Philological research revolving around premodern materials in many regions across Eurasia has often been operating without much scholarly reflection on the current context and heritage value of source materials. When researchers go to a library or archive, they tend to take for granted the fact that collections exist as collective holdings for the individual artefact they are looking for, thereby overlooking the bibliographic and cultural context in which a particular codex exists in modern times. However, manuscript collections from across Eurasia are the product of a particular history, involving the agency and motivation of past and present individuals – including scholars, explorers, administrators, and local stake holders –, specific political or socio-religious circumstances, institutional policies shaped by pre-colonial, colonial and modern practices, or simply a series of unexpected events. Understanding these processes of ancient and modern manuscript collection practices and the making of archives can have important implications for the reconstruction of the provenance and movement of individual manuscripts, as well as explain their warranted or unwarranted inclusion in certain corpora and transmission into regions far away from their original place of composition and codicological features. Furthermore, particularly in Eurasian archives, their cultural context and attached heritage value for stake holders can have important implications for conservation and preservation practices and strategies, as well as their recognition as world heritage.
For this symposium we will bring together international experts on and/or custodians of important collections of pre-modern written artifacts across Eurasia, including less-known collections located in Central, South Asia and Eastern Iran or in European institutions holding objects from those regions. The workshop aims to explore the rich and diverse manuscript collections from these regions in comparative perspective. Although these regions have been historically interconnected through trade, cultural exchanges, and shared intellectual traditions, they have often been studied separately due to, mainly, a colonial perspective that secluded each of these regions into a separate political, cultural and religious landscape. However, in pre-modern times, these areas where highly interconnected and borders between these regions where more permeable. The manuscripts from these areas offer a unique window into the cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity of the regions, as well as the cross-cultural influences that have shaped them over time.

Further information.