Professor Diwakar Acharya

Professor Diwakar Acharya is a leading scholar of South Asian religious and philosophical traditions. His research focuses on the historical development of Indian religions, with particular attention to Sanskrit textual traditions, epigraphy, and the intellectual history of early and medieval South Asia. Before taking up his position at Oxford in 2016, Acharya held academic appointments at Kyoto University (2006–2016), the University of Hamburg (2003–2006), and Nepal Sanskrit University (1993–2003). He also served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Indian Philosophy from 2014 to 2024. His scholarship is distinguished by the discovery, editing, and interpretation of previously unpublished Sanskrit texts. He has made major contributions to the study of early Vedānta, Tantra, Vaiṣṇavism, and Śaivism, most notably through his discovery of manuscripts and the critical publication of Vācaspati Miśra’s Tattvasamīkṣā, as well as through his editions of early Tantric Vaiṣṇava texts based on newly identified Pañcarātra manuscripts. Acharya has published widely on Upaniṣadic exegesis, Indian philosophy, and the religious history of South Asia. More recently, he founded the Sanskrit Text Society and launched the open-access Journal of Sanskrit Studies. He continues to shape the field through rigorous philological scholarship and interdisciplinary research, and his fully annotated critical edition of the Sāṃkhya Yuktidīpikā is forthcoming.