This volume results from a symposium held at the University of Toronto in honour of Alexis G.J.S. Sanderson. The symposium was convened in March 2015 in anticipation of his retirement as the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at All Souls College, Oxford University. The event was conceived by Srilata Raman, who worked tirelessly and resourcefully to make it a success. In this she was aided by Shaman Hatley, co-convener of the symposium, and a number of graduate students, especially Kalpesh Bhatt, Tamara Cohen, Larissa Fardelos, Nika Kuchuk, and Eric Steinschneider, to whom we offer our sincere thanks. It was immensely satisfying to have so many of Professor Sanderson's former doctoral students assemble from across the world for the occasion, students whose graduate studies at Oxford spanned more than three decades of Alexis Sanderson's teaching career. The volume is based mainly on papers presented in the symposium, with additional contributions by several of his former pupils who had not been able to present their work at that time (Parul Dave-Mukherji, Csaba Dezső, Csaba Kiss, Ryugen Tanemura, and Anthony Tribe), as well as by Diwakar Acharya, his successor to the Spalding Professorship. We would also like to extend our thanks and recognition to those who enriched the symposium with excellent papers, but who for various reasons could not include these in the present volume:

InThe Ramtek Inscriptions[I] (hereafter RI) mention was made of a Vākāṭaka inscription in the Kevala-Narasiṁha temple on Ramtek Hill, the discovery of which was reported inIAR, 1982–83, 137. The credit for first discussing, as well as editing the text goes to the Director of the Archaeological Survey and Museums of Maharashtra, Dr. A. P. Jamkhedkar. In an article which appeared in 1986 in R. Parimoo (ed.),Vaiṣṇavism in Indian arts and culture(pp. 335–41), Jamkhedkar attributed the inscription to Prabhāvatī Guptā (op. cit., 340), an attribution for which he adduced arguments in a subsequent article that was published in M. S. Nagaraja Rao (ed.),Kusumāñjali, vol. i in 1987 (pp. 217–23).

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