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Saving the Kashmirian Sanskrit Heritage

Project description

Rescuing Kashmirian Sanskrit literature

While Kashmirian Sanskrit literature exerted a pervasive influence on the rest of the Indian subcontinent, the secluded Kashmir valley became accessible to researchers only near the end of the 19th century. The first academic encounters opened up many new avenues for research, but this took place so suddenly that Indology could not keep up. The recent surge in online scans of Kashmirian manuscripts from around the globe, which both expands the evidence and puts it at our fingertips, affords a unique chance to redress the balance. The ERC-funded K-S-H-Raksa project team, specialising in editing Kashmirian texts, will make a larger number of carefully selected texts accessible in first editions together with studies of their literary, religious or philosophical aspects, highlighting their significance for the history of Sanskrit literature.

Objective

The importance of Kashmirian Sanskrit Literature was realised by scholars only in the late 19th
century, when the literary canon and historiography of Sanskrit Literature in the Indian
subcontinent had already taken shape. Texts and whole genres that were unique to Kashmir, as
political history, were not properly recognised and led to a distorted view of South Asian
literature. Much has changed, especially in the last decades, but the latest exodus and dissipation
of the Kashmirian Hindu community is bound to have a lasting negative effect on such studies. A
major effort to rescue the still unpublished and often unknown highlights of Kashmirian Sanskrit
literature from oblivion is warranted.

In the present project a team specialising in editing Kashmirian texts will make a larger number of
carefully selected texts accessible in first editions by utilizing the vast reservoir of manuscript
scans that has sprung up online in recent years. Previous work on unknown texts from newly opened
up archives has suggested that much more is to be discovered. One spectacular example would be a
17th century piece of visual poetry from Kashmir, the ``Wish-fulfilling Tree'', which is breaking
several international records (for instance, for using thirty languages in its intexts), but has
remained completely unknown until very recently.

The project will produce a careful selection of previously unknown Kashmirian Sanskrit works in ten
volumes. They will be accompanied by studies of their literary, religious or philosophical aspects,
from which their significance for the history of Sanskrit Literature can be grasped. The project is
a bold attempt to drastically improve the basis of scholarship in Kashmirian Sanskrit, and we shall
argue that as a result new genres in Sanskrit literature need to be defined.

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2023-ADG

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Host institution

PHILIPPS UNIVERSITAET MARBURG
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 499 250,00
Address
BIEGENSTRASSE 10
35037 Marburg
Germany

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Region
Hessen Gießen Marburg-Biedenkopf
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 499 250,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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