Visualising the Rāmayāṇa: Power, Redemption and Emotion in Early Narrative Sculptures (c. Fifth to Sixth Centuries CE)

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-123
Author(s):  
Seema Bawa
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
North India ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Deviant Behaviour ◽  
Visual Discourse ◽  
Emotional Landscape

This article seeks to explore the images based on the Rāmayāna tradition within archaeological, cultural and literary contexts in late fifth and early sixth century ce. It uncovers elements of politico-religious agency, art and historical knowledge. Narrative panels, spatially located largely in central and north India, narrativise the episodes set in the forest represented in the Aranya and Kiskindhākānda. Evolution of narrative complexities through placement, composition and representational devices in terracotta and stone relief sculptures at sites such as Nachna Kuthara and Deogarh is traced. Rāma’s idealised character, expressed through renunciation, benevolence, ameliorative power, authority and dharma, emerges within the physical and emotional landscape of Rāmayāna imagery. Ideal and deviant behaviour is represented through narratives based on Ahalya, Anusuyā, Śūrpanakhā, Vālin and such characters. The construction of the ‘other’ in form of monkeys and demons, vānaras and rāksasas, in the visual discourse, and the fascination with devotion, romance and heroism that is projected through these is seen as a thread that runs through the Rāmayāna narratives.

Milesian Measures: Time, Space, and Matter

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. White
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Complementary Problems

Any attempt to trace the origin of Greek philosophy faces two complementary problems. One is the fact that evidence for the early philosophers is woefully meager. The other problem raises a question of what is to be counted as philosophy. Yet neither problem is insuperable. This article proposes to reorient the search for origins in two ways, corresponding to these two problems. First, rather than trying to reconstruct vanished work directly, this article focuses on a crucial stage in its ancient reception, in particular, the efforts by Aristotle and his colleagues in the latter half of the fourth century to collect, analyze, and assess the evidence then available for earlier attempts to understand the natural world. The other shift in focus this article makes is from philosophy to science; or rather, it focuses on evidence for the interplay between observation, measurement, and explanation in the work of three sixth-century Milesians.

scholarly journals Hiketeia

1973 ◽  
Vol 93 ◽  
pp. 74-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gould
Keyword(s):  
Dominant Role ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Working Out

To Professor E. R. Dodds, through his edition of Euripides'Bacchaeand again inThe Greeks and the Irrational, we owe an awareness of new possibilities in our understanding of Greek literature and of the world that produced it. No small part of that awareness was due to Professor Dodds' masterly and tactful use of comparative ethnographic material to throw light on the relation between literature and social institutions in ancient Greece. It is in the hope that something of my own debt to him may be conveyed that this paper is offered here, equally in gratitude, admiration and affection.The working out of the anger of Achilles in theIliadbegins with a great scene of divine supplication in which Thetis prevails upon Zeus to change the course of things before Troy in order to restore honour to Achilles; it ends with another, human act in which Priam supplicates Achilles to abandon his vengeful treatment of the dead body of Hector and restore it for a ransom. The first half of theOdysseyhinges about another supplication scene of crucial significance, Odysseus' supplication of Arete and Alkinoos on Scherie. Aeschylus and Euripides both wrote plays called simplySuppliants, and two cases of a breach of the rights of suppliants, the cases of the coup of Kylon and that of Pausanias, the one dating from the mid-sixth century, the other from around 470 B.C. or soon after, played a dominant role in the diplomatic propaganda of the Spartans and Athenians on the eve of the Peloponnesian War.

Premchand, nationalism and civil resistance in colonial North India

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-194
Author(s):  
Shailendra Kumar Singh
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Duty ◽  
North India ◽  
Politics Of Representation ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

The theme of nationalism in the works of Premchand, the pre-eminent Urdu–Hindi writer of the 1920s and 1930s, not only serves as an organising principle but also constitutes a protean and contentious field of study, which has resulted in conflicting interpretations. On the one hand, his nationalist narratives are categorically denounced for their apparent lack of radicalism, while on the other hand, they are unequivocally valorised for their so-called subversive content. Both these diametrically opposed schools of criticism, however, share a common lacuna, that is, both of them tend to conflate the writer’s nationalist narratives with his peasant discourse, thereby precluding the possibility of different themes yielding different interpretations. This article examines the theme of nationalism in Premchand’s works, in general, and the question of civil resistance in particular, in order to demonstrate how the writer’s politics of representation in his nationalist writings differs from the one that we find in his peasant narratives. It argues that as opposed to the authorial valorisation of the fictive peasant’s conformity to the exploitative status quo, civil resistance in Premchand’s nationalist narratives is not only necessary and desirable but also synonymous with dharma (moral duty) itself.

XII. —Hastivanj

1904 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-272
Author(s):  
H. Beveridge
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Mountain Ridge ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time

There is a mountain-ridge on the old route to Kamīr viâ Bhimbar and Bahrāmgala which bears the name of Hastīvanj. It is near the ‘Alīābād Serai, but is on the other, or right, bank of the Pīr Pantsāl stream, and is marked on Dr. Stein's map of Kamīr. See also his Rājataranginī, book i, pp. 44–5, and vol. ii, pp. 394–5. Dr. Stein visited the spot and identified it as the place where King Mihrakul, who lived in the first part of the sixth century, is said to have had a hundred elephants thrown over the cliffs. The circumstance is mentioned in the Āīn Akbarī, Jarrett, ii, 382, but both there and at p. 347 id. the place is called in the Persian text Hastī Watar or Vatar. The name Hastīvanj occurs apparently for the first time in Ḥaidar Malik's history of Kamīr, which was written during Jahāngīr's reign and about 1621. After that it occurs in a note to the oldest MS. of the Rājataranginī, written apparently about 1680, and in Narayan Kūl's history, which was written about 1710. Ḥaidar Malik mentions the place in his account of Mihrakul near the beginning of his book. He there describes the incident, and says that the place has since been called Hastīvanj , because hastī means elephant (fīl) in the Hindī (qu. Sanskrit) tongue, and vanj in the same language means ‘going’ (raftan). Narayan Kūl's explanation is similar, and is probably copied from Ḥaidar.

Aspects of the Vocabulary of Chariton of Aphrodisias

1991 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 484-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Consuelo Ruiz-Montero
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
The Third

There has been little research on the vocabulary of the Greek novelists. Gasda studied that of Chariton in the last century. He compared some of his terms with those of other authors and he concluded he should be placed in the sixth century A.D. Then Schmid considered that Chariton's language was not Atticist, and dated his novel in the second century or beginning of the third. In 1973 Chariton's language was studied by Papanikolaou. His research dealt above all with several syntactic aspects and the use of some vocabulary, which led him to conclude that this language was closer to the koiné than that of the other novelists. But Papanikolaou went further in his conclusions: finding no trace of Atticism in Chariton, he considered him a pre-Atticist writer and, using extra-linguistic data, such as the citing of the Seres, the Chinese (6.4.2), placed him in the second half of the first century B.C. This chronology has been accepted by some, but already Giangrande has observed that this lack of Atticisms could have been intentional, in which case that date would be questionable.

WEAVING WITH WORDS: VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS'S FIGURATIVE ACROSTICS ON THE HOLY CROSS

Traditio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 27-53
Author(s):  
BRIAN BRENNAN
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Circumstantial Evidence ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Public Display ◽  
New Interpretation

Within the collected works of Venantius Fortunatus, the sixth-century Latin poet who wrote verse for kings, royal officials, bishops, and nuns in Frankish Gaul, there are found three acrostic poems. One, on the themes of captivity and release (5.6) is accompanied by a prose letter (5.6a) in which the poet discusses his methods in composing this work, which he intended for decorative display on a wall. The other two acrostics are written on the theme of the Holy Cross (2.4; 2.5). This paper, which offers a new interpretation of the figurative acrostics on the Holy Cross, begins first by examining the compositional strategies discussed by Fortunatus in 5.6a and his use there of the extended metaphor of weaving for the composition of acrostic poetry. The paper then moves to a wider discussion of weaving as a metaphor in Fortunatus's poetry before exploring how the poet played with metaphors and materiality, particularly in those instances when he was writing verse intended to be actually placed on material objects or sent with them. It finally goes on to argue, on the basis of indications within the acrostic poems on the Holy Cross themselves and much circumstantial evidence external to them, that these poems (2.4; 2.5) were written for public display in the chapel of the Holy Cross convent at Poitiers. It argues that these acrostics were most probably intended as textile designs for church vela or “hangings.”

Music as a Form of Cultural Dialogue: The Case of Ravi Shankar

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajeev S. Patke
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
North India ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Musical Tradition ◽  
Musical Traditions ◽  
Cultural Dialogue ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Partial Success

The paper explores the notion of cultural dialogue in terms of a specific application: the contributions made by the sitar music of the Indian musician Ravi Shankar to the setting up of a conversation between the musical traditions of North India and their reception and partial assimilation by largely Western audiences. A survey of Shankar’s career, contextualized by a more general discussion of the problems and challenges encountered in bringing the musical conventions of one tradition into conversation with the musical expectations and assumptions of another culture leads to the conclusion that what Shankar achieved, over a lifetime of creativity and musical fusion, was a partial success: on the one hand, it disseminated the auratic aspects of this musical tradition to a wide global audience; but on the other, it did so at the cost measured by purists in terms of a simplification or dilution of the music as practised in its original cultural contexts.

Knossos 1951–61: Protogeometric and Geometric Pottery from the Town

1972 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 63-98
Author(s):  
J. N. Coldstream
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
Contemporary Architecture ◽  
The Town

This is the first of three articles dealing with the settlement pottery of post-Minoan Knossos, dating from the tenth to the second century B.C., and coming from the British School's excavations of 1951–61. The most prolific source of this pottery is the major excavation on both sides of the Royal Road, directed by M. S. F. Hood in 1957–61. Here the post-Minoan overlay was in places over five metres deep, and good house-deposits were recovered of the Protogeometric, late Classical, and Hellenistic periods; there is also an excellent well-deposit of late Archaic times. For the other periods, the site produced only thin and scrappy rubbish-deposits, not associated with any contemporary architecture, and therefore less well stratified. But many of the gaps in the Royal Road sequence are more effectively filled by a number of well-deposits from minor excavations on the periphery of the town. Consequently, with the sole exception of the sixth century B.C. (which is still very meagrely represented), it is now possible to get a reasonably clear picture of the domestic pottery at every stage in the life of Hellenic Knossos.

The Pervigilivm Veneris and the Tiberiani Amnis in Quatrains

1920 ◽  
Vol 14 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 173-185
Author(s):  
J. A. Fort
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Loeb Classical Library ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century

As is well known, this poem, which stood in the Anthologia Latina, is preserved in two MSS. only, the Salmasian (or S) and the Pithoean (or T), Nos. 10318 and 8071 in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; ‘the handwriting dates’ the former ‘as written at the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century; the other…is about two hundred years later in date. Modern scholars regard both MSS. as traceable to a common archetype, probably of the sixth century’ (Professor Mackail in Catullus and P.V., Loeb Classical Library). At first sight these MSS. seem quite untrust-worthy, for they differ from each other in more than one hundred words, while the scribe of S copied the refrain incorrectly twice, the scribe of T twice as often. Strangely enough, however, these variations are comparatively unimportant, for most of them disappear when the spelling of the two clerks is assimilated to some recognized usage. Each manuscript in turn corrects the other in many of these passages, and conjecture has successfully emended nearly all of the remainder—the variation S peruiclanda, T peruigila in v. 47 is perhaps the only passage of this kind which still causes anxiety. The grave corruptions of the text are found in passages in which the MSS. are in agreement; they agree exactly (I) in five lacunae, T having an additional one; (2) in two or more misplaced passages; (3) in the placing of the refrain, with all of which matters I deal below; they agree exactly in an error in the title ‘Peruirgilium’ for ‘Peruigilium,’ and in about twelve lines, of which vv. 51 and 79 have almost certainly been preserved in an incorrect form.

ARISTARCHUS’ WORK IN PROGRESS: WHAT DID ARISTONICUS AND DIDYMUS READ OF ARISTARCHUS?

2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 609-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Schironi
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Work In Progress ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
New System

As is well known, the work of Aristarchus on Homer is not preserved by direct tradition. We have instead many fragments preserved mainly in the Homeric scholia, the Byzantine Etymologica and the Homeric commentaries by Eustathius of Thessalonica. These fragments go back to the so-called Viermännerkommentar (abbreviated VMK), the ‘commentary of the four men’, a commentary that is dated to the fifth-sixth century c.e. and collects the works of Aristonicus, Didymus, Nicanor and Herodian. In the first century b.c.e. Aristonicus explained the meaning of Aristarchus’ critical signs in a treatise called Περὶ τῶν σημείων τῶν τῆς ᾿Ιλιάδος καὶ ᾿Οδυσσείας, while in the Περὶ τῆς ᾿Αρισταρχείου διορθώσεως Didymus studied Aristarchus’ Homeric recension. In the second century c.e. two more scholars, Herodian and Nicanor, dealt with Aristarchus while analysing questions of prosody in the Homeric language (Herodian) or the punctuation of the Homeric text (Nicanor). Not all of these four ‘men’ are equally important, however, as sources for Aristarchus. In fact, Herodian and Nicanor had aims that were quite independent of Aristarchus’ enterprise: the former was concerned with problems of prosody, accentuation and aspiration in Homer, whereas the latter had developed a new system of punctuation to elucidate the Homeric text from a syntactic point of view. Although both Herodian and Nicanor did take an interest in Aristarchus, their focus was thus different from that of their Alexandrian predecessor. The goal of Aristonicus and Didymus, on the other hand, was specifically to reconstruct Aristarchus’ work on Homer; it is for this reason that they are considered the most trustworthy witnesses for Aristarchus’ fragments.

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