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 literary 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 Buddhist poetic culture and the roles verse, sutra translation and the wider Chinese literary tradition play in the shaping of Chinese Buddhism as religion, as community, and as aesthetic. He is currently engaged in elucidating a Tang-Dynasty episode in the evolution of the gāthā (ji 偈), a form Buddhist verse.

Besides his research, he is a passionate student and performer of Indian Classical Music specializing in the Khayāl  form of North India and in the Santoor - a 100-stringed instrument from Kashmir - both to which he has dedicated 11 years in counting.