Encouraging knowledge and enhancing the study of Asia
iias.asia
79
The Newsletter
Redefining
gender identities
on campus
The Focus
Vietnam and Korea
in the longue durée
Negotiating tributary
and colonial positions
Digital
Buddhology
2
Contents
From the Director
3
In this edition
of the Focus
29-42
Connecting knowledges and peoples
Special Feature
4-5
IIAS’ new visual identity
Thomas Voorter
The Study
7
8-9
10
11
12-13
14
Re-establishing juristic expertise:
A historic congress of female Islamic
scholars
Mirjam K̈nkler and Eva Nisa
New light on the archaeology
of the Majapahit court capital
Amrit Gomperts, Arnoud Haag,
Djoko Umbaran and Hari Subekti
Redeining gender identities on campus
Tarini J. Shipurkar
Media free zones: Precarious labour
and migrant vernaculars in Emirati cities
Bindu Menon
Urban space, reputation
and entrepreneurial transgression:
Informal inance in a North Indian city
Sebastian Schwecke
Friendship: its meaning and practice
in time and place
Carla Risseeuw and Marlein van Raalte
Vietnam and Korea
in the longue durée
Negotiating tributary and colonial positions
Valérie Gelézeau
and Phạm Văn Thuỷ
The Region
15-17
18-20
21-23
24-25
News from Northeast Asia
China Connections
News from Australia and the Paciic
News from Southeast Asia
The Review
26-27
28
New reviews on newbooks.asia
New titles on newbooks.asia
The Focus
29-30
31
32-33
34-35
36-37
38-39
40-42
Introduction: Vietnam and Korea in the
longue durée: Negotiating tributary
and colonial positions
Guest Editors: Valérie Gelézeau
and Phạm Văn Thuỷ
Chosŏn’s understanding of Ming-Đại
Việt relations
Nguyễn Nhật Linh
Land categories and taxation systems
in Đại Việt (11th-14th centuries)
Momoki Shiro
Separated by mountains and seas,
united by a common script
Ho Tai Hue-Tam
Beyond diplomacy: Japan and Vietnam
in the 17th and 18th centuries
Ryuto Shimada
The introduction of revolutionary
‘new books’ and Vietnamese intellectuals
in the early 20th century
Youn Dae-yeong
Rival nationalisms and the rebranding
of language in early 20th century Tonkin
John D. Phan
The Network
44-50
51
52-53
54-55
Reports
Announcements
IIAS Research, Networks and Initiatives
IIAS Fellowship Programme
The Portrait
56
Van Gogh & Japan
International Exhibition
Vietnam and Korea are rarely compared per se
in scholarly work, whether in the ield of social
sciences or that of area studies. Yet, obvious
convergences in their recent histories are
apparent: both are Asian countries where the
Cold War was indeed hot, tragic and deadly; and
both nations were situated at the core of the big
divide of the 20th century between capitalism and
socialism —Korea still divided, Vietnam reuniied
in 1975. A conference hosted in March 2016 in
Hanoi at the Vietnam National University, and
co-organized by IIAS, Seoul National University
and Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales
(EHESS), pioneered new attempts to compare
Vietnam and Korea, with their similar tributary
and colonial positions, as longue durée subjects
of history. This instalment of the Focus presents
a selection of a few excellent papers presented
at the conference.
The Newsletter is a free periodical
published by the International Institute
for Asian Studies (IIAS). As well as
serving as a forum for scholars to share
research, commentary and opinion with
colleagues in academia and beyond,
The Newsletter is also a window into
the Institute.
T
he International Institute for Asian
Studies (IIAS) is a global Humanities
and Social Sciences institute and a
knowledge exchange platform, based in
Leiden, the Netherlands, with programmes
that engage Asian and other international
partners. IIAS takes a thematic and multisectoral approach to the study of Asia
and actively involves scholars and experts
from diferent disciplines and regions in its
activities. Our current thematic research
clusters are ‘Asian Heritages’, ‘Asian Cities’
and ‘Global Asia.
Information about the programmes and
activities of IIAS can be found in the Network
pages of each issue of The Newsletter.
In this issue
In this issue, Françoise Vergès relects
on the symposium Reclaiming the ‘workshop’
as collaborative pedagogy held at Brown
University, USA, in the framework of the
IIAS programme ‘Humanities across Borders:
Asia and Africa in the World’ (p.49). On page
50, Rituparna Roy shares the topics discussed
during the conference Partition in Bengal,
including her idea of and work on a Kolkata
Partition Museum. Other reports are those
on the symposium River Cities: water space
in urban development and history, held in
Surabaya, Indonesia (p.44-45), and the
Leiden Summer School Asian food: history,
anthropology, sociology (p.48).
IIAS research programmes, networks
and other initiatives are described in brief
on page 52-53, preceded on page 51 by
a more elaborate description of the goals
and activities of the newly established
Leiden Centre for Indian Ocean Studies.
Pages 46-47 provide more information
about the Double Degree in Critical Heritage
Studies of Asia and Europe, including
the experiences of four students with the
programme. Information about the IIAS
Fellowship programme can be found on
pages 54-55.
18
The Region
China Connections
Digital Buddhology
Guest Editor
Di Luo
Digital Buddhology
Di Luo
Center for Global Asia
at NYU Shanghai
Buddhist studies in the digital age is faced with immense
opportunities, challenges, and problems both old and new.
By using the word ‘Buddhology’, we encourage readers to
think of not only text-based Buddhist studies but a crossdisciplinary field where art, architecture, and material
culture are an integral part of the term in question.
In this issue’s ‘China Connections’, we invite readers
to look at the exciting development of digital Buddhology
in present-day China. Highlighted here are recent digitization projects by Peking University, Zhejiang University,
and the research institutes at the world heritage sites of
Dunhuang, Yungang, Longmen, and Dazu, some involving
international collaborations such as with the Getty Center
and Harvard University.
C
onservators, researchers, curators,
and educators from around the world
work toward the common aim of
preserving Buddhist cultural heritage – texts,
images, objects, monuments, and entire
sites – by exploring and adopting, all the while
pushing the forefront of, digital technologies.
Contributors of this issue demonstrate how
Buddhist canonical work and manuscripts
in multiple languages and media have been
made available through open-access online
databases; how Buddhist monasteries and
their ancient wooden buildings and centuryold murals are recorded and experienced
through Virtual Reality; and how rock-cut
cave temples with their monumental statues
are captured using laser-scanning or
photogrammetry and reconstructed for
conservation as well as education purposes.
The beneits of the application of digital
tools are immediate, certain, and manifold:
they make quick and precise documentation,
allow (in some instances) for a greater
accessibility to and searchability of
Buddhist materials, and provide excellent
research and educational materials.
The very practice of digitization forces
us to reconsider the very meaning and
signiicance of the ‘cultural heritage’ itself.
Concerns have been made as to how much
a digitally recorded or reconstructed piece
of work can be considered an extension to
that heritage and the protection thereof,
while much of the ‘aura’ of the original has
been lost during the process of digitization.
On the other hand, some have advocated
for the ‘digital life’ or ‘digital afterlife’ of
Buddhist art and architecture, as Buddhist
practitioners actively engage themselves
with all kinds of digital tools and platforms
in their religious routines. We hope that you
ind some answers, but more importantly
further questions, from the ive essays
presented in the following.
Di Luo is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the
Center for Global Asia, NYU Shanghai
dl149@nyu.edu
The Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai
serves as the hub within the NYU Global
Network University system to promote the
study of Asian interactions and comparisons,
both historical and contemporary. The overall
objective of the Center is to provide global
societies with information on the contexts
for the reemerging connections between
the various parts of Asia through research
and teaching. Collaborating with institutions
across the world, the Center seeks to play
a bridging role between existing Asian
studies knowledge silos. It will take the lead
in drawing connections and comparisons
between the existing ields of Asian studies,
and stimulating new ways of understanding
Asia in a globalized world.
Asia Research Center
at Fudan University
Founded in March 2002, the Asia Research
Center at Fudan University (ARC-FDU) is
one of the achievements of the cooperation
of Fudan and the Korean Foundation for
Advanced Studies (KFAS). Through the years,
the center is making all the eforts to promote
Asian Studies, including hosting conferences
and supporting research projects. ARC-FDU
keeps close connections with the ARCs in
mainland China and many institutes abroad.
Digital heritage, cyber-archiving
and education
Wu-Wei Chen
W
hen discussing heritage
conservation, authenticity
is the guideline of the process.
To maintain the original status of the heritage,
paying attention to details and reversibility
helps to prevent further damage to the
cultural properties when applying materials
or methods. Contemporary conservators
embrace digital technologies such as
photogrammetry, laser scanning, CT (MRI),
Inferred and X-Ray scanning in the process.
These technologies provide non-intrusive
monitoring to collect and share data. The
data further helps to analyze the status of the
material within and enables the establishment
of visualizations and replicas as references.
In some cases, replicas further become part
of the heritage object after restoration or
even replace the original cultural object.
Fig. 2: Animation ilm directed by Chen Haitao and
Chen Qi. Image courtesy Dunhuang Academy.
In China, the restoration of the ThousandArmed Bodhisattva Guanyin, which is part
of the Chongqing Dazu Rock Carvings,
showcases the usage of 3D printing for
heritage conservation. The 3D printed model,
made in 1:3 proportion to the original, became
the reference for the restoration team during
the process. Some 3D-printed parts were
also blended with the authentic heritage
item (ig.1).
Projection mapping, along with restoration,
can be further utilized in creating engaging
narratives and messages for cultural heritage.
yU+co, one of the sponsors of the exhibition
of the ‘Cave Temples of Dunhuang’ in 2016,
created a projection-based installation at
the opening ceremony of the exhibition at
the Getty Center in Los Angeles. According
to Garson Yu, founder and creative director
of yU+co, this projection “gives a more
volumetric or immersive
experience than regular VR,
using a special 360-degree
dome shader. It was a yearlong process to merge the
2D photographs and merge
them into the 3D geometry
for the entire cave.”
Collaborating with the
Getty Conservation Institute
on the narrative, yU+co has
created a “luid experience”
in the physical environment
other than the heritage site.
In this case, projection mapping, along with
VR, stimulates public interest in and care
Fig. 1: Restoration of the Thousand-armed Bodhisattva Guanyin in progress. Image courtesy 3ders.org
for cultural restoration. It also reveals the
luidity of digital heritage across cultures,
regions, and identities.
Even with the collective devotion,
cultural heritage continues to face the
threat of human activities ranging from
vandalism to theft and wars. Education is
key to raising and cultivating the awareness
for preservation. With the joint eforts of
academia, governmental organizations
and industry, the inalized projects can be
transformed into education materials. Digital
storytelling, computer-aided drawing, and
cyber-archiving can be integrated into the
STEAM curriculum (Science, Technology,
Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) to help
students comprehend the intangible values
of heritage (method, techniques, context)
and further cherish the existing yet
endangered tangible cultural properties.
Good practices of conservation, from
cultural objects to architecture and the entire
heritage sites, can be further revitalized by
digital narrative and storytelling. The latest
animation released by the Dunhuang
Academy was inspired by the digitized
painting in Cave 254. Mr. Chen Haitao and
Mrs. Chen Qi, the directors of the animation,
integrated the rich imageries of the Buddhist
stories of ‘The Great Departure’ and
‘The Attack of Mara’ from the Mogao Cave
254 into animated infographics (ig.2).
Their interpretation of the cave painting
and artistic recreation has given the piece
more profound meanings. The follow-up
premiere and workshops at Beijing in late 2016
further revitalized the original painting and
contributed to public and higher education.
Wu-Wei Chen is a Visiting Assistant
Professor of Arts at NYU Shanghai
wc54@nyu.edu
Note
1 Arechiga, F. ‘Bringing the Ancient
Theater of the Silk Road to Los Angeles’;
https://tinyurl.com/ancienttheater
The Newsletter No. 79 Spring 2018
China Connections
Digital Buddhology
Guest Editor
Di Luo
The Region
Kaihuasi: Buddhist
art and architecture
in virtual reality
19
Scanning a
Buddha statue
in one of the
Grottoes.
Jianwei Zhang and Lala Zuo
T
he Kaihuasi (開化寺] is a Buddhist
monastery located about 17 km
northeast of the city of Gaoping (高平]
in southeast Shanxi province. The monastery
was established in the 6th century and
expanded in the late 9th to early 10th century
under the supervision of the Chan Master
Dayu [大愚]. The Kaihuasi is especially
known for its main hall, the Daxiongbaodian
[大雄寶殿] [Mahāvīra Hall], which was
built in 1073 during the Northern Song.
The interior of the Daxiongbaodian is
decorated with exquisite Buddhist mural
paintings that have been preserved from
the 11th century.
Longmen Grottoes:
New Perspectives
(a)
Fletcher John Coleman
O
(b)
In 2017, a research team of the Experimental
Teaching Center for Virtual Reality and
Simulation in Archaeology of Peking University
used Virtual Reality (VR) technology to record
the monastery including the main hall and
its murals. First, the team deployed drones to
take pictures of the monastery complex from
an aerial view. Then panoramic photography
was used to record both the interior and
exterior of each building (ig. 1). In order to
virtually reconstruct the building structure and
mural paintings in the Daxiongbaodian, the
team took 480 high-resolution photographs
and used photogrammetry to create a 3D
model of the Daxiongbaodian (interior) with
surface texture and color information. In other
words, the photos were applied as skins to
precisely cover the surface of the 3D model
of the building’s interior (ig. 2). After all data
was collected, the team located all buildings
on a map using the Geographic Information
System (GIS). The links to the panoramic
photographs were pinpointed on the aerial
picture according to the real locations where
the photos had been taken. The links to the
3D models with surface texture were also
displayed on the map.
Aside from documentation, this VR project
has also been applied to enhance the
experience of museum visitors. In the spring
of 2017, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum
of Art and Archaeology at Peking University
exhibited high-resolution life-size photocopies of the wall paintings from the Kaihuasi.
In addition to viewing the paintings in
two dimensions, visitors were able to wear
a VR headset and immerse themselves
in the virtual scene of the Daxiongbaodian
to appreciate the paintings and the building
structure in their original spatial context.
VR would help museums to redesign and/or
upgrade traditional exhibitions, and to
protect historical architecture from potential
damages made by locking visitors.
Using the VR technology to document art
and architecture is only the team’s irst step.
(d)
(c)
Fig. 2: Steps of
creating the 3D model
of Daxiongbaodian
(interior). Photos by
Yunan Wu.
(a) Point cloud
image generated by
photogrammetry;
(b) Triangle mesh model
converted from the point
cloud image;
(c) Triangle mesh model
with surface texture
and color information;
(d) Anaglyph of
Daxiongbaodian, its 3D
efect viewed by wearing
3D red cyan glasses.
The Kaihuasi is only one example in the
team’s database called VR-Heritage that
stores hundreds (currently around 150) of
temples and buildings dated from the 10th
century to the early 20th century. This
database can help scholars, professors,
and students to discover new problems and
generate new research topics. For example,
the team has developed several themes such
as ‘Song-Jin architecture in southeast
Shanxi’, ‘Yuan-Ming architecture in Sichuan’,
and ‘Liao pagodas in Inner Mongolia and
Liaoning’. Most of the objects are Buddhist
architecture or monuments.
The beneits and challenges of
the application of VR and other digital
technologies will be further discussed
in a panel titled ‘Digital Huminites and
New Directions in Studying East Asian
Art and Architecture’ at the 2018 Annual
Conference of the Association for Asian
Studies (AAS), to take place in Washington
D.C. this March. The panel, organized
by Professor Lala Zuo, will present more
original digital humanities projects and
explore new directions in East Asian
art and architectural history.
Jianwei Zhang is an Assistant
Professor at the School of Archaeology
and Museology, and the Associate
Director of the Exper-imental Teaching
Center for Virtual Reality and
Simulation in Archaeology at Peking
University zhangjianwei@pku.edu.cn
Lala Zuo is an Assistant Professor
at the Languages and Cultures
Department of the United States
Naval Academy zuo@usna.edu
Notes
Fig. 1: Panoramic photograph of the Daxiaobaodian at Kaihuasi (built in 1092). Photo by Yunan Wu.
1 Miller, T. 2008. ‘The Eleventh-Century
Daxiongbaodian of Kaihuasi and
Architectural Style in Southern Shanxi’s
Shangdang Region’, Archives of Asian
Art 58:4.
2 The VR-Heritage is a database
developed by Peking University in 2017.
It aims to record important cultural
heritage sites with panoramic photography, oblique-imagery 3D modeling,
and other VR technologies. It is currently
under construction and will be accessible
for academic use in 2 or 3 years.
n 25-26 October 2017, Harvard
University welcomed a team of experts
from the Longmen Grottoes Research
Academy to inaugurate an international
joint-initiative focused on digital conservation
and restoration. An enduring legacy to
Chinese art, the UNESCO World Heritage
Site of the Longmen Grottoes represents over
a millennium of religious and creative activity.
The ‘Longmen Grottoes: New Perspectives’
workshop brought together Longmen
Academy researchers with specialists on
Buddhist art from across the globe to promote
cutting-edge eforts at digital preservation,
archaeological work, and documentary
projects taking place at Longmen.
Spearheaded by Eugene Wang, Abby
Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at
Harvard University, and Hou Yuke, Director
of the Material and Information Center at
the Longmen Grottoes, the two-day event
was centered on overviews of recent digital
programs at Longmen. Tasked with addressing
centuries of damage and dispersal of the
magniicent limestone grotto sculptures, the
Longmen Grottoes Research Academy began
a comprehensive program of 3-D scanning
over a decade ago. Having built an extensive
database of cave scans, the Academy uses
the information to conduct new eforts
at preservation – including the redressing
of groundwater and other environmental
damage. The precision of the digital data
has also driven exciting new archaeological
discoveries in the eastern cave district
at Longmen.
With technological eforts reaching a
mature phase at the Longmen Grottoes, the
Research Academy has turned its attention
to the digital restoration of sculpture removed
from the site during the early 20th century.
The ‘Longmen Grottoes: New Perspectives’
workshop represented the inaugural
partnering of Harvard University and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art with the Longmen
Grottoes Research Academy to begin a 3-D
digital scanning project of all known Longmen
sculptures housed in institutions around the
world. As data is collected, the caves will
be digitally restored using a combination of
virtual and augmented reality technologies.
Algorithms are used to match fragmentary
pieces with their original cave locations,
allowing for the accurate virtual recreation
of the sculptures to their original forms.
Workshop participants were able to explore
the Longmen Academy’s most recent sample
cave restorations through a virtual reality
experience. The Academy plans to build a site
museum of digital restorations, as well as
an immersive travelling exhibition.
Workshop participants were also treated
to presentations on exciting new academic
research being conducted on the Longmen
Grottoes. Ranging from explorations of female
agency in Buddhist patronage at Longmen
to exciting new archival discoveries on the
collecting history of the site, traditional
research continues to play a crucial role
in broadening our understanding of the
Longmen Grottoes. Scholars remain eager
to explore further horizons in their research
through the new digitals tools ofered by
the Longmen Academy.
Fletcher John Coleman is a
PhD Candidate in the Department
of the History of Art and Architecture
at Harvard University
fcoleman@fas.harvard.edu
20
The Region
China Connections
Digital Buddhology
Digitization of Buddhist
cultural heritage
Marcus Bingenheimer
T
hroughout history, Buddhists have
used all available means to encode and
transmit the ever increasing volume of
their textual heritage. After the death of the
founder of Buddhism, the early community
organized the transmission of a sizable
corpus with the help of mnemonic recitation
techniques. The earliest Indian epigraphy
as well as the earliest manuscript fragments
in Indian languages are connected with
Buddhism, and the earliest extant printed
book, dated 868 CE, is a Chinese translation
of the Diamond Sutra.
Today, in the twilight of print, text is
largely produced, transmitted, and stored
digitally and, for better or worse, cultural
heritage information is being digitized
ever more comprehensively. In the ield
of Buddhist studies, texts were a natural
starting point for digitization. Buddhist texts
exist in a bewildering range of languages
and genres, and there are several large
canonical collections in Pāli, Chinese,
Tibetan, Mongolian, and Manchu that
overlap in complicated ways. Many texts
have also survived in Sanskrit and prakritic
languages, sometimes complete in the
monasteries of Nepal and Tibet, sometimes
fragmentary in the sands of South and
Central Asia. Then there are modern translations into Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese,
French, English, German, etc.
Since the late 1980s, various organizations
have started to digitize these riches, scanning
manuscripts and producing digital full text
editions. Distributed online, vast amounts of
Buddhist literature are now available, equally
and freely, to the wider public. The efects
on Buddhism of making all its texts available
to all believers with an Internet connection
are not yet fully understood, but the impact
could be signiicant —comparable to that of
the adoption of writing in Buddhism (which
played a major role in the emergence of
Mahāyāna) or the discovery of printing
in Europe (which was a condition for the
Reformation).
Where to ind Buddhist canonical texts
online in reliable form? For Pāli the most
widely used digital corpora are the Cha ṭṭha
Saṅgāyana corpus, the Buddha Jāyanti
corpus, and the digitized version of the
Pāli Text Society edition. For early Buddhist
literature in general, SuttaCentral ofers
parallel full-text in ancient languages and
the largest number of translations from Pāli
texts into modern languages. It also makes
all its data available in an exemplary
fashion for download.
For the Chinese canon there is the
Taiwanese Chinese Buddhist Electronic
Text Association (CBETA) corpus, and the
Japanese SAT Daizōkyō Text Database.
Translations of Chinese Buddhist texts
are less readily available online. An online
bibliography of translations from the
Chinese Buddhist canon shows that
so far about 520 of c. 5500 pre-modern
Chinese Buddhist texts have been
translated into European languages,
but not all of them are available digitally.1
Other projects ofer scans of manuscript
collections that contain a large amount
of Buddhist material. The International
Dunhuang Project, for instance, ofers
scanned images of the manuscript
witnesses for Chinese Buddhist texts,
and the Digital Library of Lao Manuscripts
preserves the rich heritage of Laotian
manuscript culture.
Most of these datasets and initiatives
are openly accessible, and many, but
unfortunately not all, projects share their
data freely via their websites or version
controlled repositories such as Github.
The digital data on ofer now surpasses
by far any single canonical print collection
in terms of volume, acquisition cost,
searchability, and portability.
Guest Editor
Di Luo
While the digitization of texts has been
quite successful, others aspects of Buddhist
heritage digitization are less advanced.
With a few notable exceptions, such as the
Huntington Archive,2 the high-end digitization
of images, objects, and spaces has just
begun. Many museums today make digital
images of their holdings available, but an
archive with faceted search across institutions
and geared to Buddhist iconography still
needs to be built. The 3D scanning and
printing of Buddhist objects and sacred
spaces are still at an early stage of
development, but have strong potential for
both teaching and research.
For scholars, one of the beneits of
digitization is that we are now able to use
computational methods to explore the
language, the historical geography, the social
networks and other facets of the Buddhist
tradition in new ways. Individual researchers
have taken steps into this direction using
computational analysis, for instance,
to re-assess the attribution of translations,
or to create data for historical social network
analysis.3 The challenge is now to integrate
these new approaches into mainstream
research and for graduate programs in
Buddhist Studies to include training in digital
methods and datasets.
Marcus Bingenheimer is an Associate
Professor in the Department of Religion
at Temple University
bingenheimer@temple.edu
Notes
1 http://mbingenheimer.net/tools/bibls/
transbibl.html
2 www.huntingtonarchive.org and
www.huntingtonarchive.osu.edu
3 See the attribution database by
Michael Radich http://dazangthings.nz
or emerging datasets for historical
social network analysis
http://mbingenheimer.net/tools/socnet
Language
Database
Website
Pāli
Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana
Pāli Text Society Corpus (at GRETIL)
SuttaCentral
http://tipitaka.org
http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de
https://suttacentral.net
https://github.com/suttacentral
Chinese
Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text
Association (CBETA)
SAT Daizōkyō Text Database
http://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw
Asian Classics Input Project
Buddhist Digital Resource Center
Buddhist Canon Research Database
Resources for Kanjur & Tanjur Studies
http://www.asianclassics.org
https://www.tbrc.org
http://databases.aibs.columbia.edu
https://www.istb.univie.ac.at/kanjur/
rktsneu/sub/index.php
http://www.thlib.org
Tibetan
Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL)
Sanskrit
Multiple
http://21dzk.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/
index_en.html
Göttingen Register of Electronic
Texts in Indian Languages & related
Indological materials from Central
& Southeast Asia(GRETIL)
Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon
http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de
International Dunhuang Project
Digital Library of Lao Manuscripts
http://idp.bl.uk
http://www.laomanuscripts.net
www.dsbcproject.org
Left and below: Digital scans of
the Xumishan Cave 45 in Ningxia.
Digitization projects at the Cultural Heritage
Research Institute, Zhejiang University
Bottom: Scanned image of the east
wall mural of the White Hall at Tholing
Monastery, Ngari Prefecture, Tibet.
Zhirong Li and Changyu Diao
T
he team at the Cultural Heritage
Research Institute of Zhejiang
University embarked on a series of
major digitization projects in 2010. Headed
by an archaeologist and a scholar in image
processing, our members come from various
disciplines including computer science,
archaeology, art history, and digital
humanities. Our mission is to establish
a high-standard, comprehensive digital
database of the cultural relics in China
for the purpose of conservation, research
and education.
At present, the team has conducted
digitization work at more than a hundred
archaeological sites, museums, and cultural
institutions across twenty diferent provinces,
cities, and autonomous regions in China.
Our works encompass large-scale monuments
such as historic architecture and Buddhist
cave temples, and museum collections
ranging from textiles to paintings, calligraphy,
porcelains, and statues. We aim to maintain
state-of-the-art technological standards in
the process of scanning, archiving, preserving,
and presenting cultural objects and sites.
Recently, with the collaboration of the Yungang
Academy, we have successfully printed a toscale 3D model of the rear chamber of Yungang
Cave 3. This marks a signiicant advance in
the digital conservation and reconstruction of
cultural heritage in China.
Zhirong Li lzr5335@163.com and
Changyu Diao diaochangyu@gmail.com
are Assistant Directors of the Cultural
Heritage Research Institute, Zhejiang
University.