An interdisciplinary approach to the study of Oriental countries’ written heritage. Proceedings of the workshop “Text critical Studies and the Oriental Source Studies” (Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS, 2010-2019)

Abstract

The article offers a summary of the results and discoveries by the participants of the workshop “Text critical Studies and Oriental Source Studies”, which has been running in the Institute of Oriental Studies since 2010. The workshop’s main task was to make the scholars who work with the classical texts from the East (mostly written sources source) privy about the results and achievements of their colleagues. Since 2010 each session of the workshop has been structured with regard to the aspects as follows. 1. An introduction of a new hitherto unknown (or lesser known) historical source (literary, epigraphic, numismatic, visual, folklore, etc.), identification of the main aspects and directions for its subsequent study (includes translation, commenting, cataloging, attribution, regional binding, preservation, etc.) and the scholar’s justifications of the approaches he has chosen as well as his research methods. Therefore, among the key aspects covered by each paper the priority is given to the relevant research methods, which make the study universally clear, understandable and ready to use. Among the benefits received by the workshop participants are: strengthening interdisciplinary links, peer reviewing the discipline’s new methods and approaches, promoting this particular branch of studies among the young colleagues.