Dušan Zbavitel studied Indology with Professor Vincenc Lesný at Charles University in Prague in 1945–1948. After defending his CSc (Candidate of Sciences) dissertation in Bengali literature (1954), he started as a researcher at the Oriental Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. He remained there until being forced out for political reasons in 1971 during the period of Communist "normalization" that followed the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. After 1971, he worked as a freelance translator, and in 1978 he started as a teacher of Sanskrit and Bengali at the School of Languages in Prague. He was active as an author and translator until the last days of his life. He translated from Sanskrit, Pali, Bengali, English and German.