The Buddhist Hell: An Early Instance of the Idea?

Numen ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 254-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Braarvig
Keyword(s):  
Great Part ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Modern Idea ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Narrative Literature ◽  
Canonical Literature ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Favourite Topic ◽  
Living Being

In spite of the modern idea that Buddhism is too rational a religion to have a conception of hell, the case is just the opposite. The Buddhists promoted this idea very early. This is not really surprising, since the idea of hell is closely connected with the concept of kamma , action, and its fruit or result. Every living being is what it is by the force of its actions in this or earlier lives: good actions entail rebirth in heaven or as a human, while bad actions have as their result rebirth as an animal, a ghost, or worst of all, in hell. In the Buddhist hell one is thus punished by the evil actions themselves, not by some sort of divine justice. Although life in hell is not eternal in Buddhism, it can still last for an enormous time span until the bad actions have been atoned for and one is reborn to a happier state of existence. Thus hell plays a great part in the Buddhist system of teachings, and it is a favourite topic in the monastic rules as well as in the narrative literature of the Jātakas , the subject of which is the Buddha's earlier lives. Hell is discussed as a topic already in the Kathāvatthu , the first scholarly treatise of Buddhism with a named author, datable between 250 and 100 BC. The discussion in the Kathāvatthu represents what may be seen as a fully developed conception of hell, and thus the Buddhist hell as described by its earliest canonical literature predates the appearance of the idea in most, if not all other religious traditions.

PUBLISHING PATTERNS IN SPECIALIST ACCOUNTING HISTORY JOURNALS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, 1996–1999

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garry D. Carnegie ◽  
Brad N. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
English Language ◽  
Time Span ◽  
International Accounting ◽  
Accounting History ◽  
Classification Framework ◽  
International Publishing ◽  
The Subject

While accounting researchers have explored international publishing patterns in the accounting literature generally, little is known about recent contributions to the specialist international accounting history journals. Specifically, this study surveys publishing patterns in the three specialist, internationally refereed, accounting history journals in the English language during the period 1996 to 1999. The survey covers 149 contributions in total and provides empirical evidence on the location of their authors, the subject country or region in each investigation, and the time span of each study. It also classifies the literature examined based on the literature classification framework provided by Carnegie and Napier [1996].

scholarly journals The Immense House of Postcards

1970 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-71
Author(s):  
Hanoch Ben-Pazi
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Way Of Thinking

The subject of tradition engaged both Emmanuel Lévinas and Jacques Derrida in many of their writings, which explore both the philosophical and cultural significance of tradition and the particular significance of the latter in a specifically Jewish context. Lévinas devoted a few of his Talmudic essays to the subject, and Derrida addressed the issue from the perspective of different philosophical and religious traditions. This article uses the writings of these two thinkers to propose a new way of thinking about the idea of tradition. At the core of its inquiry lie the paradigm of the letter and the use of this metaphor as a means of describing the concept of tradition. Using the phenomenon of the letter as a vantage point for considering tradition raises important points of discussion, due to both the letter’s nature as a text that is sent and the manifest and hidden elements it contains. The focus of this essay is the phenomenon of textual tradition, which encompasses different traditions of reading and interpreting texts and a grasp of the horizon of understanding opened up in relation to the text through its many different interpretations. The attention paid here to the actions of individuals serves to highlight the importance of the interpersonal realm and of ethical thought.

Interlude: Helium, Argon, and Creationism

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Time Span ◽  
The Other ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
Fort Lauderdale ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Creation Science ◽  
Strict Interpretation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Creationism ◽  
The Subject

Henry M. Morris, widely regarded as the founder of the modern creationist movement, died February 25, 2006, at the age of eighty-seven. His 1961 book The Genesis Flood, subtitled, The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications, was a cornerstone of the movement. Many more books followed, including Scientific Creationism; What Is Creation Science?; Men of Science; Men of God; History of Modern Creationism; The Long War Against God; and Biblical Creationism. In 1970 he founded the Institute for Creation Research, which continues to be a leading creationist force, now headed by his sons, John and Henry III. In 1982 I debated the subject with him at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale in front of a sellout crowd of several thousand. He had emphasized in our initial contacts that the debate would be based on science, not religion, but when he opened his remarks with this same statement and the audience responded with loud cries of “Amen!” and “Praise Jesus!” I knew I was in for a long night. Both of us steered away from the biological arguments, I because I’m not a biologist and he presumably because the Biblical side of that is so evidently silly—if he had tried to describe how Noah brought two mosquitoes or two fleas aboard he might have got away with it, but the whole panoply of billions of species of submicroscopic creatures was obviously a problem. Instead he concentrated on the physical side, in particular on the age of the earth, and that was fine with me. As noted in the previous chapters, the earth’s age is central to Darwin’s argument. A strict interpretation of the Bible gives a limit of thousands of years, which is clearly not enough time for evolution to take place. Radioactive dating, on the other hand, gives Darwin his needed time span of billions of years, and so a cornerstone of the creationist argument is its necessary destruction. Morris was a wonderful motivational speaker, and spent a long introduction wandering through the Bible to show how wonderfully reasonable it is.

A discussion on ship technology in the 1980s - A forward view of British shipping

1972 ◽  
Vol 273 (1231) ◽  
pp. 5-11
Keyword(s):  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Great Part ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Middle Part ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Capital Intensive ◽  
Economic Considerations

The author’s theme is that the forward view of British shipping over the time span being considered will be to a large extent a view of existing ships. The industry is too capital intensive, too highly geared and operates at too low a level of profitability to admit of a very rapid change. Developments in the future must be based on the profitability of the present. It must be anticipated that in the early part of the period considered, a great part of the developments will be concentrated on improving the efficiency of the existing industry. Future developments will be dictated by techno-economic considerations. It is likely to be the middle 1980s before the scene is substantially changed by nuclear power and fluidics. A major technical development of the middle part of the period will be the growth of a fleet of liquid gas carriers for which gas turbines will provide the main propulsion system.

Religious Traditions in Politics: Confucianism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youngmin Kim ◽  
Se-Hyun Kim ◽  
Ji Hye Song
Keyword(s):  
Chinese History ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Aspects

Because of the missionary activities of Jesuits in late imperial China and the world religions paradigm that emerged in the late 19th century, scholars tend to view Confucianism as a world religion. However, Confucianism does not fit into disciplinary boxes neatly. Accordingly, Confucian religiosity has been the subject of much debate among scholars. The answer depends largely upon how one defines religion and Confucianism. However, Confucianism and religion are not self-evident categories, but historically conditioned entities. Central to the theoretical discussion of Confucian religiosity has been the idea of transcendence. To many, Confucianism does not seem a type of religion because it does not put God at the center of attention. To others, Confucianism upholds immanent transcendence as its ideal, which does not impose an other-worldly standard but instead suggests human perfectibility. By invoking the notion of immanent transcendence, scholars caution us not to take European Christianity for granted and not to close our eyes to the array of alternative forms of religion. In addition to this theoretical debate, there have been other types of study on religious aspects of Confucianism. Anthropologists and historians have been studying practices of Confucian religious rituals in Chinese history. Rituals were a powerful method that rulers, throughout the dynasties, have employed to legitimize their rule. As with other rituals, imperial authorities patronized various rituals in the hope of attaining the support of their subjects. However, from its inception, Confucian rituals became complex interpretive arenas in which various social actors disputed, accommodated, negotiated, and rearticulated the Confucian orthodoxy according to their interests. Throughout the 20th century, mainland Chinese politicians and intellectuals often stigmatized Confucianism as the cause of China’s downfall. However, Confucianism, which had been regarded as only a hindrance by the Communists, currently appears to be a resource with which to remake China.

scholarly journals A Vase Fragment from Naukratis

1910 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. L. Lorimer
Keyword(s):  
Great Part ◽  
Black Paint ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Considerable Size

The two vase fragments reproduced in the accompanying illustration were among those brought by Mr. Hogarth from Naukratis in 1903, and are now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. The subject is painted in black silhouette, no other colour occurring in the fragment of the scene which remains: incised lines are used, not only for the inner markings, but for a great part of the outlines. Immediately below the design are two bands of purple: below these again the vase, which was of considerable size, was covered with black paint. The execution is careless, the paint of the design being very unevenly applied.

Life, Movement, and Desire

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renaud Barbaras
Keyword(s):  
Final Analysis ◽  
Vital Activity ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Satisfaction Of Needs ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Living Being ◽  
Life Movement

AbstractIn French, the verb "to live" designates both being alive and the experience of something. This ambiguity has a philosophical meaning. The task of a phenomenology of life is to describe an originary sense of living from which the very distinction between life in the intransitive sense and life in the transitive, or intentional, sense proceeds. Hans Jonas is one of those rare authors who has tried to give an account of the specificity of life instead of reducing life to categories that are foreign to it. However, the concept of metabolism, by which Jonas characterizes vital activity, attests to a presupposition as to life: life is conceived as self-preservation, that is, as negation of death, in such a way that life is, in the end, not thought on the basis of itself. The aim of this article is to show that life as such must be understood as movement in a radicalized sense, in which the living being is no more the subject than the product. All living beings are in effect characterized by a movement, which nothing can cause to cease, a movement that largely exceeds what is required by the satisfaction of needs and that, because of this, bears witness to an essential incompleteness. This incompleteness reveals that life is originarily bound to a world. Because the world to which the living being relates is essentially non-totalizable and unpresentable, living movement can not essentially complete itself. Thus, in the final analysis, life must be defined as desire, and in virtue of this view, life does not tend toward self-preservation, as we have almost always thought, but toward the manifestation of the world.

Der strībhedavarana-khaa in der Padumāvatī des Malik Muammad Jāyasī

1975 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-221
Author(s):  
Dieter B. Kapp
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
Sanskrit Literature ◽  
Literary Source ◽  
Erotic Literature ◽  
Narrative Literature ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Individual Interpretation

AbstractThe present article is concerned with “the chapter of the description of the [four] categories of women”, the strībhedavarana-khaa, which comprises the stanzas 463–467 of the great romantic poem Padumāvatī. It was composed ca. 1540 A.D. by the Muslim poet Malik Muammad Jāyasī, the most significant representative of the ūfī poets of Oudh, in Old Avadhi, the language of his native country.This study opens with a general introduction about the author and his chef-d'œuvre, which also gives the contents of the epic. The subject dealt with here is introduced by a short synopsis on the tradition of the description of the four categories of women, i.e. padminī, citriī, śakhinī, and hastinī, in Sanskrit erotic literature. Text and translation of the strībhedavarana-khaa, together with exhaustive notes, form the greater part of this article. The notes which appear after the translation of each verse, aim mainly at comparing Jāyasī's conception of the four categories of women with those held by authors of Sanskrit texts on this subject. For purpose of comparison, more than ten Sanskrit texts, beginning with Kokkoka's Ratirahasya, which was composed before 1200 A.D., have been cited. Besides, various quotations both from Sanskrit literature and from Arabic narrative literature have been given as illustrative examples, particularly in those cases, where no parallels for specific details in Jāyasī's description could be found in the Sanskrit texts referred to.The comparison of Jāyasī's conception of the four categories of women with those held by Kokkoka and his epigones, points to the conclusion that probably Jāyasī has not used any definite literary source for writing this particular chapter, but rather has relied upon possibly wide-spread popular traditions of this system of classification of women.Two conspicuous peculiarities in Jāyasī's very detailed description which are worthy of special note, have been discussed at the conclusion of the introductory remarks. The first is the “confusion” of the termini sakhinī and sighinī, that has been imputed to the poet by several editors of his œuvre; from my point of view, however, this “confusion” was fully intended by the author. The second peculiarity is Jāyasī's apparently individual interpretation of the so-called “sixteen śgāras”, i.e. “methods of decoration of the body”, which combined with the “twelve ābharaas”, i.e. “ornaments”, are generally known as the complete ornamentation of woman. According to Jāyasī, the “sixteen śgāras” are the “sixteen physical refinements”, divided into four groups: (1) four parts of the body (in the widest sense of the word) having “longness”, i.e. hair, fingers, eyes, neck, (2) four having “shortness”, i.e. teeth, breasts, forehead, navel, (3) four having “broadness”, i.e. cheeks, buttocks, arms, calves, and (4) four having “slenderness”, i.e. nose, waist, belly, lips.

scholarly journals I. On the present position of the question of the sources of the nitrogen of vegetation, with some new results, and preliminary notice of new lines of investigation

1889 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 1-107 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Great Part ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Present Position ◽  
Combined Nitrogen ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Micro Organisms

A great part of this paper was written in the spring of 1886, but its completion was unavoidably delayed. This has, however, not been altogether without advantage. Thus, in the first place, at the Naturforscher-Versammlung , held in Berlin, in September, 1886, the greater part of the sittings of two days was devoted, in the Section of Landwirthschaftliches Versuchs- Wesen , to the discussion of the subject from various points of view, one of ourselves taking part; and as it seemed desirable that the results and conclusions then brought forward by others should be considered, we have waited for the publication of the exact figures in some cases. Again, since the Berlin meeting, M. Berthelot has published some further results, to which reference should be made. And lastly, we are now enabled to give further new results of our own. In Part 2 of the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1861, a paper was given, by ourselves and the late Dr. Pugh, “ On the Sources of the Nitrogen of Vegetation, with special reference to the question whether plants assimilate free or uncombined Nitrogen .” Since that time, the question of the sources of the nitrogen of vegetation has continued to be the subject of much discussion, and also of much experimental enquiry, both at Rothamsted and elsewhere. Until quite recently, the controversy has chiefly been as to whether plants directly assimilate the free nitrogen of the atmosphere; but, during the last few years, the discussion has assumed a somewhat different aspect. The question still is whether the free nitrogen of the air is an important source of the nitrogen of vegetation; but whilst few now adhere to the view that the higher chlorophyllous plants directly assimilate free nitrogen, it is, nevertheless, assumed to be brought under contribution in various ways—coming into combination within the soil, under the influence of electricity, or of micro-organisms, or of other low forms, and so indirectly serving as an important source of the nitrogen of plants of a higher order. Several of the more important of the investigations in the lines here indicated seem to have been instigated by the assumption that compensation must be found for the losses of combined nitrogen which the soil sustains by the removal of crops, and also for the losses which result from the liberation of nitrogen from its combinations under various circumstances.

Visions of the Rebels: A Study of 1857 in Bundelkhand

1993 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tapti Roy
Keyword(s):  
Linear Order ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Early English

The available literature on the uprising of 1857 is fairly voluminous. Successive generations of historians have studied the subject in its varied aspects. Their concern, however, quite often lay with long-term political issues, with questions of the growth of the colonial state, of nationalism, of the unity and integrity of the country. These problems were made central to the study of the rebellion not because they were of any relevance to the rebels but because contending imperialist and nationalist historians were seeking to accommodate the event in a longer time span of history.The rebellion of 1857 was thereby assimilated to a linear order related to a context that largely lay outside of the occurrence itself. To most early English writers the mutiny marked the watershed between Company rule and Crown rule, an interlude in the transition to a better imperial system. For Indian writers it was the beginning of India's struggle for national independence

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