Presentazione/Presentation

I am a PhD candidate in Sanskrit/Indology under the supervision of Prof. Florinda De Simini. Following my BA and MA studies in Eastern and Western Ancient Civilizations, I joined the ERC-Śivadharma Project as a research fellow (assegnista di ricerca), and in July 2024 I was a visiting researcher at Kyoto University. My scholarly interests encompass Sanskrit epic, Purāṇa literature, classical Hinduism, Indian medicine and textual criticism. I am also interested in South Asian astral sciences, especially in the ways astrologers’ expertise and authority were framed in different textual and religious milieus. 

Title: Microcosm and Macrocosm: Individual Action and Universal Suffering in South Asian Religious Traditions. 

My dissertation investigates the relationship between the doctrines of karman and rebirth and the concept of universal suffering through the study of unpublished Sanskrit textual sources. Across South Asian religious and philosophical traditions, the idea that actions performed in this life generate specific results (experienced by the agent in a subsequent existence according to merit and demerit) functions as a central explanatory and normative framework. Agency and suffering are thus inseparable dimensions of life in saṃsāra, a point memorably condensed by the Mahābhārata’s image of action following its doer ‘like a shadow.’ 

To explore the correspondence between individual action and universal suffering, I focus on chapter 8 of the Śivadharmottara (“Supplement to the Religion of Śiva”) and chapter 11 of the Umāmaheśvarasaṃvāda (“Dialogue between Umā and Maheśvara”). For both texts, I will prepare a first critical edition and an annotated translation. These sources illuminate how different South Asian communities articulated such doctrines for non-specialist devotees, including in contexts shaped by rivalry for royal patronage. 

Chapter 8 of the Śivadharmottara asserts that no domain of existence lies beyond suffering: saṃsāra begins before birth and already encompasses the embryo. Through a stark account of gestation and bodily formation, the text presents the material body as a concrete manifestation of spiritual suffering (duḥkha). Affliction is not confined to the human condition; it extends into the divine abodes, where even the gods are not immune to the touch of disease. In this mirroring of heaven and earth, these two chapters offer valuable evidence for the entanglement of karman, suffering, and rebirth in early medieval Sanskrit literature (6th–7th century CE).