This volume is the outcome of the conference “Studying Documents in Premodern South Asia and Beyond: Problems and Perspectives”, held in October 2015 in Heidelberg. In bringing together experts from different fields—including Indology, Tibetology, History, Anthropology, Religious Studies, and Digital Humanties—it aims at exploring and rethinking issues of diplomatics and typology, the place of documents in relation to other texts and literary genres, methods of archiving and editing documents, as well as their “social life”, i.e. the role they play in social, religious and political constellations, the agents and practices of their use, and the norms and institutions they embody and constitute.

The book is the first volume of the Documenta Nepalica – Book Series, published by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in collaboration with the National Archives, Nepal.

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Saubhagya Pradhananga, Chief of the National Archives of Nepal

Editors' Preface

Simon Cubelic, Axel Michaels, Astrid Zotter: Studying Documents of South Asia: An Introduction

Diplomatics

Timothy Lubin: Towards a South Asian Diplomatics: Cosmopolitan Norms and Regional Idioms in the Use of Documents

Georg Vogeler: Digital Diplomatics: The Evolution of a European Tradition or a Generic Concept?

Charles Ramble: Producing ‘South Asian’ Tibetan Documents in Highland Nepal, 19th to 20th Centuries: The Evolution of a European Tradition or a Generic Concept?

Documentary Practice

Yogesh Raj: Waking History Up from the Chronological Nightmares: A Perspective from the Medieval Newari Historiography

Alexander von Rospatt: The Collective Sponsorship of the Renovations of the Svayambhūcaitya in the Later Malla Era, and Its Documentation in Historical Records

Christiane Sibille: Networking Digital Documents

Legal Practice

Diwakar Acharya: Poet Vaṃśamaṇi Pays off His Share in the Father’s Debt: A 17th-Century Debt-Clearance Certificate from Mithilā

Rosalind O’Hanlon: Documents of Property Right in Early Modern Western India

Rajan Khatiwoda: Documented Evidence Relating to the Implementation of the Mulukī Ain in Mid-19th Century Nepal

Axel Michaels: Are Hindu Women Allowed to Erect a Śivaliṅga? A Question Asked in a Letter to Jaṅga Bahādura Rāṇā, Dated 1863 CE

Simon Cubelic: Governing Economic Life in Rāṇā Nepal: The Tender Process for the Gambling License at the Market Square of Asan in 1902

Administration

Maheshwar P. Joshi, Madan Mohan Joshi: Some Unpublished Gorkhali Documents and Early British Records: The Example of the Seṇū Jośīs

Gisèle Krauskopff: The Silent History of the Tharu Farmers: Peasant’s Mobility and Jungle Frontiers in the Light of Written Archives

Manik Bajracharya: Munsīs in the Courts of Early Śāha and Rāṇā Rulers: The Career of Lakṣmīdāsa Pradhāna

State and Religion

Monika Horstmann: The Mālik in Rāmānandī Documents of the 18th and 19th Centuries

Christof Zotter: Ascetics in Administrative Affairs: Documents on the Central Overseers of Jogīs and Saṃnyāsīs in Nepal

Astrid Zotter: Conquering Navarātra: Documents on the Reorganisation of a State Festival

Notes on Contributors