The Buddhist Repertoire, Part 1

Author(s):  
Andrew Chittick

Chapter 10, “The Buddhist Repertoire, Part 1: The Era of Pluralist Patronage,” is the first half of the third study of various repertoires of political legitimation. This chapter focuses on the development of Buddhist institutions and historiography in the fifth century, a period of pluralist patronage under the banner of Sinitic universalism. The Buddhist repertoire in maritime diplomatic relations with South Seas regimes proved an important staging ground for the ruler’s performance as a cakravartin, or Buddhist universal ruler, as well as a conduit for Buddhist expertise. By the end of the fifth century, Jiankang elites had developed Buddhist legends and practices that asserted that the Jiankang regime’s legitimacy derived, not from the Han Empire, but from its direct inheritance of legitimacy from the cakravartin Asoka, who had ruled in northern India in the third century BCE. This set the stage for the striking developments of the sixth century.

1985 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. D. Hoyos

Rome and Carthage had established peaceful diplomatic relations before 300 b.c. — as early as the close of the sixth century according to Polybius, whose dating there no longer seems good cause to doubt. A second treaty was struck probably in 348. Both dealt essentially with traders' and travellers' obligations and entitlements, so any military or political terms sprang from that context. In both, the Carthaginians agreed to hand over any independent town they captured in Latium. In the first treaty they were not to establish a fort in Latium either; in the second, the Romans were not to found a city in Carthaginian Africa, Spain or Sardinia.But independent military considerations are the stuff of a third treaty concluded during Rome's war with Pyrrhus. Rome and Carthage now pledged each other military aid in certain circumstances, as we shall see. And ‘geopolitical’ concerns of a very broad kind imbued a treaty which was reported by the third-century historian Philinus of Agrigentum. By this, he stated, ‘the Romans must keep out of the whole of Sicily, the Carthaginians out of Italy’ (ἔδει Ῥωμαίους μ⋯ν ⋯πέχεσθαι Σικελίας ⋯πάσης, Καρχηδονίους δ' Ἰταλίας). This is Polybius' citation of Philinus' allegation; Polybius himself then roundly rejects the very existence of such a pact and declares himself at a loss to understand how his predecessor could record it, but modern scholarship is no longer all that ready to accept his view. A strong majority of historians prefer to follow the Agrigentine, and many see 306 b.c. as the likely year for the agreement because Livy records a ‘renewal’ then of a foedus with Carthage (without giving details).


Author(s):  
Andrew Chittick

Chapter 11, “The Buddhist Repertoire, Part 2: Jiankang as Theater State,” is the second half of the third study of various repertoires of political legitimation. This chapter argues that the Liang and Chen regimes in the sixth century built on the developments of the late fifth century and responded to the crisis of the Sinitic repertoire by making the Buddhist repertoire paramount instead. The chapter assesses the politics of bodhisattva ordination and the increasingly public rituals, such as Boundless Gatherings and relic worship, that turned Buddhist legend and ideology into well-established political performances. Jiankang in the sixth century can be understood as an example of a Buddhist “theater state,” a model scholars have used to understand political regimes in non-Sinitic parts of Southeast Asia. Especially when combined with elements of vernacular culture, the Buddhist repertoire proved a more successful fit for Jiankang’s political culture than the Sinitic repertoire had been.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-159
Author(s):  
Salahuddin Guntung Raden

This study aims to reveal the various patterns of belief in the internal of the Shafi'i school and also to explain the history of the emergence of these various forms of understanding after the early development of the Shafi'i school which is oriented towards pure salafi Sunni understanding. This research used the deductive inductive method. The results of this study show that the Shafi'i school as it develops in the aspect of fiqh through the hands of its figures, it also develops in the aspects of aqidah with quite rapid development. The Shafi'i school is no longer pure as it was in the days of its founder, Imam Al-Shafi'i, and his early figures. In the internal of the Shafi'i School, various forms of belief emerged which later became many different madrasas. Each madrasah produces a variety of views that are similar and are bound by the same ushul (principle) and their figures are connected with similar thoughts. The Shafi'i school was originally a pure Sunni school and could be called the Madrasah Syafi'iyyah Ahlussnnah. Then within the school, there appeared various types of understanding of the people of Kalam and Sufi. Then it became several madrasas with different styles of understanding. Within the schools, the concept of Kullabiyah Asy'ariyah emerged in the third century of hijriyyah where in the same century the people of Kalam and Sufi also emerged. Then in the fifth century, the concept of Asy'ariyah Muktazilah emerged. Then the concept of understanding of the Asy'ariyah Falsafi emerged and became grounded in the Shafi'i School in the sixth century of hijriyyah during the emergence of the concept of Kuburiyah which has survived to this day. However, the pure Sunni Salafi style remains in the internal Shafi'i school.


1990 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 553-557
Author(s):  
M. L. West

In CQ 20 (1970), 277–87, 1 argued for dating Corinna to the third century B.C. In my Greek Metre (1982), p. 141, I continued to assume this date, observing that not everyone accepted it but that I knew of no attempt to answer my arguments. I must confess to having overlooked at least one such attempt, by A. Allen in CJ 68 (1972/3), 26–8; and now M. Davies has mounted another in SIFC 81 (1988), 186–94, largely repeating Allen's points but with some new touches. Allen upholds the traditional fifth-century date. Davies has yet to come to a decision, but meanwhile he is eager to discredit what he regards as an unsatisfactory case for a Hellenistic dating.


1976 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Cunliffe

SummaryThe results of five seasons of excavation (1971–5) are summarized. A continuous strip 30–40 m. wide extending across the centre of the fort from one side to the other was completely excavated revealing pits, gullies, circular stake-built houses, rectangular buildings, and 2-, 4-, and 6-post structures, belonging to the period from the sixth to the end of the second century B.C. The types of structures are discussed. A sequence of development, based largely upon the stratification preserved behind the ramparts, is presented: in the sixth–fifth century the hill was occupied by small four-post ‘granaries’ possibly enclosed by a palisade. The first hill-fort rampart was built in the fifth century protecting houses, an area of storage pits, and a zone of 4-and 6-post buildings laid out in rows along streets. The rampart was heightened in the third century, after which pits continued to be dug and rows of circular houses were built. About 100 B.C. rectangular buildings, possibly of a religious nature, were erected, after which the site was virtually abandoned. Social and economic matters are considered. The excavation will continue.


2021 ◽  
pp. 362-372
Author(s):  
Stavros I. Arvanitopoulos

The Byzantine state inherited a large number of defensive structures, on its borders and in the hinterland where ancient cities were refortified in response to barbarian raids, primarily during the third century. The fundamental characteristics of fortification architecture developed during the sixth century. Nevertheless, criteria for the selection of the location, dimensions, and certain construction and morphological features of the forts, towers, and city/barrier walls, were continually adapted to changes in society and state until the end of the empire. Systematic study of the defensive architectural remains including excavation, creation of synthetic works, and reliable maps will allow researchers to date, compare, and understand the evolution of fortification architecture as well as aspects of daily life in the empire.


2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Corke-Webster

In 1967 Alan Cameron published a landmark article in this journal, ‘The fate of Pliny'sLettersin the late Empire’. Opposing the traditional thesis that the letters of Pliny the Younger were only rediscovered in the mid to late fifth century by Sidonius Apollinaris, Cameron proposed that closer attention be paid to the faint but clear traces of the letters in the third and fourth centuries. On the basis of well-observed intertextual correspondences, Cameron proposed that Pliny's letters were being read by the end of the fourth century at the latest. That article now seems the vanguard of a rise in scholarly interest in Pliny's late-antique reception. But Cameron also noted the explicit attention given to the letters by two earlier commentators—Tertullian of Carthage, in the late second to early third century, and Eusebius of Caesarea, in the early fourth. The use of Pliny in these two earliest commentators, in stark contrast to their later successors, has received almost no subsequent attention.


1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. T. Salmon

One of the most recent writers on the early history of Rome has shown that the framework of the traditional story is perhaps to be trusted, even though there are many details, inconsistent and self-contradictory, which are obviously to be rejected. In view of this fact, it might be worth while to reconsider the Coriolanus story, the prevailing opinion concerning which is that vouchsafed by Mommsen many years ago: ‘die Erzählung ist ein spät, in die Annalen eingefügtes, darum in alien Stücken denselben ungleichartiges und widersprechendes Einschiebsel.’ The reasons for arriving at such an opinion are sufficiently obvious to warrant their receiving but the barest recital. First, it is incredible that the Volsci would either choose a renegade Roman to be their general, or, even if they did, allow him at the last minute to rob them of the fruits of victory. Secondly, inconsistencies in the version of the story which we possess induce us to suspect its historicity; for example, Dionysius of Syracuse is made to send corn to the starving Romans'—yet Dionysius lived some hundred years later; a youthful Coriolanus is represented as having considerable influence in the senate—yet in those early days the senate was essentially a gathering of venerable men; the Roman populace learns immediately the gist of Coriolanus' remarks in the senate—yet senate meetings were held in secret; Volsci are allowed to attend the ‘ludi’ and to meet at the Spring of Ferentina—yet in the fifth century none but Latini could do this; the Roman Marcius is given an honorific cognomen, Coriolanus, because of his behaviour at the capture of Corioli—yet such cognomina were not granted until the third century or even later and even then only to the general and not to the subordinate; the plebs is represented as wielding great power in the assembly1—yet we know that in the fifth century it did nothing of the kind.


1911 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 56-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. F. Hill

With but two exceptions, no trace now remains of the shrines with which this paper deals, or at least no trace has been revealed by excavation. Practically the sole record of these buildings is to be found on the coins struck in the district during the period of the Roman Empire, and more especially during the third century of our era. The earlier coins, from the beginning of the coinage towards the end of the fifth century B.C., tell us something about the cults, but little of their furniture. But in the Roman age, especially during the time of the family of Severus and Elagabalus, there was a considerable outburst of coinage, which, in its types, reveals certain details interesting to the student of the fringe of Greek and Roman culture.The evidence thus provided is necessarily disjointed, and concerns only the external, official aspects of the Phoenician religion. The inner truth of these things, it is safe to say, is hidden for ever: even the development from the primitive religion to the weird syncretistic systems of the Roman age is hopelessly obscure. One can only see dimly what was the state of things during the period illustrated by the monuments.


1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rankin

The Christological doctrine of the “communicatio idiomatum” requires that whatever is predicated of one nature of Christ — human or divine — may be predicated of either. It was a major feature of the thought of Cyril of Alexandria and the Alexandrian school generally but denied by most of the Antiochene school. It was accepted in a restricted sense by Leo of Rome but largely ignored in the documents of the mid-fifth century Council of Chalcedon. It appears nowhere in that council's Definition of Faith. This paper suggests that an early form of the doctrine is evident in the works of Tertullian of Carthage, writing in the early years of the third century. Whether Tertullian understood the full, logical implications of what he wrote in relation to the “communicatio”, however, cannot be said with any certainty.


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