Fri. 26^th Apr. 2024
09:15-10:45 Hrs (CEST Germany)
12:45-02:15 pm (IST India)
4:15-5:45 pm (JST Japan)

Online
━ ZOOM Link
Meeting ID: 826 6024 3111
Passcode: pothi

Poster

Manuscriptology and Digital Humanities
Co-organized with Otani University Collection Buddhist Manuscript Research Project, Shin Buddhist Comprehensive Research Institute, Otani University, Kyoto

▍ Buddhist Murals of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road

Dr. Erik Radisch & Dr. Ines Konczak-Nagel (Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig)

The Kucha region of Xinjiang boasts Buddhist cave complexes featuring remarkable wall paintings dating from approximately the 5th to 10th centuries. Evidence of a past Buddhist culture was first discovered in the early 20th century. Following the spread of this news, several international expeditions travelled to the area to document the caves’ actual state of preservation through photographs and reports. Some paintings were removed for research purposes and taken to the their respective national museums. Due to sales and political turbulence, the painting fragments are now are scattered all over the world, making it challenging to identify their individual caves of origin. One of our project’s primary objective is to establish a database-supported information system, in which the Buddhist wall paintings of Kucha are successively documented by recording their current location and, if they have been removed from their context, their original location. Additionally, we will provide a description and interpretation of what is represented, along with references to relevant publications.

We use modern possibilities of the Digital Humanities such as the digital image annotation tool Annotorious to annotate the image content with a taxonomy of around 1,250 entries. The research data generated is freely available online. Currently, already over 14.000 annotations have been made in our pictures.