Who we are...
The Institute of South and Central Asia consists of three seminars and the specialisations are complementary in that two seminars focus upon the region of South and Central Asia – the Indological Seminar (Indian languages and cultures, Indonesian) and the Seminar of Mongolian and Tibetan Studies (Mongolian languages in Mongolia and China, Tibetan).
Besides languages and literatures, the basic orientation in both teaching and research is the history and culture of the individual regions. In all topics the basis of the study is the language, without which the culturally different regions can be neither successfully understood nor interpreted. We also underline the use of general methogological disciplines (linguistics, history, literary science, anthropology), which, together with mastering the relevant language (and its varieties) opens up wider opportunities for professional development both in research and in practice.
In the sphere of research important sources of knowledge include not only the written literary tradition, but in some regions also the oral tradition, which is developed to a very high level through our systematic field work. We have excellent experience with international co-operation and we meet with good responses from our target countries. We publish the results of our research in the form of monographs (cf. list of publications) and also in two international journals which we publish, Pandanus and Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia.