The German team of the ERC DHARMA project is organising the workshop "Institutionalised Religion and Asceticism in South and Southeast Asia in the Pre-Modern Period" from March 1st to 4th at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Programme

Several EFEO scholars and doctoral students working in Paris or in the centres are taking part in this workshop:
- from Paris, Andrea Acri, Yohan Chabot, Véronique Degroot, Valérie Gillet, Arlo Griffiths, Aditia Gunawan, Adeline Levivier, Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan and Vincent Tournier,
- from Pondicherry, Dominic Goodall, Indra Manuel, S.A.S. Sarma, Sathyaranayanan Sarma, G. Vijayavenugopal,
- from Siem Reap, Chloé Chollet, Salomé Pichon and Dominique Soutif.

To participate online please register by contacting Annette Schmiedchen.

The EFEO is organizing a study day on "New Research in Sanskrit Yoga Literature" on Friday, March 11, beginning at 9 a.m.

Programme.
The study day will take place online, with prior registration.

Sadhu, rsi, yogi are found throughout India. The figure of the ascetic is omnipresent in temples and pagodas in India and South-East Asia, whether it is part of the architectural decoration or a part of the golden legend of the gods and the great epics that have travelled throughout Asia.

This day will be an opportunity to share the new directions in yoga research and to hear testimonies on asceticism and yoga practices.

For those unable to attend, recordings of the talks will be posted on our YouTube channel.

EFEO Paris Seminar

Valérie Gillet (EFEO) speaks on "Pouvoirs, politiques et société à Paluvur: étude épigraphique de la capitale des Paluvettaraiyars, dynastie mineure en Inde du sud (IXe-XIe siècles de notre ère)". This seminar is part of the sequence 4: États, souverainetés, pouvoirs of the common core of the Master in Asian Studies.

From 10:30 to 12:00. The conference will take place online on prior registration.
Once registered, you will receive the elements to connect (seminar link and password).

As part of the Kyoto lectures, Stephen Roddy (San Francisco University) presents: "The Worldliness of Gion, ca. 1825".

At 6pm (Japan time) on the Zoom platform. The password for logging in will be posted on the Kyoto Center's blog and the ISEAS website on the 14th.

Legend: From Shūi miyako meisho zue 2, hidari seiryūshu "Niken chaya" ("Illustrations of Historic Places in Kyoto" Database. Nichibunken Collection).  

The XLII Seoul Colloquium in Korea Studies, organized by the EFEO Center in Seoul, in collaboration with the Royal Asiatic Society, is led by Bae Kidong, Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Hanyang University, Seoul, Director of the Institute of East Asian Archaeology and President of ICOM ASPAC, on the topic: "Rethinking the origin of Korean people".

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

S.A.S. Sarma will guide doctoral students from the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, Kerala, who have come to the EFEO Center in Pondicherry (affiliated with the University of Pondicherry), for a four-month study visit under the prestigious ASPIRE scholarship awarded by the Government of Kerala:
- Athira K. Babu, who will continue her research for her thesis entitled "Algebraic Operations: Reflections of Surds in Bījapallava, a unique commentary on Bījaganita"
- Devahar V., whose project is entitled "Measurement and Instrumentation: Reflections on the Measurement System in Indian Architecture"
- Athira T., who will be working on the nature and methodology of the Vaijayantīkośa.

Photo: Helicopter at Wat Phou in 2021 during the first phase of LIDAR acquisition.

Damian Evans and Pelle Wijker are involved in the launch of the second Lidar campaign and are continuing data analysis and training work in the laboratory in Champassak, in parallel with field operations.

Two Sintegra technicians will start aerial Lidar acquisition operations in early March in the areas planned for the second campaign.

Vissa Chanthaphasouk is on mission until summer to begin the fieldwork for her doctorate on the temple of Vat Phou. Initially, she will join the geospatial component of the Lidar project until April 22.

Michel Lorrillard continues to provide the logistics for certain operations from Vientiane.

From March 20 to 30, Éric Bourdonneau is in Cambodia to participate in the ICC-Preah Vihear and its preparatory meetings, as well as to organize an intermediate session of the technical committee for the restoration of the Dancing Shiva statue at Prasat Thom in Koh Ker.

Legend: The top head of the Shiva has regained the left side of its face. Restoration underway at the Angkor Conservation Office (Photo B. Lafay).

On March 15, Paola Calanca takes part in the China Ville ouverte / ville close, la fabrique de la ville contemporaine, organised by the Cité de l'architecture.

Photo: © Shao Yong.

Gregory Kourilsky and François Lagirarde are beginning the second phase of a research project on the epigraphic corpus and archaeological remains recently uncovered in the Fang River basin (Chiang Mai province, Thailand). Carried out in collaboration with several Thai researchers, this project aims to contribute to the history of the spread of Buddhism (in the 15th-16th centuries) in this part of the ancient kingdom of Lanna, bordering Burma. Several missions are organised, in particular on the site of Wat Som Suk where recent excavations have revealed the presence of a very large number of dedicatory epigraphs.

Photo (from left to right): Gregory Kourilsky, Vivan Saengchan (Buranavipat/Fine Art Department), Phongsathorn Buakhaphanh (EFEO), Banphen Khruethai (Chiang Mai University), on the archaeological site of Wat Som Suk, Mae Ai (Thailand) - photograph by Apiradee Techasiriwan (Chiang Mai University).

S. A. S. Sarma, "Śaivism as Described in the Śivopaniṣad of Śivadharma Corpus", dans Śritisamīkṣā: Studies on Upavedas and Upaniṣads, K. A. Ravindran (éd.), Vallathol Vidyapeetham, Malappuram (Kerala), 2022, p. 57-69.

The call for applications for the EFEO field grants for the second semester of 2022 is underway.

The deadline for submitting applications for the field grant that will allow Master II and doctoral students to study in Asia in one of the EFEO centres is March 14th, 2022, inclusive, for a stay scheduled to begin between July 1st and December 31st, 2022.

Conditions and procedures

The conditions of access are as follows:

- The library will be opened Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

- It will no longer be necessary to reserve a seat in the reading room, but you will have to be registered or pre-registered on the online catalogue for the "Maison de l'Asie"

- The documents will be communicated 20 minutes after their reservation from your reader's account, and will be made available on the shelves on the patio side of the reading room

- The library will welcome 15 readers per day. In case of overcrowding, priority will be given to readers consulting EFEO documents.
The health pass will not be required, but the wearing of masks and the respect of protective measures will continue to apply. If you are experiencing Covid-19 type symptoms, please postpone your visit to the library.

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

The new photographic exhibition Sadhu, yogi et autres ascètes [Sadhu, yogi and other ascetics] is on display on the 1st floor of the Maison de l'Asie and in the library from March 3rd to June 1st.

The EFEO's photographic collections are accessible on the Photo Library website.

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 "Le fonds photographique de l'inventaire des monuments de Pagan (1992-2001)" [The photographic collection of the Pagan monument inventory (1992-2001)], Pierre Pichard (member of the EFEO from 1979 to 2001), explains how and why he compiled a photographic inventory of the monuments of Pagan.

Pagan (or Bagan) was the capital of Burma from the 11th to the 13th century. On a bend in the Irrawaddy River, some 3000 Buddhist monuments (temples, stupas and monasteries) were built on an area the size of modern-day Paris. These brick buildings are distinguished by the widespread use of vaulting, which is exceptional in Southeast Asia, and by their frescoes, well preserved by the favourable climate, which illustrate the history and past lives of the Buddha inside the temples.

This region is a seismic zone: following the 1975 earthquake, an inventory of all the monuments was carried out by EFEO architect Pierre Pichard between 1980 and 1992 and published in 8 volumes. From 1995 to 2008, the Burmese authorities commissioned uncertain and poorly executed reconstructions which, during the new earthquake of 2016, although not very violent, collapsed, damaging the old structures even more.

In 2018, the site of Pagan was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. More than 20,000 photographs taken for the inventory have been put online in the EFEO photo library.

"Building Nationalism in Inner Asia: The Empowerment of the Tibetan Revolution in the Early Twentieth Century" is a project financed by the ANR (ANR-21-CE27-0025-NATINASIA), led by the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), in partnership with the Institut d'Asie Orientale (IAO), Lyon (March 2022 - February 2026). Its scientific coordination is assured by Fabienne Jagou (EFEO).

The aim of the project is to analyze the context of the Chinese revolution of 1911 in Tibet (Central Tibet, Kham, and Amdo regions) through "crossed views. This period of Sino-Tibetan relations is particularly important because it determines the end of the privileged relationship between the hierarchs of Tibet and the emperors of China, generally qualified as "spiritual master to lay protector" (mchod yon). The research is based on archival material, but also on published accounts, reports and notebooks left by travellers, diplomats, military and civilian officials, both Tibetan and foreign, in order to confront the official viewpoint with that of the actors and witnesses of the revolution. The aim is not only to trace the premises, the course and the consequences of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 in Tibet, but also to identify how the Tibetan situation, through the rupture of relations between Tibet and China, accelerated the political changes in Central Asia.

From March 8th to 10th, the team (composed of 10 historians and two computer scientists) met to launch the project.

Historian of the Song dynasty (960-1279), director of studies at the EHESS, Christian Lamouroux looks back on a career that led him to first study modern China and to work in militant circles before undertaking research on imperial China. Interview conducted by Alain Arrault, director of studies at the École française d'Extrême-Orient (CCJ) and Stéphane Feuillas, professor at the University of Paris (CRCAO).

On December 3rd the EFEO celebrated its 120th anniversary at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (AIBL), at a colloquium that included its weekly Friday session. Eight papers shed light on the major research disciplines that have shaped the EFEO. The birth of sinology at the dawn of the 20th century, the history of sivaism through the Pondicherry manuscript collections, research on religions and the history of Japan, and the renewal of epigraphic studies in the Indian and Indianized world, from the pioneers to the present day. The opening up of studies to contemporary phenomena and the contribution of new technologies, such as Lidar, to archaeology in Southeast Asia have shown the renewal of research fields. The history of the EFEO in India, with its installation in Pondicherry in the 1950s, was retraced as well as the anchoring of this institution in the 21st century and its place in the European research space.

You can (re)watch the talks presented at this colloquium on December 3, 2021, on the EFEO's YouTube channel and on the AIBL website:

- Alain Arrault : "Décentrement et recentrement, et inversement, de la sinologie à l’École française d’Extrême-Orient"

- Dominic Goodall : "L’École française d’Extrême-Orient et l’histoire du śivaïsme"

- Yves Goudineau : "L’École française d’Extrême-Orient dans l’espace européen de la recherche"

- Arlo Griffiths : "Le projet DHARMA et le renouvellement de l’épigraphie des mondes indiens et indianisés"

- Damian Evans : "Nouvelles perspectives du Lidar sur l’évolution urbaine et agricole ancienne en Asie du Sud-Est"

- Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat : "L’École française d’Extrême-Orient en Inde : recherches sur les traditions lettrées sanscrites"

- Franciscus Verellen : "L’EFEO au XXIe siècle : contexte et pertinence"

- Christophe Marquet : "Recherches sur les religions et l’histoire du Japon et de l’Asie orientale à l'EFEO : de Hanoi à Kyōto"

As part of the support provided to international cooperation actions, the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI) offers each year five doctoral contracts in partnership between a doctoral school and one of the five French schools abroad (EFE): École française d'Athènes, École française de Rome, Institut français d'Archéologie orientale du Caire, École française d'Extrême-Orient and Casa de Velázquez (École des hautes études hispaniques et ibériques).

Applications should be sent directly to the EFE concerned, in the form of a pdf document including
- A thesis proposal of no more than five pages;
- the CV of the candidate proposed to undertake the research;
- a letter of introduction from the prospective thesis director(s);
- the opinion of the Director of the Doctoral School.

The application documents can be sent until Monday 2 May 2022, 3 pm (Paris time), according to the procedures of each EFE.

For more information.

Conditions and procedures for the EFEO.

Applications for the Master’s degree in Human and Social Sciences, “Asian Studies” (EA) are open for the year 2022-2023 according to a multy-phase registration schedule. The EA Master's degree is a multi-disciplinary, research-oriented programme at M1-M2 level, organised around two training courses of your choice:
- Track 1: "History and social sciences: fields, texts and images" (EHESS-EFEO)
- Track 2: "History, philology and religions" (EPHE/PSL-EFEO)