Dominik Wujastyk, DPhil, MA, BSc

Contact

Professor, Faculty of Arts - History, Classics, & Religion Dept

Email: wujastyk@ualberta.ca
Phone: (780) 492-3921
Address: 2-81 Tory (H.M.) Building
11211 Saskatchewan Drive NW

Edmonton AB

T6G 2H4

Overview

About

Degrees

DPhil (Sanskrit linguistics) Oxford University, 1982
MA (Sanskrit and Pali) Oxford University, 1978
BSc (Physics) Imperial College, London, 1974

Interests

History and culture of pre-modern India
Sanskrit language and literature
Indian knowledge systems: āyurveda (medicine), yoga, vyākaraṇa (linguistics), manuscript studies, Indian textual criticism and editorial technique,
History of science in South Asia

Editorial work

In addition to serving on several editorial boards, I am a founding editor of two book series,

The Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series (Brill, Leiden)
Indian Medical Tradition (MLBD, Delhi)

and the founding editor of the journal

History of Science in South Asia (and FB page)

Research

In Asian Studies, my early training was in the Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit languages, and my first research project was on formal rule-conflicts in Indian linguistics (the generative Sanskrit grammar by Panini). Later, I moved to teach and research in the history of medicine in India and South Asia, and this has remained an active research area for me. I have also researched the history of classical Yoga in India, and that has immediately connected with aspects of early Indian Buddhism, out of which Yoga arose.

I am working on a book that presents the history of classical Indian medicine through a series of commented translations that illustrate how ideas changed through time. This will be published in a series at Columbia UP called "Historical Sourcebooks in Classical Indian Thought." Other writing projects include a book on the history of Yoga Asanas, co-authored with Philipp Maas (Leipzig), a study of debate and disagreement in the tradition of scholarly Indian medicine, and a work on the intellectual history of traditional Indian physicians in the two centuries preceding colonialism. A book on part of the surgical material in the Compendium of Suśruta (Suśrutasaṃhitā), arising out of the Sushruta Project, will be published in 2023 (DOI).

If there's a golden thread through my research interests it is the study of source materials in their original languages, mainly Sanskrit and Pali.

Teaching

Fields of Graduate Supervision (I am not accepting new PhD students)

Ancient Indian history
History of medicine and science in India
Sanskrit grammatical tradition (व्याकरणम् )
History of Indian Buddhism
History of Ayurveda
History of Yoga

I run a graduate research seminar each semester for reading Sanskrit literature and exploring topics in philology.

Undergraduate

I teach several undergraduate courses annually, including "Introduction to Classical India," "History of Indian Yoga and Meditation," "History of Science in Early India," and "Topics in the History of Medicine: Ayurveda: The Science of Life in Ancient India."

Announcements

See the University of Alberta website for South Asian Studies: http://sas.ualberta.ca

Courses

HIST 289 - Classical India to 500 CE

The world of Classical India, from the emergence of the Mauryan Empire in the fourth century BCE to the close of the Gupta Empire in the fifth century CE.

Fall Term 2023

HIST 387 - History of Indian Yoga and Meditation

The history and philosophy of early Yoga, exploring its focus on meditation, its literature, its connections with Buddhism, and its historical evolution. HIST 110, 289, or CLASS 110 are recommended but not required.

Winter Term 2024

Browse more courses taught by Dominik Wujastyk

Scholarly Activities

Research - The Suśruta Project: The textual and cultural history of medicine in South Asia based on newly-discovered manuscript evidence

1 April 2020 to 31 March 2024

In January 2007, the Nepal-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project announced the discovery of a palm-leaf manuscript of The Compendium of Sushruta that is reliably datable to 876 CE. The Compendium is a foundational treatise of classical Indian medicine written in Sanskrit about two thousand years ago. This manuscript pushes our physical evidence for the treatise back by a millennium and revels a much earlier stage of the work’s textual development. This SSHRC-funded project explores the history of medicine in South Asia in the context of this new evidence.

The Sushruta Project

Other - History of Science in South Asia journal

I am the founding editor of this new international journal.

HSSA

Other - Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series - a book series

I am a founding editor, with Profs. Paul Unschuld and Lawrence I. Conrad, of a book series published with Brill, Leiden. The series publishes volumes on the history of science and medicine in Asia.

Publisher's website for the SHWAS

Other - Traditional Indian Medicine

I am a founding editor, with Prof. K. G. Zysk. The series is published in Delhi by Motilal Banarsidass.

Publisher's website