5: John Brockington | Explorations in the World of Rāma

The Sanskrit Studies Podcast

My guest this week is Professor John Brockington, about whom you can read more here and here. This contains many of his publications as well as a complete publication list.

The main focus of Professor Brockington’s research has been on the Rāmāyaṇa. You can find the complete pdfs of the critical edition he mentions here.

In addition to publishing his own work in studies such as Righteous Rāma (see details in the bibliography mentioned above) or The Sanskrit Epics, he has a long-standing and highly productive collaboration with his wife Mary (the guest on our next podcast!) which has led, among many other things, to their beautiful translation Rāma the Steadfast as well as their extensive Rāmāyaṇa Research Archive.

Together, they both worked on the Epic and Purāṇic Bibliography hosted at the University of Göttingen. If you are interested in finding out more about the Purāṇas, this is a good place to start; similarly with this link on the god Viṣṇu’s ten incarnations (or avatars).

Read more about the International Association of Sanskrit Studies of which Professor Brockington is Honorary Vice President, and the World Sanskrit Conference organised by the IASS.

If, like our host, you are too young to remember the fascination with India caused by the Beatles, this Rolling Stone article gives you a taste.

The books John suggests for anyone interested in Sanskrit and especially the Ramayana are the Udātta Rāghavam, Julius Lipner’s The Hindus, A. L. Basham’s The Wonder that was India , Philip Lutgendorf’s The Life of a Text, Danuta Stasik’s The Infinite Story and From Lanka Eastwards.