Texts Surrounding Texts: Satellite Stanzas, Prefaces and Colophons in South-Indian Manuscripts (collections of the Paris BnF and Hamburg Stabi)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Eva Wilden
• Subject Area: Asian Studies
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 410989857

In recent years, progress has been made both in the digitisation of Indian manuscripts as well as in the field of codicology, setting new standards for cataloguing. The trend is towards putting online the images along with elaborate catalogues. One important aspect of well-catalogued digital collections is the possibilities they offer for statistically relevant research both with respect to questions of script development as well as dating and with respect to the various paratextual elements such as colophons, prefaces and satellite stanzas with their wealth of information on the provenance and transmission of the objects in question. Both Hamburg and Paris still house important collections of Indian manuscripts which have been lying more or less dormant. The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) holds Europe’s most remarkable collection of some 700 Tamil manuscripts, along with several smaller collections in Sanskrit and various local languages. The state and university library of Hamburg (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky, i.e. Stabi) has a similar collection of almost 500 manuscripts, most from Southern India, the majority in Sanskrit, but also some in Tamil and other vernaculars. Thanks to existing local and European funding, two teams, embedded in an international network of specialists, have already been established in both places and work towards opening up both collections for further historical research.The project aim is to make significant portions available online along with their catalogues and to engage into the large-scale investigation of paratextual materials. On the one hand, this will significantly improve our understanding of the times, places and communities who produced the objects. On the other hand, the material unearthed will allow us to focus more closely on the intersection between the literary and the oral tradition, because sub-genres like prefaces and mnemonic verses hover between established literary convention and local, often oral traditions. While the respective libraries, the scholarly community, and the general public will benefit from the extension of the libraries' online databases, two workshops will produce the frame for at least one volume of case studies from classical Tamil literary and grammatical studies, from various fields of Sanskrit learned traditions and from further smaller languages, but also from the amply documented encounter of Western and Indian traditions in the form of missionary documents.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France
• Partner Organisation: Agence Nationale de la Recherche / The French National Research Agency
• Co-Investigators: Dr. Victor D' Avella; Dr. Giovanni Ciotti; Professor Dr. Harunaga Isaacson; Dr. Erin McCann
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Emmanuel Francis