Research Project, 2023–2046
A project of the
Academy, since 2004
Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg
The early poetic anthologies of classical Tamil form part of the great literary heritage of mankind, even if they are still little known in the West. Just the first millennium comprises a tradition of erotic and heroic poetry, but also didactic, epic and devotional collections, along with a sophisticated systems of grammatical, poetical and lexicographical knowledge, which on the one hand was used to train apprentice poets and on the other hand served as the theoretical basis for the appreciation of the connoisseurs. Voluminous commentaries testify to the long-term effort of keeping these texts, so radically different from everyday language, alive and comprehensible. Until now there is no historical lexicon which would present the development of language and word meanings over the various domains and centuries.
The project aims at establishing an electronic corpus of reliable texts of first millennium literature, where possible on the basis of critical editions along with complete concordances and corpus dictionaries which then can serve as the basis of a historical lexicon. Editions will also be printed, but the main goal is a bilingual interactive online tool (Englisch and Tamil) that allows direct engagement with the source texts, the exegetical materials and the lexicographic works, traditional and modern.
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Spatial classification
Persons
- Prof. Dr. Eva Wilden (Project Leader)
Contact person for the academies' programme
Sebastian Zwies M.A.
Geschäftsstelle Mainz
Union der deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 2
55131 Mainz
Tel: 06131/218 528-17
E-Mail: sebastian.zwies@akademienunion.de