Renowned Sanskrit scholar H.V. Nagaraja Rao, a past fellow of the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies and a member of the "A Lasting Vision: Dandin’s Mirror in the World of Asian Letters" and "Toward a History of Sanskrit Poetry" research groups, was recently honored with the 'Champaka Kalaa Ratna' Lifetime Achievement Award by the Champaka Educational and Cultural Trust.
H. V. Nagaraja Rao, Vidvān, Oriental Research Institute Mysore (emeritus), is a world authority on Sanskrit grammar and poetics. He is the editor of numerous Sanskrit works and has translated many Sanskrit works into English and Kannada, including, most recently, Ruyyaka's Alaṃkārasarvasvam.
Organizer: Yigal Bronner (The Hebrew University)
Dandin’s Mirror of Poetry (Kāvyādarśa), a Sanskrit work on poetics composed in South India around 700 CE, is one of the most influential treatises ever produced in Asia.
The work was translated and adapted into a variety of languages in the south of the Indian peninsula and the island of Sri Lanka (Kannada, Tamil, Sinhala, and Pali), travelled to Southeast Asia (Burma and Indonesia), was repeatedly translated in northern and central Asia (Tibet and Mongolia), and may even have exercised influence on poetic praxis in China. Moreover, it is hard to overstate the profound impact of Dandin’s Mirror, which, in distant corners of Asia and at different times, consistently emboldened new literary beginnings.
