scholarly journals Traditions of transgressive sacrality (against blasphemy) in Hinduism

1970 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 1-162
Author(s):  
Claus Peter Zoller
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Early History ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
North India ◽  
Historical Contingency ◽  
The Core ◽  
Linguistic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Core Areas ◽  
Abrahamic Religions

The following essay pursues the question whether a possible non-singular immigration-encounter-event between speakers of dialects of Indo-Aryan and (as maintained in this essay) speakers of dialects of Austro-Asiatic (mostly Munda) have not only left marks in the linguistic history of Indo-Aryan (analyzed in Zoller forthcoming), but also in the cultural and political history of North India. My argumentation will follow several lines of nested arguments, but the most general is this: Whereas in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam a combination of proclivity for expansionism plus proclivity for religious violence have led to a virtual eradication or at least a subjugation of infidel traditions in the core areas of their religious/political powers (i.e. Europe and Middle East), this venture was less successful in case of South Asia. Thus the most salient aspect of this historical contingency is the fact that cultural historians – but also historical linguists – can see much deeper and much more unimpeded into the prehistory and early history both of the Indo-Aryan and the non-Indo-Aryan (= mainly Austro-Asiatic) North Indian world. The opposition between Abrahamic monotheists and Hindu ‘infidels’ manifests also in the contrast between the topics of blasphemy and transgressive sacrality. The former is typically associated with Abrahamic religions, whereas there is an abundance and great variety of examples of transgressive sacrality in Hinduism.

scholarly journals Intellectual Dimensions of Madīnian Polity and its Implication for Islamic Governance: Lessons from the Early History of Islam

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Senad Mrahorović
Keyword(s):  
Early History ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
The Core ◽  
Principal Source ◽  
History Of ◽  
Islamic Faith ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Unity Of God

The very first verse revealed to the Prophet of Islam ﷺ, namely ﴾ Read in the name of your Lord ﴿ implied the concept of knowledge that corresponds with the intellectual attestation of the first article of Islamic faith, that is, the belief in the unity of God, which for its part requires a specific kind of knowledge related to the Divine. With the same token, the Revelation continued to provide the Prophet ﷺ with the intellectual and spiritual insights that he ﷺ perfectly transformed into the nucleus based on which the first Islamic state known as the Madīnian polity was firmly established. Hence, in this paper, the analysis will cover the intellectual dimensions of the Madīnian polity portrayed here in three essential aspects: the revelation as the principal source of knowledge, the affirmation as the intellectual and practical application of knowledge, and the manifestation as the individual and communal reflection of knowledge. I will argue that the said aspects as they were displayed in the Madīnian polity are the core factors that underpin the Islamic governance as such.

FROM LAW TO DHARMA: STATE LAW AND SACRED DUTY IN ANCIENT INDIA

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark McClish
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Early History ◽  
State Courts ◽  
State Law ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Origins ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThe legal treatises of ancient India, called Dharmaśāstras, are often read as records of the initial emergence of law from religion in South Asia. The Dharmaśāstras teach the dharma, or “sacred duty,” of different members of society. It is one of the dharmas of the king to adjudicate disputes that come before his courts, and it is widely accepted that a need to articulate the king's dharma led the composers of the Dharmaśāstras over time to fashion rules for state courts, a body of law called vyavahāra. Scholars such as Henry Sumner Maine and Max Weber saw in the Dharmaśāstras evidence of the disentanglement and rationalization of law, respectively. A close examination of our sources, however, shows that the law of royal courts emerged not within the Dharmaśāstra tradition, but within an adjacent and decidedly more secular tradition of statecraft. It was gradually absorbed into Dharmaśāstra texts, where it was reconfigured as sacred duty and its historical origins were obscured. This article argues that the early history of state law in India is best described, therefore, not as a transition from dharma to law, but as a transition from law to dharma.

Even If It's Not True It's True: Using Unreliable Hadīths in Sunni Islam

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Brown
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Social Morality ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Core ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Core Areas ◽  
Sunni Islam

AbstractSunni Islam is at heart a cult of authenticity, with the science of Hadīth criticism functioning as a centerpiece designed to distinguish authentic attributions to the Prophet from forgeries. It is thus surprising that even after Hadīth scholars had sifted sound Hadīths from weak, mainstream Sunni Islam allowed the use of unreliable Hadīths as evidence in subjects considered outside of the core areas of law. This majority stance, however, did not displace minority schools of thought that saw the use of unreliable Hadīths as both a danger to social morality and contrary to the stated values of Islamic thought. This more stringent position has burgeoned in the early modern and modern periods, when eliminating the use of weak Hadīths has become a common call of both Salafi revivalists and Islamic modernists. This article explores and traces the history of the various Sunni schools of thought on the use of weak and forged Hadīths from the third/ninth century to the present day.

Shaping the Local Economic Environment

2019 ◽  
pp. 141-170
Author(s):  
Mario Polèse
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Gold Rush ◽  
Economic Behavior ◽  
Early History ◽  
Economic Environment ◽  
The Core ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
Local Environments ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores the attributes that help make local environments conducive to productive economic behavior. Several attributes are explored, beginning with integrity in local government and a short history of corruption and urban mismanagement in America, New Orleans serving as an instructive example. New Orleans’s sad story takes us back to Louisiana’s early history, the issue of race never far from the surface. The chapter also describes how the roots of Silicon Valley’s success go back to the California Gold Rush, helping to shape a unique institutional environment that promoted innovation. As the chapter explains, the unlikely success of Minneapolis-St. Paul, both peripheral and cold, can be traced back to Minnesota’s first settlers. Many of these early settlers were Scandinavian who traditionally placed a high value on education and work. Primary and secondary education matter as much, and often more, than PhDs. A competent and numerically literate workforce is at the core of many small and midsized urban success stories.

scholarly journals TEOLOGI, KEKUASAAN, DAN KEADILAN DALAM PERSPEKTIF SEJARAH ISLAM

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saefur Rochmat
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Background ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Core ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nahdlatul Ulama ◽  
Universal Application

AbstractIt is very often for some people to define theology as the core of Islamic teachings in the regard of its content as the science of God. It has Arabic similar terms such as Aqidah and Kalam for explaining the principles of God. It is not surprisingly that Moslem should deal with the issues of theology since the early history of Islam, but why do appear some conflicts in the matters of theology.Theological controversies are something inherent regarding theology is the result of man’s thinking which are bound by the limits of space and of time as the contexts. In other words, theology is the application of the principle of universalism of Islamic teachings in the certain contexts of space and time. Consequently theology is improperly to be claimed as having a universal application. That is why theology is different from iman (belief). It is believed by the Sufis who evaluate correctly that theology does not have an in-depth feeling of spirituality due to its main focus on the use of ratio for the elaboration. Meanwhile iman exists in all religions theology exists in the religions which deal with the matters of worldly affairs, especially in monotheist religions such as Yew, Christian, and Islam.Theology is in great need at the time of crisis such as at the time of the death of Muhammad PBUH the prophet. Indeed at that time theology has not developed well and be arranged systematically as today. We have some theological groups such as Shiite, Sunni, Khawarij. And in Indonesia we have Muhammadiyah, Nahdlatul Ulama, and PKS which all of them come from the Sunni sect. It is possible to notice them from their different socio-cultural background. In other words, socio-cultural background influence the form of theology.Keywords: theology, belief, Sunni, Shiite, Muhammadiyah, NU, and PKS.

scholarly journals Conjugality, Colonialism and the ‘Criminal Tribes’ in North India

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-46
Author(s):  
Jessica Hinchy
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
North India ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Over Time

The Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871 was a project to geographically redistribute and immobilize criminalized populations on the basis of family units. Family ties were a key site of contestation between criminalized people and the colonial state, as well as cooperation, or at least, situationally coinciding interests. This article’s focus on the family goes against the grain of existing literature, which has primarily debated the historical causes of the CTA and the colonial construction of the ‘criminal tribe’. This article explores a particular type of family tie—marriage—to provide a new vantage point on the minutiae of everyday life under the CTA, while also shedding light on the history of conjugality in modern South Asia. In 1891, the colonial government in north India launched a matchmaking campaign in which district Magistrates became marriage brokers. Colonial governments showed an uneven concern with marriage practices, which varied between criminalized communities and over time. In the case of ‘nomadic’ criminalized groups, colonial governments were more concerned with conjugality, since they attempted more significant transformations in the relationships between individuals, families, social groupings and space. Moreover, criminalized peoples’ strategies and demands propelled colonial involvement into marital matters. Yet the colonial government could not sustain a highly interventionist management of intimate relationships.

Introductory remarks

1982 ◽  
Vol 306 (1492) ◽  
pp. 9-10 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seismic Data ◽  
Geomagnetic Field ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Additional Constraints

The suggestion for this Discussion Meeting was put forward more than three years ago. The format of the programme has changed many times since the original version, reflecting in part changing interests in different aspects of the subject. Of the 25 papers to be presented, only 5 discuss the constitution of the core, 13 deal with the geomagnetic field (including the secular variation and reversals) and all but 1 of the remaining 7 on geophysical interpretations are also concerned with the geomagnetic field. This emphasis on geomagnetism reflects the additional constraints that the absence or presence of a magnetic field may put on the constitution of all the planets and the Moon. In contrast to the Earth, the record of the first 10 9 years of planetary history is still at least partly preserved on the Moon, Mercury and Mars (and perhaps on Venus), and a study of this record on these other bodies may yield some information on the early history of the Earth. We have some seismic data for the Moon, but it is only for the Earth that we have a rich store of such data. In this connection, a word of caution is in order. It must not be forgotten that the structure of the Earth as revealed by seismic data is only a snapshot of what it is like today, and in many ways a very imperfect snapshot. There is no science of palaeoseismology, and seismic data tell us nothing about the structure of the Earth in the past nor of its evolution.

Stotra Literature

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-64
Author(s):  
Hamsa Stainton
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Early History ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter presents an overview and analysis of stotra literature in South Asia from three different angles: definition, classification, and history. It first reviews recent descriptions of the stotra genre and offers a working definition for the present study. Then it considers some of the factors that can be used to classify and analyze this voluminous and diverse corpus. In doing so, it highlights many of the most salient and recurring features of stotra literature overall. Finally, it surveys the history of stotra literature in South Asia, highlighting key texts, authors, and periods of development, such as the relationship between stotras and Vedic hymns, political eulogies (praśasti), and vernacular devotional (bhakti) poetry, the early history of Buddhist and Jain stotras, and hymns by or attributed to famous authors like Śaṅkara. Overall, the chapter highlights the diversity, flexibility, and persistent appeal of stotra literature across regions and traditions over the millennia.

Emergence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel David
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Revenue Sharing ◽  
Early History ◽  
Coastal Restoration ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of

This chapter introduces Anne Milling, the New Orleans civic activist who founded Women of the Storm. The chapter presents her brief biography before delving into the early history of the formation of the core membership of the still unnamed incipient group. It outlines the processes involved in coming up with group names and establishing its goals, including the mission to invite members of Congress to see the destruction firsthand and a coastal restoration initiative funded through an oil and gas revenue sharing agreement.

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