Ushus K. Unnikrishnan

Ushus U. Unnikrishnan is currently working as a researcher on the DiPiKA project (‘Digital Preservation of Kerala Archives’), led by Hugo David and funded by Arcadia. Within the project, she is primarily involved in identifying private collections of Ôle manuscripts in the Thrissur region (monasteries, ancestral homes, temples, etc.), compiling inventories of these collections, and carrying out the detailed cataloguing and physical conservation of the digitised collections.

At the same time, she is continuing the research she began as part of her PhD, which focuses on the Vedārthasārasaṅgraha, a tantric and Shaivite compendium attributed to the ascetic Brahmanandabharati. The study draws on several manuscripts preserved in Thrissur, which have recently been identified as part of the DiPiKA project. Ushus is also an expert in the Grantha script, used to transcribe Sanskrit in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu. Ushus is also interested in the ritual traditions of Kerala, particularly the rites surrounding the state of āśauca – the impurity associated with birth and death – which has given rise to a particularly abundant body of literature in Kerala, well represented in the collections studied by the project.

2018: PhD – Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady