Hans T. Bakker

Who is Hans T. Bakker?

Hans T. Bakker is an Indologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He is director of the Institute of Indian Studies at Groningen and since 1996 Professor of the History of Hinduism in the Sanskrit Tradition and Indian Philosophy and holder of the Jan Gonda Chair at the University of Groningen. He has been a visiting fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford and a visiting professor at the University of Vienna and the University of Kyoto.

Bakker's main research interest has been the political and religious culture of the Vakataka dynasty. He has also led the study of the earliest known version of the Skanda Purāṇa preserved in Kathmandu, Nepal. This version of the Skanda Purāṇa is substantially different from the Skanda Purana known from manuscripts and the printed edition in India.

Bakker has continued and expanded the best traditions of Dutch Indology and has trained a number of able scholars, among them Peter Bisschop, Harunaga Isaacson and Yuko Yokochi.