Our sponsors are: The Southern Asian Institute of Columbia University, Barnard College, the Asia Society, and the Hill Center. The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Columbia University is also hosting part of the conference.

The participants will explore current exercises of power in South Asia -- indeed, behind the colonial period -- to see how Raja Jaisingh II created a court that understood the managing of difference as one of its central rationales. The planning of the new city of Jaipur some 300 years ago was itself an expression of this purpose. Special attention will be given to the way in which Jaisingh's court and his own writings mediated between cultural systems that we now associate with the words Hindu and Muslim.

As one of its special aspects, the Jaipur conference will feature the work of a group of scholars coordinated by Professor David Pingree of Brown University, who have been working with manuscripts and instruments that reveal how Jaisingh's court achieved significant advances in the exact sciences. These extend from the famous observatories Jaisingh established to much smaller astrononical instruments, some of which can be found in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia. Other speakers will explore mediations achieved and exchanges adopted in the realm of religion, architecture, and the fine arts.

Click here for full Conference Information and Daily Schedule.

If you would like to attend, please register by contacting Mary Miller, Administrative Assistant at Columbia's Southern Asian Institute. You may do this either by phone or e-mail: (212) 854-3616; or msm2004@columbia.edu.

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KRS: 02/04/2003