University of Vienna

Department Member, Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies

Other Affiliations: French Institute of Pondicherry, Department of Indology
University College London, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine
University of Oxford, Oriental Studies

About

I work on Sanskrit language and literature, classical Indian studies, and the history of science and medicine in pre-modern India.

At the University of Vienna I work on the Caraka Project (http://www.istb.univie.ac.at/caraka/). In this context, I am studying the śārīrasthāna and vimānasthāna chapters of the Carakasaṃhitā, including collating manuscripts, critical editing, conceptual study, and translation.

From 9/2009 to 2/2011, I worked on the Woolner Project (http://woolnerproject.org).

My recent work has been the study of the intellectual and social world of medical thinkers and practitioners in India during the period 1550-1750, on the eve of British colonialism. I have also worked on the history of hospitals in South Asia, and the textual history of Sanskrit medical literature. 

I have taught courses in Sanskrit language and literature, manuscript studies, and the history of medicine in India, and currently teaches the history of classical Indian medicine at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

My single-author books include "A Handlist of the Sanskrit and Prakrit Manuscripts in the Wellcome Library" (2 vols, 1985, 1998), "Metarules of Pāṇinian Grammar" (2 vols., 1993), "The Roots of Ayurveda" (Penguin, 1998, repr. 2001, 2003).  My (co-)edited volumes include "Studies on Indian Medical History" (1987, repr. 2001), "Contagion" (2000), and "Mathematics and Medicine in Sanskrit" (2009).  I am also on the editorial board of the journals Indian Journal of History of Science, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, Krishti, The International Journal of Hindu Studies, and eJIM, the eJournal of Indian Medicine. I am a founder and co-editor of the book series The Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series (Brill, Leiden) and Indian Medical Tradition (MLBD, Delhi).

In 1990 I founded the INDOLOGY online discussion forum, archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/indology.html and 1994 I founded the accompanying website, http://indology.info, that now hosts other projects such as the SARIT e-text repository.

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