The programme is executed through a cooperation between the Centre for the Study of Manuscripts Cultures (CSMC) at the University of Hamburg in Germany, PPIM, and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML), which is based in Minnesota, USA. ![]() DREAMSEA has its regional office at the premises of the Center for the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) of the Syarif Hidayatulah State Islamic University in Jakarta. Although not included as one of our main aims, we also develop efforts to preserve the physical manuscripts by advising their owners about better ways to store and handle them. We will then upload these images to an open-access database, providing reliable metadata about the manuscripts to assist users of the database to form an impression of the physical manuscripts and supply information for their research. It will involve storing these surrogate images on servers and converting them to other formats in the future. We have embarked on an ambitious course comprising the digitisation of as many endangered manuscripts as possible. ![]() The DREAMSEA programme was set up against the background of the ongoing degradation of cultural diversity and has the aim to ensure that the contents of the manuscripts are preserved for present and future generations. Within the religious and cultural traditions there is a tendency for small groups, with their own exegetic practices, to be regarded as deviant by the majorities who are informed by the transnational mainstream religious practices that are considered to be in agreement with ‘modern times’. ![]() The loss of these texts means that part of the diversity in the cultural and religious outlook of the peoples in the region will disappear with them. This means that when the manuscripts disappear or are destroyed, their contents are lost forever, not only for scholars but also for the general interested public. The manuscripts frequently remain the only witnesses of a substantial number of texts that are still unedited and therefore unknown in any other form. Natural and social disasters further add to the circumstances that make handwritten manuscripts in Southeast Asia highly endangered, and put their physical existence in jeopardy. Insects and other pests, too, have that effect as these animals feed on the organic materials. The humid tropical weather conditions we encounter in large parts of the region are detrimental for the preservation of manuscripts, especially when they are written on paper. Many of these manuscripts are not preserved in a professional way, which means that they are often the victim of simple unintended neglect. At the same time, Balinese temples, Chinese shrines and Christian institutions will have retained some of their cultural heritage of handwritten documents. We encounter similar trends in insular Southeast Asia where small Islamic educational centres frequently have their repositories. The manuscript cultures in the region, with the practice of copying texts by hand, continued most pertinently in the religious culture, whereas the more secular parts of social life were informed with texts that were much less involved in rituals and could be multiplied and preserved in other ways. There is a network of Buddhist convents built around Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, that include small pavilions where the sacred texts are kept. In mainland Southeast Asia manuscript lovers and guardians of temples have established repositories to store their highly valued and often venerated heirlooms. They may be found from Aceh on the tip of Sumatra all the way east to Papucsmca, and from the Minahassa in the north to the royal palaces of Central Java. In the largest country in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the number of manuscripts in private collections alone is staggering.
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