Defending God in Sixteenth-Century India

Author(s):  
Jonathan Duquette

This book is the first in-depth study of the Śaiva oeuvre of the celebrated polymath Appaya Dīkṣita (1520–1593). It documents the rise to prominence and scholarly reception of Śivādvaita Vedānta, a Sanskrit-language school of philosophical theology which Appaya single-handedly established, thus securing his reputation as a legendary advocate of Śaiva religion in early modern India. Based to a large extent on hitherto unstudied primary sources in Sanskrit, this study offers new insights on Appaya’s early polemical works and main source of Śivādvaita exegesis, Śrīkaṇṭha’s Brahmamīmāṃsābhāṣya; it identifies Appaya’s key intellectual influences and opponents in his reconstruction of Śrīkaṇṭha’s theology; and it highlights some of the key arguments and strategies he used to make his ambitious project a success. Centred on his magnum opus of Śivādvaita Vedānta, the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, this book demonstrates that Appaya’s Śaiva oeuvre was mainly directed against Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, the dominant Vaiṣṇava school of philosophical theology in his time and place. A far-reaching study of the challenges of Indian theism, this book opens up new possibilities for our understanding of religious debates and polemics in early modern India as seen through the lenses of one of its most important intellectuals.

2020 ◽  
pp. 213-216
Author(s):  
J. V. Fesko

The conclusion summarizes the study. The doctrine stands in continuity with patristic versions and does not arise de novo in the sixteenth century. Roman Catholics were also some of the first sixteenth-century theologians to teach an Adamic covenant. The doctrine is a construct based on a good and necessary consequence. This means that the doctrine has a broad scriptural foundation. There are also different variants of the doctrine and even confessional formulations allow for a diversity of opinion. These points stand in contrast to the claims of critics who rarely engage a close reading of primary sources. Moreover, with the development of biblicism, critics have approached the question with a different hermeneutic methodology than early modern Reformed theologians. Lastly, one of the most important themes in the covenant of works is love, something that most critics of the doctrine fail to factor.


2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1017-1042 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Walker

Abstract This chapter will present and explicate rare information regarding circumstances and techniques for the application of medicinal mercury in the Portuguese medical context during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through the use of Portuguese medical texts (including translated excerpts), the chapter will provide insight into how early modern Portuguese practitioners processed and employed mercury to treat various ailments. Of interest, too, will be that these remedies were developed at several disparate locations throughout the Portuguese imperial world (China, India, Angola, Brazil, and Portugal), and often drew upon, and blended, indigenous medical substances from the region where each remedy originated. Regarding the use of mercury in South Asian medicine, medical scholars have noted that, from the sixteenth century onwards, much of the intra-Asian (and global) mercury trade was conducted through Portuguese merchants and agents. This work asserts that Portuguese merchants and shippers had unique access both to mercury at the commodity’s main sources in Spain and Peru (Almadén and Huancavelica, respectively), but also to established, developed colonial trade routes throughout the eastern hemisphere. Most of the information presented here is excerpted from two little-known eighteenth-century Portuguese primary sources: a Jesuit compilation medical and apothecary guide in manuscript, and a published physician’s treatise regarding fevers and other illnesses encountered during a posting of nearly a decade in Angola.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-294
Author(s):  
Jeremy King

This paper considers the applicability of modern theories of language to data from pre-modern language varieties. Specifically, I address the extent to which Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper’s (1989) taxonomy of directive head acts is valid for use in descriptions of these speech acts in Early Modern Spanish. In order to address this issue, data from two distinct primary sources was collected: first, a series of familiar letters written in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and second, a collection of short farces widely discussed as representing the popular speech of the time. The results of this study indicate that speakers in the sixteenth century displayed a strong preference for direct request strategies, at odds with conclusions drawn about modern Spanish in the literature. Though the head act taxonomy is found to be useful for analyzing the Early Modern data, I caution that it cannot be assumed that speakers in different periods appraise potential face-threatening acts similarly.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-188
Author(s):  
Helena Avelar

Abstract The calculation of an individual’s life span has been a constant presence in premodern astrological practice. It was used by physicians to calculate the expected life of a patient or to ascertain if an illness was likely to be fatal. On a personal level, this knowledge could also offer a means of control over one’s life and, more importantly, a way to prepare their access to a rewarding afterlife. This article contains an overview of determinism in astrology and a brief survey of the main methodologies used to determine the length of life, exploring their history, primary sources, and variations from antiquity to the early modern period. Although it discusses to some extent the chief methods for determining the lifespan, an in-depth study of the techniques, with all their details and discrepancies is out of its scope. The goal is to correlate the astrological practice with different perspectives on determinism and free will.


1999 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J.B. Trim

AbstractThe Elizabethan epoch has long been regarded as a period in which England, isolated from the rest of Europe, fell behind the Continental powers during an era of "military revolution." More recently, England's sixteenth-century military history has attracted a growing number of scholars, but their conclusions vary widely and seem impossible to integrate. Yet recent analyses have generally been too narrowly focussed on events in Elizabethan England. This article (based on a synthesis of secondary studies, including social and cultural as well as military histories, but supported by evidence from the most important printed primary sources), attempts to put the military history of Tudor England in the setting, firstly of both earlier and later developments in England itself; and secondly, of the wider, contemporaneous experience of warfare in Europe as a whole. An understanding of the context of warfare can provide a better basis for future research into an issue with significant wider implications for early modern historiography.


Author(s):  
Ataullah Bogdan Kopanski

Abstract There is no agreement among psychologists on sources and outcomes of the dreams in human brain during sleep. Secularist scholars of Freudian school of psychoanalysis claim that human dreams reflect their highly subconscious libido. Jungian school of kollective Unbewessustes   disputes such extreme sexualized opinions and highlights the fact that rather large “collective unconscious” than sexuality is shared by representatives of all human cultures. But even without advanced studies, we can risk to believe that our dreams often predict coming events. Artemidoros Daldianus from Ephesus, the second century CE Hellenistic author of Oneirokritikon believed that dreams are human mind’s mirrors of the future. His magnum opus on the art of interpretation of dreams was translated into Arabic by famous Nestorian ophthalmologist Hunayn ibn Ishaq (Iohannitus) of Bayt al-Hikmah during the reign of Abbasid caliphs Maymun and Mutawakkil. The Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) often interpreted his own and Sahabah’s dreams with perfect accuracy. In the Qur’an, especially in Surah 12: Yusuf, 36-37, 99-101, the dreams are vehicles of foretelling the future not only of individuals but also of whole nations and states. The paper is written from historical perspective of the Muslim interpretation of dreams which emphasizes the Islamic examination of human dreams in context of the primary sources to the ancient Greek oneiromancy, studied by the Muslim scholars in the early centuries of Islamic Civilization, and their contribution to development of modern oneirology. Keywords: Oneirology, Interpretation of Dreams, Artemidoros’ Oneirocritica, Islamic Ta‘bÊr. Abstrak Tidak ada sebarang persetujuan di kalangan ahli psikologi terhadap sumber dan hasil daripada mimpi di dalam otak manusia semasa tidur. Para sekular Sekolah Psikoanalisis Freud mendakwa bahawa mimpi manusia mencerminkan kesedaran libido. Sekolah Unbewessustes kollective Jungian pertikaikan pendapat seksual melampau tersebut dan menyerlahkan bahawa kebanyakkan kesedaran bukan daripada kesedaran libido dan didapati dalam semua budaya manusia. Tetapi walaupun tanpa kajian yang canggih, kita boleh mengambil risiko untuk mempercayai bahawa mimpi kita sering meramalkan peristiwa yang akan datang. Artemidoros Daldianus dari Efesus, pengarang Hellenistik Oneirokritikon abad kedua CE percaya bahawa mimpi mencerminkan masa depan manusia. Seni interpretasi mimpi beliau telah diterjemahkan ke dalam Bahasa Arab oleh pakar mata Nestorian terkenal Hunayn ibn Ishaq (Iohannitus) dari Bayt al-Hikmah pada zaman pemerintahan khalifah Abbasiyah Maymun dan Mutawakkil. Nabi Muhammad (s.a.w.) sering mentafsirkan mimpi sendiri dan sahabat secara tepat. Dalam Al-Qur'an, terutamanya dalam Surah 12: Yusuf, 36-37, 99-101, mimpi adalah kenderaan untuk meramalkan masa depan bukan sahaja seorang individu tetapi keseluruhan negara dan negeri. Kajian ini ditulis dari perspektif sejarah interpretasi mimpi Islam yang menekankan pemeriksaan mimpi manusia dalam Islam dalam konteks sumber utama oneiromancy purba Yunani yang dikaji oleh para ulama Islam di abad-abad awal tamadun Islam, dan sumbangan mereka kepada pembangunan oneirologi moden. Kata Kunci: Oneirologi, Interpretasi mimpi, Oneirocritica Artemidoros, Ta‘bÊr Islam.


1986 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patti A. Mills

This paper examines an early modern contribution to the literature on stewardship accounting, the Tratado de Cuentas or Treatise on Accounts, by Diego del Castillo, a sixteenth-century Spanish jurist.


Author(s):  
Tom Hamilton

This chapter explores the material culture of everyday life in late-Renaissance Paris by setting L’Estoile’s diaries and after-death inventory against a sample of the inventories of thirty-nine of his colleagues. L’Estoile and his family lived embedded in the society of royal office-holders and negotiated their place in its hierarchy with mixed success. His home was cramped and his wardrobe rather shabby. The paintings he displayed in the reception rooms reveal his iconoclastic attitude to the visual, contrasting with the overwhelming number of Catholic devotional pictures displayed by his colleagues. Yet the collection he stored in his study and cabinet made him stand out in his milieu as a distinguished curieux. It deserves a place in the early modern history of collecting, as his example reveals that the civil wars might be a stimulus as much as a disruption to collecting in sixteenth-century France.


Author(s):  
Natalia Nowakowska

What is Poland? If the meaning of apparently stable words such as ecclesia has been anything but stable historically, the same is of course true of ‘Poland’, a simple noun which masks multiple possible meanings and polemical intents. For the sixteenth century, Poland should be defined not as an ethnic people (a nascent nation state), but rather as a political phenomenon. As such, this study will consider all the peoples and territories under the authority of the Polish Crown in the reign of King Sigismund I, regardless of their ‘ethnic’ or linguistic status. Twenty years ago, John Elliott coined the phrase ‘composite monarchies’, pointing out that most early modern monarchies were patchworks of territories acquired at various times by different means (marriage, conquest, inheritance), held together by one monarch....


Author(s):  
Emily Thomas

This Conclusion draws the study to a close, and recounts its developmental theses. The first thesis is that the complexity of positions on time (and space) defended in early modern thought is hugely under-appreciated. An enormous variety of positions were defended during this period, going far beyond the well-known absolutism–relationism debate. The second thesis is that during this period three distinct kinds of absolutism can be found in British philosophy: Morean, Gassendist, and Newtonian. The chapter concludes with a few notes on the impact of absolutism within and beyond philosophy: on twenty-first-century metaphysics of time; and on art, geology, and philosophical theology.


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