During more than half a century, from 1972 onwards, Nicholas Sims-Williams has published many important articles on the older Iranian languages, especially Eastern Middle Iranian (Sogdian, Bactrian and Khotanese). Virtually all of his articles on Sogdian and Khotanese are collected in the present volume, together with three entirely new papers entitled “Is there a ‘predicative instrumental’ in Sogdian?”, “Yaghnobi and the Sogdian ‘Rhythmic Law’” and “The locative singular in Old Khotanese”. The...

The Tempelgasse synagogue in Vienna, designed by Ludwig Förster and built between 1852 and 1858, marked a milestone in the annals of Jewish emancipation and architectural history. Located on a narrow alley in what was then the suburb of Leopoldstadt, it was planned to be the first monumental replica of King Solomon's Temple. Built in a Moorish-Oriental style and with an original projected capacity of 2,240 worshipers, making it Vienna's largest synagogue, the temple in Leopoldstadt was...

Tilmann Vetter was a Full Professor of Buddhist studies at Leiden University from 1975 until his retirement in 2000. He was an internationally renowned scholar of Indian philosophy and Buddhism. His untimely death in 2012 prevented him from finishing several significant projects. This volume contains a partial reconstruction of materials relating to the planned revision of his book “The Ideas and Meditative Practices of Early Buddhism” (1988), as well as scripts and lecture manuscripts on...

The Chuvash, the Kazan Tatars and the Bashkirs are Turkic-speaking peoples which have long inhabited the Volga region in Russia. For centuries, Islam and Orthodox Christianity have coexisted and blended here with folk religiosity and “pagan” beliefs. Delving into this rich cultural landscape, Sun-Eater, Moon-Swallower offers an encyclopaedic collection of narratives about mythical beings recorded among these Volga Turkic peoples. The first section of the book contains almost two hundred...

This volume addresses exchanges, challenges, and concerns in the North Atlantic Triangle that have been prevalent in the diverse disciplines of the humanities, such as musicology, philosophy, and art history, and considers the institutionalization of Canadian Studies in Austria as well as Québécois TV series and films. The collection discusses the attitude of eminent European scholars and writers toward the United States, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Sigmund Freud, and investigates...

This Reader is the first of its kind. Tracing the evolution of literary modernity across national borders, it brings together texts from three different spheres of Persian Studies. “Literary Modernity in the Persophone Realm” explores theoretical literary discussions as they unfolded in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia from the early 20th century to the Second World War. The compilation presents contextualized primary sources by writers, poets and critics of the time, including both famous...

What languages are used in the Austrian scientific community? Is English the new lingua franca? Or is multilingualism still necessary for research and teaching? This volume explores these questions and demonstrates the importance of language skills in science, which thrives on the publication of studies, theories and theses and on peer criticism. However, all these forms of exchange are only possible if the languages relevant to one's own field are adequately mastered. These questions are...

Based on the increasingly popular concept of the ‘region’ or the ‘regional’, this publication examines the forms and functions of "Heimatschutz" and other reform as well as vernacular architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that have received little attention to date. Based on specific phenomena, the contributions pursue two main theses: firstly, that references to land and home were constructions primarily developed in urban milieus whose ideal-typical conceptions were simply...

Beethoven, the loner – that is the historiographical image that has long dominated biographies and research on Beethoven. But while this image resonates with the enduring impression of the artistic genius, its credibility founders when one examines more closely his life and environment during his first decades in Vienna. Here, as a pianist and composer, as a teacher and witty conversationalist, Beethoven belonged to an expansive and close-knit tapestry of social, artistic, professional, family...

The classical philologist Albin Lesky and the physician and historian of medicine, Erna Lesky, née Klingenstein, embodied the successful "dual-career couple" internationally. Their academic careers were influenced by various political systems, structures and functioning. To what extent were they, representatives of their generation, willing to use individual room for manoeuvring to achieve success in the scientific community? Albin Lesky, appointed prorector of the University in Innsbruck in...

“A Soviet Sultanate” is the first English-language social history of Islam in Soviet Central Asia after WWII, and it focuses on a key question: what did it mean to be a Muslim in Socialist Uzbekistan? The notion that in the eyes of many Soviet citizens Socialist Uzbekistan was an abode of Islam forms the book’s framing device for understanding how the atheist project of the Soviet empire ultimately failed, but also how it simultaneously helped shape the range of meanings of Muslimness. The...