Dr. Somadeva Vasudeva
The editor and inspiration behind the Tantric Studies Reader, Dr. Somadeva Vasudeva is currently Assistant Professor in Sanskrit at Columbia University, New York. He received an M.A. at the University of London in Sanskrit and Prakrit language in 1993, and a D.Phil. from Oxford in 2000 under the tutelage of Professor Alexis Sanderson.
Dr. Vasudeva authored The Yoga of the Mālinīvijayottara Tantra (2004), an important thesis on the role of Yoga within early Shaiva Tantra. He also edited and translated the renowned Recognition of Shakuntalā by the classical Sanskrit poet Kālidāsa. He is very experienced editing and translating primary Sanskrit texts of all genres, especially Tantric scriptures and poetry, as he has been a principal editor for the Clay Sanskrit Library for a number of years.
“The foremost problem that has plagued me since I first started teaching Tantric material to students is its difficulty of access. Hence a Tantric Reader seemed always the most urgent task: something comparable to McDonell's Vedic Reader, or Lanman's Sanskrit Reader. The Tantric corpus is obviously more than one person can deal with in one lifespan, so we need to encourage more students to engage with this material in a dedicated manner. Therefore the Tantric Reader will serve the purpose of being a manual on ‘how to read, edit, translate and interpret’ Tantric primary sources.” -- SDV