Fellow type: Fellow

Dr Ashwini Mokashi

Dr Ashwini Mokashi

Ashwini Mokashi is a lecturer in Hindi and a tutor in Marathi at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. An accomplished author and comparative philosopher, she examines the intersections between ancient Indian philosophy and Classical Greek thought, highlighting their continuing relevance to contemporary ethical and personal challenges.

At Oxford, Dr. Mokashi is also a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and a member of Wolfson College. Her research explores thematic parallels between the Bhagavad-Gita and Stoic philosophy, especially in the works of Seneca. Her book, Sapiens and Sthitaprajna (2019), and its Hindi translation (2024) offers a comparative study of the concept of the wise person in these traditions.

Before her full-time academic career, Dr. Mokashi spent a decade in corporate USA as an executive compensation manager. This experience deepened her work as a certified philosophical counselor and as the founder of Philosophy and Happiness, LLC, which applies ancient wisdom to modern dilemmas.

A former two-term President of the Princeton Research Forum, Dr. Mokashi is committed to public philosophy. She produces educational YouTube videos exploring philosophical themes in music and poetry and writes a multilingual blog in Hindi, Marathi, English, and German.

Her academic training at the University of Pune, King’s College, London, and Rutgers University complements her extensive community engagement. She has taught philosophy to youth in a detention center in Pune, volunteered at Trenton soup kitchen, taught comparative philosophy at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, organized no-contact blood drives in Montgomery, New Jersey that collected enough blood to help save approximately 1,100 lives.

Through her research, teaching, corporate experience, counseling practice, and community engagement, Ashwini Mokashi exemplifies the role of the philosopher as a bridge between traditions, applying timeless wisdom to address the ethical and practical challenges of modern society.

Mrs Mary Brockington

Mrs Mary Brockington

Selected Publications:

  • “Showing what is not: the use of illusion in classical Sanskrit Rāma plays”, in: Danuta Stasik ed., Oral—Written—Performed: the Ramayana narratives in Indian literature and arts, CrossAsia eBooks, 2020.
  • “From Kanauj to Laos: development of the “Floating Maiden” episode in the Southeast Asian Rāma tradition”, in: S. Settar & Parul Pandya Dhar eds., Connecting Cultures: Rāmāyaṇa retellings in South India and Southeast Asia. Proceedings of an international conference held in Bangalore, 2017, Manipal University Press, Mangalore, 2020.
  • The Other Rāmāyaṇa Women: regional rejection and response, ed. by John Brockington and Mary Brockington, Routledge Hindu Studies Series, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
  • “Mānaku’s Siege of Laṅkā series: words and pictures”, Artibus Asiae 73.1: 231-58, 2013.
  • The Motif of the Separating Sword in World Art and Literature: A Study of Its Origins and Development, Edwin Mellen Pr, 2008.
  • Rāma the Steadfast: An Early Form of the Rāmāyaṇa, tr. by John Brockington and Mary Brockington, Penguin Books, London, 2006.
  • Epic Threads, Oxford University Press India, 2003.
  • Epic Threads: John Brockington on the Sanskrit Epics, ed. Greg Bailey and Mary Brockington, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2000.
  • Composing a Tradition: Concepts, Techniques and Relationships, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2000.

Editorial work:

  • Stages and Transitions: temporal and historical frameworks in epic and historical literature.  Proceedings of the second Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas, 1999. Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, 2002.
  • Composing a Tradition: concepts, techniques, and relationships. Proceedings of the first Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas, 1997. Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, 1999
Professor John Brockington FRSE

Professor John Brockington FRSE

Biography

Professor John Brockington graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1963 and joined the Sanskrit Department at Edinburgh in 1965. In 1968 Professor Brockington completed his D.Phil with a thesis on the language and style of the Rāmāyaṇa. He remained at Edinburgh throughout his teaching career and is now emeritus Professor of Sanskrit in the School of Asian Studies, of which he was the first Head (1998-1999); he was also the first Convenor of the Centre for South Asian Studies (1989-1993). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2001.

He was the Secretary General of the International Association of Sanskrit Studies from 2000 to 2012 (and is now a Vice President) and he was the chair of the organising committee of the 13th World Sanskrit Conference, held at Edinburgh in July 2006. Professor Brockington has given lectures by invitation at many universities in India and Europe and was awarded the honorary Vidyāvācaspati degree by Silpakorn University, Bankok, in 2015.  He was a founder member the Executive Committee of the Dubrovnik International Conferences on the Sanskrit Epics and Puranas.

Research Areas

The Sanskrit epics and the history of Hinduism.

Research Interests

His research has focused on the Rāmāyaṇa in its many forms. Other research interests include the Mahabhārata, the Purāṇas and the development of Vaiṣṇavism.

Selected Publications

  • Translator: Rāma the Steadfast: An Early Form of the Rāmāyaṇa (Penguin Classics, 2006).
  • Epic Threads: John Brockington on the Sanskrit Epics (Oxford University Press, 2000).
  • A Descriptive Catalogue of the Sanskrit and other Indian Manuscripts of the Chandra Shum Shere Collection in the Bodleian Library, Part II, Epics and Purāṇas (Clarendon Press, 1999).
  • The Sanskrit Epics (E. J. Brill, 1998).
  • Hinduism and Christianity (Palgrave Macmillan, 1992).
  • Righteous Rama: the evolution of an epic (Oxford University Press, 1985).
  • The Sacred Thread: Hinduism in its Continuity and Diversity (Edinburgh University Press, 1981).

Chapters and Articles

  • “Stories in stone: sculptural representations of the Rāma narrative”, in: Oral–Written–Performed: the Rāmāyaṇa narratives in Indian literature and arts, ed. by Danuta Stasik (Heidelberg: CrossAsia eBooks, 2020): 37-51.
  • “Religious Practices in the Sanskrit Epics”, in Hindu Practice, ed. by Gavin Flood, in The Oxford History of Hinduism, gen. ed. Gavin Flood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 202): 79-98.
  • “Illustrated Rāmāyaṇa manuscripts”, in: Mitrasampradānam: a collection of papers in honour of Yaroslav Vassilkov (Saint Petersburg: MAE RAS, 2018): 204-21.
  • “Hanuman in the Mahabharata”, Journal of Vaishnava Studies 12/2, 129.135 (2004).
  • “Yoga in the Mahābhārata”, in: Ian Whicher & David Carpenter eds., Yoga: The Indian Tradition, Routledge, London (2003).