Kiyokazu Okita

Dr. Kiyokazu Okita is Associate Professor of Hindu Studies at Faculty of Liberal Arts and at Graduate Program in Global Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo. He is also a research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. He is the author of Hindu Theology in Early Modern South Asia (Oxford University Press, 2014) as well as the editor of The Building of Vṛndāvana (Brill, 2024. Co-edited with Dr. Rembert Lutjeharms). He has published articles in various academic journals such as Journal of Indian Philosophy, International Journal of Hindu Studies, and Journal of Vaishnava Studies. In his current research project, The Aesthetic Theories of Devotion in Late Medieval South Asia funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion Science (2023-27), Okita traces a history of devotional aesthetic sentiment (bhakti-rasa) that emerged after the tenth century.

Role in the Project: I am interested in studying and comparing the Bhāgavata Purāṇa commentaries written in Sanskrit during the late medieval and the early modern periods. In my first monograph Hindu Theology in Early Modern South Asia, I presented a comparative study of four commentaries written by Madhva (13th century), Śrīdhara (14th century), Vijayadhvaja (14th century), and Jīva (16th century) on the so-called Catuḥ-śloki-bhāgavata (Bhāgavata Purāṇa 2.9.32-35). Recently I have been translating various commentaries on the first three verses (1.1.1-1.1.3) of the Bhāgavata. So far, I translated the commentary by Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (16th century) with S. Bhuvaneshwari, and those written by Madhva and Vijayadhvaja with Anusha Rao. Currently I am working on Śrīnātha Cakravartī's commentary (16th century) on the first three verses. S. Bhuvaneshwari and I are also translating Vopadeva's Harilīlā, an indexical work on the Bhāgavata, and its commentary.

Bhagavata-related Publications:

2021. “Śleṣa Readings on Bhāgavatapurāṇa 1.1.1: Śrīnātha Cakravartī’s Caitanyamatamañjuṣā Commentary”, The Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies, 69: 3, 979-985.
2020. “Rejecting Monism: Dvaita Vedānta’s Engagement with the Bhāgavatapurāṇa”, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 48: 3, 447-465.
2020. “The Authorship of the Commentary on Vopadeva’s Harilīlā”, The Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies, 68: 3, 1107-1113.
2019 "Bitextuality in Bhāgavata Purāṇa X.29." The Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies, 66: 3, 1043-1048.
2018 “Ethics and Aesthetics in Early Modern South Asia: A Controversy surrounding the Bhāgavata Purāṇa Book X”, International Journal of Hindu Studies, Special Issue, Translating the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, ed. by Anand Mishra and Monika Horstmann, 22: 1, 25-43.
2017 “From Rasa to Bhaktirasa: The Development of A Devotional Aesthetic Theory in Early Modern South Asia”, The Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies, 65: 3, 1066-1072.

Book chapters

2014 “The Bhāgavata Purāṇa in Four Verses: Jīva Gosvāmī's Kramasandarbha” in Ravi M. Gupta (ed.) Caitanya Vaisnava Philosophy: Tradition, Reason and Devotion (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 61-66.
2013 “From Ontology to Aesthetics: A Bengal Vaiṣṇava Interpretation of an Upaniṣadic Passage So ’ham” in Imre Banga (ed.) Bhakti beyond Forest: Current Research on Early Modern Literatures in North India, 2003-2009 (Delhi: Manohar Publishers), pp. 197-214.

Contact

Address: Bldg#10, Room 649, Sophia University
7-1 Kioi-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan, 102-8554
Email: k-okita@sophia.ac.jp