Introduction: Tracing the bicentennial history of Oriental studies in Lithuania

Abstract

this special issue of Acta Orientalia Vilnensia is dedicated to the bicentenary of the commencement of asian studies in lithuania and particularly at Vilnius university, which was founded in 1579 and is the oldest academic institution in Lithuania. Two hundred years is a comparatively short period, but these years have a wealthy history, especially keeping in mind that Asian or Oriental studies, as it was called at the beginning of this period, was a newly emerging academic field that has grown from a purely comparative and philological approach to recently discovered non-European cultures due to of the increasing implications of colonial aims and the imperative to manage properly those subjugated Asian counties and nations. Certainly, an integral part of this interest in Asian learning was European romantic fascination with the cultural and intellectual otherness of that area. Lithuania was not excepted from this kind of intellectual involvement. The beginning of the 19th century was a politically complicated and turbulent period in Lithuanian history. After the third and last division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, between Tsarist Russia and Prussia in 1795, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became an eastern province of the Russian Empire and formally disappeared from the world map for a more than a century. Notwithstanding, some academic institutions, including the main one, Vilnius University, continued their activities, even though under the strict control and supervision of Russian officials. the intellectuals of Vilnius university clearly understood in those days the importance and future prospects of developing Asian studies. And due to the activities of non-formal student societies (the Filarets, Filomats, and Shubravcy) and members of freemasonic lodges, especially of the Zealous Lithuanian (Gorliwy litvin) lodge, the romantic fascination with the East developed into serious academic preoccupations.