Art History

The four great cultures of Asia - China, India, Persia and Tibet - converge in the Western Himalaya. Trade and pilgrimage routes from the Mediterranean to the China Sea and the Indian Ocean traversed this region. These corridors of communication connected far flung centers and thus over the millennia contributed to common cultural features despite great ethnic and linguistic diversity. The purpose of the NFN is the documentation and descriptive analysis of the rapidly disappearing cultures of the Western Himalaya in order to study, with a comparative method and from different disciplinary perspectives, the manifold facets of the cultures in their several contexts. In the last three years, new interpretive models for the application of transdisciplinary and translational research to the problems of the cultural history of the Western Himalaya have evolved. Thus, a new transdisciplinary method has generated new short term and intermediate goals -facilitating our long term goals: the redefinition of the cultural history of the region from the 7th /8 th up to the 14th /15 th century; the development of a large body of scientifically catalogued and indexed primary resources; and the dissemination of the research results to specialists and the general public. Many scientific publications - articles and several books - have appeared. Two further edited volumes will appear in 2010 and 2012 as a result of our collaboration with the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla; we will produce an exhibition and catalogue from the National Museum of Afghanistan (Kabul Museum) in Austria, 2012. A major collaborative product of the NFN is a high quality cartographic output which allows the viewer to derive a holistic view of the entire data produced through the different sub-projects of the NFN in a regional, cultural, and historical context. The four interconnected databases produced by the NFN are the basis for the Cultural History Information Systems Project`s interactive map. The NFN is closely associated with the Research Platform (Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Documentation of Inner and South Asia = CIRDIS) at the University of Vienna. Through co-financing with the University (CIRDIS) and other third-party funding the NFN augments the existing Austrian research facilities and provides academic support and training for promising young scholars. Above all the cooperation with CIRDIS provides an institutional base for innovative teaching programs that integrate the on-going primary research produced by the FWF/NFN, for instance: the study of Tibetan manuscripts with emphasis on the independent Western Tibetan canonical tradition; Tibetan literature as preserved (usually in unique forms) in wall texts and lithic inscriptions; a clearly definable visual culture which evolved along the avenues of communication traversing the western Himalayan region; numismatics as a key primary source for the cultural and economic history of pre- Islamic Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, and Northwest India; specific philosophical texts which were an important aspect of the Kashmiri intellectual legacy of the 10th -12th century. The collaboration with our partner institutions in the research countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China/Tibet, and Uzbekistan) and the exchange with them of the archived documentation of the NFN remains a core feature of our collaborative program, providing the possibility for a unique synergy of scholars and resources.