SAOA is a free open-access resource for research and teaching -- a rich and growing curated collection of key historical and contemporary sources in arts, humanities and social sciences, from and about South Asia, in English and other languages of the region. SAOA’s collection contains hundreds of thousands of pages of books, journals, newspapers, census data, magazines, and documents, with particular focus on social & economic history, literature, women & gender, and caste & social structure. You can suggest sources to add to SAOA.
Primary sources are original documentary evidence from a given historical period, such as official correspondence, government publications, diaries, images and photographs, drawings, letters, books, films, posters, play scripts, speeches, songs, sheet music, and first-person accounts. This page provides links to some online primary source materials on South Asia. Some of these require an NYU ID and password, and are marked with an *asterisk*.
For primary sources on contemporary South Asia, including census reports, data reports and data files for various countries in South Asia, please see the Data and Maps page in this guide.
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