Diwakar Acharya

Position:

Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics 

Faculty / College Address:

Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies / All Souls College

Background

Associate Professor of Indological Studies, Kyoto University (from 2011 to 2016)
Visiting Foreign Lecturer, Kyoto University (from 2006 to 2011)
Research Associate, Hamburg University (from 2003 to 2006)
Assistant Professor, Nepal Sanskrit University (from 1993 to 2003)

Research interests

Evolution of Indian religions and philosophical ideas
Early history of South Asia (particularly Nepal)

Selected publications

Early Tantric Vaiṣṇavism. Three Newly Discovered works of the Pañcarātra: The Svāyambhuvapañcarātra, Devāmṛtapañcarātra and Aṣṭādaśavidhāna. Critically Edited from their 11th- and 12th-Century Palm-leaf Manuscripts with an Introduction and Notes. Collection Indologie 129: Early Tantra Series 2. Ecole Française d’Extrême–Orient / Institut français Pondichéry / Universität Hamburg. pp. i-lxxxvi, 1-230, 2015.

The Issue of Remarriage, Adultery and Child Production in Ancient Nepal: An insight into the Maligaun Inscription of Viṣṇugupta dated in Licchavi Saṃvat 57 (632 AD), Studies in Nepalese History and Society(SINHAS), Vol. 19(2014),3. Kathmandu.

“This world, in the beginning, was phenomenally non-existent”: Āruṇi’s Discourse on Cosmogony in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad. Journal of Indian Philosophy. Print version: volume 44 (2016).5.

The Upaniṣadic Method of Neti neti and the Jaina Doctrine of Anekānta, in J. Soni, M. Pahlke, C. Cüppers (eds.), Buddhist and Jaina Studies. Proceeding of the Conference in Lumbini, February 2013. LIRI Seminar Proceedings Series, Volume 6. Lumbini: Lumbini Internatioanl Research Institute, 2014, pp. 299–317.

An Investigation into the Background of the Śaiva Siddhānta Concept of Innate Impurity (mala), in Journal of Indian Philosophy 42 (2014), 1: pp. 9–25.

How to behave like a Bull? New Insight into the Origin and Religious Practices of Pāśupatas, in Indo-Iranian Journal 56 (2013), 2: pp. 101–131.

Néti néti. Meaning and Function of an Enigmatic Phrase in the Gārgya-Ajātaśatru dialogue of Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad II.2 and II.3, in Indo-Iranian Journal 56 (2013), 1: 3–39.

Other professional memberships and roles

Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Indian Philosophy (from 2014)
Member of Advisory Committee, Collection Indologie, Pondicherry (from 2008)

Photograph of Diwakar Acharya