The XX European Conference on Contemporary South Asian Studies (ECMSAS) was held in Manchester on July 8-11, 2008. Such conferences are held every two years in the best European universities, where research is conducted related to the most diverse problems of modern life in a huge subcontinent - South Asia. The first conference was held 40 years ago in Cambridge, at St. John's College. It was organized by Ben Farmer, the college's president. Since then, one or another European university "passed the baton" - invited colleagues to conferences, and this happened without any formal framework. Only in 1997 was the European Association for South Asian Studies (EASAS) established, which has since supported the organizers and participants of ECMSAS.

This is the fifth time that the UK has become a hospitable country for South Asian specialists. It is noteworthy that for almost all of the past 40 years, this subcontinent, as Dietmar Rothermund, Professor Emeritus at the University of Heidelberg, President for Life of EASAS, specialist in South Asian history, has rightly noted, has not been in the focus of international attention. Only the economic growth of South Asia and the impact of globalization have made it a new center of international power. Those who devoted their lives to the study of South Asia did not seek immediate "demand". But now they can be sure that their work is now meaningful to a much larger audience than ever before. And the current conference on contemporary South Asian studies in Manchester, in my opinion, confirmed this opinion.

For scientists and teachers, such conferences are a great opportunity to get acquainted with what their colleagues are doing, talk about their research, continue and strengthen communication, which, fortunately, has now become much easier to maintain thanks to modern tools: after all, you can not only exchange messages over the Internet, but also just talk using Skype. However, the conference provides an opportunity to meet not only those who fall within the scope of your narrow scientific interests (for example, for me it is modern literature in India), but also related disciplines. It is no coincidence that interdisciplinary research is so important and popular now. ECMSAS provides excellent opportunities for this: after all, the conference had more than 40 panels-sections, and most of them worked for two days to give participants the opportunity to listen to reports in other sections as well.

I will not list all the sections - those who wish can take a look at the site http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/ecmsas/. I will only note that they "covered" almost all areas of humanitarian knowledge-from the now fashionable political science and economics to literature and history, both ancient and modern.

Special mention should be made of the plenary lectures, which, in my opinion, very successfully combined broad views and respect for the narrower, professional interests and preferences of the participants. The conference was opened with a lecture by Sanjay Subramanyam, a professor of history at the University of California (UCLA), on texts describing travel, mostly commercial, between Anju in France and Agra, the capital of the Mughal Empire. The first plenary lecture was addressed primarily to those who are interested in social and religious issues of today. It was called "From " Race" to "Ethno-religious": the Asianing of British Race Relations ""("From "race" to "ethno-religious":"Asianing" of British race relations"). It was brilliantly read by Prof. University of Bristol's Tariq Maqdoodh. The second one, which attracted almost a large audience (which caused me surprise - against the background of sharply curtailing and stopping courses in teaching Sanskrit)1, there was a lecture by Prof. Oxford's K. Minkowski "Sanskrit and Early Systems of Cognition in South Asia". It was organized with the support of the organizers of the annual symposium "The Sanskrit Tradition in the Modern World", in particular, a lecturer at the University of Manchester, Jacqueline Sudern Hurst, who headed the section "Sanskrit in the modern world" within the framework of the conference.-

1 By the way, shortly after the conference in Manchester, a summer Sanskrit school was held at Leiden University, and I learned from one of the teachers that more than 30 people took a two-week course in Vedic Sanskrit!

page 157
re". K. Minkovsky spoke about two projects that Sanskrit scholars are currently working on at Columbia University and Oxford, studying the activities of Indian Shastri scholars in Benares and the Deccan in 1500-1750.

Such conferences are very important. They really give a creative impulse and help to understand the range of research of Western European colleagues. Communication with colleagues from Italy, France, Holland and England was also extremely useful: T. de Braun, M. Ofredi, D. Dimitrova, A. Kasten. Later, we became co-authors in collections of articles devoted to contemporary literature in India - " Heroes and Heritage. The Protagonist in Indian Literature and Film" и "Voices from South Asia. Language in South Asian Literature and Film". They were edited by Theo Damstegt, who for many years was the main organizer of our panel at ECMSAS and, to give him his due, spent a lot of effort, time and effort to ensure that the reports delivered at the conferences did not remain in the form of short theses, but were translated into solid publications devoted to modern literature in India.

The conference, which lasted four days, was very diverse and rich. It was impossible to listen to all the reports that were of interest, especially since I participated in two sections. I will focus on them. This is a traditional one for me - "Religion, literature and film in South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora", organized by D. Dimitrova from the University of Michigan and T. de Braun from the University of Leiden, and, of course, they also made presentations. T. de Braun, a specialist in medieval and modern literature in India, has recently been engaged in research "a new short story" Hindi of the 1960s - 1970s era. and actively promotes the work of modern Indian writers in Western Europe 2. He made a presentation on "The Modern Individual in Today's Hindi Works: an icon of Secularism or a religious 'hero'?". This topic is very relevant for modern India, where interreligious contradictions have recently become extremely acute and literature willy-nilly reflects the processes taking place in society, and raises questions that are so necessary and so difficult to find the right answers.

D. Dimitrova presented a report on the development of modern Indian drama and the reflection of interreligious relations in it. This choice of topic is due to her academic interests and the fact that just this year her book on Indian theater was published. The reports of our section were distinguished by a wide chronological framework (from the end of the XIX century to the present day), geographical space - from India and Pakistan to Great Britain, a variety of genres and forms of the works under consideration (prose, poetry, drama, cinema). In addition to reports on the genre of3 and Parsi theater and how they resist Hindu chauvinism (k. I was particularly interested in the presentations given by two Italian teachers and researchers of contemporary Hindi literature on how Indo-Muslim relations are portrayed in contemporary Indian cinema (Sani Singh, Metropolitan University of London; Priyashi Kaul, Bristol University). These are M. Ofredi from the University of Venice, who presented the paper "Myth and Religion in Krishna Sobti's Zindaginama", and A. Consolaro from the University of Turin, who presented the report "The Power of 'tradition' - katha in the Secular World: Alki Saraogi's novel ' Koi bat naha?'".

Both speakers chose two popular and profound works - the novels of Krishna Sobti and Alka Saraogi-as the object of their research. They also came to listen to the report that I gave at the section "Sanskrit tradition in the modern world". If in the section devoted to religion, literature and cinema, I talked about Buddhist motifs in the works of the classic Hindi literature Jayashankar Prasad, then here I considered the interpretation of Bana's classic Sanskrit novel Kadambari in modern Hindi prose. For comparison, I chose Hazari Prasad Dwivedi's novel " The Autobiography of Banabhatta "(1946) and Alka Saraogi's already mentioned "The Remaining Kadambari" (2001). My task was to demonstrate how the traditional plot and elements of classical Sanskrit poetics have been used for such a long time to solve the problems of our time and achieve the goals that Indian writers face today. If Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, in my opinion, sought to revive the national cultural heritage and wanted to

2 T. de Braun is a regular contributor to the HAS News Letter. Notable are his articles and interviews with K. B. Vaid, Shashi Tharoor, and Gitanjali Sri.

3 A piece in the literary dialect of Braj, performed with music and dance.

page 158
to arouse interest in it on the eve of India's independence, as well as solve the problem of creating a genre of the novel focused on the synthesis of European and classical Indian traditions, then for Alki Saraoga one of the main themes is the continuity of generations and mutual understanding of people of different ages. It was very important for me that I addressed an interested and well-acquainted audience with the artistic material, because M. Ofredi translated Alka Saraogi's novel into Italian, and A. Consoloro is engaged in the work of this writer. In addition, the unexpected coincidence of interests-samyeg, as the Indians say-confirmed the correctness of my choice. That is why the opinion of our professional colleagues is so valuable. And Russian Indology has only recently begun to turn its attention to modern Indian literature - in contrast to its Western European counterparts, who know and appreciate it well.

As for the other reports presented in the program of the Sanskrit section, they were even more diverse and diverse in comparison with the religious and literary section. The organizer of the section, Jacqueline Sudern Hurst, was guided by the idea expressed in the Rig Veda (9, 23, 2): "Ancient singers walked with the newest tread" (ami pratnas ayava: padam navlyo akramu:). This is probably why she was concerned not with the thematic unity, but with the variety of manifestations of this "step". So, the report of Associate Professor of the University of Wales Maya Carrier was devoted to the training of specialists in Ayurveda in the UK. Indira Gandhi in Delhi spoke about the tradition of literary criticism, and Sharada Sugirtharaj from the University of Birmingham spoke about the socio-economic problem of creating a "good city" in the modern world and the concept of such a city in ancient Hindu texts. Other reports referred to early Buddhist Sanskrit and preserved manuscripts discovered in the early twentieth century and translated only in 1975 (Anders Folkvi, "Early Buddhist Sanskrit: the Spitzer Manuscript"), or on dreams and optical disturbances - in a reinterpretation of Kumarila (Hazel Collins). He completed the work of the "round table" section, which discussed the problems of interpretation of classical Sanskrit aesthetic theory in the XXI century.

On the eve of the closing of the conference, a meeting was organized with publishers, editors of scientific journals and specialists in reviewing scientific literature. Representatives of the Routhledge publishing house, which specializes in publishing scientific and educational literature, were very active at this meeting. In addition, an exhibition and sale of scientific literature was open all the days of the conference.

There were many opportunities for the conference participants to escape from their intellectual labors and enjoy themselves aesthetically - Manchester is a surprisingly beautiful city with wonderful museums and galleries. The university campus is home to the Manchester Museum, which hosted the amazing exhibition "The Lindow Man: The Mystery of the Bog Body"4, and the Whitworth Art Gallery is located near the Language Center, or Samuel Alexander House, where the conference was held. It features modern art, textiles, a rare collection of antique wallpaper, and wonderful watercolors - it was a discovery for me, for example, that the well-known Limerick author Edward Lear was also a wonderful artist. His watercolors, created during his travels to the East, can be seen in the exhibition entitled "Look here".

In addition, participants of the conference could listen to a lecture on the world trade in Indian textiles, and then - with knowledge - look at the priceless samples of these textiles that are stored in the gallery's collection, or immerse themselves in the treasures of the recently reopened - after a grand renovation - John Rylond Library 5. And I am referring not only to the priceless books, but also to the exhibition of Indian miniatures organized specifically for the conference - "From Kashmir to Kandy: A South Asian Odyssey". Indeed, these days Manchester, despite the chilly but so British weather, almost at every turn reminded of South Asia, and even the rain was not accidental, because in India at this time it is the time of Mansun-monsoon. Although traditional Indian poetry celebrates this time as a time of separation , for everyone who came to the XX European Conference on Contemporary South Asian Studies, it was a time of meeting and waiting for the continuation of the odyssey.

4 I advise you to go to this site http://www.museum.manchester.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/lindowman/

5 One more invitation - to the site http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/, where you can learn a lot about this wonderful library.

Permanent link to this publication: