RE-BOUND

Assembling South Asia’s Illustrated Manuscripts—Online

The tradition of commissioning ambitious and lavishly illustrated manuscripts and series in the Indian subcontinent dates back to the ninth century, possibly earlier. Originally conceived as unified works of art and literature, a large number of these objects were dismantled during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Today, their folios are widely dispersed across public and private collections around the world.

Re-Bound is a new project aiming to digitally reunite folios held across collections worldwide, and to restore these manuscripts and series to the coherence originally intended by their makers, enabling them to be studied and appreciated in their entirety. 

The project will make these fragile and often inaccessible materials  freely available to the public on a dedicated online platform, featuring high-resolution reproductions, introductory essays, and contextual information—serving scholars, researchers, students, and general audiences. In doing so, Re-Bound strives to encourage deeper engagement with art and visual histories from the Indian subcontinent. The project constitutes a significant contribution to global digital humanities initiatives through the virtual reconstruction of dispersed cultural heritage objects.

Re-Bound is a project led by Dr Neeraja Poddar, scholar and curator of South Asian art, in partnership with Impart, an online platform encouraging deeper engagement with South Asia’s art and cultural histories through collaborative projects, editorial initiatives, and accessible programming.