Professor Emeritus of South Asian Literature and Linguistics
About
Research Interests
Madhav M. Deshpande is professor of Sanskrit and Hindu Studies at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, with a joint appointment in the Department of Linguistics. Originally trained in traditional and modern Sanskrit scholarship in Pune, India, Deshpande earned his B.A. (1966) and M.A. (1968) in Sanskrit from the University of Pune, and his doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania (1972). He has been on the faculty of the University of Michigan since 1972. His research relates to the fields of the Sanskrit grammatical tradition, historical linguistics and sociolinguistics of Indo-Aryan languages, and the religious and philosophical traditions of India, including Hinduism and Buddhism. He has published fifteen books and over 150 research papers relating to these areas.
Recent Courses Taught
First and Second Year of Sanskrit (taught during alternate years)
Advanced Sanskrit
Introduction to Classical Hinduism
Krishna Speaks: The Bhagavadgita
Introduction to Indian Philosophy
Publications
- Samskrtasubodhini: A Sanskrit Primer. 1997. Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
- Sociolinguistic Attitudes in India: A Historical Reconstruction. 1979. Karoma Publishers, Ann Arbor.
- The Meaning of Nouns: Semantic Theory in Classical and Medieval India. 1992. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Affiliation(s)
- Visiting Scholar in the Department of Linguistics at Stanford University
- Asian Languages & Cultures
- Center for South Asian Studies
- Department of Linguistics
Field(s) of Study
- Historical linguistics
- Sanskrit grammatical tradition
- Sanskrit phonetics
- Indo-Aryan linguistics
- Sociolinguistics of Sanskrit and Prakrit languages
