Indian manuscripts

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Dominik Wujastyk

• India as a modern nation-state covers the greater part of the South Asian
  peninsula, from the Himalayas in the north to the tip of Cape Comorin,
  about 3000 km to the south. However, as a cultural-historical sphere, other
  modern states such as Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and even
  to some extent Burma, Thailand and Indonesia, share aspects of their manuscript
  heritage with modern India. Countries such as Afghanistan and even
  western China, especially Xinjiang Province, have been important sites of
  “Indian” manuscript discovery, and the Tibetan manuscript tradition was
  strongly influenced by Indian Buddhist models. This is because these surrounding
  geographical areas participated in trade and cultural exchange
  with South Asia from a very early period, and especially because of the
  missionary activities of Buddhist monks. What, then, really defines an “Indian
  manuscript?”

• Date created

  2014

• Subjects / Keywords

  • South Asia
  • Writing
  • Manuscripts
  • History

• Type of Item

  Chapter

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3154F380

• License

  Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International