Exploring Himalayan Textual Heritage

This two-day symposium is organised in memory of the Czech-Austrian ethnographer and Tibetologist René Nebesky-Wojkowitz, honouring the 60th anniversary of his untimely and unexpected death, by focusing on different aspects of his long forgotten text collection housed at the ethnographic museum in Vienna, the Weltmuseum Wien.

The corpus of his collection comes from different cultural contexts and is of great value for the study of Buddhist iconography, Tibetan medicine and ritual, the grammatical tradition and other topics. Focused on the Weltmuseum’s collection of manuscripts and block prints, which is currently digitised and will be made available to the public in the future, the symposium seeks to commemorate Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s pioneering research in the field of Himalayan philology.

Event in English!

Programme:

10:00
Registration

Welcome and Introduction

10:30
Martin Gaenszle (University of Vienna)
Christian Schicklgruber (Weltmuseum Wien)
Birgit Kellner (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Ernst Steinkellner (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

11:30
The Scientific Legacy of René Nebesky-Wojkowitz - Uwe Niebuhr (University of Vienna)

12:00
Catalogue of the René Nebesky-Wojkowitz Text Collection - Mathias Fermer (Austrian Academy of Sciences) Tsering Drongshar (University of Vienna)

12:30
Lunch

Session 1

13:30
Translating the rgyud bzhi – Tibetan Medicine in Western Countries in the 21st Century - Florian Ploberger (University of Vienna)

14:00
shel gong – shel phreng: A Treasure in the History of Tibetan Pharmacology - Katharina Sabernig (Medical University of Vienna)

14:30
Ethnopharmacological Information Found in Documents of European Explorers – with a Special Focus on Traditional Himalayan Medicine in the Notes   of René Nebesky-Wojkowitz - Florian Eidam-Weber (Goethe University Frankfurt)

15:00
Tea/coffee

Session 2

15:30
Preliminary Observations on Paper of Tibetan Books from the René Nebesky-Wojkowitz Collection in the Weltmuseum Wien - Agnieszka Helman-Wazny (University of Hamburg)

16:00
News from Resources for Kanjur & Tanjur Studies: Buddhist Canonical Collections in the Himalayan Borderlands - Markus Viehbeck (University of Vienna)

16:30
Charting the bka' gdams gsung 'bum - Pascale Hugon (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

17:00
Passion for Print: René Nebesky-Wojkowitz and His Ties with the First Modern Tibetan-Language Print-Publisher Babu Tharchin in Kalimpong - Anna Sawerthal (Vienna)

17:30
Refreshments

Public Keynote Lecture

18:00

Welcome - Martin Gaenszle

Nebesky at the Himalayan Hotel - Prof. em. Dr. Michael Oppitz (University of Zurich)

Reception following the lecture

Meeting point: WMW Forum
Participation: free (excl. museum admission)
Please register at info@weltmuseumwien.at