scholarly journals Revivals of ancient religious traditions in modern India

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-77
Author(s):  
Knut A. Jacobsen
Keyword(s):  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Printed Books

The article compares the early stages of the revivals of Sāṃkhyayoga and Buddhism in modern India. A similarity of Sāṃkhyayoga and Buddhism was that both had disappeared from India and were revived in the modern period, partly based on Orientalist discoveries and writings and on the availability of printed books and publishers. Printed books provided knowledge of ancient traditions and made re-establishment possible and printed books provided a vehicle for promoting the new teachings. The article argues that absence of communities in India identified with these traditions at the time meant that these traditions were available as identities to be claimed.

scholarly journals Missionaries as bridge builders in Buddhist kingdoms: Amity amid radical difference

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Eva M. Pascal
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
The World

Buddhism and Christianity are major world religions that both make universal and often competing claims about the nature of the world and ultimate reality. These claims are difficult to reconcile and often go to the core of Buddhist and Christian worldviews. This article looks at the age of encounter in the early modern period for ways Christians and Buddhists forged friendship through common spiritual commitments and action. Beyond seeking theological and philosophical exchange, convergences along spirituality and practice proved important vehicles for friendship. With the examples of Christian–Buddhist friendship from historical case studies, this article explores the ways contemporary Christian expressions of spiritual practice and advocacy allows Christians to connect with Buddhists. Early modern encounters have important lessons for furthering Christian–Buddhist friendship that may also be applied to other religious traditions.

The Modes and Intentions of Biography

2007 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-84
Author(s):  
Graham Hassall
Keyword(s):  
Inner Life ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Individual

This paper explores a range of modes, intentions and problems of Baha'i biography, in order to offer some initial observations on the ways in which biographical literatures frame understandings of the individual in the context of community. It distinguishes between documentary, hagiological and critical modes of biography as these have emerged in the diverse literature of the world's religious traditions, as well as in the secular literature of the modern period. It suggests that much Baha'i biography has continued the traditions of remembrance and exempla, although more critical works have also begun to appear. The quest to write spiritual biographies that explore a subject's inner life and journey remains difficult, due mostly to limitations on sources, since few subjects give adequate exposure to their inner thoughts. Rather than privilege one tradition above any other, Baha'i biographies have to date drawn on the skills of the craft elaborated across generations, religions and cultures, while beginning to draw also on Baha'i scripture for inspiration productive of new insights into how lived lives can be depicted in literature.

scholarly journals Religious Experience, Hindu Pluralism, and Hope: Anubhava in the Tradition of Sri Ramakrishna

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery Long
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
John Hick ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
William Alston ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Religious Subject ◽  
Pluralistic Approach ◽  
Swami Vivekananda

The pluralistic turn in modern Hindu thought corresponds with the rise of an emphasis on direct experience of divine realities in this tradition. Both pluralism and a focus on experience have precedents in premodern Hindu traditions, but have become especially prominent in modern Hinduism. The paradigmatic example in the modern period of a religious subject embarking upon a pluralistic quest for direct experience of ultimate reality as mediated through multiple religious traditions is the nineteenth century Bengali sage, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836–1886), whose most famous disciple, Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) played a prominent role in the promotion of the idea of Hinduism as largely defined by a religious pluralism paired with an emphasis on direct experience. The focus in the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda on Brahman as a universal reality available, at least in principle, to being experienced by anyone, and interpreted using the categories of the experiencing subject’s religion or culture, gives rise to a corresponding pluralism: a move towards seeing many religions and philosophies as conducive to the experience of a shared ultimate reality. This paper will analyze the theme of experience in the thought of these two figures, and other figures who are representative of this broad trend in modern Hindu thought, as well as in conversation with recent academic philosophers and theorists of religious experience, John Hick and William Alston. It will also argue that aspects of Hinduism, such as pluralism and an emphasis on direct experience, that are often termed as ‘Neo-Vedantic’ or ‘Neo-Hindu’ are not simply modern constructs, as these terms seem to suggest, but are reflective of much older trends in Hindu thought that become central themes in the thought of key Hindu figures in the modern period. Finally, it shall be argued that a pluralistic approach to the diversity of religions, and of worldviews more generally, is to be commended as an approach more conducive to human survival than the current global proliferation of ethno-nationalisms.

scholarly journals The Hanging Guard: William Hope’s (1660-1724) Invention of Self-defence and the Spirit of Enlightenment

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Alexander Will
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Self Defence

Fight books can be much more than repositories of knowledge or cornerstones of tradition. In some cases they may also reflect fundamental changes in the intellectual and social life of a society and even attempt to change the latter for the better. This is very much true for the works of William Hope (1660-1724). In eight printed books the Scotsman covered a wide range of topics connected to smallsword fencing and duelling. He employed early scientific methods when developing his school of swordplay, reflected on the social implications of fencing, introduced the notion of “sport for better health” into early modern fencing, and sought to institutionalise fencing in order to curb violence. As a whole this reflects the mindset of the early Enlightenment as it started to flourish in Hope’s native Scotland during his lifetime. This paper will answer the question of how the early Enlightenment influenced a set of remarkable Scottish fight books from the early modern period.

Europe: Arena of Pluralization and Diversification of Religions

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Kippenberg
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Church

AbstractIf participation in church activities is critical for the strength or weakness of religion, there is no denying that Europe comes off poorly. According to American sociologists of religion the rise of religious pluralism in the USA was due to the strict separation between state and church; it compelled congregations and denominations to compete for believers. The European case is different. Here the diversity of religions existed long before the modern period. Since its ancient beginning European culture sought its authorities outside its geographical confines. Greeks and Jews, Hellenism and Hebraism, Athens and Jerusalem, later Mecca and Islam became cultural points of orientation for people living in Europe. The article addresses the cultural and social processes that transformed these and other foreign religious traditions into typical European manifestations: the Roman legal system turned foreign religions into legal categories; it was modernization that led to the articulation of distinctly religious meanings of history and of nature; and it was the detachment from the church that provided the impetus for new societal forms of religion. Those processes are at the center of the European plurality and diversity of religions.

scholarly journals Introduction: Early Catholic Orientalism and the Missionary Discovery of Asian Religions

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 463-470
Author(s):  
Robert Trent Pomplun ◽  
Joan-Pau Rubiés ◽  
Ines G. Županov
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Asian Religions ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Close Interaction ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Patristic Literature

Abstract New encounters in America, Africa, and Asia facilitated the “discovery” of non-Biblical religious traditions that were distinct from the ancient paganism known to Christian humanists and antiquarians from classical sources and patristic literature. Although Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism did not exist as concepts in the early modern period, the three articles in this special issue illustrate the learning process by which a number of influential and pioneering Catholic missionaries came to distinguish these various traditions from each other. We argue that they did not simply “invent” new religions arbitrarily: instead, on the basis of the very broad categories of true religion and idolatry, they engaged in some close interaction and “dialogue”—albeit usually polemical—with local religious elites and their writings, including Eastern Christians. In addition, in the case of the Jesuits in particular, we note that these various engagements were often connected events that influenced each other in important ways, from India to Japan, from Japan to China, and from all these to Tibet.

Between Utopia and New Jerusalem: Eschatological Projectors and Lutheran Confessional Culture in the Seventeenth Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 470-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh T.I. Penman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
New Jerusalem ◽  
Modern Period

Contributing to discussions concerning the influence of eschatological ideas on trajectories of natural philosophy in the early modern period, the present article analyses several distinct projects which emerged from the intellectual and religious traditions of Lutheran confessional culture, which imagined a future earthly golden age that existed in a discursive space between communistic utopia and heavenly Jerusalem. A consideration of this impulse among figures who emerged from Lutheran culture – like Wolfgang Ratke, Wilhelm Eo Neuheuser, Johann Valentin Andreae, Johann Permeier, and even Samuel Hartlib – sheds a unique light on broader issues of epistemology, eschatology and reforming activism of the period, and the varying cultures – natural philosophical, political and religious – which could be harmonized within the ambit of an encompassing eschatological vision.


scholarly journals Print Cultures in the Making in 19th- and 20th-Century South Asia: Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Cristina Pecchia ◽  
Johanna Buss ◽  
Alaka A. Chudal
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
History Of ◽  
Textual Traditions ◽  
19Th And 20Th Century ◽  
Print Cultures

Abstract The study of the history of print technology in South Asia is a multidisciplinary enterprise which involves attentive consideration of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the region, as well as of the historical time in which print technology was massively adopted, namely the colonial period. Here, we focus on the complex fabric of relationships between print and modes of recording and using texts in long present oral and manuscript cultures, also pointing out the limits of applying interpretative models based on the cultural history of Europe to the histories of print in South Asia. Furthermore, we present aspects of the formative stage of print cultures concerning Vedic, Limbu, Nepali, Newari, and Tamil textual traditions—which are studied in the essays of this special issue. This multi-layered perspective helps making sense of social and cultural dynamics concerning the uses of printed books, the (new) meanings associated with them, and the formation of hegemonic configurations within literary and religious traditions.

scholarly journals The 'Beauty Fallacy'

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Arianna Borrelli ◽  
Alexandra Grieser
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Scientific Representation ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Poetic Imagination ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between science and religion has been, and still is, the subject of much discussion, both among scholars of religion and among historians and philosophers of science. Despite the cultural and historical complexity of the issue, since the nineteenth century the question of the interaction between science and religion has been constantly framed in the rather simple terms of their mutual ‘compatibility’ or ‘exclusion’. The historical roots of such discussions are entwined with the emergence both of modern science as a practice and an ideal, and of the field of the cultural study of religion. It was in the modern period that the assertion of the existence of a ‘conflict’ between science and religion emerged and a series of binary oppositions were constructed, such as those between ‘rational’ scientific knowledge and ‘irrational’ religious belief, or between an ‘objective’ scientific representation of reality and the poetic imagination allegedly characteristic of religious traditions and mythology.

scholarly journals Buddhist Endowments by Śaiva Kings under the Maitrakas of Valabhī in Western India (5th–8th Cent.) and the Yodhāvaka Grant of Dharasena iv, [Valabhī] Year 326

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 107-134
Author(s):  
Annette Schmiedchen
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Western India ◽  
Specific Character ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
Personal Beliefs ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Royal Inscriptions ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Individual

Abstract The phenomenon of interreligious patronage on the Indian subcontinent in the pre-modern period is best attested in royal inscriptions recording religious endowments. It is striking that most pre-Islamic Indian rulers patronised priests, monks, ascetics, and religious establishments of multiple faiths. The personal religious affiliations of the kings often contrasted remarkably with the patronage patterns followed by them according to the testimony of their epigraphs. The strongest indication for the individual confessions of rulers is given by the religious epithets among their titles. While the ambivalent relationship between the personal beliefs of the kings and their donative practices has been repeatedly described as an expression of Indian religious “tolerance” or of the specific character of Indian religious traditions, this paper emphasises that there were several reasons for the dichotomy. This will be investigated on the basis of the epigraphic material of the Maitraka dynasty, which ruled in Gujarat from the 5th to the 8th centuries. The article also contains an edition and translation of the hitherto unpublished Yodhāvaka Grant of Dharasena iv.

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