We are uniquely fortunate in Austria to have distinguished academic traditions in all the disciplines of the NFN: art history, numismatics, Buddhist philosophy, Tibetan and Sanskrit philology. Thus both in terms of human and archival resources, Austria was the logical place for the emergence of transdisciplinary research on the cultures of the Western Himalayas. The National Research Network (NFN) “The Cultural History of the Western Himalaya from the 8th Century” continues the successful Forschungsschwerpunkt (FSP) Interdisciplinary Research Unit of a similar name (2001-2006). The NFN brings to fruition the many years of experience and assembled scholarly resources as well as long-standing international partnership resulting from earlier FWF projects. The collecting and archiving of primary documentation from the several countries of the region has produced unique resources at the University of Vienna.