Recovering the Plays of Māyurāja

Conversation between Prof. Andrew Ollett, University of Chicago, and Prof. Naresh Keerthi, Ashoka University

Chair: Dr. Sudha Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, IIC-International Research Division

The speakers will share their experiences of editing and translating two plays composed by the eighth-century poet Māyurāja, Tāpasavatsarāja (“Udayana the Ascetic”) and Udāttarāghava (“Raghu’s Exalted Descendants”). They will refer to the challenges posed by the manuscripts, of which there is only one extant for Tāpasavatsarāja, and only one accessible to scholars of Udāttarāghava.

Prof. Andrew Ollett works on the literary and intellectual traditions of South Asia, including works composed in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, Kannada, and Chinese from the first millennium of the common era. He is the recipient of the Infosys Prize for 2025.

Prof. Naresh Keerthi is Head, Department of Sanskrit, Ashoka University and researched on the semantics of colour in Sanskrit, at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. He is interested in kāvya and nāṭya literature in Sanskrit and Prakrit, and their interactions with South India’s literary cultures. He studies topics at the intersection of the lexicon, grammar and poetics, and is investigating the development of poetic topoi in kāvya literature.

Sixteenth in a series of lectures organised by IIC-International Research Division with the support of Ministry of External Affairs