The songs of the Bauls are composed by gurus and performed by itinerant folk musicians. They are transmitted among low-caste communities in India and Bangladesh, where they ar…
The Arabic and Arabic Malayalam literature of Kerala (Malabar) constitutes an important, under-researched link in the history of intellectual and religious networks in the pre…
In 1903, Fred Gaisberg and George Dillnutt conducted the first Asian recording expedition for the Gramophone Company. The recording represents the beginning of the recording t…
Kongu Nadu is one of the earliest cultural areas in ancient Tamil land. The documents held by chieftains in the region are of great interest to historians, anthropologists, so…
Rajasthan’s cultural heritage is heavily based on oral traditions. Professional bards and musicians of the region recite traditional epics, with puppetry and music. Recordings…
The Fragile Palm Leaf Foundation (FPL) holds hundreds of unknown and unstudied manuscripts and texts. Access to this vast collection would revolutionise the study of Theravāda…
Over the past few decades, scholars of Śaivism have recovered a wealth of manuscripts that have revolutionised our understanding of the place of Śaivism in the religious histo…
The manuscripts of the Lanten in Laos enable shamans and priests to engage Daoist deities in the rituals to reproduce the Lanten socio-cosmological order. A distinctive qualit…
The Mons are credited with bringing Buddhism and a written culture to mainland Southeast Asia. The Thai Mon manuscripts represent a gap in the intellectual history of Burma an…