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South Asian Studies

Resources for research and teaching.

Digital Humanities for South Asia

Archival

Many of the databases or digital collections licensed by Emory contain primary source documents -- old newspapers, books, manuscripts, government documents, memoirs, etc. Click on the links below to search the collections directly. Much of the content is also indexed in the Combined Search tab in Library Search. Most of the collections listed below are licensed by Emory. Some are freely available on the web. See also a selection of non-Emory archives listed in the tabs under "Resources outside Emory" in this guide.

Other primary source documents are reproduced in reprints or printed compilations or in microforms discoverable in Library Search using the Catalog tab. These reproductions and compilations usually will bear the Library of Congress subject sub-heading "sources" in most western research library catalog records.

Other primary sources in their original form may not be so conveniently cataloged, however. Some may lie uncataloged or minimally cataloged in private archives, museums, or even special manuscript collections of libraries.

Dissertations and theses

Electronic Text Repositories

Good resource listings can be found at the following

Indica et Buddhica contains texts in Sanskrit as well as lexica in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and English. 

The Internet Archive hosts the Free Indological Collection.  Try also a search by keyword "Sanskrit." It also hosts University of Toronto Library's collection of digitized Sanskrit texts.

French Books on India is an ever-expanding e-library arranged in chronological order. The site lists books from 1531 to 2016, giving access to full-text copies of hundreds of titles that appeared before 1939 and offering short critical summaries of the most important items written by international experts. 

Listed below are some specialized collections.

SARAI

SOUTH ASIA RESOURCE ACCESS ON THE INTERNET

  • Library Links, Reference Tools, Bibliographic Resources
  • E-Journals
  • E-News
  • E-Books
  • E-Images (Online Image Archives)
  • e-Text Collections
  • AMESA--Directory of Scholars of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia (via Columbia University)
    • Supercedes "The International Directory of South Asia Scholars"
  • South Asia Resources by Country
  • South Asia Resources by Organization
  • South Asia Resources by Topic
  • Other South Asia-related online resource collections
  • SARAI In-Process Resources: A raw, unsorted collection of South Asia-related resources which will gradually be evaluated, selected, annotated, and sorted into the various categories of SARAI above.

Databases for Journal Articles and other secondary material

Most databases we license index journal articles; a few, like JSTOR, provide full text access. See the guide to Journal Articles for general tips. See also this guide on "database standard features," esp. boolean searches. Most of the content of major databases is indexed in the Combined Search tab of Library Search. So it may be useful to search there first.

Most comprehensive online database aggregations like EBSCO's Academic Search Premier and ProQuest Databases will generate useful results.

Beyond Emory, try the following:

  • Harvard Business School Case Studies involving India.
  • South Asia Research Documentation Services database (about 70,000 citations from 1797-2006).
  • Social Science Journals Database of the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi. The database is a citation index of articles from 150 English-language Indian social science journals. As of this writing, the database consists of more than 160,000 records. To sign up for free access to their Social Science Journals Database, follow this link. Once you have secured a username and password (free), you can then login and search the database. For a full review, see the Spring 2010 edition of the AAMES newsletter. AAMES is the Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Section of the Association of College & Research Libraries and the American Library Association.
  • Google Scholar
  • Among the more subject-specific databases of possible interest to South Asian Studies, try the following:

Newspapers

Current and historical news sources.  See also the Journals and Newspapers page of this guide.

Online Reference Works