Sharma Anjana (ed.) Records, Recoveries, Remnants and Inter-Asian Interconnections: Decoding Cultural Heritage

Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2018. — 301 p. — ISBN13: 978-9814786423Records, Recoveries, Remnants and Inter-Asian Interconnections: Decoding Cultural Heritage has its conceptual core in the inter-regional networks of Nalanda Mahavihara and its unique place in the Asian imaginary. The revival of Nalanda university in 2010 as a symbol of a shared inter-Asian heritage is this collection's core narrative. The multidisciplinary essays interrogate ways in which ideas, objects, texts, and travellers have shaped — and in turn have been shaped by — changing global politics and the historical imperative that underpins them. The question of what constitutes cultural authenticity and heritage valuation is inscribed from positions that support, negate, or reframe existing discourses with reference to Southeast and East Asia. The essays in this collection offer critical, scholarly, and nuanced views on the vexed questions of regional and inter-regional dynamics, of racial politics and their flattening hegemonic discourses in relation to the rich tangible and intangible heritage that defines an interconnected Asia.Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Records, Recoveries, Remnants and Inter-Asian Interconnections — Decoding Cultural Heritage
Anjana Sharma
2. Negotiating Place and Heritage: Creating Nalanda University
Gopa Sabharwal
3. India, Magadha, Nalanda: Ecology and a Premodern World System
Frederick Asher
4. Collecting the Region: Configuring Bihar in the Space of Museums
Sraman Mukherjee
5. Heritage Preservation in the Gaya Region
Abhishek S. Amar
6. Setting the “Records” Straight: Textual Sources on Nālandā and Their Historical Value
Max Deeg
7. “Central India Is What Is Called the Middle Kingdom”
Anne Cheng
8. The Object | The Tree: Emissaries of Buddhist Ground
Padma D. Maitland
9. Tracing Transregional Networks and Connections Across the Indic Manuscript Cultures of Nusantara (AD 1400–1600)
Andrea Acri
10. Seeking a Sufi Heritage in the Deccan
Kashshaf Ghani
11. Archaeological Remains at Nalanda: A Spatial Comparison of Nineteenth Century Observations and the Protected World Heritage Site
M.B. Rajani and Sonia Das
12. A Heritage Gem Sits in the Heart of a City, Unacknowledged, Incognito: The Case for Recognizing Kolkata Chinatown as a Historic Urban Landscape
Rinkoo Bhowmik