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European Network of Dravidian Studies (ENDS)
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Dravidian Studies

Photo: G. Ravindran/N. Ramaswamy/J.-L. Chevillard

Dr Marco Franceschini

franceschini

Member of TST

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University of Bologna

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Study of colophons in Grantha and Tamil manuscripts, with special reference to the interpretation of the dates (included the symbols used therein) and their conversion into the Gregorian calendar.

Marco Franceschini (b. 1965) did his PhD in Indological and Tibetan Studies (University of Turin, 2005), currently Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor of Sanskrit in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna (Italy).

His main research interests lie in Vedic studies, in kāvya and Buddhist literatures and in South Indian palaeography, with special reference to the Grantha script in manuscripts. With respect to the last subject, he collaborated on the ‘Cambridge Manuscripts Project’ (2013-2014) by cataloguing all the manuscripts written in Grantha script held by the Cambridge University Library; he is also participating in the ‘Encyclopaedia of Manuscript Cultures in Asia and Africa’ project (South Asia section), based at the University of Hamburg. He is currently preparing a book on the diachronic evolution and geographic differentiation of the Grantha script in manuscripts.

He is author of three books and nine articles.

Publications

  • “Certain Times in Uncertain Places: A Study on Scribal Colophons of Manuscripts Written in Tamil and Tamilian Grantha Scripts”. In Giovanni Ciotti and Hang Lin (eds.) Tracing Manuscripts in Time and Space through Paratexts. Studies in Manuscript Cultures 7, DeGruyter, Berlin 2016 (co-authored with Giovanni Ciotti, pp. 59-129.
  • Buddhaghoṣa. Padyacūḍāmaṇi. Il diadema dei versi. With new critical edition of the Sanskrit text and translation into Italian. Milano: Edizioni Ariele, 2010.
  • An Updated Vedic Concordance. Harvard Oriental Series 66 (2 volumes and CD), Cambridge (Mass.)-Milano: Harvard University Press and Mimesis Edizioni, 2007.