[INDOLOGY] Classical Tamil Studies at the university of Hamburg

[Jean-Luc Chevillard]

ANNOUNCEMENT

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Classical Tamil Studies at the university of Hamburg


 From 1st of June 2017, the department for Culture and History of India 
and Tibet at the Asia-Africa Institute of Hamburg University 
(https://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/indtib/personen.html) has appointed a 
new professor for Tamilistics and manuscript studies.

Since March 2014, Tamil has been strongly represented in research at the 
Hamburg Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures 
(http://www.manuscript-cultures.uni-hamburg.de), thanks to the ERC 
Advanced Grant NETamil (Going from Hand to Hand: Networks of 
Intellectual Exchange in the Tamil Learned Traditions; 
http://netamil.org/), which allows an international team of twenty-seven 
scholars to digitise the remaining textual witnesses for several 
literary traditions, to edit them and to follow up on their transmission 
history. A group of four doctoral and postdoctoral scholars under PI Eva 
Wilden are affiliated to the CSMC and work in close collaboration with 
the Indian part of the team at the centre of the Ecole Française 
d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in Puducherry. Since then Tamil is found among 
the optional languages in the indological curriculum in Hamburg.

 From this October onwards Classical Tamil will also be introduced as a 
language for Master and as a second language on B.A. level. The focus 
both in teaching and research will be on premodern literature and 
traditional grammar and poetics, as well as on South-Indian Bhakti, 
especially in its Vishnuite varieties. Special attention will be paid to 
multi-lingual interaction between Tamil, Sanskrit and the other 
Dravidian languages. According to capacities, modern Tamil will also be 
included, because of its relevance for the later transmission and its 
importance in secondary literature. In addition there are plans for 
continued collaboration with the EFEO Pondy, where since 2003 yearly 
intensive course are taking place in the form of Classical Tamil Winter 
or Summer Seminars.

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-- Jean-Luc Chevillard (CNRS, France)