Ph.D. Student Devaki Sapkota
Devaki Sapkota is a DAD-funded PhD candidate in South Asian Studies (Classical Indology) at Heidelberg University and a member of the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS). She holds an M.A. in South Asian Studies from the University of Hamburg (2019), where she graduated with honours. Her master’s thesis, a critical edition and annotated translation of the Bhaktisāra hagiography from the Divyasūricaritam, was supervised by Prof. Dr. Harunaga Isaacson and Prof. Dr. Eva Wilden. She earned her B.A. in Classical Indology from Nepal Sanskrit University, with a focus on Purāṇic literature and the Mahābhārata.
Her academic experience includes research positions at the EFEO Centre de Pondichéry (ERC-funded NETamil project), Leiden University Library (Kern Collection), and the Nepal-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project, where she worked extensively with Sanskrit manuscripts. She has also taught Sanskrit at the Śrī Muktinātha Kanyā Sanskrit Gurukulam in Kathmandu. Devaki is fluent in Sanskrit, Nepali, Hindi, and English, with a working knowledge of Tamil, and regularly presents her research at international conferences and workshops.
Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Axel Michaels, her project titled “The Sovereign of Liberation: A Study of the Changing Religious Landscape of Muktinātha, Nepal” investigates the changing religious landscape of Muktinath, one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Hindus and Buddhists in the trans-Himalayan region. Combining philological analysis, the study of 19th- and 20th-century Nepali administrative documents, and ethnographically informed perspectives, the project explores how Purāṇic traditions, Vaiṣṇava hagiography, and local ritual practices intersect and transform over time. By situating Muktinath within broader South Asian and transcultural networks, the research investigates how textual traditions, institutional interventions, and lived practices continuously reshape the meanings of sacred space. The study aims to illuminate the dynamic processes through which Muktinath is negotiated, reinterpreted, and experienced by diverse communities, contributing to a deeper understanding of religious change in the Himalayan region.
