The Indian Invasion of Alexander and the Emergence of Hybrid Cultures

2021 ◽  
pp. 037698362110096
Author(s):  
Chandima S. M. Wickramasinghe
Keyword(s):  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Achaemenid Empire ◽  
Return Home ◽  
Cultural Features

Alexander the Great usurped the Achaemenid Empire in 331 bc, captured Swat and Punjab in 327 bc, and subdued the region to the west of the Indus and fought with Porus at the Hydaspes in 326 bc. But he was forced to return home when the army refused to proceed. Some of his soldiers remained in India and its periphery while some joined Alexander in his homeward journey. When Alexander died in 323 bc his successors ( diodochoi) fought to divide the empire among themselves and established separate kingdoms. Though Alexander the Great and related matters were well expounded by scholars the hybrid communities that emerged or revived as a result of Alexander’s Indian invasions have attracted less or no attention. Accordingly, the present study intends to examine contribution of Alexander’s Indian invasion to the emergence of Greco-Indian hybrid communities in India and how Hellenic or Greek cultural features blended with the Indian culture through numismatic, epigraphic, architectural and any other archaeological evidence. This will also enable us to observe the hybridity that resulted from Alexander’s Indian invasion to understand the reception the Greeks received from the locals and the survival strategies of Greeks in these remote lands.

scholarly journals A New Interpretation of the Edicts of Aśoka from Kandahar

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Maniscalco
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
The West ◽  
Achaemenid Empire ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
New Interpretation

From Alexandria of Arachosia, present-day Kandahar, we have two edicts in Greek, issued by the sovereign Maurya Aśoka (c. 270-230 BC). Arachosia, the ancient Eastern satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire – corresponding to present-day southeastern Afghanistan – had long seen the meeting of the Iranian world to the west and the Indian world to the east. As from the end of the fourth century BC, after the conquest by Alexander the Great and the occupation of the eastern dominions of the Empire by Seleucus Nicator, it was to see a conspicuous Greek presence, strikingly attested by the epigraphs of Aśoka. The first edict – discovered in 1957 – is in two languages, Greek and Aramaic, while the second – discovered in 1963 – is in Greek alone. On the basis of texts from the court of Maurya of Pāṭaliputra, both of them constitute summaries of and propaganda for the conversion and moral principles inspiring Aśoka, subsequent to his bloody conquest of Kaliṅga. Our aim here is to take stock of certain issues, proposing a new completion for the opening lacuna in the Greek section of the bilingual epigraph, and casting doubt anew on the originality of the Greek texts, considering the attribution of the region to Indian, rather than Seleucid rule after the pact between Seleucus Nicator and Candragupta Maurya, Aśoka’s grandfather (c. 305 BC).

Our Most Troubling Madness

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Defeat ◽  
Social World ◽  
Epidemiological Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Brain Alteration ◽  
Benign Course ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
The Way

This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.

Navarātra: The Festival of the Nine Nights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bihani Sarkar
Keyword(s):  
Eastern India ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Central Object ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Secular Power

Fundamental in making the myth of civilization meaningful in Indian culture was the performance of the Navarātra, the festival of the Nine Nights, which was intertwined with Durgā's cult. This final chapter deals with how the cult functioned in creating the spectacle of ‘public religion’ through a reconstruction of this ritual in which the goddess was worshipped by a ruler in the month of Āśvina. A detailed exposition of the modus operandi of the Nine Nights shows us how the religion of the goddess was spectacularly brought to life in an event of grand theatre and solemnized before its participants, the king and the entire community. The development of the Nine Nights from a fringe, Vaiṣṇava ceremony in the month of Kṛṣṇa's birth under the Guptas, to a ritual supplanting the established autumnal Brahmanical ceremonies of kingship and finally into a crucial rite in Indian culture for consolidating royal power, formed a crucial motivation for the expansion of Durgā's cult. The chapter isolates and analyzes in depth the principal early traditions of the Navarātra in East India and in the Deccan by an assessment of the available ritual descriptions and prescriptions in Sanskrit and eye-witness sources from a later period, used to fill in the gaps in the earlier sources. The most elaborate description of a court-sponsored rite emerges from the Kārṇāṭa and Oinwar courts of Mithilā, which embody what appears to be a ritual that had matured a good few centuries earlier before it was recorded in official literature. Among these the account of the Oinwars by the Maithila paṇḍita Vidyāpati is the most extensive treatment of the goddess's autumnal worship by a king, and attained great renown among the learned at the time as an authoritative source. His description portrays a spectacular court ceremony, involving pomp and pageantry, in which horses and weapons were worshipped, the king was anointed, and the goddess propitiated as the central symbol of royal power in various substrates over the course of the Nine Nights. Vidyapati's work also reveals the marked impact of Tantricism on the character of the rite, which employed Śākta mantras and propitiated autonomous, ferocious forms of the goddess associated with the occult, particularly on the penultimate days. Maturing in eastern India, the goddess's Navarātra ceremony was proselytized by the smartas further to the west and percolated into the Deccan, where, from around the 12th century, it attained an independent southern character. Whereas the eastern rite focused on the goddess as the central object of devotion, the southern rite focused on the symbolism of the king, attaining its most distinctive and lavish manifestation in the kingdom of Vijayanagara. Throughout this development, the Navarātra remained intimately associated with the theme of dispelling calamities, thereby augmenting secular power in the world, sustaining the power of the ruler and granting political might and health to a community. It remained from its ancient core a ritual of dealing with and averting crises performed collectively by a polis. Such remains its character even today.

Ramakrishna Movement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas L. Bryson
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
Christian Missions ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Spiritual Path ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Christian Missionary ◽  
Swami Vivekananda

Although the Ramakrishna Movement was born in Bengal and influenced by Christian missionary activity and Western Orientalism, its understanding of Hinduism has become the standard for modern educated Indians. Drawing on the spiritual inspiration of its guru, Sri Ramakrishna (1836–86), and the dynamic preaching of his main disciple, Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), the Ramakrishna Order has founded centres throughout India and the West. Calling his system ‘Practical Vedānta’, Vivekananda laid claim to the classical Advaita Vedānta associated with Śaṅkara. Unlike Śaṅkara, though, Vivekananda elevated selfless social work to a spiritual path equal in value to meditation, devotion and gnosis. The swamis of the order combine traditional Hindu religious practice with the administration of educational and medical institutions on the model of Christian missions. Vivekananda’s vision of Indian culture as united and renewed by his humanistic Hinduism has inspired other gurus as well as Hindu nationalists.

“They Wandered in the Deserts and Mountains, and Caves and Holes in the Ground”

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-471
Author(s):  
Elisabeth R. O'Connell
Keyword(s):  
Flood Plain ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
The West ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Literary Representation

This contribution examines how models of exile were adopted and adapted in non-Chalcedonian communities following the establishment of a parallel Severan episcopal hierarchy under Archbishop Peter IV of Alexandria (576–577) and the consolidation of the Severan non-Chalcedonian church under his successor Damian (578–c. 607). Peter's predecessor Theodosius spent most of his long episcopacy (536–566) exiled in Constantinople, where he died, and Peter himself contended with three rivals to the patriarchate of Alexandria. Drawing on literary, documentary, and archaeological sources, I explore how the memory of non-Chalcedonian heroes was mobilized partly in order to validate the uncomfortable truth that members of the new network of bishops did not always live in their capitals, but in local monasteries, just as Peter and Damian did not live in Alexandria, but in the Enaton, nine miles to the west. After a brief survey of the role of exile in the Alexandrian Church, I concentrate on the literary representation of the appropriate places for exile in monastic literature, in particular the identification of the “deserts” and “mountains,” “caves” and “holes” of the wandering Hebrews (Heb 11.38) with the monastic landscape of Egypt in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. At this time, monastic habitation of natural caves, gallery quarries, and rock-cut tombs on the desert escarpment above the Nile Valley flood plain flourished. Finally, I survey the archaeological evidence of one region where bishops appointed by Damian settled, and how they put their models of exile into practice.

scholarly journals The social and ritual context of horizon astronomical observations at Chankillo

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (S278) ◽  
pp. 144-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iván Ghezzi ◽  
Clive L. N. Ruggles
Keyword(s):  
Solar Observation ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The West ◽  
Native Form ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Astronomical Observations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ritual Context

AbstractThe authors have shown previously that, as viewed from an evident observing point to the west, and a plausible observing point to the east, the Thirteen Towers of Chankillo formed an artificial ‘toothed’ horizon that spanned the annual rising and setting arcs of the sun and provided a means to identify each day in the seasonal year by observing the position of sunrise or sunset against them. The Thirteen Towers thus constitute a unique solar observation device that is still functioning, and a remarkable example of a native form of landscape timekeeping that preceded similar facilities in imperial Cusco by almost two millennia. Yet the social, political, and ritual contexts in which Chankillo's astronomical alignments operated deserve further exploration. In this paper, we present new archaeoastronomical evidence that not only clarifies some aspects of the solar observation device but suggests a wider range of alignments visible from more publicly accessible parts of the ceremonial complex, and also suggests a possible interest in marking lunar alignments as well as solar ones. We also bring together archaeological evidence to suggest that the society that built Chankillo was differentiated. The Thirteen Towers may have served to regulate the calendar, solar and ritual, while the solar cult centred on them may have lent legitimacy and authority to a rising warrior elite through ceremony in an impressive sacred setting that brought society together while reproducing its growing inequality.

scholarly journals The Women's Cultural and Social Society (WCSS) : Its role in shaping women's political participation in Kuwait (1963-2010)

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Marzouqah Q. Alazmi
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Participation Of Women ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
Feminist Organization ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
Women's Political Participation

Feminism and women's rights movements are often seen as concepts and activities that originated within the West. As it is important to examine sociological concepts where they occur, this study reviews these concepts within a particular culture and social context: that of the Kuwaiti society. Specific sociological and cultural features, which are important in shaping the petition for political participation of women in Kuwait are identified and examined. The focus of this dissertation is to understand the role and impact of one organization, the Women's Cultural and Social Society (WCSS), in the struggle to bring about women's political participation in Kuwait. The main strategies and methods used by the WCSS between 1960 and 2010 are emphasized. Data sources include interviews with members and leaders of the WCSS, members of the general population primary documents along with secondary (historical) documents and observations of activities organized by the WCSS. The findings of the study are: the WCSS is perceived as a liberal feminist organization in Kuwait and has an orientation that is quite different from that of the more conservative Islamist or Tribalist associations. The study also identified the various strategies and methods used by the WCSS in its drive to obtain political participation for women. Its strategies and methods changed over time due to specific social and political events occurring in the country. Finally, WCSS members and leaders felt the organization did have a significant impact over the period under discussion, but members of the general population felt that the organization had minimum impact.

scholarly journals The ‘Classics’ in India: Unseen Presence, Cloaked Authority

2020 ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Harish Trivedi
Keyword(s):  
Civil Servants ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
The West ◽  
Classical Education ◽  
Creative Writers ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Pax Romana

The classics were taught not only in the West but also all over the colonised world –except in India, probably because India was acknowledged to have foundational classics of its own written in a language which was proclaimed by Western scholars to be fully a match of Greek and Latin. However, an earlier connection between Greece and India that began in 326 BCE with the aborted attempt by Alexander the Great to conquer India left enduring cultural traces which have been explored by creative writers and scholars alike. In the hey-day of British rule in India, the British governors and civil servants, who were themselves steeped in classical education, often fashioned themselves on the model of Pax Romana, so that the absence in India of a direct classical education was still not exempt from a pervasive classical penumbra.

4 Cultural Features

1970 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 16-69
Author(s):  
Lewis R. Binford ◽  
Sally R. Binford ◽  
Robert Whallon ◽  
Margaret Ann Hardin
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Social Unit ◽  
Temporal Differences ◽  
Field Season ◽  
Recovered Sample ◽  
Recovery Program ◽  
Cultural Features

It should be pointed out that, in general, cultural features are types of facilities representing a major investment of a social unit and as such are extremely important indicators of the nature of the activities conducted at a given location. For this reason we planned our recovery program so as to obtain as much information about cultural features as possible. The following analysis has been conducted with the aim of maximizing information on functional and temporal differences between the formal variants of the recovered sample.One of the most significant aspects of the 1963 field season in the Carlyle Reservoir was the discovery of a housetype previously unknown in the Middlewest. There were four such structures located in the southernmost end of the West Field of Hatchery site. They were “keyhole” in shape, and consisted of a round, semi-subterranean floor and an extension, subrectangular in shape, which angled off toward the east-southeast.A detailed description of the structures follows. The description will in turn be followed by a comparison between and an interpretation of the four structures. The order of description does not proceed on the basis of feature numbers or inferred chronology of occupancy. The descriptions follow the order of completeness of information, beginning with the structure about which the most data was obtained and ending with the least well known.

Cognitive Metaphor Theory Integrated into Comparative Theology

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-183
Author(s):  
Yesudasan Remias
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Metaphor Theory

Abstract The emergence of the new comparative theology in the west has greatly benefitted from Indian Vedic texts and related ones. Despite their extensive use for western theological reflection, comparative theology, however, has not come to the limelight in India, since most of the western initiatives have been perceived to be camouflaged missionary efforts. This paper proposes the cognitive metaphor theory as a fitting supplement to comparative theology. I argue that combining both has much to offer to study, learn, and relate religions in the multi-religiously coexisting context of India. I explore its possibilities and challenges and address how new comparative theology stays distinct from its nineteenth-century efforts in terms of bridging religious traditions by learning from them. This paper draws much from my own experiences, insights, and studies as a native of Indian culture, brought up in Christian tradition. My studies and researches are focused on comparative theology developed through the lens of cognitive metaphor theory.

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