User:SaphireTi/Nepalresearchunit-engl

The research project "Documents on the History of Religion and Law of Pre-modern Nepal", Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, makes accessible a text corpus of documents and other texts relevant to the history of religion and law in pre-modern Nepal. This corpus has so far been dealt with only partially, and the aim of the project is to make it available in printed and digital form. The project with a duration until 2028 is directed by Axel Michaels, research units are in Heidelberg (Germany) and Patan (Nepal).

Project Aim
The project aims at investigating the text corpus on the history of religion and law in pre-modern Nepal in a comprehensive way, at cataloguing the documents and at publishing selected documents in the form of digital scholarly text editions, accompanied by translations and commentaries. It focuses on the creation of an open access data base. It will examine the edited documents from a historico-cultural point of view, thus drawing a nuanced picture of Nepal's socio-cultural developments and processes of transformation from the late 18th century to the first half of the 20th century. The research approach combines methods of Indology, Tibetology, History, Anthropology, History of Religion, Philology and, furthermore, Digital Humanities and the Semantic Web.

The corpus is wide-ranging, covering temple documents and legal documents of different kinds, among which particularly well represented are those relating to religious institutions (such as edicts, land grants, contracts, foundation charters, and letters) and to legal and administrative practice (such as caste regulations and court decisions on moral conduct), and also, represented to a much lesser extent, narrative-eulogical texts on local shrines. Together, these groups of texts lay the foundation for a better understanding of the history of numerous temples and other sanctuaries in Nepal (particularly in the Kathmandu Valley), as well as for the history of legal practices of South Asia. In addition, the material provides valuable information on the development of elite cultures, forms of religion related politics, the formation of public order and state administration, diplomacy and foreign policy, and the significance of the textualisation and codification of law within ethnologically recorded jurisprudence. The members of the project focus on specific research topics related to their areas of research and based on the corpus. The temporal focus of the project is on the early Śāha (1769-1846) and Rānā (1846-1951) periods, i.e., on Nepal's "long 19th century".

The corpus is based on records held by the National Archives of Nepal (Rashtriya Abhilekhalaya, Kathmandu) and other governmental organisations; these records have been microfilmed and rudimentarily catalogued as part of the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project (NGMPP) by the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG). However, only few are edited, translated or studied. Thus, with the successive cataloguisation and digitisation of the total NGMPP holdings of over 100,000 historical documents the project will make a substantial contribution to the preservation of what for South Asia is doubtless a unique microfilm collection. In addition to the documents microfilmed by the NGMPP, documents from other collections will be included over time.

Documenta Nepalica
The "Documenta Nepalica" comprise the digital infrastructure of the project consisting of two interrelated parts “Catalogue” and “Editions” and the publications of the research results produced therewith.

Catalogue
The catalogue database records entries together with metadata of the already edited and published documents as well as of documents that have so far not been processed further. When the database was launched in May 2016, the catalogue comprised about 19,000 entries; the number has grown to about 60,000 (12/2020) and continues to increase, the aim being to cover all relevant NGMPP documents (more than 100,000 entries) as well as the subsequently integrated collections by the end of the project in 2028. The metadata can be enriched by bibliographic information relating to previous editions, translations, and studies of individual documents. Catalogue records of documents that have been edited are linked to their respective editions.

Editions
The project has implemented an editing platform with versatile functionality for the transliteration, transcription, philological editing (following diplomatic principles of textual criticism), and XML tagging (in compliance with the standards established by the Text Encoding Initiative - TEI) of the documents. Each edition can be viewed on the editing platform; the user interface displays facsimile, texts, and translations side by side; moreover, each edition is accompanied by the short title of the document, the name(s) of the editor(s), an abstract of the content, a German translation, notes, and a commentary. Various options are available for displaying the editions (diplomatic; with word separation; annotated edition; XML tree, Devanagari script or transliteration in Latin script, zoom-in function).

E-Publications
At frequent intervals, the research project makes accessible document editions on the editing platform; 376 documents are published yet [as of 02/2021]. Since February 2017, the editions are, successively, also published with a DOI in cooperation with the Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg on the platform "Heidelberg Historic Literature Digitized" (DWork) in Open Access [133 editions as of 02/2021].

Print
The research unit publishes the printed publication series "Documenta Nepalica – Book Series" in Open Access (CC BY-SA 4.0). The volumes are also available as print-on-demand.


 * Simon Cubelic, Axel Michaels and Astrid Zotter (Edd.), Studies in Historical Documents from Nepal and India, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2018 (Documenta Nepalica – Book Series, Vol. 1); DOI: 10.17885/heiup.331.454

Literature
Bajracharya, Manik, Rajan Khatiwoda and Axel Michaels. “Six 19th-20th Century Documents on Elephants from the National Archives of Nepal”. In: Abhilekha 32 (2015): 96-105.

Michaels, Axel. „Kulturelles Erbe in Katastrophen: Nepal und seine Erdbeben“. In: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Jahrbuch 2015, Heidelberg: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2016, p. 78-80.

Bajracharya, Manik, Simon Cubelic and Rajan Khatiwoda. “Reporting across Borders in a Time of Turmoil: Eight Reports from Lokaramaṇa Upādhyāya from the Years 1837–1844”. In: Abhilekha 34 (2017): 138–172.

Michaels, Axel. Kultur und Geschichte Nepals. [1. Auflage], Alfred-Kröner-Verlag, Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 978-3-520-21201-6, URI: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1061315940 [abgerufen am 08.02.2021]. Rezension: Mirnig, Nina, "Kultur und Geschichte Nepals". In: ''Internationales Asien Forum. International Quarterly for Asian Studies''; München Bd. 50, Ausg. 3/4,  (Autumn 2019): 122-127. URI: https://search.proquest.com/docview/2400104987?fromopenview=true&pq-origsite=gscholar

Zotter, Christof. "Ascetics in Administrative Affairs: Documents on the Central Overseer of Jogīs and Saṃnyāsīs in Nepal". In: Simon Cubelic, Axel Michaels and Astrid Zotter (Hrsg.), Studies in Historical Documents from Nepal and India, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2018 (Documenta Nepalica – Book Series, Vol. 1), DOI: 10.17885/heiup.331.454, p. 445-491.

Plachta, Nadine and Subas Tamang. “Labor Geographies: Uneven Infrastructures in Nepal’s Rana Period.” Roadsides 2 (2019): 25-33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26034/roadsides-20190028.

Pretsch, Sabine. "Nepal Research Bhavan Opens In Patan", March 24, 2019, 8:49 a.m. In: Spotlight. Magazine Issue: VOL 12 No.16, March 29-April 18, 2019 (Chaitra. 15, 2075) Online Register Number: DOI 584/074-75, URL: https://www.spotlightnepal.com/2019/03/24/nepal-research-bhavan-opens-patan/

Zotter, Astrid. "Papier ist geduldig". In: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Jahrbuch 2019, Heidelberg: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2019, S. 95-100.

SAI News. "Visit of the Nepal Research Bhawan", 23. Oktober 2019, URL: https://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/kathmandu/news/kathmandu_news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1571829063&archive=&start_from=&ucat=4&

Weblinks
Website of the research project at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Nepalese National Archives

Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG)

Orientabteilung der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (SBB)

South-Asia Institute Heidelberg (SAI)

Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS)

CrossAsia

Heidelberg Historic Literature Digitized (DWork)

Heidelberger Forum Edition

Department of Archaeology Nepal

Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust

Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya

The Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project (NGMCP, successor of the NGMPP)

Nepal Heritage Documentation Project (NHDP)

Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust