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Going from Hand to Hand – Networks of Intellectual Exchange in the Tamil Learned Traditions

Final Report Summary - NETAMIL (Going from Hand to Hand – Networks of Intellectual Exchange in the Tamil Learned Traditions)

NETamil cultivated an international team of scholars from various disciplines (philologists of Tamil and Sanskrit, linguists, historians of culture, religion, literature and art) with a European hub at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Hamburg University, and an Indian hub at the Centre of the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient in Pondicherry. An internal team of 14 scholars (3 in Hamburg, 10 plus one informatician in Pondicherry) was employed by the project, supported by a team of 14 external scholars. Collaboration and international dissemination were ensured by 12 workshops, 10 of them with wider external participation, by scholarly visits, as well as twice-yearly field-trips of the European team to Pondicherry.
[“NETamil Inaugural Workshop”, 10-14 March 2014, centre of the EFEO in Pondicherry. “Approaches to Codicology and Manuscript Lab”, 29.9.-3.10.2014 SCMC Hamburg.
“The Commentary Idioms”, 2-13 February 2015, centre of the EFEO in Pondicherry.
“Aspects of Mulilingualism in South India”, 2-12 February 2016, centre of the EFEO in Pondicherry.
“Colophons, Prefaces, Satellite Stanzas”, 20-22 April 2017, SCMC Hamburg.
“Glosses -- Lexicography -- Semantics”, 6-12 September 2017, centre of the EFEO in Pondicherry
“Tracing School Formation and Scholarly Networks”, 10-12 September 2018, centre of the EFEO in Pondicherry
“The Syntax of Colophons, 11-13 October 2018, SCMC Hamburg (co-organised by external member Giovanni Ciotti, Martin Delhey, CSMC and Nalini Balbir EPHE)
“Final NETamil Workshop”, 11-15 February 2019, centre of the EFEO in Pondicherry.
RG C: From Tolkaappiyam to Nannuul, 22-26 August 2016, centre of the EFEO in Pondicherry (organised by external member Jean-Luc Chevillard)
RG D: Ways to approach the Tivviyappirapantam, 15-17 October 2015, Academy of Sciences Vienna (organised by external member Marcus Schmücker)
Aazvaars and Divyadeshas -- Vaishnava Regional and Vernacular Voices, 31 January to 3 February 2017, centre of the EFEO in Pondicherry (organised by Suganya Anandakichenin and S.A.S. Sarma, EFEO; networking with Indian Vaishnava scholars)
Reading Vedaanta Deshikan’s cillaRai rahasyankaL, 18-22 February 2019, centre of the EFEO in Pondicherry (organised by Suganya Anandakichenin and Erin McCann)]
The four main goals of the project were the a) digitisation and cataloguing of endangered manuscript material for Classical Tamil literature (by now counting ca. 800 mss.), b) critically editing, translating and studying select texts, c) the development of a theoretical framework to better describe the material and its history of transmission, and d) the safeguarding and dissemination of both material and the results of the analysis in a digital archive.
Starting point was the realisation that current discourses on South-Indian literature and cultural heritage are unsound, partly because based on unsatisfactory sources (insufficient editions and uncritically inherited narratives, today often coupled with nationalistic tendencies), partly because regarding in isolation strands that form one cultural whole (regional Tamil tradition and transregional Sanskrit tradition). Four research groups (RG) corresponded to four types of positioning within more regionally or more cosmopolitanly oriented spheres: RG A dealt with the almost exclusively Tamil-oriented early classical literature, RG B with its close successor, already influenced by Sanskrit literature, RG C with treatises on grammar and poetics, a system running in parallel to and drawing upon the Sanskrit learned tradition, and finally RG D with a (still active) religious tradition that combined early devotional poetry in Tamil with a theological system conceived in Sanskrit.
The focus on manuscripts as the primary sources allowed the recovery of vast amounts of paratextual material lost to the print tradition, on the one hand satellite material such as mnemonic verses and colophons, on the other hand glossaries, unpublished commentaries and notes from various hands, thus providing glimpses both of a living textual tradition and of the people who copied, studied and transmitted those texts. A type of testimony for engaging with the texts extending backward in time (for South-Indian manuscripts cover only the last 300 years of a 2000 year old tradition) was found in the still largely untapped commentary culture with its lengthy prefaces and learned discussions. Three collective volumes present new theoretical approaches in the related fields of studying 1. exegetical literature, 2. more complex multilingual phenomena, and 3. paratextual elements.
The project created for its print outcome a NETamil subseries to the well-established and prestigious collection indologie (Ecole Française and French Institute of Pondicherry) where the majority of its publications can be found, with nine volumes out by the end of 2019, laying a foundation for a better-informed history of South-Indian literature and a better understanding of the processes of knowledge transfer in a semi-oral culture. A database containing the primary data (for the most part still of restricted access due to library policies), electronic texts and editions with annotated translations and word indexes made by the team, as well as digitised rare print materials, is still under construction and will go online piece by piece from spring 2020 onwards, acknowledging the support of the ERC. It will be hosted by the Hamburg Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures and be accessed via the project webpage.