James McHugh studied philosophy at the University of Cambridge before becoming interested in the study of Sanskrit and religion in India. After pursuing a master's degree in Indian religions at the University of Oxford, he received a Ph.D. from Harvard, researching the history of smell and perfumery in pre-modern India.

"[McHugh] has produced a model for other like-minded works on realia. Highly recommended."--Journal of the American Oriental Society

"Sandalwood and Carrion is a heady Odyssey of the olfactory, an exquisite and consummate study of smell in early India, drawing on an array of Sanskrit texts. It is thoroughly informative and comprehensive...The author has a nose for the topic and a gift for wafting his curiosity in the reader's direction. Countless minutiae reveal their hidden aroma. The overall effect is a new perspective on premodern South Asian experience in its elusive particularity....The author really accomplishes something daring, and through the elegance and felicity of the prose, the work becomes in equal parts information and intoxication...He is an elegant and entertaining writer whose powers of evocation make it a pleasure to learn about a topic both so dizzyingly vast and minute."--Indian Economic and Social History Review

"This book is destined to become a classic in the fields of Indology and South Asian social and cultural history. Not only will it inspire coming generations of scholars, but it will have them longing for their own jars of yaksa mud and pairs of sandalwood slippers." --American Historical Review

"[A] book that will long stand out for bringing the text back in after the embodied turn in the history of religion, and doing so with the utmost erudition and nuance..." --Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"A brilliant and engaging study of a completely original subject. McHugh's writing is thoughtful and sophisticated, and his book opens up a whole new dimension of understanding South Asian culture. Sandalwood and Carrion exemplifies an exciting new vitality current in classical Indian studies, and stimulates us all to think of fresh questions and strategies in our scholarship." --Dominik Wujastyk, University of Vienna

"This is a book that will irrevocably change the way Indologists and Buddhist scholars working on India will read their texts. They will no longer be able to skip over the rich and complex references to smells--both good and bad--that are met with at every turn in so many of their sources." --Gregory Schopen, Rush C. Hawkins University Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University

"An interdisciplinary approach that draws on religion, history, material culture, anthropology and art history... Highly recommended." - CHOICE

"Creative and well written, the work explores a huge selection of literature... Each chapter opens up multiple facets of the physiology, aesthetics, social function, and economics of smell... Because of the richness of his sources and the breadth of his scope, historians of religion, literature, transnational exchange, technology, and medicine will equally benefit from reading McHugh." --Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"While there have been many minor investigations of realia in a range of areas, McHugh's book is, to my knowledge, the first that chooses one specific area and investigates it in as comprehensive manner as possible... Highly recommended." --Journal of the American Oriental Society