Descrizione del progetto
Un approfondimento sui testi himalayani della collezione Van Manen
Johan van Manen fu un tibetologo olandese che, in seguito alla sua scomparsa nel 1943, lasciò ai posteri un’importante collezione di testi e manufatti tibetani e himalayani. La Biblioteca universitaria di Leida ha ricevuto oltre 1 500 di questi testi, mentre il Museo nazionale di etnologia della stessa città ospita i manufatti himalayani. Finanziato dal Consiglio europeo della ricerca, il progetto VAN MANEN studierà i preziosi ma spesso trascurati testi e manufatti citati, unici tra i testi di letteratura tibetana raccolti tra il 1920 e il 1940. Il progetto offrirà una nuova prospettiva sulla collezione Van Manen analizzando i rari manoscritti, gli oggetti materiali, le scritture marginali non documentate e le pregevoli autobiografie in lingua tibetana commissionate da Van Manen, consentendo un approfondimento senza precedenti sulle autobiografie della gente comune vissuta nella regione dell’Himalaya.
Obiettivo
This project offers an ambitious study of an important, yet mostly forgotten, collection of Himalayan texts and artifacts collected between 1920 and 1940. It will, for the first time, provide a view of the Van Manen collection through a study of its rare manuscripts, the material objects, undocumented marginal writings, and the unique Tibetan language autobiographies by ordinary Himalayan people commissioned by Van Manen.
This collection, held in the Leiden University Library, contains a large number of Tibetan and Himalayan texts, collected by Johan van Manen who lived in India. After his death in 1943 a large part of his personal collection became housed at the university, totaling more than 1500 mostly Tibetan texts. He also collected Himalayan artifacts, now stored separately from the texts, in Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden. The texts and artifacts reflect the collector's interest in the lived religion and the lives of Himalayan people.
The project's goal is the examination of the van Manen Collection as a whole using historical, ethnographic and philological methods, and by employing Digital Humanities methods through which the origins of the texts and artifacts can be traced, mapped, and be made available, linking them to other editions in online databases as well as to local Tibetan archives.
The main aim is to get an understanding of the proliferation, usage, and presence of religious and ritual literature and artifacts in the greater Darjeeling area in the first half of the 20th century and, by extension, their religious milieus 1). Many of the texts are unica in Tibetan literature - and as they are mostly unstudied, they merit a thorough examination 2). The broader question is how to 'read', and engage with, a multi- media collection curated by one single collector, and how to understand the 'collection formation' process 3). The project results will contribute to the analysis of multi-media collections of non-Western literature and material culture 4).
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsIstituzione ospitante
2311 EZ Leiden
Paesi Bassi