Dear colleagues,
Partly at my suggestion, my friends Mark Singleton and Jim Mallinson are trying out a completely new way of funding an indological project. They wish to co-author a book on the history of yoga, that they are calling The Roots of Yoga. Rather than going to a traditional academic funding agency, they are appealing directly to the public. They hope that the global public interest in yoga will result in a strong enough response to fund the project.
Both Mallinson and Singleton will probably be known to you already as
dynamic academic authors with successful track-records of writing and publishing in a scholarly yet accessible way. They have made a promotional video about their project, with supporting written narrative and illustrations, and have submitted the appeal to the well-known funding service, Kickstarter.com. Their project can be viewed here:
If you are interested in yoga, please have a look at their presentation. Please also tell your friends, students, colleagues, and random people in the street 
I am personally watching this initiative with great interest. They have raised nearly $5000 in just a few days since launch at Kickstarter, but they are aiming at a larger sum that will give them the time and freedom to do the work over the next two years. I believe this kind of direct public appeal has real potential to help promote and support certain subjects within indology. But at the moment, we have everything to learn about how to proceed with such a funding bid and how to design an appeal to the public that is realistic and will work. Hats off to Jim and Mark for being willing to be pioneers in this.
Dominik Wujastyk