The XXXIXe Seoul Colloquium in Korea Studies, organized by the EFEO Center in Seoul, in collaboration with the Royal Asiatic Society, is led by Simon Kim, lecturer  at the Korea University, on the theme: "Kim Tschang-Yeul (1929-2021), une ascèse dans la tourmente de l’Histoire".

At 6:00 p.m. (Seoul time), online: register with the EFEO Center to receive the information needed to connect.

Legend: Kim Tschang-Yeul in his studio in Seoul © "Estate of Kim Tschang-Yeul.

The sculpture conservation workshop (EFEO) of the National Museum of Cambodia finalizes the restoration of the Krishna Govardhana statue of Phnom Da.

Photos: Installation of a lightweight, removable simulation of the upper part of the missing support stele in progress.

Suganya Anandakichenin (PI), Giovanni Ciotti (University of Hamburg) and S. A. S. Sarma (EFEO, Pondicherry) have been awarded a grant for a pilot project under the British Library's Endangered Archives Program, supported by the Arcadia Fund. Entitled "Safeguarding for Posterity Two Private Collections of Palm-Leaf Manuscripts from the Tamil Country (EAP1294)" this ten-month project (August 2021-May 2022) aims to clean, digitize, and catalogue a portion of about 180 manuscripts belonging to two collections (called "Kalliṭaikuṟicci" and Villiampākkam). These manuscripts, many of which date from the mid-19th century, contain texts of various genres, in Tamil, Sanskrit and Manipravalam, written in Tamil and Grantha. Previously neglected, these relics of the past will give us a clear idea of the reading and study choices of a Tamil and Vishnu Brahmin scholarly family from the 19th century onwards. Work on the project is currently underway at the EFEO Center in Pondicherry.

Frédéric Girard

On 1 September, Frédéric Girard participated in Professor Ishii Seijun's bi-weekly seminar on Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō at Komazawa University, Tokyo, with a talk on Zazenshin (1242).

As part of the Langarts study days "La nuit à la croisée des arts et des cultures" organised by Marie Laureillard & Patrick Otto, on September 17 and 18 at the Maison de la Recherche de la Sorbonne, Frédéric Girard presents on September 17 at 5.15 pm "Le Rituel de la lune de Kamo no Chōmei (1216), Fujiwara no Noriie, Myōe et Dōgen", in videoconference (registration with the organisers via Langarts).

Legend: Yan Wenliang (1893-1990), River in the moonlight.

Legend: Four blocks (machi) at the intersection of Nishinotōin and Shijō streets depicted on the 1926 "Detailed Plan of Kyoto City" (Hasegawa House Edition), kept at the Kyoto Prefectural Archives.

On September 25, from 5 to 7 p.m. (10 a.m. to 12 noon in France), Benoît Jacquet participates in the Japarchi/Ebisu online roundtable on the theme "Les architectes de l’ère Heisei (1989-2019). Rôles, statuts, pratiques et production", the zoom link will be communicated later in September.

Michel Lorrillard participates on September 8 in the 11th international conference of EuroSEAS in Olomouc, Czech Republic. His contribution is entitled "Lao royal ordinances and territories in the margins: the case of the "bai-chum" of the Hua Phan".

Legend: Detail of a Lao royal ordinance on cloth for the authorities of Sam Neua (9 February 1812).

On September 2nd, Hélène Njoto is the moderator of Webinar 5 "Malay illustrated manuscripts with a focus on images of magic and divination" presented by Dr Farouk Yahya, part of the Archaeology and Art History of Southeast Asia Programme of which she is co-organiser.

2:00-3:30 pm (Singapore time), online, registration required.

The EFEO library is open on appointment from Monday to Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.. It offers a document loan and return service every Wednesday.

- Book your reading space.

- Order the desired books you would like to consult during your visit, via your online catalog account.

- Make an appointment for the Wednesday loan-return service.

Check the EFEO's Facebook page and Twitter account regularly for any updates on the terms and conditions of the public reception service.

The EFEO's Paris library took advantage of the summer to continue and complete several projects on its collections.

For two months, the library received Laura Docquier, an intern from Sorbonne University (Master 1 in Archeology : texts, sites, remains), in charge of the inventory of Christophe Pottier’s archives.

Around 30 000 photographs and 5 000 negatives, dated between 1990 and 2000, related to archeological sites and restoration works in Cambodia, are now repacked in neutral paper and cardboard conservation boxes.

For four months, the library receives Alexis Marcovitch, an intern from EHESS (Master 1 in History and Social Sciences), in charge of the inventory of Jane Cobbi’s archives.

Jane Cobbi (1943-2020), french ethnologist and anthropologist specialized in japanese material culture, worked on nutrition, vegetables and perfumes in japanese context.

Those archives, repacked in 23 neutral cardboard conservation boxes, include miscellaneous documents (scientific articles, correspondence, handwritten notes, administrative documents, photographs, magazines, etc.) which Jane Cobbi mainly used in her research activities.

Over a period of four months, the library is receiving Long Sha, an intern from Bourgogne Franche-Comté University (Master's degree in Rare Book and Digital Humanities), in charge of the identification of rare books in our collections, as well as their conservation, in order to constitute our future Special collections (manuscripts, rare books and illustrations, maps and so on).

Most of these rare books are travel writings from the first missionaries from the West in China, Japan, or India, completed by numerous illustrations and maps.

An opportunity to rediscover the document Epistolae indicae de stupendis et praeclaris rebus, quas divina bonitas in India & variis insulis, printed by librarian Rutger Velpius at Leuven in 1566, or the Dictionnaire chinois, français et latin, the first Chinese character dictionary (with 13316 sinograms) with translation into two Western languages, printed by order of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1813. The work has 1200 pages, measures 42 cm, and weighs about 12 kilos.

For two months, the library received Line Langlois, an intern from Lettres Sorbonne University (Master 2 Research in Art History of Far East), in charge of the inventory of Anna Seidel’s archives.

Anna Seidel (1938-1991), sinologist and researcher in Asian religions (especially Taoism and Buddhism) worked at the EFEO center in Kyoto for 22 years, where she founded the Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie.

The archives have been curated into 10 neutral cardboard boxes. It includes several articles on Chinese and Japanese religions, her research works on Johann Jacob Maria de Groot’s collection and the Musée Guimet in Lyon (now the Musée des Confluences), various files on Buddhist iconography and research on mandalas, Mount Tateyama and Asian underworlds. As well as some ritual objects, talismans and lucky charms from Japan, China and Korea.

Over a period of one month, the library received Nan Wang, an intern from EHESS (Master's degree in Asian studies : Histoire et sciences sociales : terrains, textes et images), in charge of cataloging ancient documents of the Alain Arrault collection.

The collection contains more than 200 volumes in Chinese, mainly printed material dated from Imperial China (late Qing dynasty) to Modern Era, including xylographic prints from second half of 19th century.

It covers three main thematics : secular literature (recipes for elaboration of medicine for humans and animals, scientific texts, everyday life manuals, initiation texts for children), religious literature and folk beliefs (Taoist thoughts, collections of talismans, divination and physiognomy manuals), and more than 90 annual calendars and almanacs.

The integration of the André Leroi-Gourhan collection into the EFEO library is now achieved.

After the inventory and reporting of the archives, and the cataloguing of all the monographs (Sudoc), all the periodicals in this collection have been inventoried and catalogued.

The collection of periodicals in the Leroi-Gourhan collection treated by Yukari Yamamoto-Laurent includes 30 titles, the most complete of which are Minzoku geijutsu 民俗藝術  and Kōgei 工藝, a publication co-edited by Yanagi Muneyoshi (1889-1961), the specialist in Japanese "folk arts" (mingei). This monthly journal, with a print run of only 1000 copies, devoted to craftsmanship, materials and tools used in the making of objects, is rare and precious.

A team of five trainees (Line Langlois, Ambre Genevois, Alexis Marcovitch, Long Sha, Yukari Yamamoto) processed the Elisseeff collection donated to the EFEO, which contained no less than 87 boxes.

Serge Elisseeff (1889-1975) and Vadime Elisseeff (1918-2002) were two orientalists specialised in the art of China and Japan. The father worked for the Musée Guimet in the 1920s, while the son was curator of the Musée Cernuschi after the war, ending his career as director of the Musée Guimet in the early 1980s. They were also eminent professors in their disciplines at Harvard, the EPHE, the Langues'O and the École du Louvre.

These archives are mainly composed of handwritten notes, scientific documents and personal or professional correspondence. There are also photographs, prints, and several works written in Japanese, Russian, English, French, and Chinese.

These archives allow us to trace the personal and professional lives of these two great scholars as well as their working methods as students and teachers.

The EFEO's photographic holdings are accessible on the photo library website.

The photo library puts an additional 4,500 photographs from the Marie-Louise Reiniche collection online.

Legend: Śiva Temple Festival at Mel Seval, abhiṣeka, Asari Day, photograph by Marie-Louise Reiniche, 23 April 1972, Mel Seval in Tamil Nadu, India (EFEO_REIM006826).

It is with deep regret that we learned today of the demise of Professor V. Venkataraja Sarma, quondam principal of Tiruvananthapuram Sanskrit College, who after his retirement worked for 29 years as a senior Sanskrit scholar at the Pondicherry Centre of the École française d’Extrême-Orient, finally leaving the institution in December 2016 at the age of 86. On Wednesday, 14 July 2021, at the age of 91, he passed away in Trivandrum, where his son lives.

In the field of Sanskrit grammar, V. Venkataraja Sarma worked for many years in collaboration with François Grimal and with scholars of the IFP and the EFEO on the Dictionary of Examples of Paninian Grammar, or Pāṇinīyodāharaṇakośa, a collaborative multivolume venture of encyclopaedic proportions that presents the examples used to illustrate the rules of the grammatical treatise of Pāṇini (fl. 5th century BCE), the cornerstone of the vast edifice of Indian reflections about language. V. Venkataraja Sarma was also a principal member of the ANR project “Panini and Paninians of the 16th and 17th centuries”. During his many years in Pondicherry, he taught and helped many researchers there.

His erudition and his approachability meant that he was widely known as an authority on the Sanskrit grammatical tradition (vyākaraṇa), and he received several awards, notably the President’s award for Sanskrit in 2005. He was awarded the Vacaspathi Puraskar by the Kadavallur Anyonyam Prasath (an organisation which conducts every year a famous competition of Vedic recitation in Kerala) on 19 November 2013, and the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady conferred upon him the distinction of a D. Litt. degree at a special convocation ceremony in December of the same year.

The entire staff of the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO will always remember him with the greatest respect and we express our deepest condolences to his family.

With a view to celebrating its 120th anniversary, the École française d'Extrême-Orient is launching a series of video vignettes, entitled "EFEO's Asian Treasures", designed to make the rich holdings of its library and archives better known: prints, published works, manuscripts, maps, plans, photographs, images, etc.

In this video, Fabienne Jagou and Caroline Riberaigua present the collection of Tibetan statuettes assembled by Paul Pelliot at the very beginning of the 20th century in Beijing, while he was on a mission to collect documents. As a witness to the Boxer Rebellion and the resulting destruction of temples, he acquired for the EFEO a hundred bronze statuettes of the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon that were being sold on market stalls. The collection includes, for example, various representations of the bodhisattvas Avalokitesvara and Manjushri or of Changkya Rölpé Dorjé. The inventory of this collection can be consulted on the EFEO archives website and on Calames.

From September 5 to 11 the EFEO, the EHESS, and the Institute of Modern History (Academia Sinica) organize, with the support of the Orchid program and the CNRS, the summer camp "From Late imperial China to Republican China: continuities and ruptures". This Summer camp is hosted by the CNRS La Vieille Perrotine centre on the island of Oléron.