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).

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.

Coins

2019 ◽  
pp. 383-400
Author(s):  
John W. Betlyon
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Small Change ◽  
City States ◽  
Gold Coins

The coins of the Phoenician city-states were struck in the fifth and fourth centuries bce. Influenced by coins struck in Greece and eastern Greece, Sidon, Tyre, Byblos, and Aradus struck coins in silver and bronze. These coins functioned as the “small change” for the gold coins struck by the imperial mint of Achaemenid Persia. The production of these coins aided in everyday commerce and in the collection of tariffs and taxes. Early studies of these coins were inevitably connected to the great royal collections of Europe in London and Paris. Major studies of these coins appeared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More recent archaeological discoveries in Lebanon have included an inscription which expanded knowledge of the king list of the Phoenician city of Sidon in the fifth and fourth centuries bce. New historical sources such as this inscription published by Maurice Dunand in 1965 have enabled scholars to propose new and more accurate chronologies for the earliest coins of the Phoenicians. Sidon was the largest of the Phoenician mints, with coins struck between the late fifth century and the coming of Alexander the Great in 332 bce. Tyre, Aradus, and Byblos also struck coins, and together with those of Sidon, provided the denominations required to fuel the Phoenician (and therefore Persian) economy of the period. These coins enabled the Phoenician city-states to compete more favorably with their Greek and East Greek neighbors to the west. The coins of Tyre undoubtedly inspired the Tyrian colony of Carthage to strike coins beginning late in the fourth century bce.

Why Coins Turned Round the World Over? A Critical Analysis of the Origins and Transmission of Ancient Metallic Money

China Report ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 279-302
Author(s):  
Niv Horesh ◽  
Hyun Jin Kim
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Achaemenid Empire ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
Eurasian Steppe ◽  
The World ◽  
Archaeological Work

The inspiration behind the pre-modern bronze round coinage standardised across China by the First Emperor of Qin in the 3rd century BC have remained fairly obscure and are still a contentious issue. We demonstrate in this article that the various theories arguing for an exclusively endogenous impetus behind the spread and development of Chinese round coinage vouched for by many scholars in either East Asia or the West all carry inherent contradictions. In contrast, circumstantial and archaeological evidence in support of partly exogenous origins are mounting. Evidence from the Middle East points to the early invention and wide circulation of round coinage in Lydia, Greece and the Achaemenid Empire. The expansion of the Persians into India in the 6th century BC and the later incursions by Alexander and the Greco-Bactrians in the fourth and third centuries BC all facilitated and may have decisively contributed to India’s adoption of round coinage. Similarly, the flow of ideas, artistic motifs and metallurgic knowhow from West Asia to China via Central Asia had occurred much earlier than the 3rd century BC. Active adoption of foreign (Central Eurasian steppe) customs in the fourth century BC is recorded in Chinese pre-imperial records and confirmed by recent archaeological findings across Eurasia. Ongoing archaeological work in China’s western provinces could further highlight this ancient phase of globalization that, quite literally, still shapes our most fundamental grasp of money.

Phoenicia Under the Achaemenid Empire

2019 ◽  
pp. 87-97
Author(s):  
Vadim Jigoulov
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Achaemenid Empire ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
City States

This chapter covers several aspects of Achaemenid Phoenicia, including literary sources, epigraphy, numismatics, and material culture. Achaemenid Phoenicia was characterized by a continuity of material culture from the Neo-Babylonian period. The extant sources—literary, epigraphic, and numismatic—evince a conglomerate of independent city-states characterized by expressions of compliance with the central Achaemenid authorities while pursuing their own economic and political goals, with Sidon as the most preeminent metropolis. The end of the period in the fourth century bce saw the gradual disintegration of the Phoenician loyalties to the Achaemenids and a pivot toward the Aegean in political and economic aspects.

Church and State in the Byzantine Empire: A Reconsideration of The Problem of Caesaropapism

1965 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deno J. Geanakoplos
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Roman Emperor ◽  
The West ◽  
Latin West

In the medieval theocratic societies of both the Byzantine East and the Latin West, where the influence of Christian precepts so strongly pervaded all aspects of life, it was inevitable that the institutions of church and state, of sacerdotium and regnum to use the traditional Latin terms, be closely tied to one another. But whereas in the West, at least after the investiture conflict of the eleventh century, the pope managed to exert a strong political influence over secular rulers, notably the Holy Roman Emperor, in the East, from the very foundation of Constantinople in the fourth century, the Byzantine emperor seemed clearly to dominate over his chief ecclesiastical official, the patriarch.

A Romano-British Interment, with Bucket and Sceptres, from Brough, East Yorkshire

1938 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Corder ◽  
I. A. Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Present Note ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
West Side ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Chief Interest ◽  
Roman Age ◽  
The Way

The Roman Ermine Street, having crossed the Humber on the way to York from Lincoln, leaves Brough Haven on its west side, and the little town of Petuaria to the east. For the first half-mile northwards from the Haven its course is not certainly known: then, followed by the modern road, it runs northwards through South Cave towards Market Weighton. In the area thus traversed by the Roman road burials of the Roman age have already been noted in sufficient quantity to suggest an extensive cemetery. The interment which is the subject of the present note was found on 10th October 1936, when men laying pipes at right angles to the modern road, in the carriage-drive of Mr. J. G. Southam, having cut through some 4 ft. of blown sand, came upon a mass of mixed Roman pottery, dating from the late first to the fourth century A.D. Bones of pig, dog, sheep, and ox were also represented. Presently, at a depth of about 5 ft., something attracted closer attention. A layer of thin limestone slabs was found, covering two human skeletons, one lying a few feet from the west margin of the modern road, the other parallel with the road and some 8 ft. from its edge. The objects described below were found with the second skeleton, and the first to be discovered was submitted by Mr. Southam to Mr. T. Sheppard, F.S.A.Scot., Director of the Hull Museums, who visited the site with his staff. All that can be recorded of the circumstances of the discovery is contained in the observations then made, under difficult conditions. ‘Slabs of hard limestone’, it was reported, ‘taken from a local quarry of millepore oolite and forming the original Roman road, were distinctly visible beneath the present roadway—one of the few points where the precise site of the old road has been located. On the side of this… a burial-place has been constructed. What it was like originally it is difficult to say, beyond that a layer of thin … slabs of limestone occurred over the skeletons. This had probably been kept in place or supported by some structure of wood, as several large iron nails, some bent at right angles, were among the bones.’ If this were all that could be said about the burials, they would hardly merit a place in these pages. The chief interest of the record would be its apparent identification of the exact course of the Roman road at a point where this had hitherto been uncertain. Three objects associated with the second skeleton are, however, of exceptional interest.

scholarly journals The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii: Interim Report

1983 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Ling
Keyword(s):  
General Trend ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Phase 2 ◽  
Interim Report ◽  
The West ◽  
Phase 3 ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Economic Basis ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City

SummaryA British team has been working since 1978 upon a programme of documentation and analysis in the Insula of the Menander at Pompeii, one of the irregular city-blocks situated immediately to the west of the old part of the city in an area which was developed from the early fourth century B.C onwards. Study of the structural techniques, of wall-abutments, and of anomalies in plan can be used in conjunction with the evidence of painted wall-plaster to identify five main phases in the building-history: Phase I (fourth-third centuries B.C), Phase 2 (second and early first centuries B.C), Phase 3 (c. 80-c. 15 B.C), Phase 4 (c. 15 B.C.-C. A.D. 50), Phase 5 (c. A.D. 50-79). These illustrate a complex pattern of changing property-boundaries, but underline the general trend towards increasing commercialization and greater pressure upon living-space in this area of the city. There is also interesting evidence of the economic basis of life in the individual houses during the years immediately before 79.

scholarly journals The East and the West

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-134
Author(s):  
Hye K. Pae
Keyword(s):  
East Asian ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
The West ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Attention And Perception ◽  
Analytic Problem

Abstract This chapter reviews the cultural aspects of the East and the West. A wide range of differences between the East and the West is discussed in terms of the extrinsic and intrinsic differences. The extrinsic differences comprise architecture, the mode of clothing, everyday practices, and language and script, while the intrinsic differences consist of culture and value systems, attention and perception (holistic vs. analytic), problem solving (relation vs. categorization), and rhetorical structure (linear vs. roundabout). The locus of these differences is identified with respect to philosophical foundations and the characteristics of Eastern and Western cultures. The prevalent interpretations of the differences between the East and the West center on Diamond’s (1999) guns, germs, and steel, Nisbett’s (2003) geography of thought, and Logan’s (2004) alphabet effects. However, these interpretations cannot explain differences in ideologies, religious practices, and societal values among Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. Therefore, script relativity becomes a new interpretation of the engine behind the differences among the three East-Asian nations and between the East and the West.

Afghanistan

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-106
Author(s):  
Anthony Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
Central Highlands ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
The Church

With Turkic and Tajik peoples to the north, Tajiks and Pashtuns in the west, ethnic Hazaras in the central highlands and the Pashtuns to the south and east, Afghanistan’s diversity stems from its history as a regional crossroads. Christianity began in Afghanistan in the fourth century and was later revived by missionaries in the frontier areas, but there was little concerted effort to spread the faith until after 1945, when the Pashtun monarchy sought to modernise Afghanistan. However, the Soviet invasion prompted fighters to repel the forces under the banner of Islam. Amidst a civil war, Christian NGO’s continued until expelled by the Taliban in 2001. The new government allowed Christian NGO’s to expand into new areas of the country. For the sake of believers’ security the most visible fellowships have been limited to foreigners. Most find it difficult to sustain everyday life in the country while openly professing Christianity due to ostracism from society. While Islam has been linked with Afghan identity, worldview has begun to change. Unfortunately, there has been an exodus of Afghan believers, usually after social and legal ostracism. Nevertheless, due to sacrifices by Afghan believers, the church is growing in numbers despite all the challenges.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document