The Place of Nusantara in the Sanskritic Buddhist Cosmopolis

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-166
Author(s):  
Andrea Acri
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Higher Learning ◽  
Malay Peninsula ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era

AbstractThis article synthesizes and links together evidence published thus far in secondary literature, in order to highlight the contribution of Nusantara to the genesis and circulation of various forms of Sanskritic Buddhism across Asia from the fifth to the fourteenth century. It places particular emphasis on its expansion via maritime routes. Archaeological vestiges and textual sources suggest that Nusantara was not a periphery, but played a constitutive, Asia-wide role as both a crossroads and terminus of Buddhist contacts since the early centuries of the Common Era. Sumatra, Java, and the Malay Peninsula hosted major centres of Buddhist worship and higher learning that were fully integrated into the trans-Asian maritime network of trade, diplomacy, and pilgrimage. Frequented by some of the most eminent Buddhist personalities of their times, who prompted doctrinal and cultic developments in South and East Asia, Nusantara may have exerted an influence on paradigms of Sanskritic Buddhism across Asia, rather than being a passive recipient of ideas and practices.

Languages, scripts, and Chinese texts in East Asia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Francis Kornicki
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Asia ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Chinese Script ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Crucial Difference ◽  
The Common ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Common Era

This book is a wide-ranging study of vernacularization in East Asia, and for this purpose East Asia includes not only China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam but also other societies that no longer exist, such as the Tangut and Khitan empires. It takes the reader from the early centuries of the Common Era, when the Chinese script was the only form of writing and Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and medical texts spread throughout East Asia, through the centuries when vernacular scripts evolved, right up to the end of the nineteenth century when nationalism created new roles for vernacular languages and vernacular scripts. Through an examination of oral approaches to Chinese texts, it shows how highly valued Chinese texts came to be read through the prism of the vernaculars and ultimately to be translated. This long process has some parallels with vernacularization in Europe, but a crucial difference is that literary Chinese was, unlike Latin, not a spoken language. As a consequence, people who spoke different East Asian vernaculars had no means of communicating in speech, but they could communicate silently by means of written conversation in literary Chinese; a further consequence is that within each society Chinese texts assumed vernacular garb: in classes and lectures, Chinese texts were read and declaimed in the vernaculars. What happened in the nineteenth century and why are there still so many different scripts in East Asia? How and why were Chinese texts dethroned and what replaced them? These are some of the questions addressed in this book.

Sinitic in a Global Perspective

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Francis Kornicki
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
The Common

This chapter focuses on the language rupture in East Asia, that is to say, the loss of the common written language known as literary Chinese or Sinitic. The gradual replacement of the cosmopolitan language Sinitic by the written vernaculars was a process similar in some ways to the replacement of Latin and Sanskrit by the European and South Asian vernaculars, as argued by Sheldon Pollock. However, Sinitic was not a spoken language, so the oral dimension of vernacularization cannot be ignored. Charles Ferguson’s notion of diglossia has been much discussed, but the problem in the context of East Asia is that the only spoken languages were the vernaculars and that Sinitic was capable of being read in any dialect of Chinese as well as in the vernaculars used in neighbouring societies.

The Word of God in One’s Hand: Touching and Holding Pendant Koran Manuscripts

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 338-357
Author(s):  
Cornelius Berthold
Keyword(s):  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
The Body ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Rare Occurrence ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Solid Objects ◽  
Cylindrical Form ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era

AbstractKoran manuscripts that fit comfortably within the palm of one’s hand are known as early as the 10th century CE.For the sake of convenience, all dates will be given in the common era (CE) without further mention, and not in the Islamic or Hijra calendar. Their minute and sometimes barely legible script is clearly not intended for comfortable reading. Instead, recent scholarship suggests that the manuscripts were designed to be worn on the body like pendants or fastened to military flag poles. This is corroborated by some preserved cases for these books which feature lugs to attach a cord or chain, but also their rare occurrence in contemporary textual sources. While pendant Korans in rectangular codex form exist, the majority were produced as codices in the shape of an octagonal prism, and others as scrolls that could be rolled up into a cylindrical form. Both resemble the shapes of similarly dated and pre-Islamic amulets or amulet cases. Building on recent scholarship, I will argue in this article that miniature or pendant Koran manuscripts were produced in similar forms and sizes because of comparable modes of usage, but not necessarily by a deliberate imitation of their amuletic ‘predecessors’. The manuscripts’ main functions did not require them to be read or even opened; some of their cases were in fact riveted shut. Accordingly, the haptic feedback they gave to their owners when they carried or touched them was not one of regular books but one of solid objects (like amulets) or even jewellery, which then reinforced this practice.

Marking Religious and Ethnic Boundaries: Cases from the Ancient Golan Heights

2000 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Gregg
Keyword(s):  
Rhode Island ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Small Communities ◽  
Rural Settings ◽  
The Common ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Common Era

In the aftermath of the 1967 “Six Days' War,” 254 ancient inscribed stones were found in forty-four towns and villages of the Golan Heights—241 in Greek, 12 in Hebrew or Aramaic, and 1 in Latin. These stones, along with numerous architectural fragments, served as the basis of the 1996 book by myself and Dan Urman, Jews, Pagans, and Christians in the Golan Heights—a study of settlement patterns of people of the three religions in this region in the early centuries of the common era.1 The area of the Golan heights, roughly the size of Rhode Island, was in antiquity a place of agriculture and, for the most part, small communities. Though historians of religions in the late Roman period have long been aware of the “quartering” of cities, and of the locations of particular religious groups in this or that section of urban areas, we have had little information concerning the ways in which Hellenes, Jews, and Christians took up residence in relation to each other in those rural settings featuring numerous towns and hamlets— most presumably too small to have “zones” for ethnic and religious groups. The surviving artifacts of a number of the Golan sites gave the opportunity for a case study. Part 1 of this article centers on evidence for the locations and possible interactions of members of these religious groups in the Golan from the third to the seventh centuries and entails a summary of findings in the earlier work, while part 2 takes up several lingering questions about religious identity and ways of “marking” it within Golan countryside communities. Both sections can be placed under a rubric of “boundary drawing and religion.”

Advancing community-led research into the climate of the Common Era

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah S. Eggleston ◽  
Steven Phipps ◽  
Oliver Bothe ◽  
Helen V. McGregor ◽  
Belen Martrat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Science ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Present Climate ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Scientific Questions ◽  
New Phase

<p>The past two thousand years is a key interval for climate science. This period encompasses both the era of human-induced global warming and a much longer interval when changes in Earth’s climate were governed principally by natural drivers and unforced variability. Since 2009, the Past Global Changes (PAGES) 2k Network has brought together hundreds of scientists from around the world to reconstruct and understand the climate of the Common Era using open and collaborative approaches to palaeoclimate science, including virtual meetings. The third phase of the network will end in December 2021. Here we highlight some key outputs of PAGES 2k and present the major themes and scientific questions emerging from recent surveys of the community. We explore how these might boost a new phase of PAGES 2k or a successor project(s). This year we will further reach out to the community through Town Hall consultations, vEGU and other meetings, and a PAGES 2k global webinar series. The aim of these activities is to foster development of post-2021 community-led PAGES initiatives that connect past and present climate.</p>

Anthropomorphic ‘tombstones’ of the Gorgippia necropolis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Е.М. Алексеева
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Black Sea Region ◽  
Funeral Ritual ◽  
Conventional Meaning ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Burial Grounds

Traditionally, anthropomorphic sculptures from the necropolis of the ancient city of Gorgippia are flattened half-shapes without detailed face and body contours, merely trunks and heads. In the Northern Black Sea region such monuments are characteristic of the IV–II centuries BC, but some date back to the first centuries of the Common Era. There is a reason to believe that they were used for ceremonial purposes rather than as markers of particular burial grounds or gravestones in the conventional meaning. Faceless half-shapes in Greek necropolises are associated with rites of the worship of Persephone, who dies (as represented by faceless sculptures) and then resurrects (by sculptures with painted faces) as seasons change. They could be used like special posts – ‘cippi’ – for marking sacred places within necropolises with libations and sacrifices in honor of gods with chthonic properties. Such incarnations are observed in Persephone (Kore), Demeter, Aphrodite, Artemis and their male counterparts – Dionysus, Hercules, Hermes, Eros. Epitaphs and carved scenes related to traditions of the funeral ritual on the anthropomorphic objects turned them into tombstones dedicated to specific deceased individuals. 

“Literary Institutions are Founded and Endowed for the Common Good”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Dorn
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Higher Learning ◽  
The Public ◽  
Regional Center ◽  
The Common ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Civic Mindedness ◽  
Primary Mission

This chapter examines Bowdoin College, which was supported by district elites who worked to erect a regional center of higher learning to which they could send their sons rather than incur the cost of dispatching them south to other colleges. On the morning of Bowdoin's opening, appointed president Joseph McKeen pronounced the college's primary mission: “That the inhabitants of this district may have their own sons to fill the liberal professions among them, and particularly to instruct them in the principles and practice of our holy religion, is doubtless the object of this institution.” This conception of higher education's function in American society drew heavily on a social ethos of civic-mindedness that assigned priority to social responsibility over individuals' self indulgence. Characterized by the practice of civic virtue and a commitment to the public good, civic-mindedness provided social institutions, including those dedicated to higher learning, a source from which to derive their central aims.

scholarly journals Roman to Middle Age Earthquakes Sourced by the 1980 Irpinia Fault: Historical, Archaeoseismological, and Paleoseismological Hints

Geosciences ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 286
Author(s):  
Paolo Galli
Keyword(s):  
Middle Age ◽  
Fault System ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Seismogenic Structure ◽  
Working Hypothesis ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Written Sources

The Italian seismic compilations are among the most complete and back-in time extended worldwide, with earthquakes on record even before the Common Era. However, we have surely lost the memory of dozen strong events of the historical period, mostly in the first millennium CE. Given the lack of certain or conclusive written sources, besides paleoseismological investigations, a complementary way to infer the occurrence of lost earthquakes is to cross-check archaeoseismic evidence from ancient settlements. This usually happens by investigating collapses/restorations/reconstructions of buildings, the general re-organization of the urban texture, or even the abrupt abandonment of the settlement. Exceptionally, epigraphs mentioning more or less explicitly the effects of the earthquake strengthened the field working hypothesis. Here, I deal with both paleoseismological clues from the Monte Marzano Fault System (the structure responsible for the catastrophic, Mw 6.9 1980 earthquake) and archaeoseismological evidence of settlements founded in its surroundings to cast light on two poorly known earthquakes that occurred at the onset and at the end of the first millennium CE, likely in 62 and in 989 CE. Both should share the same seismogenic structure and the size of the 1980 event (Mw 6.9).

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