107 – Recovering lost works: traces and methods

October 3, 2025

8:30 am

UGX60

This panel examines lost works of Indian literature, religion, and philosophy. It focuses not only on the use of traces — whether fragments, abridgments, or translations — to recover lost works and thereby to gain a greater understanding of Indian traditions, but on the methods and concepts that scholars working in different disciplines and subfields bring to these questions. We are therefore interested in starting a productive dialogue to compare the clues and methods used for studying "lost texts" between participants who work across a range of languages and specializations. Examples might include works presumed lost in their original form but available in summaries or adaptations, some of which have subsequently been recovered (e.g., Taraṅgavaī, Ṇivvāṇalīlāvaī, Suhr̥llēkha); works that are incompletely preserved (e.g., Rukmāṅgada, Pārataveṇpā); works that include portions of texts otherwise lost (e.g., Tridaṇḍamālā, Śr̥ṅgāraprakāśa, Yāpparuṅkalavirutti); or works that are totally lost and known only from either brief quotations or paraphrases (e.g., Mukuṭatāḍitika, Ṣaḍḍhātusamīkṣā, Vyādi's Saṅgraha). We hope that the comparative and synthetic results of this panel will aid in future research, and in view of publishing those results, we ask for original papers.

Convenors

Ollett Andrew
Chojnacki Christine

Presentations

“The Making is a Remaking”: Purāṇic Textual Variation as a Way of Worldmaking

Bisschop Peter - LIAS, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

Ephemera and Embodied Desire: Recovering the Mohamāna Varṇam Dance-Drama of the Tañjāvūr Marāṭhās through Oral Records and Lost Feminine Poetics

Srivastava Aparna - WCS, Indian Institute of Management, Indore, IIM Indore, Indore, India

Scriptural Loss as Destiny or the Jain Śrutaskhandha

Taylor Sarah - University of Chicago Divinity School, University, Chicago, United States

Māyājāla-sūtra as an important new canonical source-text

Sharygin Gleb - Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie, LMU München, München, Germany

On the Lost Nyāyatattva of Nāthamuni: A Reconstruction of Its Reception in Later Works

Schmücker Marcus - Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia, Vienna, Austria

Lost and Found. The Buddhist literature of Gandhāra.

Schlosser Andrea - Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie, LMU, München, Germany

Lost meters

Ollett Andrew - South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, Chicago, United States

Does the Poruḷiyal even exist?

Nelson-Jones Leo - University of Hamburg, Universtiy of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

Lost and Found in Citations: Divākara’s Lexicon of Aesthetic Emotions

Keerthi Naresh - Ashoka University, Ashoka University, Sonipat, India

Searching for the white elephant: Did Aśvaghoṣa ever write a Sūtrālaṃkāra?

Hartmann Jens-Uwe - Insitute for Indology and Tibetology, University of Munich, München, Germany

Jineśvara’s lost Nivvāṇalīlāvaī (1035): Tracking its contents and functions

CHOJNACKI Christine - University of Toronto, University of Toronto, TORONTO, Canada

Found Manuscripts, Disappearing Texts: Gāndhārī Dharmapadas and Arthapadas

Baums Stefan - Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München, Germany

Analyzing an unknown manuscript on “śayanopacāra:” An abridgement of Dattaka’s work on courtesanry

Arora Shubham - Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada