CULTURAL RECEPTION OF YOGA ANTHROPOLOGY IN RUSSIA IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Author(s):  
Natalya M. Sachkova ◽  

The research examines the specifics of reception of Yoga anthropology in Russia and its dissemination paths. The end of 19th – early 20th century was marked by the appearance of Russian translations of the academic research, in which Yoga was viewed as one of the Indian philosophical schools. In the same time, the West was witnessing an onset of popularization of Yoga by representatives of Neo-Vedanta, whose writings were also translated into Russian. Those writings were of a popular nature, since their authors sought to make Yoga understandable for Western readers. For the Occult community, the practical aspect of Yoga was the most attractive one. Occultists regarded Yoga as a method of anthropological perfection – both spiritual and physical – and eventual attainment of superhuman powers. Yoga popularization in Russia was to a considerable extent promoted by theosophists, who built their interpretations on contrasting Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga. In the writings of theosophists, Yoga was presented as a path to attaining arcane knowledge. Russian Occultists created their original interpretations of Yoga. Christian theosophist M.V. Lodyzhensky, despite of considering Yoga as a path to attaining the Superconscious, gave it less appreciation compared to Christian heritage, thus emphasizing the supremacy of Christian tradition. P.D. Uspensky viewed Yoga through the lens of his concept of the Superman, and believed that Yoga practice is a way to achieve an overhuman condition, which the entire humanity will ultimately reach. The interest of Russian community to Yoga should be considered in the context of interest towards the Eastern culture and the belief in the possibility of upcoming transformation of the human nature that were common with the European society of that age

2020 ◽  

In the 18th and 19th centuries, relations between China and the West were defined by the Qing dynasty’s strict restrictions on foreign access and by the West’s imperial ambitions. Cultural, political and economic interactions were often fraught, with suspicion and misunderstanding on both sides. Yet trade flourished and there were instances of cultural exchange and friendship, running counter to the official narrative. Tribute and Trade: China and Global Modernity explores encounters between China and the West during this period and beyond, into the early 20th century, through examples drawn from art, literature, science, politics, music, cooking, clothing and more. How did China and the West see each other, how did they influence each other, and what were the lasting legacies of this contact?


Author(s):  
Artem I. Shevchuk ◽  

The article suggests a typology of Russian theosophical anthropological theories of the early 20th century and offers an analysis of the root causes of disputes between theosophists on anthropological matters. Christian theosophists, who were critical about the Orientalist elements of theosophical doctrines, preferred to draw upon the Christian tradition, while synthesizing it with certain theosophical concepts. Russian theosophists, leaning towards the traditional theosophical doctrine, espoused the idea of universal nature of religious anthropology and often preferred the Oriental approach to anthropology. Nevertheless, they had regard to the Christianity and sought to homologate Oriental anthropology with the Christian one. Millennial expectations were common with the theosophists; they believed that a new era was approaching that would result in a change of the human nature. Many of them reckoned that the human nature could be transformed through spiritual practices. Like many other advocates of Esotericism of those times, theosophists engaged scientific concepts to justify their anthropological views and referred to experimental evidences that would allow revealing the Invisible. For all of their differences, theosophical approaches to anthropology had some shared features and reflected the trends that were common in that age


Author(s):  
Elvan Ozkavruk Adanir ◽  
Berna Ileri

Orientalism is a Western and Western-centric broad field of research that studies the social structures, cultures, languages, histories, religions, and geographies of countries to the east of Europe. The term took on a secondary, detrimental association in the 20th century which looks down on the East. However, this chapter will not dwell on the definition of Orientalism that is debated the most; instead, it will discuss the positive contribution of Orientalism to Western culture. Even though the West otherizes the East in daily life, when it comes to desire, vanity, luxury, and flamboyance without hesitating a moment it adopts these very elements from the Eastern culture. It could be said that this adaptation brings these societies closer in one way or another. The highly admired fashion of Orientalism in the West starting from the 17th century until the 21st century will be the focus of this study.


Author(s):  
Katherine Higgins

Orientalism is the sociological, historical, cultural, and anthropological study of the Orient, with "the Orient" constituting countries East of "the Occident" (Western Europe), and including lands spanning from Morocco to Japan. The term Orientalism, however, is primarily used to describe the incorporation of Eastern culture in Western art, literature, and design during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Artists whose work largely focused on Oriental subjects are often referred to as the Orientalists, and include Eugène Delacroix, Alphonse Etienne Dinet, Jean-Léon Gérôme, William Holman-Hunt, John Frederick Lewis, and the photographers Lehnert and Landrock. Traces of Oriental themes can also be found in the work of 20th-century artists including Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Wassily Kandinsky. Orientalist artists predominantly depicted scenes of the Arabian Desert, portraits of natives with Oriental artefacts and clothing, the harem, odalisques, and Oriental architecture. Broadly speaking, the Orientalists represented the Orient as primitive yet opulent, and in stark contrast to the "rational" and enlightened West. Much of the scholarship around (and the very definition) of Orientalism in the 20th century is indebted to Said’s Orientalism (1977), which discusses why the West has preconceived notions of the Orient (and primarily the peoples of the Middle East).


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Joon Il Song

The article investigates the influence of Japanese and Chinese traditional culture on Sergey Eisensteins theory of artistic thinking, his activity as a film director. The author explores the origin of Eisensteins interest for the Far East in the historical context of the late 19th - early 20th century. Special attention is paid to his reflection on the nature of Japanese and Chinese drama, painting and poetry as well as its results manifested in his montage theory.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxim Lvovich Razmolodin

This monograph reveals the conservative essence of the Black Hundred movement and its ideology aimed at the protection of Christian and national traditions in Russia in 1905-1917. This task is solved on the basis of an analysis of the origins, foundations of the theoretical constructs and programs of the extreme right monarchist parties in comparison with the system of views of Russian nationalists. The subjects for consideration are a set of basic ideological principles, postulates and provisions of ideologies of the Black Hundred organizations; the Orthodox religious foundations of the right monarchist ideology; conservative bases of political problematics and the problem of "Russia – the West"; approaches to the definition of nation (nationality); Imperial and national perspectives; the role and place of the Russian people; attitudes to pogroms and terrorist methods of struggle. The research proposes a system of criteria for the identification of party and personal affiliation to the Black Hundred spectrum in Russia the early 20th century, allowing a clear border to be drawn with nationalist (including fascist) parties. The urgency for this research has been caused by a poor development in the historiography. Intended for historians, sociologists, political scientists.


Author(s):  
V.N. Shulgin ◽  

The author proceeds from still in large measure incomprehensible phenomenon – the existence of the Russian pre-revolutionary intellectual and moral tradition, whose representatives, including N.M. Karamzin and other classics of «pochvennicheskoj» orientation (of «national originality»), sought to re-educate the St. Petersburg political class in the spirit of Russism. Therefore, they criticized the «bureaucratic yoke of Petersburg», which turned into a Westernization errors of Peter the Great in the form of borrowing from the West in the spirit of bureaucracy and state absolutism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-61
Author(s):  
Lubna Farah ◽  
◽  
Abdul Bari Owais

This research is an attempt to trace and corelate the evolution of short story in the Arabic and Urdu languages besides highlighting contributions made by the most prominent pioneers and the trends prevailing in different eras of both the languages. The short story is one of the most famous and widely read genres of fiction that seems to answer almost everything near to the nature of human being and whenever it is narrated it feels as if, something exceptional has been created which contains substance of our inferred experience and transitory sense of our common, tempestuous journey of life. Irrespective of the prevailing belief that short story also belongs to the West, its roots in the Arabic language go back to the pre-Islamic times and especially the Golden Age of Islamic civilization which spans from the 8th to the 14th centuries. Anecdotes of the Bedouins and the rhymed Ma’qama were the early foundations of short story in the Arabic language. Then this art reached its epitome in the modern era by the big names like al-Manfaluti, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Naguib Mahfouz, Yahya Haqqi, Ihsan Abdul Quddus, Yusuf Idris and Hasib Kayali. Likewise, the Urdu language that is a product of centuries long interaction between the native Indians and the invading Muslim culture, has borrowed the genre of short story form diverse sources. Then it was matured in the early 20th century by the pioneers like Rashid al-Khairi, Sajjad Haider Yaldram, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Mansha Yaad and Intizar Hussain.


Author(s):  
Ruslan Abdurazakovich Abdurazakov

The purpose of the research is the consideration of the problem of synthesis of racialism and geopolitics in the late 19th - the early 20th century and the substantiation of such a new concept in geopolitics as geopolitical racialism which hasn’t been used before neither in Russian nor in foreign science. To solve this task, the author applies the fundamental geopolitical dualism methods to the analysis of supremacist and imperialist mindset typical for scientific and sociopolitical life in Britain and the U.S. of the considered period, which became a core for the formation of Anglo-Saxon exceptionality, and formed the basis for the foreign policy of these states. The author arrives at the conclusion that until recently, Anglo-Saxonism was considered as a result of the Western elites’ fascination with the ideas of social Darwinism rather than as a geopolitical form of racism, since its analysis was mostly based on the peculiarities of “blood and descendance” of Anglo-Saxon peoples rather than on their “thalassocratic nature” or the influence of natural and climatic factors on their development. The differentiating feature of continental geopolitics was, vice versa, not only distancing from social Darwinism, but also the repudiation of the possibility of ultimate victory in the struggle between the West and the East. Theoretical and practical importance of the research consists in the fact that based on the analysis of the works of the Western authors of the late 19th - the early 20th centuries, both already known and left out in the cold, the author substantiates the definition and characteristics of geopolitical racism in its Anglo-Saxon variant, upholding the supremacy of maritime powers (thalassocracies) over land powers (tellurocracies) predefined by geographical factors, which in many aspects predetermined the development of the Western geopolitical mindset in contemporary history.


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