Dr Shikha Rajpurohit received her PhD from the School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her doctoral research focused on the text of Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā by Utpaladeva along with his auto-commentary and two commentaries by Abhinavagupta on this text. Her work dealt with the theory of cognition and consciousness in this philosophy vis-à-vis the Buddhist philosophy. She completed both her MPhil and MA in Sanskrit from Jawaharlal Nehru University and her BA (Hons) in Sanskrit from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi.
Dr Rajpurohit’s broad research areas include Pratyabhijñā philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, Indian philosophical traditions, Sanskrit poetics and dramaturgy, Indian aesthetics and Sanskrit language and literature. Within these domains, her research aims to study the theories of cognition, creativity and consciousness. She was awarded the Junior Research Fellowship by the University Grants Commission and has authored over a dozen papers published in reputed journals and as book-chapters. Contributing to the ongoing dialogue within the philosophical community, she has presented her research at about fifteen national and international conferences.
Dr Rajpurohit has gained exposure to manuscript editing and translating while working on the project Mātṛkānidhi, funded by the Indorama Charitable Trust, New Delhi. She assisted the IGNCA in preparing a dossier on the manuscript of Sahṛdayālokalocana, which has been included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Asia-Pacific Regional Register. Currently, she is working as a reviewer for an English-Sanskrit Dictionary project with Oxford University Press. Her aim is to disseminate India’s rich philosophical and literary tradition in all the ways possible.
Dr Shikha Rajpurohit’s research explores consciousness in the philosophy of Pratyabhijñā and is focused on studying it in contrast to the Buddhist philosophy. She was drawn to Pratyabhijñā philosophy while working on her MPhil dissertation which discussed Abhinavagupta’s views on the reader/receiver of literature. Her work is based on a text of this philosophy Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā along with its commentaries which explains two aspects of consciousness – cognition and action. While focusing majorly on the cognitive aspect of consciousness her research goes into the details of perception, memory and language. This analysis has been done in contrast to Buddhist theories.
Her approach in Sanskrit poetics and Indian philosophy is mainly comparative. Knowledge systems in India have flourished with support, be it in the form of argument with each other. Studying one system, opens the channel to study all of its contrasting and corresponding views. The dialectical aspect is a significant characteristic of Indian discourses which helps in sharpening and polishing any theory before it is placed before the common masses. This is the point which she would like to explore at length in the coming years. She believes that the task at hand is to interpret the philosophical texts with their own methodology which could be availed through the commentaries of that particular system. She also intends to develop a module for teaching non-dual Kashmir Śaivism to graduate level philosophy students.
