Convening
One Table, Many Disciplines
Aadivamsha brings together people who rarely share a room, around a single question at a time.
Those Who Study
Historians, archaeologists, epigraphists, art historians and conservators.
Those Who Build
Architects, town planners and engineers of water and of stone.
Those Who Make
Weavers, metalworkers, painters, cooks, musicians and performers.
Those Who Keep
The families, their archivists and the people who have served their houses.
How Does Aadivamsha Convene?
The question decides the form.
A gathering may last a day or a season. What does not change is who is in the room: those who work from the written record and those who carry what was never written down, seated as equals.
The Method
Three Questions
What Is Documented?
Inscriptions, archives, excavations and published scholarship, read by those who know them best.
What Is Undocumented?
Family memory, craft practice, recipes and rites, told by those who still keep them.
How Did It Pass?
The teachers, the trade, the patronage and the breaks, traced from one generation to the next.
The Forms
What A Gathering May Be
An age, a region or a line may be the starting point. So may a single subject followed across all of them: the art of a court, the food of a kingdom, the objects of daily life, the planning of a city, a trade route and what travelled along it.
A Roundtable
One question, one day, one table. Its proceedings are published and kept.
A Residency
A season spent in one place, alongside the people who keep its traditions.
A Journey
A route through a region, read by those who know it from books and from birth.
A Shared Study
A subject followed across ages and regions by a small company over many months.
An Exhibition
What the gathering found, shown to the public in the room, in print and on screen.
The first gathering is in preparation.
Scholars, makers and keepers who would like to take part are welcome to write to the house.