South Asia Resources
Beyond Books
South Asia and Tibetan Library Materials
Fall 2000

The Digital South Asia Library will be a valuable resource when it becomes fully operational in 2 or 3 years. Already its initial content provides some interesting samples of what is to come: the Hobson-Jobson Anglo-Indian glossary is an example of a Reference dictionary; statistics can be found in the 1867 East India Statistical Abstract; examples of images are the photos from the British Library; plus several Indexes and Blibliographies, maps, etc. For example, the Statistical Abstract reports no telegraph lines in British India in 1851, but those lines had grown to 11,736 miles by 1864, generating Rs 91,533 in receipts that year, though construction and maintainance costs totaled Rs. 271,726. This digital resource will continue to grow in items and value in the next years.

Persian collection. The family of one of Iran's foremost novelists and short story writers has given his working library to U.Va. Consisting of 1020 items, the library of Sadeq Chubak contains many Persian literary masterpieces and several rare Persian works. According to Farzaneh Milani, associate professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and Studies in Women and Gender, researchers will now be able to study and understand Chubak's own literary tastes and views on Persian literature from his extensive annotations in the margins of numerous books in the collection. "Mr. Chubak was one of Iran's literary. giants, considered by many one of the country's foremost authors. To have his personal collection at U.Va. is like a gift from above," said Milani. [Paragraph quoted from "Library Developments" newsletter 1999/2000]

The library arranged for the shipping of the Chubak Collection in the Spring 2000 and is now systematically cataloging these Persian language and literature materials during the next year, in order to make these valuable titles accessible to reserachers.

A simple search engine has been added to the Library's South Asia pages to allow people to find citations from the lists of the Table of Contents of 4 Indian journals (from about 1993 on): Seminar, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Social Scientist, and Biblio: The most recent issue of the Biblio: (July-August 2000) contains 4 essays or obituaries on Arvind N. Das, who died unexpectedly in August 2000. Arvind Das participated in the 1998 Center's Symposium on Power, Agrarian Structure, and Peasant Mobilization in Modern India; and was the wirter and director of the 13-part video series on Indian Civilization, titled India Invented.

The library is negotiating to purchase and network two Tibetan-English dictionaries: one is the Sarat Chand Das dictionary, and the other, The Illuminator Dictionary, developed by Tony Duff. In addition, 5 full-text works would be part of this networked package, including the electronic edition of the Treasury of Knowledge by Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche.

You might enjoy listening to more of the music of South Asia at the Music Library. They have added v. 5 on South Asia of the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music; the CD's call number is ML100 .G16 1998 disc v.5

Hope you will find these and many other library resources helpful in you learning and research.


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South Asia Resources

Philip McEldowney and Nawang Thokmey
Univeristy of Virginia Alderman Library