scholarly journals THE WAY TO TIBET: RELIGIOUS SONGS OF THE KALMYKS AND THE REALITIES OF TRAVEL

Author(s):  
Эльза Петровна Бакаева

В статье анализируются калмыцкие народные песни о паломничестве в Тибет на примере текстов «Зу гидг һазр» ‘Страна, называемая Тибет’, «Алта гидг һазрас» ‘Из местности, называемой Алтай’. На основе сравнительного исследования разновременных записей песни «Зу гидг һазр» (1897 г., 1903 г., а также записи конца XX в.) и сопоставления с историческими данными о посольствах и паломничествах в Тибет и вариантами преданий о Джиджетен-ламе сделан вывод о том, что религиозная песня посвящена паломническому посольству хана Дондук-Даши (1755‒1757 гг.) и в ней отражены сведения о пути в Тибет через Монголию и Кукунор. Анализ песни «Алта гидг һазрас» и данных наиболее полного текста песни «Зу гидг һазр» в записи Г. Й. Рамстедта позволил сделать вывод о том, что в них отражены сведения о двух основных путях в Тибет. Архивные и литературные материалы о паломничествах в Тибет свидетельствуют, что в XVII в., когда территория формирующегося Калмыцкого ханства была подвижной, к святыням Лхасы, называвшейся калмыками «Зу», отправлялись по традиционному пути через территории расселения ойратов — «из местности, называемой Алтай». С начала XVIII в. по ряду причин путь в Тибет пролегал через Монголию и Кукунор. И лишь в начале XX в. вновь был освоен путь в Тибет, бывший традиционным для их предков, который теперь назывался «новым». The article analyzes the Kalmyk folk songs about the pilgrimage to Tibet through the example of the texts titled “Zu gidg gazr” (“The Country Called Tibet”), “Alta gidg gazras” (“From the Land Called Altai”). The comparative study of records of the song “Zu gidg gazr” of different times (1897, 1903, late 20th century) and insights into historical data and versions of legends about Jijeten Lama conclude that the religious song is dedicated to the pilgrimage embassy of Khan Donduk-Dashi (1755‒1757) and contains information about the way to Tibet through Mongolia and Kokonor. The analysis of the song “Alta gidg gazras” and the data of the most complete text of the song “Zu gidg gazr” recorded by G. J. Ramstedt makes it possible to conclude that those reflect information about two main routes to Tibet. Archival and literary materials about pilgrimages to Tibet indicate that in the 17th century when boundaries of the emerging Kalmyk Khanate were still mobile, routes to the shrines of Lhasa (Zu) went through the traditional territories of Oirat settlement ― “from the area called Altai”. From the beginning of the 18th century, for a number of reasons, the way to Tibet lay through Mongolia and Kokonor. Only at the beginning of the 20th century the path to Tibet which had been traditional for ancestors (now called the “new one”) was mastered again.

Author(s):  
Michael Stoeber

The comparative study of mysticism began in the mid-19th century, with the development of the modern meaning of the word, which had begun to be used as a substantive, with the classification of “mystics” in the 17th century. This differed from the traditional Greek Christian use of the adjective mystikos, to qualify rituals, scriptures, sacraments, and theology as “mystical” contexts of the human encounter with the Divine. This modern shift highlighted the personal experience of ultimate Reality, rather than the sociocultural context. Certain individuals claimed to encounter the Divine or spiritual realities more directly, separate from traditional mediums of religious experience. The study of this phenomenon tended in the early 20th century to focus on the psychology and the phenomenology of the personal experience, generally described as an altered state of consciousness with specific characteristics, processes, stages, effects, and stimulants. This emphasis on common features influenced the development of perennialist and traditionalist theorists, who saw evidence of the same experiential origin, fundamental principles, or epistemology among major world religions. Some essentialist views of mysticism argued that a pure consciousness-experience of undifferentiated unity or non-duality is the core feature of all mysticism, in contrast to other religious experiences. Reaction to these positions led to contextualist or constructivist views of mysticism, which presume the sociocultural character of mysticism. In its most extreme form, the contextualist perspective suggests that all mystical experiences among traditions are different, given diverse socio-religious categories that overdetermine the experience. In turn, some critical scholarship has proposed qualifications to contextualism within the context of a general acceptance of many of its tenets, even among many theorists with essentialist tendencies. Up to the late 20th century, much scholarship in the area tended to downplay the sociocultural features of mysticism, emphasizing the psychological dynamics and an individual, disembodied, and radically transcendent ideal. This brought into question the relationship of morality to mystical experience and raised concerns about the status of entheogens—the use of psychoactive drugs in religious contexts. Interest in the comparative study of mysticism has also extended into the area of neuroscience, where researchers explore electro-chemical brain states associated with mystical experience, in proposing evidence of a mystical neurological substrate. But the essentialist/contextualist debate also moved the comparative study of mysticism beyond issues of epistemology, consciousness-states, ontology, and cognitive neuroscience, broadening the field to include other aspects of religious experience. Some studies have brought feminist concerns to bear on the discussion, insofar as women’s mysticism has been overshadowed and even repressed by men, and was seen to preclude legitimate experiential possibilities of a more embodied character. Related scholarship in history and depth psychology has focused creatively on the nature and significance of erotic elements of mysticism in comparative studies, with special attention to associated physical phenomena and their transformative dynamics. Similarly, more embodied features of comparative mysticism are the subject of transpersonal psychology, which draws on many humanistic disciplines and supports participatory approaches to the field. Transpersonal psychology remains open to claims that the ego can be transcended in movements into higher states of being that ideally involve personal/spiritual enhancement and integration. Also, some more recent proponents of new comparative theology advocate methods that engage the scholar in specific beliefs or practices of another tradition, and include subsequent clarification and elaboration of one’s own perspective in light of such comparative study, in exploring phenomena related to comparative mystical experience.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-224
Author(s):  
Nikola Kosto Minov

The article summarizes the known data about the localization and numerical distribution of various Vlach groups in Macedonia in the 19th and 20th centuries. Each Vlach group’s (Moscopolitan; Grammoustian; Farsherot and Moglenite Vlachs) migrations are analyzed separately, following them from their starting points from which they ventured forth and dispersed all over Ottoman Macedonia at the end of the 18th century, all the way to their dwellings in late 20th century in North Macedonia. In the second part of the article we review the thorough, yet unofficial statistics of Gustav Weigand and Vasil Kanchov about the number of Vlachs in Ottoman Macedonia, as well as the number and territorial distribution of the Vlachs in Macedonia, as shown in the 1921 census in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Yugoslav census from 1931, the six censuses conducted in socialist Yugoslavia in 1948, 1953, 1961, 1971, 1981 and 1991, and the two censuses in the Republic of Macedonia from 1994 and 2002. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Sara Matrisciano ◽  
Franz Rainer

All major Romance languages have patterns of the type jaune paille for expressing shades of colour represented by some prototypical object. The first constituent of this pattern is a colour term, while the second one designates a prototypical representative of the colour shade. The present paper starts with a short discussion of the controversial grammatical status of this pattern and its constituents. Its main aim, however, concerns the origin and diffusion of this pattern. We have not found hard and fast evidence that Medieval Italian pigment compounds of the type verderame influenced the rise of the jaune paille pattern, which first appears in French in the 16th century. This pattern continued to be a minority solution during the 17th century, but established itself during the 18th century. In the 19th century, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese adopted the pattern jaune paille, while it did not reach Catalan and Romanian before the 20th century.


Author(s):  
Natalia A. Koshelyuk ◽  
◽  

Introduction. The article reviews background studies on the Mansi language and its dialects performed by European and Russian (Soviet) linguists. Goals. The paper seeks to provide a comprehensive historical description of Mansi language research. Methods. The descriptive and comparative-historical methods have been employed thereto. Results. The work arranges the studies chronologically — from earliest research activities to contemporary ones — highlighting most essential achievements. Mansi is one of the least studied languages with earliest written accounts dating to the 16th-17th centuries. The earliest Mansi dictionaries were compiled by explorers and missionaries (I. Kuroedov, S. Cherkalov, P. S. Pallas, etc.) in the 18th century. In the 19th century, the Mansi language officially became a subject of scientific research, and expeditions by Finnish and Hungarian linguists (Antal Reguly, August Engelbrekt Ahlqvist, Bernát Munkácsi, Artturi Kannisto) proved the first field studies. In the 20th century, quite a number of European scientists have contributed to Mansi language research, namely: W. Steinitz, L. Honti, K. F. Кarjalainen, M. Bakró-Nagy, K. Rédei, M. Szilasi, and others. In Russia, the first Mansi studies were initiated by Soviet scholars in the 1930s (V. Chernetsov, A. Balandin). Studies in spoken Mansi evolved into a national Cyrillic alphabet, and for the first time ever there were published comprehensive works dealing with Mansi studies, textbooks on Mansi phonetics, morphology, and grammar. Experimental phonetic explorations emerged in the mid-to-late 20th century resulting in new Mansi dictionaries (A. Sainakhova, T. FrankKamenetskaya, E. Rombandeeva, and others). Mansi studies in the 21st century in Russia and Europe have reached a brand new level: there appeared online research laboratories and linguistic platforms which make it possible to further investigate the Mansi language and verify up-to-date materials.


Author(s):  
Kambiz E. Maani

Despite our most impressive advances in science and technology, our prevailing worldview and the way we work and relate are deeply rooted in the thinking that emerged during the Renaissance of the 17th century. This thinking was influenced by the sciences of that era and, in particular, by Newtonian physics. Newton viewed the world as a machine that was created to serve its master—God (Ackoff, 1993). The machine metaphor and the associated mechanistic (positivist) worldview, which was later extended to the economy, the society, and the organization, has persisted until today and is evident in our thinking and vocabulary. The mechanistic view of the enterprise became less tenable in the 20th century, partly due to the emergence of the corporation and the increasing prominence of human relation issues in the workplace. As the futurist Alvin Toffler (1991) declared, “the Age of the Machine is screeching to a halt” (Toffler, 1991).


Author(s):  
Michael Griffin

The life and work of the Irish poet, playwright, essayist, historian, and novelist Oliver Goldsmith (b. 1728–d. 1774) had not received a tremendous amount of attention since the 1960s, a decade that saw a substantial burst of editorial and critical work, and, in particular, the publication of Arthur Friedman’s five-volume edition of the Collected Works (Goldsmith 1966, cited under Editions) and Roger Lonsdale’s edition of The Poems of Goldsmith, Gray and Collins (Goldsmith, et al. 1969, cited under Editions). A good deal of the critical scholarship that has emerged since then has been in dialogue with, or in response to, those editions and to two-book length works of criticism by Ricardo Quintana (Quintana 1967, cited under General Collections and Studies) and Robert H. Hopkins (Hopkins 1969, cited under General Collections and Studies), which argued for a greater appreciation of the ironic registers of Goldsmith’s work. Indeed, much Goldsmith criticism has focused on the question of whether he should be understood as a sentimentalist or as a satirist, since the oeuvre as a whole exists along a seam between the satirical tenor of his Augustan predecessors and the emerging sensibility of his literary milieu and an expanding middle-class audience. As such, Goldsmith’s writings are in many ways highly representative of his mid-18th-century contexts. The relative lack of sustained scholarly and critical work on Goldsmith since the 1960s is also partly attributable to his work being in some senses too various to accommodate in single thematic or generic studies: he moved across the modes of 18th-century writing with considerable ease and success. The eclectic nature of his oeuvre, and the variety of tones and registers he used in writing across the genres, has resulted in his being characterized in various, often-inconsistent ways. That said, clusters of essays and articles have appeared since the late 20th century that have illustrated the richness and instructive ambiguities of his writing and thinking. Also, his Irishness has been intermittently, and with varying degrees of insight or success, studied throughout the critical heritage as a contributing factor in his social and political worldview. In this article, items that Friedman acknowledged and incorporated into the editorial apparatus of his 1966 edition—including earlier scholarship on the history and sources of Goldsmith’s Greek, Roman, and English histories, the prefaces to which feature in Friedman’s work—are largely omitted. The emphasis here is primarily on the biographical tradition, on criticism and scholarship published after 1966, and within that period on the substantial bodies of criticism surrounding the major poetry and Goldsmith’s one novel.


Author(s):  
Norman Etherington

Christianity came very early to Africa, as attested by the Gospels. The agencies by which it spread across North Africa and into the Kingdom of Aksum remain largely unknown. Even after the rise of Islam cut communications between sub-Saharan Africa and the churches of Rome and Constantinople, it survived in the eastern Sudan kingdom of Nubia until the 15th century and never died in Ethiopia. The documentary history of organized missions begins with the Roman Catholic monastic orders founded in the 13th century. Their evangelical work in Africa was closely bound up with Portuguese colonialism, which both helped and hindered their operations. Organized European Protestant missions date from the 18th-century evangelical awakening and were much less creatures of states. Africa was a particular object of attention for Evangelicals opposed to slavery and the slave trade. Paradoxically this gave an impetus to colonizing ventures aimed at undercutting the moral and economic foundations of slavery in Africa. Disease proved to be a deadly obstacle to European- and American-born missionaries in tropical Africa, thus spurring projects for enrolling local agents who had acquired childhood immunity. Southern Africa below the Zambezi River attracted missionaries from many parts of Europe and North America because of the absence of the most fearsome diseases. However the turbulent politics of the region complicated their work by restricting their access to organized African kingdoms and chieftaincies. The prevalent mission model until the late 19th century was a station under the direction of a single European family whose religious and educational endeavors were directed at a small number of African residents. Catholic missions acquired new energy following the French Revolution, the old Portuguese system of partnership with the state was displaced by enthusiasm for independent operations under the authority of the Pope in Rome. Several new missionary orders were founded with a particular focus on Africa. Mission publications of the 19th and 20th centuries can convey a misleading impression that the key agents in the spread of African Christianity were foreign-born white males. Not only does this neglect the work of women as wives and teachers, but it diverts attention from the Africans who were everywhere the dominant force in the spread of modern Christianity. By the turn of the 20th century, evangelism had escaped the bounds of mission stations driven by African initiative and the appearance of so-called “faith missions” based on a model of itinerant preaching. African prophets and independent evangelists developed new forms of Christianity. Once dismissed as heretical or syncretic, they gradually came to be recognized as legitimate variants of the sort that have always accompanied the acculturation of religion in new environments. Decolonization caught most foreign mission operations unawares and required major changes, most notably in the recruitment of African clergy to the upper echelons of church hierarchies. By the late 20th century Africans emerged as an independent force in Christian missions, sending agents to other continents.


rahatulquloob ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2(2)) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Dr. Aziz ur Rehman Saifee ◽  
Dr. Muhammad Ishaq Alam ◽  
Prof. Dr. Ubaid Ahmed Khan

The present study sheds light on the disgrace of women over the centuries. The way this world has been treating and treats at present, women, and how different culture in context of religious has given the status is the focal points of this analysis. The present-day woman is not an embodiment of the slogans of liberty, equality and freedom. The present-day woman is what she was never before. The research investigates how this particular status has been a subject to the contrary practices of the above mentioned Slogans. Do Slogans embody the existence of women or they just create an allusion? The comparative study and analysis of women status in different religions’ and cultures pinpoints the actual physical mental, social and economic inequalities they have been suff-ering through. So the very idea of a liberated woman is the question the present study seeks to answer. Moreover, it explores what status Islam has given to women in real, and what misinterpretations are associate to their status. 


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Benno Alexander Blaschke

<p>In this study I aim to give an alternative approach to the way we theorise in the philosophy and comparative study of mysticism. Specifically, I aim to shift debate on the phenomenal nature of contemplative states of consciousness away from textual sources and towards reliable and descriptively rich first-person data originating in contemporary practices of lived traditions.  The heart of this dissertation lies in rich qualitative interview data obtained through recently developed second-person approaches in the science of consciousness. I conducted in-depth phenomenological interviews with 20 Centering Prayer teachers and practitioners. The interviews covered the larger trajectory of their contemplative paths and granular detail of the dynamics of recent seated prayer sessions. I aided my second-person method with a “radical participation” approach to fieldwork at St Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass. In this study I present nuanced phenomenological analyses of the first-person data regarding the beginning to intermediate stages of the Christian contemplative path, as outlined by the Centering Prayer tradition and described by Centering Prayer contemplatives.  My presentation of the phenomenology of Centering Prayer is guided by a synthetic map of Centering Prayer’s (Keating School) contemplative path and model of human consciousness, which is grounded in the first-person data obtained in this study and takes into account the tradition’s primary sources. This includes: (1) an outline of the stages of the contemplative path; (2) the levels of consciousness (ordinary, spiritual and divine) and the type of experiential content (coarse, subtle and very subtle/divine presence) proper to each stage of the path; and (3) corresponding types of self (false, true and separate-self sense).  My study addresses three meta-issues in the field pertaining to method, description and theory. First, I offer a new framework for the comparative study of contemplative practices and experiences, alongside a sound second-person method for collecting first-person data from contemplative practitioners. Second, I provide an effective framework for developing phenomenological accounts that are descriptively faithful, analytically transparent and theoretically useful. Third, I draw on the phenomenological accounts developed in this study to reconsider important theses advanced in the contemporary philosophy and comparative study of mysticism.  On this basis, I argue that practitioners phenomenally apprehend union states, specifically prayer of full union, through experiential primitives, such as a “sense of presence”, and without a “God-identification element”. Consequently, union states are phenomenologically of an unidentified reality and therefore not theistic, in Katz’s and Pike’s senses. However, there might be some sense in which they are phenomenologically of God, because they could be practitioners’ consciousness of God as God is; but this would empirically disconfirm received views of how God should be experienced. This finding challenges arguments for a unique theistic experience, designed to uphold a fundamental distinction between theistic and nontheistic experiences. Since Christian practitioners do not necessarily have unique theistic experiences in union, in the way that Katz and Pike require, there is at least some sense in which contemplatives from different traditions and cultures could have experiences similar in content and structure.</p>


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