After a general introduction to the project by Beatrice Gründler, the Principal Investigator of the project, Marcus Pöckelmann (Halle) presented the project’s editing tool LERA, which provides an interactive, synoptic display by which similarities and differences between multiple textual versions can be analysed. Developed in Halle, it will be adapted and further developed in the project. The morning session ended with a paper by Matthew Keegan (Berlin) on the “Hermeneutics of Fiction in Classic Arabic Literature” and its potential impact on the reception of Kalīla and Dimna. In the afternoon session, Florinda de Simini (Naples) first introduced the Indian background of this work, then followed by a group reading session of selected passages of the Mahabharata in translation. After that, Christine van Ruymbeke (Cambridge) presented the 11thcentury Persian version by Nasrollah Monshi of the “Cat and Rat” chapter, which was also followed by a comparative reading session. The event concluded with a keynote lecture by Dimitri Gutas (Yale, Einstein Visting Fellow) on “the Leaven of Translation in the Rise of Translation in the Rise of the Medieval West (of India),” in which he threw light on the socio-historical motivations of translation between different cultures.
Indologist Florinda De Simini reads with us the Mahābhārata tales of Kalīla and Dimna – Part 1
In our daily close reading sessions from October 21 until November 3, 2018, we explored the Indian origins of the Arabic Kalīla and Dimna texts. Our expert advisor was Florinda de Simini, Indologist from L’Orientale (Naples University) who is taking off with a project on “The Shivadharma and the Making of Regional Religious Traditions in Premodern South Asia”, funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).
This close reading workshop is to be continued!
Watch Jan van Ginkel’s presentation on the Syriac versions of Kalila and Dimna
Matthew L. Keegan joins our team!
Matthew will work on the theorization of fictive writing in pre-modern Arabic. He holds a PhD from New York University and an M.Phil from the University of Cambridge, UK, and is now the Moinian Assistant Professor in Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College of Columbia University.
Find out more about Matthew here.
Beatrice Gründler speaks about Indian wisdom in Kalīla wa-Dimna as honorary guest speaker of the conference “Approaches to the Study of Pre-modern Arabic Anthologies” in Beirut
AnonymClassic press feature in the Berliner Tagesspiegel
Fabulous success for the humanities in Berlin: Following the Leibniz Prize, Beatrice Gruendler, professor of Arabic studies at Freie Universität Berlin, receives funding via the prestigious Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).
Read more online (in German).