Legend: The EFEO on the Rue de Lonchamp side, seen from the north.

After two and a half months of confinement, life is finally returning to its more or less normal course in France. The research world is nevertheless still constrained by the closure of universities and libraries as well as the suspension of scientific meetings. In Asia several countries where the EFEO is established have decided to lift their state of health emergency. Let us rejoice in the fact that this epidemic is much less active there than might have been feared. However, access to the field is still difficult, pending the lifting of the border closures.

New initiatives have also emerged, such as on-line seminars or a call for contributions concerning Covid-19 in the framework of our CRISEA project (CRISEA and the Covid-19 outbreak in Southeast Asia), which will provide us with an interesting return on social and cultural practices in the management of this crisis and its diplomatic and geopolitical consequences in Southeast Asia.

In France, following ministerial instructions, we continue to favour teleworking, but staff and researchers can now access the Maison de l'Asie. As you have been informed, a document lending service has been set up by the library for EFEO researchers and doctoral students. We are considering extending it to a wider public, depending on how the situation develops.

In this letter we continue our close-up of research activities at the EFEO, with presentations of projects on Catholicism in Japan, on the Sanskrit corpus Śivadharma and on the exhibition Ōtsu-e. Another History of Edo Painting.

Christophe Marquet
Director of the EFEO

As part of the Kyoto lectures, Gala Follaco (University of Naples "L'Orientale") presents: "Early Meiji "Accounts of Prosperity": the Making of an Urban Literary Canon".

At 6 p.m. (Japan time). The conference will be broadcasted online via Zoom. The password for logging in will be posted on the Kyoto Center's blog and ISEAS websites the day before.

Legend: The Catholic church of Sakitsu village seen from the sacred portico of the Suwa Shrine (Amakusa region; Kumamoto Prefecture). Site inscribed on the World Heritage List in July 2018 (Photo by Martin Nogueira Ramos).

1- Current events in the history of Catholicism in Japan

Since the beginning of 2010, several widely publicized events have been taking part in the renewal of studies on the Catholic presence in Japan.

In 2011, thousands of handwritten documents on the struggle against Christianity during the Edo period (1600-1868) in several fiefdoms north of Kyūshū will be found at the Vatican Apostolic Library (Mario Marega fonds); At the end of 2017-early 2018, the American director Martin Scorsese's adaptation of the historical novel Silence (1966) by the Catholic writer Endō Shūsaku (1923-1996) is shown in cinemas around the world; in July 2018, twelve crypto-Christian and Catholic sites in Nagasaki and Kumamoto counties are classified as World Heritage Sites (UNESCO); in 2018, two events are again widely reported in the press: the discovery, at the National Library of Rio de Janeiro, of a fourth copy of the Japanese-Portuguese dictionary (1603) by the Jesuit João Rodrigues (1561-1633) and the discovery, at the Sawada Miki Museum (Kanagawa County), of a scroll (3 metres long by 22 cm wide) representing the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, probably illustrated by a Japanese artist (1592? ).

In addition to the multiplication of publications by academics and amateurs alike on the history of Japanese Catholicism, many research projects are currently underway: the Franco-Italian centre at Kyoto is taking a large part in this revival.

Legend: International Symposium Reception and Repression of Catholicism in East Asia in the Premodern Era organized at Waseda University on June 22, 2019, by members of the Mario Marega and Kirishitan projects. Lecture by Pierre-Emmanuel Roux (University of Paris-Diderot) (Cliché Martin Nogueira Ramos).

3- Kirishitan Project (JSPS)

Martin Nogueira Ramos (EFEO) is participating in a four-year program of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) launched by Ōhashi Yukihiro (Waseda University; Tokyo). It is entitled Les échanges interculturels et le catholicisme dans le Japon prémoderne; it brings together nine researchers working on various themes related to the history of Catholicism in the archipelago between the 16th and 19th centuries: sciences (Hiraoka Ryūji from the University of Kyoto), linguistics (Emi Kishimoto from the University of Osaka), village societies (Ōhashi Yukihiro and Martin Nogueira Ramos), diplomatic issues (Shimizu Yūko from Meiji University), intellectual debates (Orii Yoshimi of the university Keio) and missions (Akune Susumu of the university Kyoto, Kizaki Takayoshi of Nihon University and Makino Motoyori of Toyo bunko).

The project aims first of all to examine little-known archival collections located at Kyushu or resources from several Asian and South American countries (Vietnam, Philippines, China, Mexico, Brazil...) which are not usually mobilized to deal with the history of Catholicism in Japan. The other objective is to draw up an inventory of our knowledge on some of the better known research collections: the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus, the Ajuda Library (Lisbon) or the Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid), among others.

*

Part of the scientific activities of these two programmes are organised jointly. The EFEO/ISEAS Center hosted two study days in July 2018 and January 2020. In June 2019 the Center also participated in the organization of an international symposium entitled Reception and Repression of Catholicism in East Asia in the Premodern Era which brought together six lecturers at Waseda University. New activities and publications are planned for 2020 and 2021.

Legend: Detail of a Nepalese manuscript on Xth c. plates transmitting several texts from the corpus of Śivadharma.

A dominant current in all the two thousand year old traditions that we call "Hinduism" is that formed by the practices and theologies that crystallized around the Vedic deity Rudra, or, to give him his apotropaic name, Śiva, the "benevolent". These traditions śivaïtes are themselves extremely varied, encompassing antinomistic practices that exploit the power of transgressive sexual and mortuary rituals, as well as philosophical defences of a set of dualist and non-dualist theological positions.

Legend: Yama, the god of death, represented in the "gallery of the underworld" in Angkor Wat. The 32 hells represented correspond to the 32 described in the texts of the corpus of Śivadharma.

During the last 60 years, French research institutions in Pondicherry have mainly studied the voluminous priestly corpus of doctrines and liturgies: the agamas and their commentaries. But there are sources that allow us to reconstruct secular religiosity. Perhaps the most important is the largely unpublished corpus of Sanskrit works known as Śivadharma, the "religion of Śiva", produced between the sixth and ninth centuries A.D.

Legend: First reading workshop of the project Śivadharma, EFEO Center in Pondicherry, January 27 to February 7, 2020.

Launched at the end of 2018, the project Śivadharma (Translocal Identities: The Śivadharma and the Making of Regional Religious Traditions in Premodern South Asia), subsidized by the ERC (No. 803624) and directed by Florinda De Simini (University of Naples "L'Orientale") is studying this corpus. Its aim is to open up these primary sources to further research and to better document their influence in the "Sanskrit cosmopolis" (through epigraphs, translations, quotations, borrowings and commentaries), thus shedding light on the genesis of "Hinduism".

Legend: Detail of the inside front cover of a Nepalese manuscript transmitting texts from the corpus of Śivadharma. The myth illustrated is that of liṅgodbhava, where Śiva is shown as a column of fire whose top and base cannot be found by Brahma and Vishnu.

The EFEO Center in Pondicherry is an important partner in this project. D. Goodall, SAS Sarma, and R. Sathyanarayanan are working on editions and translations of certain chapters of Śivadharmottara (7th century) and on the only known Sanskrit commentary preserved in a manuscript in Trivandrum. The Śivadharmottara presents itself as a conversation between the god Skanda and the sage Agastya in which Skanda exposes many of the practices and beliefs of the lay devotees of Śiva. It also details how the king can endow foundations, sponsor the copying of books śivaïtes and organize religious festivals. Comparable prescriptions do not appear until five centuries later in the Aegamic corpus, for the first revealed texts of Mantramārga focus rather on individual salvation and the acquisition of yogic and magical powers, largely ignoring social religion.

T. Rajarethinam and S. Saravanan, who joined the project in March, are preparing translations of parallel sections of a literary version in Tamil verse of the same book, which has been considerably revised. It was written in the 16th century by Vedajñāna/Maṟaiñāṉa (died in 1563) and commented by his nephew of the same name. Contrary to the Sanskrit original, this Tamil text was published several times, first in 1867, which testifies to its popularity until today. We have also photographed many of its manuscripts on plates.

Legend: K. Nachimuthu and S. Saravanan examine manuscripts of the Civatarumottaram (Tamil translation of Śivadharmottara) in the library of the monastery śivaïte in Tiruvavaduthurai.

Professor K. Nachimuthu is interested in the pre-modern dissemination of works related to the corpus Śivadharma in Tamil Nadu. His attention was drawn to Kacciyappa's Taṇikaippurāṇam Muṉivar (eighteenth century), a voluminous treatise in verse in Tamil that ostensibly praises Tiruttani, a place of pilgrimage dedicated to the god Skanda in the north of Tamil Nadu, but at the same time is a dazzling demonstration of virtuosity in several fields of scholarship. One of its chapters includes a paraphrase of the entire Śivadharmottara.

Legend: Professor K. Nachimuthu and Nirajan Kafle at the first reading workshop of the project Śivadharma. The work of Nirajan Kafle, who did his doctoral studies at the EFEO Center in Pondicherry between 2007 and 2011, concerns a text that bridges the studies āgamiques and Śivadharma. A revised version of his thesis is currently in press in the Indology Collection.

Two doctoral students (project scholarship holders) from the University of Pondicherry are working at the EFEO on Bṛhatkālottara (11th c.), one of the first āgamas to focus, as does the corpus of Śivadharma, on social religion. Sushmita Das is preparing an edition of the passages concerning the roles of women in age and popular forms of śivaïsme. H. Venkataraman focuses on the many prescriptions in this unpublished text concerning rites for creating peace.

Legend: First reading workshop of the project Śivadharma, EFEO Center in Pondicherry, January 27 to February 7, 2020.

The first reading workshop of the Śivadharma project was held in Pondicherry from January 27 to February 7, 2020, and ended with a search for manuscripts in the library of the monastery śivaïte in Thiruvavaduthurai (near Kumbhakonam).

Legend: Screenshot of a recent online meeting. Between 5 and 15 participants attend the sessions.

Italy and then India having entered containment, work continued online. Virtual sessions allowed the Pondicherry team and colleagues from Bologna and Naples, including Florinda De Simini and Margherita Trento, to discuss the editions and translations in preparation.

Legend: Margherita Trento and Florinda De Simini, among others, on their way to the monastery śivaïte in Tiruvavaduthuri, in search of manuscripts.

Legend: Interview with Christophe Marquet at the exhibition "Peintures d'Ōtsu : regards européens", Otsu, NHK television, 30 October 2019.

Fukushima owes its sad "world renown" to the natural and nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011, but the department and city that bear this name are also a land of history and popular resilience, where life has resumed its course, almost a decade after these events. From 19 May to 28 June 2020, an unusual exhibition entitled Ōtsu-e. Another History of Edo Painting (もうひとの江戸絵画 大津絵展) will be held at the departmental museum, devoted to a forgotten form of popular painting from the Edo period (17th-19th centuries). After the exhibition Ōtsu-e: Peintures populaires du Japon (April-June 2019), curated by Christophe Marquet and Yokoya Ken.ichirō at the Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris, which was shown at the Otsu City Museum of History under the title Peintures d'Ōtsu : regards européens (大津絵 ヨーロッパの視点から), from October to November 2019, it was the third event devoted to this subject in the space of a year, although it had been very rarely dealt with by Japanese museums until then.

Legend: Poster and catalogue of the exhibition "Ōtsu-e. Another History of Edo Painting", Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art. The monkey carrying a lantern and a bell, painting from Otsu, late 17th c., former Asai Chū collection, Japan Folk Crafts Museum, Tokyo.

In fact, these paintings are extremely rare today: there are barely half a thousand of them in the reserves of Japanese museums and, above all, they have not achieved the status of a work of art without having been really studied by anthropologists. These questions were addressed in two colloquia and a series of lectures organized in Paris and at Otsu with the collaboration of the EFEO and the contributions of Christophe Marquet and François Lachaud, as well as Japanese and Catalan researchers and curators. The Paris exhibition, which was a first in Europe, was designed to introduce visitors to this craft production, which is particularly original in its themes, forms, and modes of representation, while evoking the viewpoint of its rediscoverers in the 20th century, from Leroi-Gourhan to Miró, Serra, and Picasso.

François Lachaud (EFEO) speaks on: "Les Chemins hantés du nord : Bouddhisme et société locale dans le Japon moderne (1700-2000)" [The Haunted Ways of the North: Buddhism and Local Society in Modern Japan (1700-2000)] as part of the PSL-EHESS-EPHE-EFEO Master in Asian Studies, the general theme of which is Dynamiques religieuses : traditions et innovations.

The conference will take place at 10 a.m. (Paris time) online. You can attend the seminar by logging on to this link.

Kun Sopheap was a man of radiant goodness, a prodigy of his time and knowledge, and those who had the privilege of working at his side mourn his passing with the deepest sorrow.

Winner of a TV game show hosted by Jean Thevenot in the 1960s whose prize was a trip to the country of his choice, Alain Daniel had chosen Cambodia. To his great surprise, he was greeted as he stepped off the plane in Phnom Penh by Prince Sihanouk who wanted to honour the young man who had praised his country. With a mathematics degree, Alain Daniel was soon appointed professor at the Sisowath High School in Phnom Penh at the same time as he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts from 1965 to 1967, and then expert to the Cabinet of Prince Sihanouk, Head of State, where he remained until the March 1970 Coup d'Etat. Alain Daniel also held a doctorate in Asian Studies.

Having remained close to Norodom Sihanouk, Professor Alain Daniel took an active part in Beijing in the first classification of his private archives when His Majesty the King decided, in 2004, to bequeath them in their entirety to the EFEO.

The photographic holdings of the EFEO remain accessible on the photo library website.

Legend: Kettuvallam (or "houseboat") used in South India, consisting of a wooden hull and a thatched roof, designed for the transport of goods, it is today mainly used for tourism. Tamil Nadu, South India, 1971 (?) (DELJ00755).

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted Southeast Asia in a variety of ways that will be studied by researchers in the region in the coming years. CRISEA's network of researchers is uniquely positioned to reflect on the impact of Covid-19 on Southeast Asian states and societies. We would therefore like to invite CRISEA researchers to contribute to a conversation on the pandemic in relation to our existing research interests and concerns.

More information HERE.

Within the framework of the call for projects #CollExPersée 2019-2020, the Écoles françaises à l'étranger are winners of 3 projects, including ArchéoRef Alignments which is common to the 5 EFEs.

Discover the channel dedicated to the Network of Écoles françaises à l'étranger on Canal-U, the digital video library for higher education.