From 24 to 26 September 2024, the workshop Gift Protection in South and Southeast Asia was held at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. The workshop was organised as part of the DHARMA project The Domestication of ‘Hindu’ Asceticism and the Religious Making of South and Southeast Asia, funded by a 2018 ERC Synergy Grant from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (ERC 809994).
The DHARMA project aims to understand the ‘institutionalisation’ process of ‘Hinduism’ by investigating the role of various agents: kings and nobles, priests, monks and local communities. A core objective of the project is to make as much as possible South and Southeast Asian inscriptions available in a digital database.
The project focuses on the publication of editions with translations of unpublished texts, including descriptions of religious practices and prescriptions concerning both secular religiosity and religious life in temples and monasteries. With regard to archaeological research, excavations are carried out in order to compare the findings of inscriptions and texts with the archaeological record.
