Research reading

jgbrowning

Suzi and I are thinking about writing a gaming book set in India during the medieval period. We'd like to do this while in India for at least 6 months.

Could someone explain to us how research libraries work in India. We'd want to find a university library and use their books (not check them out, just read/photocopy). Is this common practice in India as it is here in the US?

Thanks,

Joseph Browning

beach

There are plenty of large libraries associated with the local universities. But I doubt if they allow any one other than the student/ researcher of the institutions to use it.

Then there are public libraries at major cities. Mostly run by the local governments or organizations like that.

There are a number of British council libraries aslo at places like Bangalore, Chennai , Kolkata , Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, Trivandrum etc. I had membership there and they do allow people to do the library work without having the proper membership required to borrow books.

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Hampi info

Apana

What exactly do you mean by a gaming book?

Ideally you should get a reference from a university there addressed to the Vice-Chancellor/Registrar/Librarian and, if required, a particular Head of Department of the University you want to work in.

Most Indian universities should have online catalogues and that may be a starting point.

City and State libraries will usually ask for a reference from a local university, so perhaps it will be better to contact them online and see if a reference from a foreign university will suffice.

Apana

beach

India International center at New Delhi have a collection of translation of medieval scripts etc, if that is what you are looking for.
www.iicdelhi.nic.in

jgbrowning

Role-Playing, like Dungeons and Dragons.

The books we'd be looking for wouldn't be old/rare books, just solid history books that you're not going to find anywhere else but at a university library.

We don't have any university references, but we have written two books in a similiar vein to what we'd be doing research for.

Joseph Browning

albaruni

what you need to do is go to the theosophical society in madras(or shantiniketan in West bengal) They have extensive manuscript collections. The german center in most cities have translations in german of most major Indian work.

If you are looking for general south asian mythology related resources, your best bet for english language work is in the US. University of hawaii(hinduism), UC berkeley(general south asian studies), Columbia university, Sara Lawrance college(where joseph campbell taught) , University of penn (dravidian studies), and a couple of museums here(norton simon center, the boston fine arts museum (ananda coomaraswamy) have publications on India's mythology and epic poems.

You could also visit temples in south and eastern India to get a feel for the shapes and structures of deamons/gods depicted in indian sculpture.

albaruni

There's a lot of Etext resources (original works and classics) available in local languages (urdu, tamil, malayalam..etc) on the net.

you could also go here ,here or here

Apana

Personally, I would second albaruni's suggestions. It will be very difficult to get access to libraries in India without proper credentials. It is not as if the libraries are crammed with people, it's just that the people running these libraries are petty tyrants.

You might also want to contact war gaming societies, they are likely to know of good sources.

Apana

DianeN.

You might also find more books on the subject in England. Probably not as much fun as India, though. I'm just talking off the top of my head....reading White Mughals....and am impressed with Dahlrymple's "detective" history skills.

IainC

You could enrol at a university, such as JNU in Delhi (www.jnu.ac.in), as an Associate Student. At JNU this costs 600USD per semester and a semester lasts for six months. An Associate Student attends classes but is not registered for a degree and you do not sit any exams but you get access to the library. In London, you could do the same at the School of Oriental and African Studies (www.soas.ac.uk) where you would also get access to the India Office Library at the British Library (www.bl.ac.uk). Both have online catalogues.
Happy researching.

jgbrowning

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone and thanks for the links. What we'd be writing would be fairly easy to do here in the states, but we wanted to go to India as well and if we can make it a "working vacation" that would be the best.

Also, we were planning on using photographs of structures, clothing, and people as illustrations for ideas. We don't have to be super-historical, but we like to be as much so as possible. It's not a history book, after all.

The associate student is something we'll have to look into.

Joseph Browning

Apana

Joseph,

A good source for books is Manohar Books

Apana