The Study of South Asia Between Antiquity and Modernity — Parallels and Comparisons. Coffee Break Conference 2

The present volume collects the proceedings of the conference "The Study of South Asia: between Antiquity and Modernity, Parallels and Comparisons. The Coffee Break Conference 2" (held in September 2011, at the Oriental Institute of the Sapienza University of Rome). The meeting, as well as the present proceedings, is a further step in the path already established with the first "Coffee Break Conference" (June 2010). The two events share most of the organising staff and the same theoretical premises. "The Coffee Break Project" has been started by a group of young researchers on Asian Studies and it has been conceived since the beginning as an open challenge to some well-known and "petrified" research criteria of traditional academia. The purpose of these papers is to make the authors and their audience aware of the plurality of possible methodological approaches within every field of study and of the non-neutrality of the choice of one approach over another. It might also be possible to find some common grounds between the way a philologist and an economist conceive their works. The panels have been conceived and organized by researchers working on South Asia who have, in most cases, opened the discussion to contributions from different contexts.