My project is a text-historical research focussing on the transmission of Shaiva religious traditions from the pre-Modern Indian Subcontinent to the Indonesian Archipelago. It involves the comparative study of published and unpublished (Sanskrit-)Old Javanese Shaiva scriptures stemming from Javanese and Balinese palm-leaf manuscripts.
Given the important advancements in our knowledge of Shaivism and its textual corpus in the Subcontinent that have been achieved in the last two decades, particular emphasis will be placed on comparison between Old Javanese and related Sanskrit sources. The importance of a comparative approach lies in the fact that the knowledge of the ancient Indonesian forms of this religion may throw important light on Indological dilemmas, just as much as the knowledge of the Indian forms of Shaivism may be of great help in order to establish the lines of transmission and the ‘localised’ development of the religion in the Archipelago.