Andrew Ollett

I study the literary and intellectual traditions of South Asia, including works composed in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, and Kannada, mostly falling within the first millennium of the common era. My research has focused on the “question of language”: the availability and choice of certain languages for certain purposes, and the role of language in cultural production and change. 

Currently I am working with Sarah Pierce Taylor on an edition and translation The Way of the Poet-King (Kavirājamārgaṁ), a manual for composing literature in Kannada, one of the regional languages of south India. It was written in the 870s and hence is the oldest Kannada text to survive, apart from inscriptions. This project has been supported by an NEH “Scholarly Editions and Translations” grant. 

I am working on a monograph on the principle of context-sensitivity in Indian theories of language, which will situate the work of premodern thinkers such as Kumārila Bhaṭṭa and Śālikanātha Miśra in contemporary debates within linguistics, especially semantics and pragmatics. Another longer-term project addresses the impact of manuscript technology on the ideas and practices of different communities in early historic South Asia.

• The Mirror of Ornaments (Alaṅkāradappaṇō): A Prakrit Work of Poetics. Naples: Unior Press, 2025. (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” Series Minor) Open access and available for free from the publisher.
• Lilavai (edition and translation). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2021. (Murty Classical Library of India) Available from the publisher.
• Language of the Snakes: Prakrit, Sanskrit, and the Language Order of Premodern India. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Open access and available for free from the publisher.

• “The First Hundred Light Years: The Wave of Twelfth-Century Responses to the
  Kāvyaprakāśa.” (with Yigal Bronner) Journal of the American Oriental Society 144.4 (2024): 807–831. DOI 10.7817/jaos.144.4.2024.ar029.
• “Final Syllable Reduction in Middle Indic and Iranic.” Bhāṣā: Journal of South Asian Linguistics, Philology and Grammatical Traditions 3.1 (2024): 54–106. DOI 10.30687/bhasha/2785-5953/2024/01/004.
• “A Revisionist Account of the Campū.” Journal of South Asian Intellectual History 6.1 (2024): 128–162. DOI 10.1163/25425552-20240006.
• “‘A Mirror and a Handlamp’: The Way of the Poet-King and the Afterlife of the Mirror In the World of Kannada Literature.” (edited by me, with contributions by Sarah Pierce
  Taylor, Gil Ben-Herut, and myself) Chapter 3 in Yigal Bronner (ed.), A Lasting Vision: Daṇḍin’s Mirror in the World of Asian Literature, 92–140. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2023. DOI
  10.1093/oso/9780197642924.003.0003.
• “Poetics Before Dandin” (with Yigal Bronner). Chapter 5, section 2 in Yigal Bronner (ed.), A Lasting Vision: Daṇḍin’s Mirror in the World of Asian Literature, 255–258. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2023. DOI 10.1093/oso/9780197642924.003.0006.
• “The Application of Mīmāṁsā Interpretive Concepts on Commentaries in Plays.” Asiatische Studien / Études asiatiques 76.3 (2022): 559–580. DOI 10.1515/asia-2022-0029.
• “Attempted Iconoclasm: Mahmud of Ghazna, King Yoga, and the Poet Dhanapāla.” 
  Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 42.2 (2022): 309–324 (a special issue edited by Manan Ahmed in memory of Allison Busch). DOI 10.1215/1089201X-9987762.
• “This Globe Where Man Is Nothing.” (Part of a symposium in response to Dipesh Chakrabarty’s The Climate of History in a Planetary Age). Review of Politics 84.4 (2022): 593–597. DOI 10.1017/S0034670522000687.
• “Non-canonical Subjects in the Prakrit of Kōūhala’s Līlāvaī.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 142.2 (2022): 273–292.
• “Plumbing the depths: reading Bhavabhūti in seventeenth-century Kerala.” (with Anand
  Venkatkrishnan) Asiatische Studien / Études asiatiques, 76.3 (2022): 581–622. DOI 10.1515/asia-2021-0036.
• “Images of Language Mixture in Early Kannada Literature.” In Chenna Reddy (ed.), Nagabharanam (festschrift for Hampa Nagarajaiah), 2022. (Note that I have
  never seen proofs or the final result of this article!)
• “Two Stories about the Transmission of Knowledge.” In Nida Ghouse and Brooke Holmes (eds.), Coming to Know (Volume 2 of the series An Archaeology of Listening, edited by Nida Ghouse and Brooke Holmes). Truccazano, Milan, Italy: Archive Books, pp. 92-104, 119-120. 2022.
• “Taking the Measure of A Hundred Measures.” In Yigal Bronner and Charles Hallisey (eds.), Sensitive Reading: The Pleasures of South Asian Literature in Translation, pp. 229–233. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022.
• “Śālikanātha’s Fundamentals of Sentence-Meaning.” In Alessandro Graheli (ed.), The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy of Language. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.
• “Rasa as Sentence-Meaning.” In Alessandro Graheli (ed.), The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy of Language. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.
• “Kumārila Bhaṭṭa’s Explanation in Verse, Prabhākara’s Long Explanation, and
  Śālikanātha’s Straightforward and Lucid Gloss and Comprehensive Survey of the
  Epistemic Instruments.” (with Elisa Freschi) Three chapters of annotated translations about arthāpatti. In C. Malcolm Keating (ed.), Controversial Reasoning in Indian Philosophy: Major Texts and Arguments on Arthāpatti. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.
• “The Prakrit Mirror of Ornaments and Bhāmaha’s Ornament of Literature.” In Jayandra Soni and Hampa Nagarajaiah (eds.), Cāruśrī: Essays in Honor of Bhaṭṭāraka Cārukīrti, 163–174. Bangalore: Sapna Book House, 2019.
• “Duty and Sacrifice: A Logical Analysis of the Mīmāṃsā Theory of Vedic Injunctions.” [With Elisa Freschi and Matteo Pascucci.] History and Philosophy of Logic 40 [4]: 323–354, 2019. Open access and available for free from the publisher.
• “The Prakrit Mirror of Ornaments and Bhāmaha’s Ornament of Literature.” In Jayandra Soni and Hampa Nagarajaiah (eds.), Cāruśrī: Essays in Honor of Bhaṭṭāraka Cārukīrti, 163–174. Bangalore: Sapna Book House, 2019.
• “Making it Nice: Kāvya in the Second Century.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 47 [2]: 269–287, 2019.
• Sātavāhana and Nāgārjuna: Religion and the Sātavāhana State.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 41: 421–472, 201
• “Explaining Prakrit Poetry in the 18^th Century: Vrajarāja Dīkṣita’s Commentary on Hāla’s Seven Centuries.” Bulletin de l’école française d’extrême-orient 103: 11–41, 2018.
• “Pālitta and the History of Prakrit Literature.” In Peter Flügel and Nalini Balbir (eds.), Jain Studies: Select Papers at Bangkok and Kyoto. Delhi: DK Publishers Distributors, 2018.
• “High-Density Expressions in The Way of the Poet-King.” Rivista degli Studi Orientali N.S. 90: 93–105, 2017.

• Readings in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Pali
• Orientalism
• South Asian Civilizations I
• Memory, Text, Tradition
• Classical Literature of South Asia, 0-1000 CE
• South Asian Theatre: The First Thousand Years