scholarly journals Architecture and Living Traditions Reflected in Wooden Rafters of Śrīvilliputtūr Temple

1970 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 229-266
Author(s):  
Deepak John Mathew ◽  
Parthiban Rajukalidoss

The present article cursorily examines the wooden images set in exterior hall of the Vaṭapatraśāyī complex. The temple priests told me these images were part of an old temple car, tēr that existed in the nineteenth century. A collection of 135 wooden sculptures is packed in this hall of which select specimens are reported. Each image is supposed to be housed in a vimāna. The unique features of the images vis-à-vis their architectural setting is investigated. It is understood the different Mūrtis appearing in the sculptural illustrations are likely to represent the presiding gods of Vaiṣṇava divyadeśas at Śrīvilliputtūr, Māliruñcōlai, Araṅkam/Śrīraṅgam, Vēṅkaṭam/Tirumala-Tirupati, Dvārakā, Śālagrāma and so on. The vimāna typologies seem to represent the models popular in South Asian art. Architectural drawing of the examined specimens is designed to facilitate better understanding of the religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent. Parthiban’s doctoral thesis on the architectural setting of the Śrīvilliputtūr includes a survey of the sculptural wealth of the Great Temple (Tamil peruṅkōyil) dedicated to Āṇṭāḷ and Vaṭapatraśāyī. A number of architectural drawings are presented to pinpoint the programme of images within the macro twin-temple and the micro maṇḍapas or other parts where icons are accommodated.

1960 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. E. Strong ◽  
J. B. Ward-Perkins

The name and date of the little round temple in the Forum Boarium at Rome (popularly known as the ‘Temple of Vesta’) are long-standing problems of Roman topography. Its identification is still quite uncertain. On the chronology, however, general opinion seems to have hardened and, for reasons which are discussed below, most scholars appear now to believe that the building is Augustan, rejecting the attractive theory of Altmann and Delbrueck that it was erected some time in the later second century B.C. The present article is not concerned at all with the problem of identification, nor does it attempt the full and detailed study of the design and construction without which a definitive solution of the problem of dating is clearly impossible. Its purpose is twofold: to draw attention to some significant features of the architectural design and decoration, and to illustrate and discuss some surviving fragments which can be shown to belong to the lost entablture, but which seem hitherto to have escaped attention.The foundations of the temple were first exposed by Valadier in the early nineteenth century, in the course of restoration work undertaken to free the building of later accretions and to consolidate the ancient remains.


Oriens ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 365-388
Author(s):  
Khaled El-Rouayheb

Abstract The present article is a reconstruction of a logical dispute concerning the analysis of existential propositions between the two rivals from Shiraz, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 1502) and Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī (d. 1498), a dispute that continued to echo down to the nineteenth century, especially in Iran and the Indian subcontinent. The controversy was elicited by a passage from a discussion in the commentary by Qūshjī (d. 1474) on Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd in which Qūshjī had briefly suggested that perhaps the predicates “existent” (mawjūd) and “nonexistent” (maʿdūm) are unusual in not needing a copula to link them to the subject. Dashtakī thought that a copula is needed in both existential and non-existential predications, but that in existential predications the copula is simply the union of subject and predicate, whereas in non-existential predications there is an additional copula that signifies the existence or nonexistence of the predicate for the subject. Dawānī’s position was that existential and non-existential predications are exactly on a par and should both be analyzed into subject, copula and predicate.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 281-300
Author(s):  
Amanda Lanzillo

Focusing on the lithographic print revolution in North India, this article analyses the role played by scribes working in Perso-Arabic script in the consolidation of late nineteenth-century vernacular literary cultures. In South Asia, the rise of lithographic printing for Perso-Arabic script languages and the slow shift from classical Persian to vernacular Urdu as a literary register took place roughly contemporaneously. This article interrogates the positionality of scribes within these transitions. Because print in North India relied on lithography, not movable type, scribes remained an important part of book production on the Indian subcontinent through the early twentieth century. It analyses the education and models of employment of late nineteenth-century scribes. New scribal classes emerged during the transition to print and vernacular literary culture, in part due to the intervention of lithographic publishers into scribal education. The patronage of Urdu-language scribal manuals by lithographic printers reveals that scribal education in Urdu was directly informed by the demands of the print economy. Ultimately, using an analysis of scribal manuals, the article contributes to our knowledge of the social positioning of book producers in South Asia and demonstrates the vitality of certain practices associated with manuscript culture in the era of print.


Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Stapley

Early Mormons used the Book of Mormon as the basis for their ecclesiology and understanding of the open heaven. Church leaders edited, harmonized, and published Joseph Smith’s revelation texts, expanding understandings of ecclesiastical priesthood office. Joseph Smith then revealed the Nauvoo Temple liturgy, with its cosmology that equated heaven, kinship, and priesthood. This cosmological priesthood was materialized through sealings at the temple altar and was the context for expansive teachings incorporating women into priesthood. This cosmology was also the basis for polygamy, temple adoption, and restrictions on the participation of black men and women in the church. This framework gave way at the end of the nineteenth century to a new priesthood cosmology introduced by Joseph F. Smith based on male ecclesiastical office. As church leaders expanded the meaning of priesthood to comprise the entire power and authority of God, they struggled to integrate women into church cosmology.


Author(s):  
Julian Wright

This chapter asks wider questions about the flow of time as it was explored in this historical writing. It focuses on Jaurès’ philosophy of history, initially through a brief discussion of his doctoral thesis and the essay entitled ‘Le bilan social du XIXème siècle’ that he provided at the end of the Histoire socialiste, then through the work of three of his collaborators, Gabriel Deville, Eugène Fournière, and Georges Renard. One of the most important challenges for socialists in the early twentieth century was to understand the damage and division caused by revolution, while not losing the transformative mission of their socialism. With these elements established, the chapter returns to Jaurès, and in particular the long study of nineteenth-century society in chapter 10 of L’Armée nouvelle. Jaurès advanced an original vision of the nineteenth century and its meaning for the socialist present.


Author(s):  
Susanne Wagini ◽  
Katrin Holzherr

Abstract The restorer Johann Michael von Hermann (1793–1855), famous in the early nineteenth century, has long fallen into oblivion. A recent discovery of his work associated with old master prints at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München has allowed a close study of his methods and skills as well as those of his pupil Ludwig Albert von Montmorillon (1794–1854), providing a fresh perspective on the early history of paper conservation. Von Hermann’s method of facsimile inserts was praised by his contemporaries, before Max Schweidler (1885–1953) described these methods in 1938. The present article provides biographical notes on both nineteenth century restorers, gives examples of prints treated by them and adds a chapter of conservation history crediting them with a place in the history of the discipline. In summary, this offers a surprising insight on how works of art used to be almost untraceably restored by this team of Munich-based restorers more than 150 years before Schweidler.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Lomazzi ◽  
Dara Entekhabi ◽  
Joaquim G. Pinto ◽  
Giorgio Roth ◽  
Roberto Rudari

Abstract The summer monsoon season is an important hydrometeorological feature of the Indian subcontinent and it has significant socioeconomic impacts. This study is aimed at understanding the processes associated with the occurrence of catastrophic flood events. The study has two novel features that add to the existing body of knowledge about the South Asian monsoon: 1) it combines traditional hydrometeorological observations (rain gauge measurements) with unconventional data (media and state historical records of reported flooding) to produce value-added century-long time series of potential flood events and 2) it identifies the larger regional synoptic conditions leading to days with flood potential in the time series. The promise of mining unconventional data to extend hydrometeorological records is demonstrated in this study. The synoptic evolution of flooding events in the western-central coast of India and the densely populated Mumbai area are shown to correspond to active monsoon periods with embedded low pressure centers and have far-upstream influences from the western edge of the Indian Ocean basin. The coastal processes along the Arabian Peninsula where the currents interact with the continental shelf are found to be key features of extremes during the South Asian monsoon.


2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 563-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raf Gelders

In the aftermath of Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), European representations of Eastern cultures have returned to preoccupy the Western academy. Much of this work reiterates the point that nineteenth-century Orientalist scholarship was a corpus of knowledge that was implicated in and reinforced colonial state formation in India. The pivotal role of native informants in the production of colonial discourse and its subsequent use in servicing the material adjuncts of the colonial state notwithstanding, there has been some recognition in South Asian scholarship of the moot point that the colonial constructs themselves built upon an existing, precolonial European discourse on India and its indigenous culture. However, there is as yet little scholarly consensus or indeed literature on the core issues of how and when these edifices came to be formed, or the intellectual and cultural axes they drew from. This genealogy of colonial discourse is the subject of this essay. Its principal concerns are the formalization of a conceptual unit in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, called “Hinduism” today, and the larger reality of European culture and religion that shaped the contours of representation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Wood

The present article considers whether there is “a general practice accepted as law” establishing rules of customary international law on the immunity of international organizations from the jurisdiction of domestic courts. Apart from treaties, there does not appear to be a great deal of practice or opinio juris on the immunity of international organizations. And while there are many treaties dealing with the matter, their significance for the generation of a rule of customary international law seems questionable. This article sketches the historical development of the immunity of international organizations since the nineteenth century, describes various approaches that have been suggested to this question, and sets out such practice as there is and academic consideration of that practice. It then considers whether practice has to date generated any rules of customary international law regarding immunities, and finally suggests some conclusions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-557
Author(s):  
Rituparna Roy

AbstractA lonely wife in Kolkata and a bachelor in London have a virtual affair, but are forced to re-think their relationship when they discover he is her brother-in-law. Charulata 2011 is an ingenious post-millennial adaptation of Tagore’s novella, Nastanir (The Broken Nest, 1901), already immortalized by Satyajit Ray in his classic Charulata (1964). This intertextuality, especially with Ray, lends an added dimension to the film, allowing Chatterjee to contrast two modernities in Bengal – the colonial and glocal – over the course of a century. Both these women gain temporary respite from their suffocating marriage through an affair, but their circumstances are vastly different. While Tagore/Ray’s heroine (like Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterley) could only bond with a man she knew, technology expands Charulata’s choice in 2011. She romances the strange and the unknown – an unseen tall dark stranger with a gift for words. While the nineteenth century Bengali heroine had to reign in her erotic impulse, her twenty-first century counterpart submits to it, though with an overwhelming sense of guilt. But there are similarities too – both are childless homemakers; have a literary sensibility; and though a 100 years apart, in both their cases, the lover eventually departs, and duty ultimately wins over passion, bringing back the duly chastened wife to the wronged husband. Charulata 2011 thus dramatizes a glocalized South Asian narrative, where the protagonist negotiates an uneasy juxtaposition of a globalized outlook on the world with the entrapment of age-old social obligations in her self.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document