scholarly journals Dhār, Bhoja and Sarasvatī: from Indology to Political Mythology and Back

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-153
Author(s):  
MICHAEL WILLIS

The Bhojśālā or ‘Hall of Bhoja’ is a term used to describe the centre for Sanskrit studies associated with King Bhoja, the most celebrated ruler of the Paramāra dynasty. The Bhojśālā is also linked to Sarasvatī – the goddess of learning – whose shrine is said to have stood in the hall's precinct. Since the early years of the twentieth century, the mosque adjacent to the tomb of Kamāl al-Dīn Chishtī in the town of Dhār has been identified as the Bhojśālā. This has turned the building into a focal point of religious, social and political tension. Access to the site, currently under the protection of the Archaeological Survey of India, has been marked by communal friction and disputes in the press and in the courts. My aim in this paper is not to chart this sorry tale of events; I only need note that the legal and political wrangles, not to mention a steady flow of inflammatory assertions, have formed a toxic backdrop to the scholarly publications cited in the pages that follow. A second issue beyond the scope of this paper is how the medieval history of Dhār has played its part in the wider ‘invention of tradition’ and formation of modern Hindu identity. Stepping back from these concerns, my ambition here is rather modest: I seek only to explore how the mosque at Dhār has come to be described as the Bhojśālā and, on this basis, to undertake an assessment of that identification. Along the way, I will touch on a number of problems concerning the history, architecture and literary culture of central India.

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Alex Costin

A half century before the New Jersey Supreme Court endorsed inclusionary zoning in Southern Burlington N.A.A.C.P. v. Mount Laurel Township, the state struggled to secure basic municipal zoning. While New Jersey’s political elite embraced zoning in the 1910s and 20s to weather a period of tremendous growth and change, a disapproving judiciary steadfastly maintained that the practice violated basic property rights. Hundreds of state court decisions in the 1920s held zoning ordinances unconstitutional. Finally, the people of New Jersey in 1927 overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the state constitution overruling those decisions and affirming zoning as a reasonable exercise of the state’s police power. This essay traces those uncertain early years of zoning in New Jersey. The amendment was not the result of a state monolithically coming to its senses. Instead, its passage documents a decade-long struggle played out not only in the courts and legislature but also in the press and the town meeting.


1910 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 1187-1203
Author(s):  
G. E. Gerini

The New History of the T'ang dynasty relates that in a.d. 648 the Chinese envoy Wang Hsüan-ts'ê, having raised an army in Tibet and Nep¯al, advanced into Central India as far as the town Ch'a-po-ho-lo, which he stormed after three days’ siege. The Na-fu-ti(or Ti-na-fu-ti) A-lo-na-shun, an usurper who had just seized the throne after the death of King Śīlāditya (i.e. Harṣavardhana Śīlāditya of Kanauj), thereupon fled, but was shortly afterwards taken prisoner. A band of his dispersed followers, however, took position, barring the way across the Kan-t'o-wei River, but were in their turn routed by Hsüan-ts'ê's second in command.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
Gregory P.A. Levine

“Buddha Rush” is a profile of the artist Casey O’Connor, who in 2005 dumped hundreds of quarter-size porcelain Buddha heads into the American River near Colfax, and a portrait of the town and region's response to the discovery of these unexpected objects. What were Buddhas doing in gold country, where did they come from, and what were they worth? The press sent reporters to find out and residents imagined the town reviving with tourist revenue. Then the Bureau of Land Management got involved: the heads may have been archaeological artifacts removed illegally from federal land. An arrest was made, but the mystery remained unsolved. Then in 2006 O’Connor came forward to take responsibility; the Buddha heads were not antiques from Asia but contemporary California art. Working from interviews, media reports, and online commentary, I track the Colfax “Buddha rush” as it grew, ricocheted off histories of the Gold Rush, the Central Pacific Railroad, and Pacific-Rim immigration, and rebounded into modern understandings of Buddhism. I situate the saga in a wider history of modern-contemporary representations of and responses to the Buddha. Ultimately, this is not a story that simply reaffirms conventional notions of the cool or contemplative Buddha; the Buddha's presence and meaning may be less clear, less detached from history, power, and violence than we assume. O'Connor's work and its reception pushes us in unexpected ways toward California’s complex relationships of artistic praxis, landscape, race, class, and culture.


Author(s):  
Odile Moreau

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.


1989 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-328
Author(s):  
Salahudeen Yusuf

The history of Islam in part of what is known today as Nigeria datesto about the loth Century. Christianity dates to the late 18th Century. Bythe middle of the 19th Century, when Nigerian newspapers began to appearon the streets of Nigeria, both religions had won so many followers and extendedto so many places in Nigeria that very few areas were untouched bytheir influence. The impact of both religions on their adherents not only determinedtheir spiritual life, but influenced their social and political lives aswell. It therefore became inevitable that both religions receive coverage frommost of the newspapers of the time. How the newspapers as media of informationand communication reported issues about the two religions is thetheme of this paper.Rationale for the StudyThe purpose of this study is to highlight the context in which such earlynewspapers operated and the factors that dictated their performance. Thisis because it is assumed that when a society faces external threat to its territory,culture, and independence, all hands (the press inclusive) ought tobe on deck to resist the threat with all might. Were newspapers used as verbalartillery and how did they present each religion? It is also assumed thatin a multireligious society a true press should be objective and serve as avanguard in the promotion of the interest of the people in general and notcreate or foster an atmosphere of religious conflict. The study also aims atfinding out whether the papers promoted intellectual honesty and fosteredthe spirit of unity particularly when the society was faced with the encroachmentof the British who posed a threat to their freedom, culture, economy ...


Author(s):  
Ivars Orehovs

In a literary heritage with a developed tradition of genres, works whose main purpose is to attract the attention of readers to a selected geographical location, are of particular culture-historical and culture-geographical interest. The most widespread in this respect is travel literature, which is usually written by travellers and consist of impressions portrayed in prose after visits to foreign lands. Another type of literary depiction with an expressed poetic orientation, but a similar goal, is characteristic of dedicatory poetry. The author’s position is usually saturated with emotional expressiveness as well as the artistry of symbols, encouraging the reader or listener to feel the formation of a spontaneous attitude. It is possible to gain confidence in the engagement of the author of the poetry as an individual in the depicted cultural-geographical environment, which can be conceptually expressed by words or pairs of words ‘resident’, ‘native place’, ‘patriot’. With regard to the devotional depictions on the Latvian urban environment, one of the earliest examples known in the history of literature is the dedicatory poem in German by Christian Bornmann to the town Jelgava with its ancient name (Mitau, 1686/1802). The name of Liepāja town in this tradition of the genre has become an embodiment later – in the poetry selection in German, also using the ancient name of the town (Libausche Dichtungen, 1853), but in terms of contemporary literary practice with Imants Kalniņš’ music, there is a convincing dominance of songs with words of poetry. The aim of the article is, looking at the poetry devoted to Liepāja in the 19th century and at the turn of the 20th/21st century in the comparative aspect, to present textually thematic peculiarities as well as to provide the analytical interpretative summary of those.


Author(s):  
Joanna Innes ◽  
Michael J. Braddick

The Introduction offers a brief overview of Paul Slack’s contribution to early modern history, distinguishing between an earlier phase concerned with social policy and the ideas which informed it, and a later phase concerned with the history of political economy, and particularly the shifting discourse of happiness which, he argued, informed it. It then explores recent interest in the history of emotions, distinguishing a variety of approaches to that subject. Reviewing three broad approaches taken by the contributors to the volume, it goes on to suggest that the history of emotions is most stimulating when seen as a focal point for different kinds of history rather than as a discrete subject of enquiry. A further implication is that a variety of forms of expertise need to be brought to bear.


Author(s):  
W. B. Patterson

In 1634 Fuller became the minister of the parish at Broadwindsor, in Dorset. This provided him the opportunity to know John White, the minister in nearby Dorchester. White, the spiritual and moral leader of the town became a pastoral model for Fuller. In this setting, Fuller wrote The Historie of the Holy Warre, the first English history of the Crusades. His use of medieval sources was extensive, and his analysis of the motives and tactics of western leaders is shrewd and persuasive. Elected to the clerical Convocation that met in 1640, during sessions of the first Parliament to be called in eleven years, Fuller dissented from the leadership of Archbishop William Laud, who sought to impose more stringent rules or canons on the Church of England. This Convocation, continuing to meet after Parliament was dissolved, passed canons whose legality was contested. War with the Scots ensued over religious issues, forcing the king to call what came to be known as the Long Parliament.


Author(s):  
R.V. Vaidyanatha Ayyar

The chapter is a prologue to the main narrative of the book. It offers an evaluation of Macaulay’s minute which paved the way for introduction of modern education in India, the idea of National System Of Education which dominated Indian thinking on education for over sixty years from the Partition of Bengal (1905) to the Kothari Commission (1964), and the division of responsibility between the Central and Provincial Governments for educational development during British Raj. It offers a succinct account of the key recommendations of the landmark Sarjent Committee on Post-War Educational Development, the Radhakrishnan Commission on University Development, and the Mudaliar Commission on Secondary Education, of the drafting history of the provisions relating to education in the Constitution, the spectacular expansion of access after Independence, the evolution of regulatory policies and institutions like the University Grants Commission (UGC), and of the delicate compromise over language policy.


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