Sudasien-Anthologie: Vierunsvierzig Ubersetzungen aus sudasiatischen Literaturen.

• Author: Gaeffke, Peter

Edited by GUNTHER D. SONTHEIMER with collaboration of HELMA WERNY. Beitrage zur Sudasienforschung, Sudasien-Institut, Heidelberg, vol. 140. Stuttgart: FRANZ STEINER VERLAG, 1993. Pp. xiv + 306.

The book is the last publication of the anthropologist G. Sontheimer, who died in 1993, and was meant to be a token of appreciation to Herman Berger, retired Sanskritist and Burushaski scholar at the University of Heidelberg. The translations offered present a multi-cultural approach, which the Sudasien-Institut has practiced for years, long before this term became fashionable, and all the thirty contributors to this volume are teachers or students of the institute. Moreover, due to the "democratic" policy of the place, none of the names of these contributors appear either in the table of contents or along with their contributions. They are tucked away in the last pages of the book.

In the same innovating sense, the conventional order of presenting material among Orientalists is disregarded, for the translations from the Vedas appear at the very end of the book. The beginning of this publication is embellished by translations from Shina, Burushaski, Jaunsari, and...