The LMU requires teachers and students to exchange all professional correspondence between them via LMU email addresses (for students these are the addresses that end in “@campus.lmu.de”) .

As is customary at our university, it has not been explained why this should be so (regrettably, transparency is not its strongest side). Please do not ask me why the University requires this of us. I myself do not know.

Computerressourcen an der LMU und Computerwahl

http://lmu.zydenbos.net/computertips.pdf

E-Mail-Verkehr

http://lmu.zydenbos.net/emailverkehr.pdf

Textverarbeitung: Programme und Formate

http://lmu.zydenbos.net/textverarbeitung.pdf

Students who are primarily interested in more recent and contemporary India must choose a modern Indian language as the main language in their studies. (Students of so-called Classical Indology, which concerns itself with Indian antiquity, have Sanskrit as their main language.) Although the Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie strives to offer courses in several modern Indian languages (for further information please see the updates on the LMU’s offerings), the possibilities of comprehensive guidance of the students are limited in our small institute (every European institute of Indological studies is small and limited in its possiblities), and a comprehensive guidance can be offered for the southern Indian language Kannada and only to a certain extent for the northern Indian language Hindi. Please do not assume that other languages and their associated regional cultures can be represented in an academically satisfying manner at our institute. It happens repeatedly that students expect that an ‘institute of Indology’ can treat the whole of India, which in view of the enormous size of the Indian republic is plainly impossible. Just as no institute in India offers ‘Europology’ including the cultural studies of entire Europe, no single institute in Europe can treat the whole of India.

New Indian studies (the so-called ,Moderne Indologie‘) in München are mainly focussed on southern India, namely, the language, literature, religions and culture of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, with which the Free State of Bavaria has a cooperation agreement since 2007. Students can also choose Hindi, the semi-artificial lingua franca of northern India, as their main language, but in this case the possibilities of guidance, due to personnel constraints, are simply very limited. If one chooses Kannada, the possibilities are practically unlimited, and also the possibility of study abroad at the Indian University of Mysore (the partner university of the LMU) becomes an option.

A brief characterization of Kannada, meant primarily for students of the linguistic MA “Cultural and Cognitive Linguistics” (CCL), is available for reading and downloading here as a PDF file. An HTML webpage can be found here. Interested persons may also refer to the Wikipedia webpages in German and English (and naturally in Kannada and Sanskrit).