 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Projects |
||
| Comparative Diasporas | ||
| This project will focus on the study of mainly Chinese and Indian diasporas in
diverse cultural and geographical settings. While past studies have
focused on Indian and Chinese diasporas separately, comparative studies
on these two important diasporic communities have been lacking. It
will seek to understand the interactions, mutual perceptions, issues
of
identity, and roles of the Chinese and Indian diasporas in
history and in the contemporary world. The project will have four segments:
1) The Indian diaspora in China and the Chinese diaspora in India;
2) Indian and Chinese diasporas in Southeast Asia; 3) Indian and Chinese
diasporas as global phenomenon; and 4) The Chinese Indian returnees
and the Southeast Asian Chinese returnees to China. |
||
| Buddhist History and Archeology in Southeast Asia | ||
| The early history of Buddhism in Southeast Asia remains enigmatic. This project aims at illuminating diverse aspects of early Southeast Asian Buddhism. Many important Buddhist sites in Southeast Asia, such as the Bagan and Pyu sites in Myanmar, Palembang, Jambi and the northern coastal sites in Sumatra, Sumberawan and Taruma in Java, southern Thai sites on the peninsula, and Dong Duong and other Cham sites in Vietnam, remain to be explored. This project will seek to examine some of these sites in order to understand the impact of Chinese and Indian influences, as well as indigenous developments in regard to Buddhism that took place in Southeast Asia. In addition, it is hoped to employ the skilled archaeologists working in Singapore to conduct joint surveys and excavations of some of these sites in collaboration with archaeologists of the respective countries. This may also be linked with a regional archaeological field school which would bring together archaeological students from the EAS countries to learn as they surveyed and excavated such sites. | ||
| Comparative Study of Religious Networks in Asia | ||
| This project will undertake a comparative study of the historical spread of Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, and Christian networks across Asia, the role these religions had in facilitating trading activities, and the ways in which they created cultural links among Asian societies. Both the overland and maritime networks will be examined in order to understand the similarities and differences in the ways in which religious ideas were transmitted, the relationship between traders and missionaries, pilgrimage activities, and the adaptation and domestication of foreign beliefs. It will also analyze the role these religions may have played in facilitating the exchange of scientific and medical knowledge, technologies, and art and literature among Asian societies. | ||
| Perceptions of Asia | ||
| Asia as both a concept and a reality continues to provoke productive debate. While the concept of Asia as “the other” developed within Europe, there are ongoing studies of how certain Asian ideas and concepts perceived Asians and their interrelationships. Such ideas burgeoned during the period of high European imperialism, when prominent Asian intellectuals strove to define and interlink the various facets of Asia. Rabindranath Tagore, Okakura Kakuzo, Lim Boon Keng, Liang Qichao, and Manhae Benoy had an imagination of Asia as an abstract entity, transcending the imperial and national frontiers being etched by colonial powers, and thereby hoping to provide a prism to refract the light of universal humanity. This project will explore the intellectual, cultural and political conversations across Asia conducted by these various intellectuals. The aim is to make a significant contribution to the modern intellectual history of Asia as well as theories of universalism, cosmopolitanism and internationalism. | ||
| Maritime Asia | ||
| This is a wide-ranging project which incorporates studies of maritime technologies,
maritime trade and commercial networks, shipwrecks, and early maritime
connections throughout Asia. The importance of the sea in the history
of many Asian societies has not been fully recognised and the project
will bring a higher profile to this aspect of Asian history. |
||
| India-China Interactions during the Late-Qing and Republican Periods | ||
| The interactions between India and China during the colonial period have attracted limited attention. While the links between British colonial administrations and administrations have been examined in some studies, the relations between the people of India and China during this period remains little known. In addition to opium trade between the two regions during this period, there were regular exchange of people and trade in diverse other commodities. Writings of many of the travelers and visitors, such as Kang Youwei and Ma Jianzhong from China and Binoy Kumar Sarkar and Ramnath Sarkar from India ( written in Bengali), have not yet been translated or researched. This project will focus on these and other aspects of cross-cultural interactions between India and China from 1850 to 1949. | ||
| Web Projects | ||
In addition to the website which will bring the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre itself a global profile, the site will be used to mount a range of related materials as a global resource for persons interested in intra-Asian historical interactions. This will include bibliographies, guides, working papers, translations, and integrated projects. One of the first Web projects is related to Rabindranath Tagore, and focuses mainly on his visits to Southeast Asia and East Asia, the local reactions to Tagore and the scholarship related to him in these two regions. We are working with the West Bengal State Archives to identify and digitize materials relevant to Southeast Asia and China-India relations.
|
