Jonas Buchholz studied Sanskrit and Tamil in Heidelberg and earned his Master of Arts degree in 2012. In 2018, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg with a dissertation on classical Tamil literature. From 2014 to 2019, he served as a research assistant on the ERC-funded project “Going from Hand to Hand: Networks of Intellectual Exchange in the Tamil Learned Traditions (NETamil)” at the University of Hamburg. From 2019 to 2022, he collaborated with Prof. Dr. Ute Hüsken on the DFG-funded project “Temple Networks in Early Modern South India” at the University of Heidelberg. In addition, he taught as a lecturer at the Universities of Tübingen and Göttingen. Since 2022, he has been Academy of Sciences and Humanities at the research center “Hindu Temple Legends in South India” at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and serves as its deputy director. His research focuses on Tamil and Sanskrit literature and their relationship to one another, the temple culture of Tamil Śivaism, manuscript studies, and the digital humanities.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3303-3138

Professional Background

• Since 2022: Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the research center“Hindu Temple Legends in South India”at Academy of Sciences and Humanities Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
• 2019–2022: Research Associate and Co-Principal Investigator of the DFG project “Temple Networks in Early Modern South India,” Department of Cultural and Religious History of South Asia, South Asia Institute (SAI), Heidelberg University.
• 2014–2019: Research Assistant, ERC project “Going from Hand to Hand: Networks of Intellectual Exchange in the Tamil Learned Traditions,” University of Hamburg.
• 2017–2018: Lecturer, Department of Indian and Tibetan Culture and History, Asia-Africa Institute (AAI), University of Hamburg
• 2014–2015: Lecturer, Center for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), University of Göttingen
• 2012–2013: Lecturer, Department of Ethnology, Institute for Asian and Oriental Studies (AOI), University of Tübingen

Academic Training

• 2013–2018: Ph.D. in Indology, University of Hamburg
• 2006–2012: Master of Arts in Classical Indology, Modern Indology, and Semitic Studies, University of Heidelberg

Editions

• 2017. Tiṇaimālai Nūṟṟaimpatu. Critical Edition and Annotated Translation. Hamburg: University of Hamburg. http://ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/volltexte/2020/10710/

Edited anthologies

• 2022 (with Malini Ambach and Ute Hüsken). Temples, Texts, and Networks: South Indian Perspectives. Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.906

Articles in anthologies and journals

• 2026. “Digital Edition of the Temple Legends of Kanchipuram: The Project ‘Hindu Temple Legends in South India’.” In Textual Criticism – Digital Humanities: 25 Heidelberg Edition Projects, ed . by Isabel Langkabel, Ludger Lieb, Maximiliane Nietzschmann, and Lena Sowada, 111–120. Cultural Heritage: Materiality – Text – Edition (KEMTE), Vol. 7. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.1634.c23592
• 2025. “The City of Many Temples: Textual Representations of Kanchipuram’s Śaiva Temple Network.” In Routes, Patterns, Ideologies: Navigating Sacred Sites in India, ed. by Ewa Dębicka-Borek and Ofer Peres, 93–122. Ethno-Indology: Heidelberg Studies in South Asian Rituals, Vol. 18. Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1561.c22686
• 2023. “The Country and the City in the Kāñcippurāṇam”. Cracow Indological Studies 25 (1): 41–77. https://doi.org/10.12797/CIS.25.2023.01.02
• 2023. “Same Same but Different: The Tamil Kāñcippurāṇam and Its Sanskrit Source.” In *Visions and Revisions of Sanskrit Narrative: Studies in the Indian Epics and Purāṇas*, ed. Raj Balkaran & McComas Taylor, 387–416. Canberra: ANU Press. http://doi.org/10.22459/VRSN.2023.16
• 2022. “Sthalamāhātmyas and Talapurāṇams of Kanchipuram: A Network of Texts.” In Temples, Texts, and Networks: South Indian Perspectives, ed. by Malini Ambach, Jonas Buchholz, and Ute Hüsken, 11–40. Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.906.c13934
• 2020. “Construing a Corpus: The Mnemonic Stanza on the Kīḻkkaṇakku Works”. In Colophons, Prefaces, Satellite Stanzas. Paratextual Elements and Their Role in the Transmission of Indian Texts, ed. by Eva Wilden & Suganya Anandakichenin, 19–62. Hamburg: Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, University of Hamburg. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03186034
• 2019. “Commentaries on the Kīḻkkaṇakku Akam Works.” In The Commentary Idioms of the Tamil Learned Traditions, ed. Suganya Anandakichenin & Victor B. D’Avella, 335–383. Pondicherry: École française d’Extrême-Orient, Institut Français de Pondichéry. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02454169
• 2017 (with Giovanni Ciotti). “What a Multiple-Text Manuscript Can Tell Us About the Tamil Scholarly Tradition: The Case of UVSL 589”. In *Manuscript Cultures* 10, 129–144. https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/mc/mc10.html
• 2015/2016. “Countering Kampaṉ: C. N. Annadurai’s Critique of the Rāmāyaṇa”. In Journal of Indology and South Asian Studies 32/33 , 203–232.

Book Reviews

• 2023. Review by Rafael Klöber: Sivaism in Transition. Tamil Saiva Siddhanta since the 19th Century. In *Orientalistische Literaturzeitung* 118(3), 214–215. https://doi.org/10.1515/olzg-2023-0073

Other Publications

• 2024 (with Ute Hüsken). “Hindu Temple Legends in South India.” In *Yearbook 2023* of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Heidelberg: Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 80–86. https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.71221.18