Akane Saitô, currently a post-doctoral researcher in Kyushu University (Fukuoka, Japan), has arrived at the Pondicherry EFEO Centre for a two-year stay to work on her project "Theories of Sound, Speech and Conceptualisation in Medieval India", funded by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Dr. Saitô is a well-known expert of Indian philosophy of language, especially of the work of Maṇḍana Miśra (7th century CE). In Pondicherry, she will investigate the exegetical background of Indian epistemology and language theory, and its resonances in later Hindu theology. She will especially work, in collaboration with H. David, on the tenth book of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra ("Aphorism on [Vedic] exegesis") and its commentaries, dealing with the concept of "cancellation" (bādha), used both in the fields of ritual and epistemology. She will also pursue, under the guidance of Dominic Goodall, her translation of Aghoraśiva's twelfth-century commentary on the Ratnatrayaparīkṣā, a Kashmirian Śaiva text with large sections devoted to speech and its various levels.


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