Dr. Alessandro Giudice Awarded the Colette-Caillat Prize 2026

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The 2026 Prix Colette Caillat, conferred by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of the Institut de France, has been awarded jointly to Dr. Alessandro Giudice (LMU Munich) and Prof. Dr. Tiziana Pontillo (University of Cagliari, Italy) for their book Medhātithi’s Grammatical Notes on the Mānavadharmaśāstra: How Technicalities Can Shed Light on Ancient Indian Law, published in Turin by Edizioni AIT–Edizioni ETS in 2025 as volume 11 of the series "Corpus Iuris Sanscriticum et Fontes Iuris Asiae Meridianae et Centralis".

Named after Colette Caillat, a distinguished scholar of Middle Indo-Aryan languages and Jain and Buddhist studies, this international prize recognises outstanding scholarship in the field of Indology, with a particular emphasis on philology.

Alessandro Giudice and Tiziana Pontillo’s book investigates the relationship between the Sanskrit grammatical tradition and legal exegesis in Medhātithi’s Manubhāṣya, one of the most authoritative commentaries on the Mānavadharmaśāstra, composed in the ninth century. Its principal aim is to determine when, how, and why Medhātithi cites or draws upon grammatical authorities and to assess the exegetical value of these grammatical discussions for the interpretation of ancient Indian law.