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Research office of the AdWL Mainz
Since 1 March 2020, the Centre for the Historiography and Intellectual History of Kashmir, which was established at Martin Luther University Halle in 2005, has been intellectual history of Kashmir has been continued in Marburg under the direction of Jürgen Hanneder. Through this centre, the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature supports research projects that focus on the cultural history of Kashmir. The focus is on previously untapped important sources on religion, philosophy and history, and by focussing on literature written in Sanskrit, it is possible to cover several epochs at once - in practice from the 10th to the 19th century.
Research into historical Kashmir is currently an important and interesting task, as this region, which is actually geographically manageable, has repeatedly set the cultural pace for Indian cultural history for centuries and the sources to be catalogued often represent highlights of Indian literary history. Situated on the northern edge of the Indian subcontinent, this strategically important country, which was marketed as the ‘Happy Valley’ by English tourists during the colonial era because of its mountains and temperate climate, saw itself under a curse that manifested itself in armed conflicts, pogroms and expulsions. Unfortunately, this is still the case today and has made it impossible to research Kashmiri literature locally in recent decades. Only in one respect have the conditions for scholarly research into Kashmiri cultural history recently become more favourable, as some of the manuscripts are now more easily accessible in the age of the digital revolution.
The description of the individual projects can be accessed via the German version of this page.