‘Verità e bellezza’. Essays in Honour of Raffaele Torella (Volume II)

Francesco Sferra is full professor of Sanskrit language and literature at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, where he has been teaching since 1998. His primary areas of expertise are connected to Sanskrit philology, the history of Indian religions, tantric studies, and classical Indian philosophy. In 2007 and in 2011–2012 he has been visiting professor (Numata-Professor für Buddhismuskunde) at the Asien-Afrika-Institut (Hamburg Universität). Since 2006, he leads an international research project for the critical edition and study of unpublished Buddhist works in Sanskrit. His works include the critical edition and translation of the longer Ṣaḍaṅgayoga by Anupamarakṣita with its commentary by Raviśrījñāna (2000), the Sekoddeśaṭīkā by Nāropā (2006) and (together with H. Isaacson) the Sekanirdeśapañjikā by Rāmapāla (2014). He is founder and coeditor of the series Manuscripta Buddhica launched in 2008.

Vincenzo Vergiani is Professor of Sanskrit at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. His main areas of research are the Sanskrit grammatical tradition and the history of linguistic ideas in ancient South Asia. In 2011-2014 he launched and directed the AHRC-funded project “The intellectual and religious traditions of South Asia as seen through the Sanskrit manuscript collections of the University Library, Cambridge” (http://sanskrit.lib.cam.ac.uk/). Since September 2021 he leads the project “An Intellectual History of Late Vedanta (1750-1900)” funded by the Leverhulme Trust, in collaboration with A. Barua, H. David, and J. Duquette. He has co-edited Studies in the Kāśikāvṛtti. The section on pratyāhāras. Critical edition, translation and other contributions (2009), Bilingual Discourse and Cross-Cultural Fertilisation: Sanskrit and Tamil in Medieval India (2013), and Indic Manuscript Cultures through the Ages. Material, Textual, and Historical Investigations (2017).