Documents on the History of Religion and Law of Pre-modern Nepal

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; the corpus texts will be available in a 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 aim is to catalogue the corpus documents and texts and to publish selected documents in the form of digital scholarly text editions with translations and commentaries. Its focus lies on 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, Digital Humanities, and the Semantic Web.

Corpus Material

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); few are edited, translated or studied. The research project will catalogue and digitise the total NGMPP holdings of over 100,000 historical documents. In addition to the documents microfilmed by the NGMPP, documents from other collections will be included.

Documenta Nepalica

The digital infrastructure of the project is called Documenta Nepalica; it consists of the catalogue database, an editing platform, and the publications of the research results produced therewith.

Catalogue

The catalogue database launched in May 2016 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. As of 12/2021, the database comprised approx. 60,000 entries. The metadata contains bibliographic information on previous editions, translations, and studies. Catalogue records of documents that have been edited are linked to their respective editions.

Editions

The editing platform is a tool for the transliteration, transcription, philological editing (following diplomatic principles of textual criticism), and XML tagging (compliant with the Text Encoding Initiative) of the documents. The user interface displays facsimile, edited text (display options are diplomatic, with word separation, XML annotation; transliteration in Latin script or Devanagari) and translations (into German), a short title of the document, the names of the editors, an abstract of the content, notes, and a commentary.

Publications

E-Publications

The research project makes accessible document editions on the editing platform; 376 documents are published 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
• Rajan Khatowoda, Simon Cubelic and Axel Michaels (Hrsg.), The Mulukī Ain of 1854. Nepal's First Legal Code, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, in print (Documenta Nepalica – Book Series, Vol. 2)

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&

External links

• 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

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