Digital Collections

Literature on South Asia – University Library Heidelberg

Among its 265.000 books the Library of the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg also holds some rare and valuable literature from the 18th to the early 20th century. The Library offers access to digital full text versions of selected works of these historical publications and makes them available on the internet. The digitized works are recorded in Heidi, the University Library’s online catalogue as well as inter-regional online catalogues..

Digitized Slide Collection Sontheimer

In 1977 Günther-Dietz Sontheimer (1934-1992) became professor for Religious History of South Asia at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, where he also taught traditional law, Marathi language and Marathi literature. During his thirty years of research he made more than 22,000 slides showing the everyday life and rituals of the common people, the peasants, the pastoral communities and ethnic minorities. This slide collection is now digitized and accessible throught the image database HeidICON. The digitization was funded by the Cluster of Excellence ”Asia and Europe in a Global Context – Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows“.

GRETIL e-Library – State and University Library Göttingen

The GRETIL e-Library is a project of the Lower Saxonian State and University Library Göttingen, which provides free access to digital full texts. The main focus lies on older indological standard works as well as publications that are of interest to the history of Indology.

Digital South Asia Library – University of Chicago

The Digital South Asia Library provides digital materials for reference and research on South Asia. Participants in the Digital South Asia Library include leading U.S. universities and libraries as well as libraries form UK and South Asia.

Sanskrit Manuscripts – University of Pennsylvania Library

The University of Pennsylvania possesses a collection of almost 3,000 Indic manuscripts, the one of the largest in the Western hemisphere. The material is almost all from India, but a few items are from Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Tibet. The language of most of the manuscripts is Sanskrit, and the works are almost entirely connected with Hinduism (including the Vedas). There are a few manuscripts in Pali, Burmese, Sinhalese, Tibetan, Jaina Maharashtri and Prakrit. The age of the manuscript is from the middle of the 15th century, although most of the material date from the 17th and 18 centuries.