Ajay Rao
Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Religion
Associate Professor and Vice-Dean, Graduate, Department of Historical Studies (UTM)
Areas of interest
- Sanskrit Intellectual History
- Sanskrit Literature and Poetics
- South Asian Religions
- Cultural History of the Deccan
Biography
Main Bio
Ajay Rao is Associate Professor in the Department of Historical Studies and the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. His areas of research include Sanskrit intellectual history, Sanskrit literature, and religion in South India. His first book, Re-figuring the Ramayana as Literature: A History of Reception in Premodern India focused on traditional hermeneutics and the pre-colonial prehistory of the modern emergence of this epic as a foundational religious text. He is currently engaged in collaborative research projects on the “Age of Vedanta” and “Sultanate Sanskrit.”
Select publications
Book
- Re-figuring the Rāmāyaṇa as Theology: A History of Reception in Premodern India. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015.
Articles
- “From Fear to Hostility: Responses to the Conquests of Madurai”. Journal of South Asian Studies 32:1 (2016): 68-79.
- “The Vaiṣṇava Writings of a Śaiva Intellectual”. Journal of Indian Philosophy 44.1 (2016): 41-65.
- “Theologising the Inaugural Verse: Śleṣa Reading in Rāmāyaṇa Commentary”. Journal of Hindu Studies 1.1-2 (2008): 77-92.
- “A New Perspective on the Royal Rāma Cult at Vijayanagara”. In Bronner, Yigal, Cox, Whitney, and McCrea, Lawrence, (Eds.) South Asian Texts in History: Critical Engagements with Sheldon Pollock, pp. 25-44. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011.
Edited Volume
- Reuse of the Past: Producing the Deccan, 1300-1800. Journal of South Asian Studies 32:1 (2016).