SPONSOR – The New Ecology of Expressive Modes in Early-Modern South India
After Tamil and Sanskrit, Kannada possibly has the richest literary corpus among the languages of South India. The Premodern Kannada Project supported by the NEEM ERC aims to map out data about texts, and the people and places connected to them within the framework of PanditProject. Combining previous scholarship with recent findings, the project will focus on documenting details about authors and texts (literary, technical, inscriptional, religious) connected to the Kannada linguistic sphere. Organizing these data within a relational database that cross-links texts, places, patrons and information on citations and intertexts, will be of immense help towards formulating a richer, situated account of Kannada literature within its historical context. We also expect that the database will highlight incongruities, and thereby emerge as a resource for the re-evaluation and contestation of some well-entrenched ideas in the literary history of Kannada.
The data represented in the Premodern Kannada Project should be of interest not only to scholars working on Kannada literature, but to all students and researchers interested in the cultural and intellectual history of the Deccan and South India.