LanguageSpaces: Religious texts as a resource in a colonial context

Interview with Arabic scholar Dr. Ines Weinrich on using digital methods to analyze religious origin legends

Associated to the Cluster of Excellence is the project “Hindu-Muslim-Jewish Origin Legends in Circulation between the Malabar Coast and the Mediterranean[WI1] , 1400s–1800s”. This project is analyzing origin legends on the south-west coast of India, and creating a multilingual digital edition of selected tellings alongside an interactive map of imagined religious landscapes. Up to six researchers from the University of Münster and the University of Glasgow are working in the binational project to explore and analyze multilingual texts. Funded on the British side by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and on the German side by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the project is led by the Indologist Dr. Ophira Gamliel (Glasgow) and the Arabic scholar Dr. Ines Weinrich (Münster).

What does your DH project investigate, and what question does it aim to answer using DH methods?

We are exploring and analyzing the origin legends of Hindu, Muslim and Jewish communities on the southwest coast of India. These three communities lived there under Hindu rule, but this changed from 1498 on with the arrival of the European trading fleets – first Portuguese, then Dutch and British . First of all, we are in the process of using digital methods to make the textual corpus accessible before presenting it visually. Using digital methods helps us compare the origin legends and address issues of religious demarcation, as well as ultimately analyze the role of religion in the shifting trade networks from the 16th century onwards.

What do the DH methods actually look like when you apply them in your project?

Our corpus consists of seven texts in three languages: Malayalam, Arabic and Hebrew. We work with manuscripts, which in turn comprise very different materials: palm leaves, paper and parchment. We bring these languages, materials and book forms together in an annotated digital edition and English translation, encoding selected entities, such as religious titles or abstract terms like “faith” or “conversion”. Such terms can then be retrieved and analyzed across different languages and religious communities. However, the digital edition also makes it possible to show textual variants between individual manuscripts and narratives. This should help us catalogue the individual manuscripts and tellings chronologically. Finally, we use another digital tool: since the narratives describe sacred places, journeys and trading cities, it makes sense to create an interactive map that presents these imagined religious landscapes visually.

How have these methods been developed: in whole or in part for your project?

Our digital edition is based on the TEI standard, and we use the oXygen XML editor to create our documents. This software will be adapted to the needs of our project or additional tools will be developed. oXygen is necessary because we work with different writing systems. We will use a version similar to the one that Dr. Christian Lück from the SCDH developed in the German Research Foundation long-term project in Arabic Studies on the poet Ibn Nubatah. Relevant encoded entities will be displayed on the map. We will be able to link our data from the texts with standard databases, but not all of them: some places cannot be identified beyond doubt, and this will also be shown on the map.

What results are already available, and what results do you expect? What would the same research look like without DH methods?

We begin from the assumption that the origin legends, which are textually unstable, reflect the geopolitical tensions and shifting alliances between indigenous communities and European powers, or between indigenous communities themselves. A first reading seems to confirm this, but it is still too early to draw firm conclusions . Without digital methods, comparing these texts would be much more time-consuming. Yet the methods are a help not only in terms of analyzing religious demarcation, but also for fundamental philological work: we and anyone else who uses the edition can display text variants  without having to scroll through pages, jump between footnotes, or place several texts side by side. The same applies to annotations. Finally, there is one more advantage: as we have only selected a limited number of tellings for the pilot project, we can integrate more texts and languages into the analysis in a follow-up project.

What is the social relevance of this research today? What is the value of DH methods in this regard?

The edition of the manuscripts and the translations making most of our texts accessible to researchers for the first time, i.e. they become available to a wider academic and non-academic public. It is particularly important to us that the members of the communities whom we study also have access to the data and our findings. This is ensured by the FAIR data principles and open-access publication. The data can therefore be used by the research community worldwide, either to add new texts or to apply them to new research questions. The data that we compile on people and places can be fed into standard databases and thus make a very practical contribution to the generation of knowledge. The historical view of the coexistence of religious communities is also relevant for the present. The shared Hindu-Muslim cultural past is often ignored by the nationalist ideology that dominates India today. It is also important to highlight the heterogeneous voices that speak from the tellings and thereby counter the colonial view, which sees the individual religions as a homogeneous entity. Religious identities appear to have been more fluid in the past than is generally assumed. (exc/pie/tec)