Published by De Gruyter

Welten Süd- und Zentralasiens / Worlds of South and Inner Asia / Mondes de l'Asie du Sud et de l'Asie Centrale

Im Auftrag der Schweizerischen Asiengesellschaft / On behalf of the Swiss Asia Society / Au nom de la Société Suisse-Asie

Edited by: Blain Auer, Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz, Angelika Malinar, Nicolas Martin and Ingo Strauch

ISSN: 1661-755X

eISSN: 2235-5774

Overview
Volumes

PEER-REVIEWED

The series Worlds of South and Inner Asia of the Swiss Asia Society publishes high-quality research on present-day and historical South and Inner Asian cultures and societies covering fields such as history, literature, philosophy, politics and arts, as well as interpretations and translations of primary sources. Furthermore the series presents studies focusing on current topics and affairs appealing not only to the academic public, but also to a public generally interested in South and Inner Asia.

The series provides a forum for scholarly work in the fields of humanities and social sciences in Switzerland. However, the series is also committed to the rich variety of studies and writing on South and Inner Asia in the international research community. The principal languages of publication of monographs and anthologies are German, French and English.

The series is supervised by an editorial board which is advised by leading scholars in the academic fields concerned.

Book Open Access 2023

Vedānta, Bhakti and Their Early Modern Sources

The Philosophical and Religious Dimensions of Brajvāsīdās’ Prabodhacandrodaya

Rosina Pastore

Volume 14 in this series

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This volume considers the Prabodhacandrodaya Nāṭaka (c. 1760 CE), an allegorical drama composed by Brajvāsīdās in Brajbhāṣā. It contributes to the study of vernacular nāṭakas with its first complete English translation. Moreover, the critical analysis shows that the foundational Sanskrit texts for Vedānta and those for Bhakti play a part in the Prabodhacandrodaya Nāṭaka’s philosophical and religious edifice. At the same time, the investigation demonstrates that Brajvāsīdās expresses several philosophical ideas by adaptively reusing the Rāmcaritmānas by Tulsīdās (c. 1574 CE). Brajvāsīdās composes a dohā by combining one line of his invention with a line from the Mānas. This method is employed throughout all the personified metaphysical concepts. That Brajvāsī not only read Bhakti but also Vedānta through the Rāmcaritmānas highlights the philosophical and literary creativity in 18th c. North India. It points to the necessity to rethink the sources of Vedānta philosophies, by including works non-conventional for language and genre, because not in Sanskrit and not śāstras. Such sources may not be original in their contribution per se but are essential to understand how early modern philosophy was done, conceived and transmitted.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111063836
ISBN:: 9783111063836
ISBN:: 9783111064314
ISBN:: 9783111063188
Subject:: Asian and Pacific Studies
Subject:: North and Central Asia
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2022

Photographing Central Asia

From the Periphery of the Russian Empire to Global Presence

Svetlana Gorshenina, Sergei Abashin, Bruno De Cordier, Tatiana Saburova

Volume 13 in this series

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This volume addresses new theoretical approaches in visual and memory studies that prompted to rethink of the photography of Russian Turkestan of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Attempts to relate the visual unknown documentations to postcolonial criticism also opened up new interpretive arenas, helping to decentralize the analysis of the history of photography.

The aim of this volume is to interpret photography as a specific tool that reifies reality, subjectively frames it, and fits it into various political, ideological, commercial, scientific, and artistic contexts.

Without reducing the entire argument to the binary of ‘photography and power’, the authors reveal the different modes of seeing that involve distinct cultural norms, social practices, power relations, levels of technology, and networks for circulating photography, and that determined the manner of its (re)use in constructing various images of Central Asia.

The volume demonstrates that photography was the cornerstone of imperial media governance and discourse construction in colonial Turkestan of the tsarist and early Soviet periods. The various cases show the complex mechanisms by which images of Turkestan were created, remembered, or forgotten from the nineteenth until the twenty-first century.

The book should appeal to scholars of the Russian Empire and Central Asia; of history of photography and visual culture; of memory studies. It should be appropriate for use in upper-level undergraduate courses, and even a broader public.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110754469
ISBN:: 9783110754469
ISBN:: 9783110754568
ISBN:: 9783110754421
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Genres
Subject:: Photography
Subject:: Asian and Pacific Studies
Subject:: North and Central Asia
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2022

Krishna Sobti’s Views on Literature and the Poetics of Writing

Theoretical Positions and Literary Practice in Modern Hindi Literature

Rosine-Alice Vuille, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)

Volume 12 in this series

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How does a writer discuss her creative process and her views on a writer’s role in society? How do her comments on writing relate to her works? The Hindi writer Krishna Sobti (1925-2019) is known primarily as a novelist. However, she also extensively wrote about her views on the creative process, the figure of the writer, historical writing, and the position of writers within the public sphere. This study is the first to examine in detail the relationship between Sobti’s views on poetics as exposed in her non-fictional texts and her own literary practice. The writer’s self-representation is analysed through her use of metaphors to explain her creative process. Sobti’s construction of the figure of the writer is then put in parallel with her idiosyncratic use of language as a representation of the heterogeneous voices of her characters and with her conception of literature as a space where time and memory can be "held." At the same time, by delving into Sobti’s position in the debate around "women’s writing" (especially through the creation of a male double, the failed writer Hashmat), and into her views on literature and politics, this book also reflects on the literary debates of the post-Independence Hindi literary sphere.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110781519
ISBN:: 9783110781519
ISBN:: 9783110781441
ISBN:: 9783110781540
Subject:: Asian and Pacific Studies
Subject:: North and Central Asia
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2022

When Tibetan Meditation Goes Global

A Study of the Adaptation of Bon Religious Practices in the West

Mara Lisa Arizaga, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)

Volume 11 in this series

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This book provides an in-depth examination of the Yungdrung Bon religion in light of globalization. In its global dimension, Bon has been attracting a growing number of Westerners, particularly to its Dzogchen teachings and meditation practices. In this expansion, Bon operates in a dynamic context where forces that create changes in the tradition coexist, sometimes in tension and sometimes in tandem, with other forces that aim to preserve it. In tracing the process through which Bon has become a global religion, this monograph narrates the story of the principal figures who initially facilitated this transmission, following their journey from Tibet to India and Nepal. The narrative then moves to explore the dynamics taking place in the transmission and reception of Yungdrung Bon in Western countries, opening up a new viewpoint on the expansion of Tibetan religious traditions into the West and painting a comprehensive picture of the modern history of the Yungdrung Bon religion as narrated by its participants. In so doing, it makes an invaluable contribution to the study of Tibetan traditions in the West as well as to the wider history of religions, social anthropology, psychology, and conversion studies.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110758870
ISBN:: 9783110758870
ISBN:: 9783110758221
ISBN:: 9783110758962
Subject:: Asian and Pacific Studies
Subject:: North and Central Asia
Subject:: Theology and Religion
Subject:: Religious Studies
Subject:: Indigenous Religions and Native Traditions
Subject:: Sociology of Religion
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Dev, l’artisan-poète du 18ème siècle et la « nāyikā » dans le « Rasavilāsa »

Circulation et échanges, intertextualité et transformations

Nadia Cattoni

Volume 10 in this series

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This volume looks at the rīti poet Dev’s works and career through the study of the socio-historical context of the first half of the 18^th century and the analysis of the Rasavilāsa, a text dedicated to the description of the feminine literary figure of the nāyikā. The poet’s biography is examined with a new perspective and several patrons who offered their support are identified, giving a better view of Dev’s career. His status of itinerant poet is read in conjunction with the historical context and as an opportunity to make his works circulate in various circles. This compels the poet to write many texts and to recycle part of his repertoire through various processes which are examined. Assimilating the poet with a craftsman – "artisan-poète" – underlines this practical aspect to be considered for itinerant poets. At the same time and through the translation and the study of a good number of poems from the Rasavilāsa translated for the first time, the book also shows the evolution of the nāyikābheda genre and the important influence exerted by other literary traditions such as Sanskrit kāmaśāstras and Indo-Persian shāhrāshob.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110645705
ISBN:: 9783110645705
ISBN:: 9783110645484
ISBN:: 9783110646306
Subject:: Asian and Pacific Studies
Subject:: South Asia
Subject:: India
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literature of other Nations and Languages
Subject:: Asian Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Encountering Buddhism and Islam in Premodern Central and South Asia

Blain Auer, Ingo Strauch

Volume 9 in this series

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This volume brings together a variety of historians, epigraphists, philologists, art historians and archaeologists to address the understanding of the encounter between Buddhist and Muslim communities in South and Central Asia during the medieval period. The articles collected here provoke a fresh look at the relevant sources. The main areas touched by this new research can be divided into five broad categories: deconstructing scholarship on Buddhist/Muslim interactions, cultural and religious exchanges, perceptions of the other, transmission of knowledge, and trade and economics. The subjects covered are wide ranging and demonstrate the vast challenges involved in dealing with historical, social, cultural and economic frameworks that span Central and South Asia of the premodern world. We hope that the results show promise for future research produced on Buddhist and Muslim encounters. The intended audience is specialists in Asian Studies, Buddhist Studies and Islamic Studies.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110631685
ISBN:: 9783110631685
ISBN:: 9783110629163
ISBN:: 9783110629866
Subject:: Asian and Pacific Studies
Subject:: South Asia
Subject:: South Asia, other
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Asia-Pacific
Subject:: Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
Subject:: Language and Literature
Subject:: Theology and Religion
Subject:: Religious Studies
Subject:: Buddhism
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

“Masters” and “Natives”

Digging the Others’ Past

Svetlana Gorshenina, Philippe Bornet, Michel E. Fuchs, Claude Rapin

Volume 8 in this series

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The book focuses on the relational dynamic between “masters” and “natives” in the construction of scholarly narratives about the past, in the fields of archeology, history or the study of religions. Reconsidering the role of subaltern actors that recent postcolonial studies have tended to ignore, the present book emphasizes the complex relations between representatives of the imperial power and local actors, and analyzes how masters and natives (and their respective cultures) have shaped each other in the course of the interaction. Through various vectors of intercultural transfer and knowledge exchange, through the circulation of ideas, techniques and human beings, new visions of the past of extra-European regions emerged, as did collective memories resulting from various kinds of appropriations. In this framework, the most important question is how these dynamic processes determined collective memories of the past in plural (post-)colonial – in particular, Asian – worlds, participating to the construction of national/imperial/local identities and to the reinvention of traditions.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110599466
ISBN:: 9783110599466
ISBN:: 9783110597066
ISBN:: 9783110597127
Subject:: Asian and Pacific Studies
Subject:: South Asia
Subject:: South Asia, other
Subject:: Western Asia
Subject:: Western Asia, other
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Asia-Pacific
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Mobile Technologien und nomadischer Raum

Motorisierung, Mobiltelefonie und Urbanisierung in Südamdo, Osttibet

Lilian Iselin

Volume 7 in this series

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Based on richly detailed ethnographic materials, the author of this monograph describes how nomads in the Tibetan highlands employ motorcycles, cars, and mobile telephones. The study is grounded in theoretical and methodological conceptions of mobile technologies and mobility, making it of great interest to Asian scholars and comparatists in the social and communication sciences.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110502008
ISBN:: 9783110502008
ISBN:: 9783110500295
ISBN:: 9783110498271
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Sociology
Subject:: Sociology, other
Subject:: Communication Science
Subject:: Interpersonal Communication
Publisher:: De Gruyter