Descrizione del progetto
L’analisi digitale di antiche iscrizioni vietnamite
La scoperta di 40 000 stampe in carta che riproducono le iscrizioni su colonne erette tra il XVI e il XX secolo in Vietnam offre un’opportunità unica per lo studio della società vietnamita di questo periodo. La scrittura utilizzata per le iscrizioni è in un idioma che comprende cinese e vernacolo locale e le iscrizioni sono di valore inestimabile per la ricchezza di informazioni che contengono. Il progetto VIETNAMICA, finanziato dall’UE, analizzerà il materiale per studiare la società rurale, gli approcci religiosi e le strutture economiche durante i cinque secoli oggetto delle iscrizioni. Il buddismo diffuso, il ruolo della donna nell’economia del dono e il possesso e la monetizzazione di terre saranno tra gli studi perseguiti dal progetto. Le stampe saranno analizzate e studiate tramite avanzati strumenti e tecniche digitali.
Obiettivo
Driven by a general movement in Asia to invest in Classical studies, the project Vietnamica aims for a historical and linguistic study of ancient, invaluable Vietnamese inscriptions, while also helping to determine a ground-breaking method for the use of epigraphic resources. In partnership with Han-Nôm Institute and Vietnam National University, the project is motivated by the recent divulgence of 40,000 paper stampings that reproduce the inscriptions engraved on the surfaces of 25,000 steles erected between the 16th to 20th century in Vietnam. These inscriptions, written in a complex Chinese embedded with the local vernacular, are conserved at the Han-Nôm Institute in Hanoi.
Offering an unexpected counterpoint to existing official sources, these inscriptions prompt the study of rural inhabitants, monks and notables across an era of five centuries through their very own language. The project will produce a series of studies on popular Buddhism and its connection to the ancestor cult, donations and the role of women in the economy of gifting, and monetization and land property. Based on these themes, the project will record and analyze the logographic processes that the Vietnamese once used to transcribe the language they spoke. Such research - close to the field and to its people - was once a dream for scholars, and is now possible due to the corpus of stampings available. Characteristic of local histories, information is dispersed in fragments all throughout the corpus and it is first necessary to categorize the existing inscriptions. Vietnamica will rely on tools available through digital and computational humanities to construct a database of the stampings, connect it to data mapping, and on a more technical level, proceed with a segmentation of the text to allow for the automatic identification of the demotic characters. The results from the project will converge on a Platform (Vietnamica.eu) that is meant to remain accessible to researchers indefinitely.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantIstituzione ospitante
75014 Paris
Francia