Rishi Mahendran Nair

Rishi Mahendran Nair joined ASU, in 2024, as a Master's student in the East Asian Languages & Civilizations (Chinese) Program. He received his Bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies at Western Washington University where he chiefly studied under advisors Dr. Julian Siyuan Wu (Premodern Chinese Literature) and Dr. Ethan Bushelle (East Asian Buddhism).

Rishi’s scholarship and translation work seeks to mediate meaningful dialogues between the poetic and the religious, enriching our understanding of the impact religion has on the creation, product, evaluation, and culture of poetry, and the influence that poetry has on the expression, practice, and experience of religion in Medieval China. His research particularly emphasizes the assimilation of Buddhist thought, literature, and Sanskrit into the Chinese poetic tradition, and the role that literary aesthetics plays in the shaping of Chinese Buddhism. He is currently piecing together a cross-cultural history of the gāthā, a form of Buddhist verse common to both India and China.

Besides his research, he is a passionate student of Hindustani Classical Music and specializes in the Santoor, a 100-stringed instrument from Kashmir, to which he has dedicated 11 years in counting.