scholarly journals Aesthetic Pleasure in the Worship of the Jina: Understanding Performance in Jain Devotional Culture

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 251
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Restifo
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
The Common ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Common Era

Performance has long been recognized to be a meaningful component in the worship of the Jina. This paper will focus on a particular aspect of devotional performance and historicize the phenomenon of ritual re-enactment of the Jina’s biography, a practice that remains significant to temple worship today. This paper will argue that the performance of the enlightened soul’s biography was familiar to Jains already in the early centuries of the common era and was not confined to the five auspicious events (kalyāṇakas). In a Śvetāmabara canonical text called the Rāyapaseṇiyasutta, this re-enactment is part of a greater, highly pleasurable spectacle that evokes a variety of aesthetic emotions, including erotic emotion, in the audience of monks. Through this discussion I will question the dichotomies between aesthetic pleasure and ritual efficacy and between drama and meritorious conduct and show that aesthetic pleasure, which lies at the heart of Jina worship, defines its meritorious value in the eyes of the devotees. The more splendid and aesthetically pleasing one’s expression of devotion, the more efficacious it is believed to be. I propose that the significance of the aesthetic element in devotional performance for laypeople stems from their temporary transformation into gods and goddesses. Celestial beings, as the paradigmatic enjoyers (bhoktṛ) of sensual pleasures, spend their life-spans relishing joy and rapture. As such, the pleasurable experiences of laypeople are essential for the veracity of their ritual transformation.

The Word of God in One’s Hand: Touching and Holding Pendant Koran Manuscripts

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 338-357
Author(s):  
Cornelius Berthold
Keyword(s):  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
The Body ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Rare Occurrence ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Solid Objects ◽  
Cylindrical Form ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era

AbstractKoran manuscripts that fit comfortably within the palm of one’s hand are known as early as the 10th century CE.For the sake of convenience, all dates will be given in the common era (CE) without further mention, and not in the Islamic or Hijra calendar. Their minute and sometimes barely legible script is clearly not intended for comfortable reading. Instead, recent scholarship suggests that the manuscripts were designed to be worn on the body like pendants or fastened to military flag poles. This is corroborated by some preserved cases for these books which feature lugs to attach a cord or chain, but also their rare occurrence in contemporary textual sources. While pendant Korans in rectangular codex form exist, the majority were produced as codices in the shape of an octagonal prism, and others as scrolls that could be rolled up into a cylindrical form. Both resemble the shapes of similarly dated and pre-Islamic amulets or amulet cases. Building on recent scholarship, I will argue in this article that miniature or pendant Koran manuscripts were produced in similar forms and sizes because of comparable modes of usage, but not necessarily by a deliberate imitation of their amuletic ‘predecessors’. The manuscripts’ main functions did not require them to be read or even opened; some of their cases were in fact riveted shut. Accordingly, the haptic feedback they gave to their owners when they carried or touched them was not one of regular books but one of solid objects (like amulets) or even jewellery, which then reinforced this practice.

Marking Religious and Ethnic Boundaries: Cases from the Ancient Golan Heights

2000 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Gregg
Keyword(s):  
Rhode Island ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Small Communities ◽  
Rural Settings ◽  
The Common ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Common Era

In the aftermath of the 1967 “Six Days' War,” 254 ancient inscribed stones were found in forty-four towns and villages of the Golan Heights—241 in Greek, 12 in Hebrew or Aramaic, and 1 in Latin. These stones, along with numerous architectural fragments, served as the basis of the 1996 book by myself and Dan Urman, Jews, Pagans, and Christians in the Golan Heights—a study of settlement patterns of people of the three religions in this region in the early centuries of the common era.1 The area of the Golan heights, roughly the size of Rhode Island, was in antiquity a place of agriculture and, for the most part, small communities. Though historians of religions in the late Roman period have long been aware of the “quartering” of cities, and of the locations of particular religious groups in this or that section of urban areas, we have had little information concerning the ways in which Hellenes, Jews, and Christians took up residence in relation to each other in those rural settings featuring numerous towns and hamlets— most presumably too small to have “zones” for ethnic and religious groups. The surviving artifacts of a number of the Golan sites gave the opportunity for a case study. Part 1 of this article centers on evidence for the locations and possible interactions of members of these religious groups in the Golan from the third to the seventh centuries and entails a summary of findings in the earlier work, while part 2 takes up several lingering questions about religious identity and ways of “marking” it within Golan countryside communities. Both sections can be placed under a rubric of “boundary drawing and religion.”

Vegan attendance: reading Gibbons’s animals

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-394
Author(s):  
Emelia Quinn
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Simone Weil ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
Embodied Presence

When we encounter the work of Grinling Gibbons, we find ourselves in the presence of multiple non-human animals. However, it is unclear how one should address these presences. On the one hand, for ecofeminist scholars such as Josephine Donovan, the aestheticization of animal death is to be vehemently resisted and the embodied presence of animals recovered by looking beyond the surface: a mode of looking that Donovan terms ‘attentive love’. On the other hand, a re-reading of the philosophical ideas of Simone Weil, upon which Donovan premises her argument, suggests that attention to others requires a mode of radical detachment. These two positions speak in important ways to the dilemmas faced by a vegan spectator. Drawing on Jason Edwards’s previous work on ‘the vegan viewer’, this article seeks to reconcile a vegan resistance to Gibbons’s depictions of animal death, in their spontaneous falling under human dominion, with the aesthetic pleasure generated by Gibbons’s craftmanship. I therefore propose ‘vegan camp’ as a means of reconciling oneself to insufficiency and complicity in systems of violence without renouncing pleasure. Vegan camp is detailed as an aesthetics that acknowledges the violence of humanity and one’s inescapable place within it, dissolving the subjective idea of the beautiful vegan soul to pay attention to the pervasive presence of an anthropocentrism that, in the case of Gibbons, decoratively adorns the sites at which animals might be eaten, worn, or offered up for sacrifice.

Embodied Aesthetics

2018 ◽  
pp. 890-910
Author(s):  
Barbara Gail Montero
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Bodily Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Embodied Aesthetics ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Bodily Movements

Although great art frequently revers the body, bodily experience itself is traditionally excluded from the aesthetic realm. This tradition, however, is in tension with the experience of expert dancers who find intense aesthetic pleasure in the experience of their own bodily movements. How to resolve this tension is the goal of this chapter. More specifically, in contrast to the traditional view that denigrates the bodily even while elevating the body, I aim to make sense of dancers’ embodied aesthetic experience of their own movements, as well as observers’ embodied aesthetic experience of seeing bodies move.

scholarly journals Archetypes in Batsa Gopal Vaidya's Paintings

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Yam Prasad Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Collective Unconscious ◽  
Common Heritage ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Common Heritage Of Mankind ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Himalaya

Batsa Gopal Vaidya's paintings integrate primordial images, symbols, and figures from myths, cultures, and rituals. These images and symbols are the archetypes that appear recurrently in his artworks. The artist shares these primordial images from his collective unconscious, the common heritage of mankind, and the storehouse of archetypes that reappear in the creative process. They suggest the pattern of experiences of our ancestors. These recurring communicable images function as an aesthetic mode of communication in society. Swastika, shaligram, tilaka, the Himalaya, rivers, various deities, and their attributes are such images and symbols that do not only provide aesthetic pleasure but also take the viewers back to their cultural roots, rituals, and myths. This article attempts to trace the archetypes in Vaidya's works and explain their significances.

Advancing community-led research into the climate of the Common Era

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah S. Eggleston ◽  
Steven Phipps ◽  
Oliver Bothe ◽  
Helen V. McGregor ◽  
Belen Martrat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Science ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Present Climate ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Scientific Questions ◽  
New Phase

<p>The past two thousand years is a key interval for climate science. This period encompasses both the era of human-induced global warming and a much longer interval when changes in Earth’s climate were governed principally by natural drivers and unforced variability. Since 2009, the Past Global Changes (PAGES) 2k Network has brought together hundreds of scientists from around the world to reconstruct and understand the climate of the Common Era using open and collaborative approaches to palaeoclimate science, including virtual meetings. The third phase of the network will end in December 2021. Here we highlight some key outputs of PAGES 2k and present the major themes and scientific questions emerging from recent surveys of the community. We explore how these might boost a new phase of PAGES 2k or a successor project(s). This year we will further reach out to the community through Town Hall consultations, vEGU and other meetings, and a PAGES 2k global webinar series. The aim of these activities is to foster development of post-2021 community-led PAGES initiatives that connect past and present climate.</p>

Anthropomorphic ‘tombstones’ of the Gorgippia necropolis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Е.М. Алексеева
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Black Sea Region ◽  
Funeral Ritual ◽  
Conventional Meaning ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Burial Grounds

Traditionally, anthropomorphic sculptures from the necropolis of the ancient city of Gorgippia are flattened half-shapes without detailed face and body contours, merely trunks and heads. In the Northern Black Sea region such monuments are characteristic of the IV–II centuries BC, but some date back to the first centuries of the Common Era. There is a reason to believe that they were used for ceremonial purposes rather than as markers of particular burial grounds or gravestones in the conventional meaning. Faceless half-shapes in Greek necropolises are associated with rites of the worship of Persephone, who dies (as represented by faceless sculptures) and then resurrects (by sculptures with painted faces) as seasons change. They could be used like special posts – ‘cippi’ – for marking sacred places within necropolises with libations and sacrifices in honor of gods with chthonic properties. Such incarnations are observed in Persephone (Kore), Demeter, Aphrodite, Artemis and their male counterparts – Dionysus, Hercules, Hermes, Eros. Epitaphs and carved scenes related to traditions of the funeral ritual on the anthropomorphic objects turned them into tombstones dedicated to specific deceased individuals. 

ON THE ISSUE OF THE “ROCK POETRY WORD” IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN NOVEL. THE WORLD OF BORIS GREBENSHCHIKOV IN THE WORLD OF “DREAMS SWIMMER” BY LEV NAUMOV

2021 ◽  
pp. 96-111
Author(s):  
Yurii V. Domanskii ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Denominator ◽  
Russian Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Modern Russian

The article deals with references to the work of Boris Grebenshchikov in the “Dreams Swimmer” by Lev Naumov “The swimmer of dreams” (2021). The common denominator of the system of these references is the aesthetic character of the hero’s understanding of himself in the world and the world in relation to himself, which, if not directly leads the hero to the idea of his own chosenness, then at least is a symptom of the emergence of this idea. As a result, the system of references to the songs of “Aquarium” in Naumov’s novel makes it possible to interpret the character’s worldview as a worldview based on the aesthetic concept of understanding reality. The example of the appeal of a modern Russian novel to the “word of rock” considered in the article allows us to make sure that such an inclusion contributes to the disclosure of the specifics of the character’s worldview, and the analysis of this appeal brings one closer to a deeper understanding of the text.

scholarly journals Roman to Middle Age Earthquakes Sourced by the 1980 Irpinia Fault: Historical, Archaeoseismological, and Paleoseismological Hints

Geosciences ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 286
Author(s):  
Paolo Galli
Keyword(s):  
Middle Age ◽  
Fault System ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Seismogenic Structure ◽  
Working Hypothesis ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Written Sources

The Italian seismic compilations are among the most complete and back-in time extended worldwide, with earthquakes on record even before the Common Era. However, we have surely lost the memory of dozen strong events of the historical period, mostly in the first millennium CE. Given the lack of certain or conclusive written sources, besides paleoseismological investigations, a complementary way to infer the occurrence of lost earthquakes is to cross-check archaeoseismic evidence from ancient settlements. This usually happens by investigating collapses/restorations/reconstructions of buildings, the general re-organization of the urban texture, or even the abrupt abandonment of the settlement. Exceptionally, epigraphs mentioning more or less explicitly the effects of the earthquake strengthened the field working hypothesis. Here, I deal with both paleoseismological clues from the Monte Marzano Fault System (the structure responsible for the catastrophic, Mw 6.9 1980 earthquake) and archaeoseismological evidence of settlements founded in its surroundings to cast light on two poorly known earthquakes that occurred at the onset and at the end of the first millennium CE, likely in 62 and in 989 CE. Both should share the same seismogenic structure and the size of the 1980 event (Mw 6.9).

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