Principal Investigator

The Suśruta Project is led by Prof. Dominik Wujastyk, Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity at the University of Alberta. Prof. Wujastyk has a track record of research and publication in the study of Indian manuscripts, the history of Indian medicine (ayurveda) and other disciplines in Sanskrit and Indological studies.

Collaborators

The SSHRC offers this formal definition of a project collaborator.

  • Professor Diwakar Acharya, Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at the University of Oxford, is a leading authority on Sanskrit and South Asian history, languages and culture. Prof. Acharya has worked extensively on early Nepalese manuscripts and has himself published important critical editions. During a period when he worked on the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project, based at the University of Hamburg and at the National Archives in Kathmandu, he was part of the team that discovered the manuscripts on which this project is based.
  • Dr Madhu K. Paramesvaran is experienced in manuscript research and editing practice and is strongly networked with traditional south-Indian families of hereditary physicians. It is in south India, and especially Kerala, where Dr Madhu lives, that the living traditions of early Ayurvedic practice are most strongly preserved in hereditary familes of physicians. Dr Madhu provides the project with an important footprint in India. As an experienced physician and scholar of Sanskrit himself, he is in a position to aid the project with the interpretation of medical knowledge when the textual descriptions need to be clarified against transmitted traditional practice. Dr Madhu is an Assistant Professor at the VPS Varier Ayurveda College, Kottakkal.
  • Prof. Alessandro Graheli has deep experience with Indian manuscripts and is an international expert in the subtleties of textual criticism and the editing of Sanskrit works from manuscript. His edition of the philosophical work of Jayanta Bhaṭṭa contains an introduction that lays out the editorial practices that will be applied in our project. In particular, Dr Graheli discusses the application of cladistic analysis to manuscript stemmata and raises important questions and insights into the practical use of these novel methodologies. Prof Graheli advises the project on both technical and interpretative questions.
  • Prof. Kengo Harimoto is one of the few scholars to have published analytic research about the Nepalese manuscripts of the Suśrutasaṃhitā. Prof. Harimoto is an experienced text-historical scholar with numerous landmark publications in the area of textual criticism and the evaluation of medieval Sanskrit commentarial literature. Prof. Harimoto’s published studies of the Nepalese manuscripts of the SS cover both text-historical enquiries as well as higher critical studies concerning the newly-revealed content of the SS in the early manuscript transmission.

Research Fellows

  • Dr Jason Birch joined the project in late 2020 as a full-time project researcher and moved to part-time participation in 2021 when he was hired on the Haṭhapradīpikā project. Jason has an extensive research and publication record in the study of Sanskrit, Indian manuscripts, Yoga and the history of ayurveda.
  • Dr Andrey Klebanov joined the project in 2021 and continued to 2022 when he moved to take up a new position at Vienna University. He continues as an honorary RF on the project. Andrey wrote his MA on the Nepalese SS and his doctorate on Sanskrit literary commentaries. He has studied several Sanskrit śāstras, and published on the history of the Suśrutasaṃhitā its earliest commentaries, and the Nepalese MSS that are the core of this project.

Research Assistants

  • Madhusudan Rimal, PhD student, University of Alberta
  • Deepro Chakraborty, PhD student, University of Alberta
  • Jane Allred, PhD student, University of Alberta
  • Vandana Lele, Independent scholar, Baroda
  • Harshal Bhatt, Assistant Professor, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
  • Devayani Shenoy, BA student, University of Toronto (to August 2021)
  • Paras Mehta, PhD student, University of Bombay (from 2022) and Assistant Professor, Jīva Institute of Vedic Studies
  • Gauri Vyaghrambhare, MA, Bombay University (2022 Jan-July)

Project Associates

Colleagues who are working with the materials of this project.