Lecture 7 Dunhuang Studies and Oriental Studies in the West

2013 ◽  
pp. 205-225
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Vetokhov

In the chapels of a number of tombs in the Giza necropolis, both rock-cut and stone (mastaba), the false door – the main place of worship of the tomb – is sometimes not located on the west wall. Given that the tradition of placing the false door precisely on the western wall had deep roots for centuries, these cases raise a legitimate question about the reasons for such an anomaly. But the paucity of examples, both in Giza and in other necropolises, made it difficult to conduct a broad analysis of this phenomenon. This question has been repeatedly raised in the literature, but it is still debatable. And after the discovery of new examples at the site of the Russian Archaeological Mission at Giza of the Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS (RAMG), it became necessary to return to this problem to analyze it, to structure and summarize the early information, to try to understand the nature of the occurrence of such cases. A total of nine such cases are known in the Giza necropolis; all of them date from the time of the V–VI dynasties, when the necropolis is drastically compacted – and the tombs are occupied by any vacant space. It was not always possible to place false doors on the western wall of the chapels for each individual burial. As a result, sometimes the builders deliberately placed a false door not on the western wall but in the immediate vicinity of the burial to emphasise the connection between them.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Luluk Fikri Zuhriyah

<p>Islam has been an interesting object of study for both Muslims and non-Muslims over a long period of time. A number of methods and approaches have also been introduced. In due time, Islam is now no longer understood solely as a doctrine or a set of belief system. Nor is it interpreted merely as an historical process. Islam is a social system comprising of a complex web of human experience. Islam does not only consist of formal codes that individuals should look at and obey. It also contains some cultural, political and economic values. Islam is a civilization. Given the complex nature of Islam it is no longer possible to deal with it from a single point of view. An inter-disciplinary perspective is required.</p><p>In the West, social and humanities sciences have long been introduced in the study of religion; studies that put a stronger emphasis on what we currently know as the history of religion, psychology of religion, sociology of religion and so on. This kind of approach in turn, is also applied in the Western studies of the Eastern religions and communities.</p><p>Islam as a religion is also dealt with in this way in the West. It is treated as part of the oriental culture to the extent that—as Muhammad Abdul Raouf has correctly argued—Islamic studies became identical to the oriental studies. By all means, the West preceded the Muslims in studying Islam from modern perspectives; perspective that puts more emphasis on social, cultural, behavioral, political and economic aspects. Among the Western scholars that approach Islam from this angle is Charles Joseph Adams whose thought this research is interested to explore.</p>


2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Audrius Beinorius

Centre of Oriental Studies, Vilnius University The article deals with the main historical and cultural approaches of Europeans to Buddhism in various Asian areas. The intention of author is to turn to discussion of those peculiar forms in which the knowledge of Buddhism was presented. This study sets out its aim to explore the way of engagement of the West with the Buddhist tradition, emphasizing the early period of the encounter and those initial imaginative constructions and early discourses that shaped the nascency of the scholarly discipline. Conclusion is made that Buddhism has been represented in the Western imagination in a manner that reflects specifically Western concerns, interests, and aspirations. Europeans saw themselves as possessing the criteria upon which the judgement of the religious, social, and cultural value of Buddhism rests. Buddhism was constructed, essentialized and interpreted through Western images of the Oriental mind that provided ideological strategies and a hermeneutic filter.


2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (06) ◽  
pp. 129-140
Author(s):  
Nora REDJATI ◽  
Ameziane WASSILA

With th rise of the Western renaissance in the modern era and the subsequent advanced material civilization The intellectual struggle began between the West and the East, and Western intellectual production began to be concerned with Islam and Islamic heritage, And this production was found among the children of the Islamic world who are fascinated by this Western civilization One of the results of this civilization shock was that the Muslim modernists adopted the views of the Western Orientalists, and these oriental studies contributed to defining the positions of Muslim scholars, As some of them took a stance against the West, and some of them took this break with the Islamic heritage and adopted the positions of the West, And some of them revisited himself after this adoption and examined his assumptions with this thought, even if this examination was late, and this is the case of Muhammad Arkoun. The intellectual works of Muhammad Arkoun were known for their adoption of the approaches and axioms of Western thought, so that he called the group of his ideas what is known as criticism of the Islamic mind Considering that his modernist discourse is the intellectual alternative to the Orientalist discourse in Islamic thought, believing that his epistemological effort is an endeavor to enlighten Islamic thought, From this standpoint, the thought of Muhammad Arkoun faced a lot of criticism in the Islamic intellectual circles, and he was accused that his writings in their entirety are marketing the Orientalist discourse with a modernist vision, In contrast to this Islamic attack on Muhammad Arkoun, the reader may be surprised by his writings, especially the latter, when he finds him showing a kind of criticism of Orientalism, accusing him of shortcomings, and defaming him for the presence of the positivist and philological-linguistic approaches strongly in his studies, If we wish, we would say that Arkoun's recent books contain a desire to transcend the Orientalist discourse. This appears in his books such as: Islamic Thought, Criticism and Ijtihad, Towards a Comparative History of Monotheistic Religions, Islamic Thought, Scientific Reading, History of Arab and Islamic Thought... and other of his writings. Which makes a legitimate question about the nature of the relationship between Arkoun - as a model of the modernist school - with Orientalism. And about the real reasons that made him stand in a controversial position, Once, the Orientalist discourse adopts its evaluative approach and vision of the Islamic heritage, Once he criticizes him, accuses his approach of sterility, and blames him for failing to find solutions to the problems in which the Islamic world is stumbling.


2021 ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Artem Kobzev

The objective duality of the world, man and mankind should correspond to the pairing of Oriental studies and Western studies, however, science and pedagogy know only the first, or orientalistics. This monopoly was the result of the formation of the modern system of sciences in the field of the global domination of the West, representing the East as its opposite — the Non-West and / or interpreting interaction with it in value-asymmetric categories of culture and barbarism. The publication in 2006 of the Russian translation of E. Said&apos;s famous anti-Eastern book “Orientalism” and the scientific and educational reform of 2010-2013, provoked a discussion of Russian orientalists in the sense of the concepts of the East and the scientific status of Oriental studies as a complex and supra-branch discipline, which is either a syncretic underscience, or a synthetic superscience. Similar problems have been discussed in Russian Sinology since the 19th, since of all the highly developed cultures of the East, Chinese is the most syncretic, and the science about it is the most synthetic. In traditional China, there were no divisions customary for the West into philosophy and religion / theologians, philosophy and science, humanitarian and natural disciplines, fine and applied arts, etc. Russian Sinology, created at the beginning of the 18th century, corresponded to this specificity, simultaneously with “cutting a window to Europe” to address similar government requests. In the USSR, it was divided into classical Sinology, which was concentrated in Leningrad, with an emphasis on philology and wen-yan, and Soviet Sinology, which was concentrated in Moscow, with an emphasis on history, social studies, and bai-hua. As a result, it was possible to find the most complete reflection in accordance with the standards of classical sinology of the 6-volume encyclopedia “Spiritual Culture of China” (2006-2010). The results of this convergence were also recorded by the 10-volume “History of China from Ancient Times to the Beginning of the 21st Century”, which largely inherited Soviet Sinology (2013-2017). After analyzing these historical phenomena, the article describes the main achievements and problems of Russian Sinology over the past decade and the challenges it faces in the light of the modern rethinking of the scientific status of all oriental studies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Imam Turmudi

<p>This article explores the study of Islam by an orientalist, Bryan S. Turner. This study aimed to: <em>first</em>, to uncover the things that underlie the history of thought and movement of Orientalism. <em>Second</em>, to determine the thought Bryan S. Turner about Islam, which is specifically intended as a corrective to the thesis produced by Max Weber about his interpretation of Islam. The results of the study reveal that historically Orientalism, or the oriental studies movement emerged in the 18th century. This movement is often associated as a movement that pretend to control and weaken the East, especially Islam. It is not without basis, since the emergence of Orientalism has led to intellectual arrogance by claiming the West as a measure of civilization, because the East presented only in accordance with the construction used by the West.</p><p><strong><em> </em></strong></p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Orientalism, Orient, West, civilization.</p>


1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 65-74
Author(s):  
Klaus Karttunen

Of the five universities of Sweden in the 17th and 18th centuries, the history of Oriental studies has been often dealt with in the cases of Uppsala, Turku and Lund. While the University of Greifswald, though politically under Swedish rule (1648–1815), belongs more to the history of learning in Germany, it is my task here to give a short survey of the Oriental chair in Dorpat (now Tartu) and of studies connected with it. The University of Tartu (Dorpat) was founded in 1632 by Gustaf II Adold, and hence it was called the Academia Gustaviana. Its location near the frontier of ascendant Russia posed constant difficulties for the new university. After little more than twenty years it had to move to Tallinn (Reval) and soon afterwards to close its doors altogether (in 1665). In 1690 it was reopened, now as the Academia Gustavo-Carolina, but soon (in 1699) had to move to Pärnu on the west coast and after ten years once again, and this time permanently, closed its doors due to a new war.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
I. R. Nasyrov

The article provides a comprehensive picture of the state of research on the thought of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111), the greatest Islamic jurist, theologian and thinker, in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. The research is important because there is a widespread stereotypical view in the West and Russia that the decline of rationalism in the Muslim world and strengthening of Mysticism is due to al-Ghazali. The first part of the article traces down a number of research projects carried out during the aforementioned period, the dominant research trends and different approaches to al-Ghazali’s thought in general and certain his teachings. The author demonstrates that Soviet and Russian researchers have made a substantial progress in studying the intellectual legacy of al-Ghazali due to forsaking the one-sided approach that prevailed in Marxist Oriental studies during the Soviet era. According to their views, al-Ghazali developed a rationalistic trend of the Islamic Theology (Kalam) and Muslim Peripatetic Philosophy. Studies on al-Ghazali carried out in the late Soviet era and in Post-Soviet Russia will be analyzed in the second part of the paper.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document