Arlo Griffiths

Arlo Griffiths (b. 1976, New York USA) is an Indologist and Sanskritist specialized in ancient epigraphy and philology of India and Southeast Asia, and a member of EFEO since 2008, first based in Jakarta, Indonesia, then Directeur d’Etudes EFEO in Lyon, France, for the program ​“The Domestication of ​“Hindu” Asceticism and the Religious Making of South and Southeast Asia”, part of the DHARMA project.

After studying at the University of Leiden and at Harvard, Arlo Griffiths researched Vedic philology in the Paippalāda tradition of the Atharvaveda, still alive in Odisha (formerly Orissa, Indian state), within a doctoral fellowship from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

Familiar with the Indo-Aryan Oriya language and tribal languages of the region, his research focus shifted to Southeast Asia, in particular the epigraphical documents in Sanskrit and in vernacular languages, both Austroasiatic and Austronesian (Old Khmer, Old Cham, Old Javanese),with the publication of previously unstudied manuscripts and epigraphical documents.

Amongts his publications: The Vedas: Texts, Language and Ritual (Proceedings of the Third International Vedic Workshop), Groningen : Egbert Forsten (Groningen Oriental Studies XX), edited with J. E. M. Houben, 2004; The Atharvaveda and its Paippalādaśākhā. Historical and Philological Papers on a Vedic Tradition, Aix-la-Chapelle : Shaker-Verlag (Indologica Halensis / Geisteskultur Indiens : Texte und Studien, Band 11), edited with Annette Schmiedchen, 2004; From Laṅkā Eastwards. The Rāmāyaṇa in the Literature and Visual Arts of Indonesia, KITLV Press, Leiden, with Andrea Acri and Helen Creese, 2011; Études du corpus des inscriptions du Campā, X : Le haut Campā de Gia Lai-Bình Định au XVe siècle selon les stèles de Tư Lương (C. 237) et du mont Man Lăng (C. 56). Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient 106, 2020.