Iranian Studies

Dr. Florian Schwarz, ÖAW
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Within this program, “Iranian Studies” focus on the role of representations of Iranian culture in processes of cultural transmission, transfer and communication in the (Western) Himalaya region. The region - more specifically the “Pamir knot”: the Pamir, Karakoram, Hindukush, Zarafshan, Tien Shan and Kunlun area – is understood as a dynamic system of multiple cultural contact zones and borderlands. This part of the program offers a wide range of possibilities for dissertation research. Research topics from one of the following thematic, methodological and chronological areas are particularly welcome:

Theme 1: Material culture in the transition from Late Antiquity to the early Islamic period (6th-13th cc.), in particular the study of coins as carriers of multiple cultural expressions.

Theme 2: Muslim ritual communities, 13th-18th centuries: interconnections and interactions between Muslim and non-Muslim ritual communities, networks and sacred landscapes between Tien Shan, Hindukush and Kashmir.

Theme 3: Historical cultural anthropology of the modern period (19th-20th cc.): archival and anthropological research on regional and trans-communal communications, focusing on pilgrimage, local/regional tourism, migration, trade and gift exchange from the 19th century to the present.

Social and Cultural Anthropology

Univ.-Doz. Dr. Guntram Hazod, ÖAW
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The anthropological part of the IK programme proposes the two topics of “wandering stories” (such as the narrative genre of flood or lake stories, or similar cross-border narratives from the corpus of local oral traditions) and “toponymy and religious conceptions of the topographical environment”. Both are part of the larger field of an anthropology of landscape, which in various respects will be able to reveal significant aspects of the long history of cross-contacts and cultural transfers in the zones of the Highlands and the Himalayas. Methodologically, the study will combine text and fieldwork (i.e. comparative elaboration of primary textual sources and of oral traditions, recording of rituals, etc.), where it is noteworthy that the long-standing contacts between Vienna Tibet research and the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences (Lhasa) will be of great use here for the realisation of fieldwork in the AR Tibet.

Numismatics

Univ.-Doz. Dr. Michael Alram, KHM
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PD Dr. Nikolaus Schindel, ÖAW
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Comparing the numismatic evidence with the data derived from historiographic sources often offers highly important insights into the way socio-political contacts worked in reality. Whereas the history written by an elite tends to be guided by particular ideologies, the coins – the actual medium of mass communication – often deliver a different message. It is especially the study of the cultural and political contacts as mirrored in coinage which is of special interest in the context of the present IK. One line of approach will be the in-depth study of chosen entities and the beginning of their respective coinages in new socio-political-religious landscapes. The transfer of images is as important as the changes in languages, alphabets and the main phrases of imperial phraseology. Whereas the aforementioned concept focuses on the coin as a conveyor of political and religious propaganda in the context of continuity and discontinuity, an alternative, but equally important approach will be to concentrate on the coin as a medium of exchange in economic terms. Here, the main topic is on the one hand metrology, metal composition and denominational standards, on the other hand distribution patterns as mirrored in coin finds. This line of research is especially interesting since it shows how monetary changes worked (or did not work) in practice as mirrored by monetary circulation in every-day life.

Buddhist Studies

Univ.-Doz. Dr. Helmut Krasser, ÖAW
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Dr. Anne MacDonald, ÖAW
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The Himalayan borderlands provided the stage for a massive and unprecedented transfer of Buddhist ideas and practices from India, Kashmir, Nepal and Central Asia into the Tibetan linguistic and cultural domain. Of great interest and importance to Tibetan intellectuals was the vast Indian Buddhist philosophical literature that presented the Buddhist schools’ views on ontology, epistemology and soteriology and refuted the tenets of the Indian opponents. Along with works on Abhidharma, Prajñāpāramitā and Yogācāra, treatises dealing with the various expressions of the Madhyamaka school and with the Buddhist logical-epistemological tradition were located, studied and transposed into Tibetan. It was the latter two schools of thought that would come to dominate the Tibetan intellectual landscape and its presentations of knowledge and liberation.

Proper understanding of the individual Indian works is imperative for discerning the motivations and aims of their respective authors and, significantly, for judging the understandings of the later Tibetan scholars and for recognizing aberrations and developments in their interpretations of the views presented and analyzed. The Tibetan translations of the philosophical works often remain our sole records of the tenets, arguments and opinions of the Indian authors. Fortunately, a few important Sanskrit manuscripts, long preserved in Tibet, have recently become available for both the Madhyamaka and the logical-epistemological traditions and will undoubtedly benefit doctoral research focussing on the relevant works and connected philosophical issues in India and in Tibet.