Deven M. Patel

Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Comparative Literature

814 Williams Hall


Research Interests

Sanskrit language and literature (belles-lettres, epics, and drama); grammar and linguistics; Indian philosophy and intellectual history; Pali, Prakrit, Hindi and Gujarati language and literature; translation theory.

Affiliation

American Oriental Society, Association for Asian Studies, International Association of Sanskrit Studies, American Institute of Indian Studies, Scindia Oriental Research Institute, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute

Courses Taught

COML 7215   Medieval Poetics: Europe and India (co-taught with Rita Copeland)

SAST 004      India's Literature: Love, War, Wisdom and Humor

SAST 006      Hindu Mythology

SAST 150      Introduction To Indian Philosophy

SAST 324      Sanskrit Literature and Poetry

SAST 334      A Survey of Sanskrit, Pakrit,& Classical Tamil Literature in Translation

SAST 631      Sanskrit Epics

SAST 713      Literary Theory, Aesthetics, and Comparative Literature in South Asia

SKRT 460      Sanskrit: 1st Year

SAST 480      Readings in Sanskrit Literature 

Education

Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley

B.A. Columbia University

Selected Publications

BOOKS:

Text to Tradition: The Naiṣadhīyacarita and Literary Community in South Asia.  Columbia University Press, 2014 (U.S. Edition)

Text to Tradition: The Naiṣadhīyacarita and Literary Community in South Asia. Manohar Books, 2014 (Indian Edition)

Āndhraśabdacintāmaṇi: A Grammar of Telugu Language in Sanskrit [co-authored with R.V.S. Sundaram], Central Institute of Indian Languages, 2016. 

Kavirājamārgam: The Way of the King of Poets  [co-authored with R.V.S. Sundaram], Jawarharlal Nehru University (Kannada Language Chair) and Manohar Publishers, 2017.  

An Ocean of Gems: Essays on Language, Linguistics, and Education in Memory of Dhanesh Jain, Primus Books, 2025.
 

INTERVIEW:

Critical Margins with Deven M. Patel, Author of “Text to Tradition”

ARTICLES and BOOK CHAPTERS:

"The Mahābhārata as India's National Epic" in National Epics.  Ed. David Wallace.  Oxford University Press. [Forthcoming]

"An Epic 20th-Century Sanskrit Life: Baladev Upadhyaya and Srinivas Rath's Baladevacarita-mahākāvya" in Modern Sanskrit: Dialogue across Times, Spaces, and Religions [Series: Dialogues in South Asian Traditions: Religion, Philosophy, Literature, and History].  Eds. Laurie Patton, Charles Preston, and Finnian Gerety. [Forthcoming]

"Sources of Authority in Post-Classical Hinduism" in A Cultural History of Hinduism in the Post-Classical Age (800-1500 CE). Ed. Karen Pechilis.  Pgs. 25-47.  Bloomsbury Press. (2024) 

"Translating Warhol to India" in Translating Warhol. Ed. Reva Wolf.  Bloomsbury Press.  Pgs. 197-211. (2024) 

"Disruptive Readings: Sanskrit Literary Commentary as Translation" in Science and Society in the Sanskrit World.  Eds. Fleming, Knudsen, Misra, Sharma. Brill Press (2023). 

“The Literary Commentary in Sanskrit as Metalinguistic Communication” in Asiatiche Studien – Études Asiatiques, 76.3, 2022. 

"Translating texts, translating readers: could Andy Warhol’s writings be translated into Indian languages?" in Journal of Art Historiography (26: June 2022). ISSN 2042-4752. 

"The Curious Case of Sanskrit Literary Translingualism" in The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism.  Eds. Steven Kellman and Natasha Lvovich.  Routledge Press (2021) 

"Desire, Perception, and the Poetry of Desire: A Reading of the Vasucaritramu" in Sensitive Reading: The Pleasures of South Asian Literature in Translation. Eds. Yigal Bronner and Charles Hallisey. University of California Press (2021).  

"Kāvya’s Repeat Performances: Intersections of Aesthetics, yoga-parikarma-bhāvanā, and the Logic of Medium-Specificity in Daśarūpaka’s Discussion of śāntarasa" in Cracow Indological Studies, Issue XXII (2) (2020).

“Appropriations and Innovations in Metalinguistic Terminology in an Influential Telugu Grammar Composed in Sanskrit” (2017) in Histoire Épistémologie Langage, Paris: Société d’Histoire et d’Épistémologie des sciences du Langage (International Society for the History and Epistemology of Language Science).

"Mettabhāvanā in Traditional and Popular Buddhist Contexts" (2014) in Asian PhilosophyAn International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East. Taylor & Francis. Volume 24, Issue 4.

"The Sanskrit Poet's 'Voice' in Legend and History" in Sucāruvādadeśika: A Festschrift Honoring Professor Theodore Riccardi, Jr.  Eds. Lewis and Owens.  Himal Books (2014). 

“Sanskrit Poetry” (2012) in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th Edition. Ed. Greene and Cushman. Princeton University Press, pp. 1250-1255. 

“Shared Typologies of KāmaśāstraAlaṅkāraśāstra, and Literary Criticism” (2011) in the Journal of Indian Philosophy, Volume 39, No.1. Journal of Indian Philosophy, February 2011, pp. 101-122.

"Source, Exegesis, and Translation: Sanskrit Commentary and Regional Language Translation in South Asia" (2011) in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 131, no. 2.

Faculty Bookshelf