The Origins of Chinese Mountain Painting: Evidence from Archaeology

Author(s):  
JESSICA RAWSON

Mountainous landscapes, with massive crags and narrow fissures between rocks, through which water spouts, are among the principal subjects of paintings in China. This chapter addresses the question, why, in the first place, were these subjects chosen? It focuses on developments made during the Qin (221–207 bc) and Han (206 bc–ad 220) dynasties, from the third century bc onwards. It explores the ways in which the conditions prevailing in the Qin and Han periods moulded some aspects of the later Chinese practice. It is argued that the ways in which the Chinese from the Han period onwards viewed the cosmos determined their choice of mountains as a major subject for painted images. The chapter discusses attitudes to the cosmos and the aesthetic consequences of these views. It considers the whole range of ideas about the universe and not simply with depictions or models of mountains as representing one part of the cosmos.

2004 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 273
Author(s):  
Marcos R. NUNES COSTA

Founded in Asia, in the third century, by Mani, manicheism constituted, by itself, in a doctrinal viewpoint, in a gnosis that mixed oriental principles of sects/religions, specially from Zoroastrism and Budism, Greek-Roman Philosophy and Christianism. His basic thesis consisted of statement of two ontological principles: Good or Light, presented by the sun, and Evil or Darkness, personified in matter. From this ontological Dualism arose a cosmology/soteriology that presented the salvation history of world in three moments: the first-one, initial, embodies the two principles cosmic origins and their first conflicts. The second-one, medial, is the mixture time is characterized by the downfall of one the Light parts in the matter, as well as it is the universe being creation time. At last, the third-one, final, marks the liberation of all Light particles, imbricated in the matter, meaning the Light return to Father's kingdom and the matter's definitive downfall into the hell.


Author(s):  
Peter Schäfer

This chapter analyzes the wisdom tradition in the biblical Book of Proverbs, which goes back around the third century BCE. Wisdom emerged prior to the creation of the world, before the universe had taken on its final form. The chapter emphasizes that Wisdom is to be understood as a person and even enthroned on a cloud throne in heaven. But in contrast to Proverbs, Wisdom comes forth from the mouth of God and is obviously God's word, which is nevertheless interpreted as a person, since she lives in heaven, sits on a throne, compasses the heavenly and earthly vaults, and rules over the land, seas, and all people. The chapter also talks about Wisdom or the holy spirit as gifts from God to the righteous person.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 5-11
Author(s):  
Vsevolod Evgenyevich Bagno ◽  
◽  

An international language of interethnic communication emerges from Dostoevsky’s novels published in translations. The signifi cance of the pronouncements by various foreign cultural fi gures concerning the Russian writer is determined by the fact that today they shape the public opinion of tomorrow. They focus on Dostoevsky’s relevance for modern life, the universality and accessibility of his work for various periods and cultures. The multifaceted human nature, as refl ected in the works by Dostoevsky, is particularly obvious in the fact that various cultural fi gures see the writer’s various protagonists as the most compatible ones with the spirit of our time. The stage directors’ and moviemakers’ creative dialogue with Dostoevsky does not negate the fact that the value of his own „mes-sage“ is much greater than the aesthetic impact of the works of art he has inspired. The „dispute“ about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky has not been ignored either. According to the art activists of today, Dostoevsky novels help to shape the picture of Russia and the Russian folk. At the same time, though, they offer a true and profound picture of humanity and human nature in general.


Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Bell ◽  
Kathy Davis

Translocation – Transformation is an ambitious contribution to the subject of mobility. Materially, it interlinks seemingly disparate objects into a surprisingly unified exhibition on mobile histories and heritages: twelve bronze zodiac heads, silk and bamboo creatures, worn life vests, pressed Pu-erh tea, thousands of broken antique teapot spouts, and an ancestral wooden temple from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) used by a tea-trading family. Historically and politically, the exhibition engages Chinese stories from the third century BCE, empires in eighteenth-century Austria and China, the Second Opium War in the nineteenth century, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, and today’s global refugee crisis.


2019 ◽  
Vol 950 (8) ◽  
pp. 2-11
Author(s):  
S.A. Tolchelnikova ◽  
K.N. Naumov

The Euclidean geometry was developed as a mathematical system due to generalizing thousands years of measurements on the plane and spherical surfaces. The development of celestial mechanics and stellar astronomy confirmed its validity as mathematical principles of natural philosophy, in particular for studying the Solar System bodies’ and Galaxy stars motions. In the non-Euclidean geometries by Lobachevsky and Riemann, the third axiom of modern geometry manuals is substituted. We show that the third axiom of these manuals is a corollary of the Fifth Euclidean postulate. The idea of spherical, Riemannian space of the Universe and local curvatures of space, depending on body mass, was inculcated into celestial mechanics, astronomy and geodesy along with the theory of relativity. The mathematical apparatus of the relativity theory was created from immeasurable quantities


Author(s):  
Barbara K. Gold

This chapter discusses the key issues surrounding Perpetua’s life and her narrative, the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. It introduces the most perplexing circumstances around her life and times: the authorship of her Passio (which is written in at least three different hands); her life and family; the conditions of her martyrdom and of martyrdoms during the pre-Constantinian period; the status of martyrdom texts as personal, social, or historical documents; whether persecutions can be historically verified or were exaggerated by the Christians and others; and the afterlife of Perpetua and her text in writers from the third century to contemporary times. The introduction lays out the arguments for these thorny issues and tries to find a reasonable position on each one.


Author(s):  
Willy Clarysse

In this chapter, papyrus letters sent from superiors to their inferiors are studied on the basis of test cases ranging across the Graeco-Roman period in Egypt, from the third century BCE to the third century CE. This correspondence is drawn from four archival groups of texts: the archive of Zenon; the letters of L. Bellienus Gemellus and the letters of the sons of Patron; and the Heroninus archive. The letters are usually short, full of imperatives, and characterized by the absence of philophronetic formulae. Recurrent themes of the correspondence are urgency, rebukes, orders, and interdictions, and there is an almost total lack of polite phrases.


Author(s):  
Adrastos Omissi

This chapter begins by considering what made the late Roman state distinctive from the early Empire, exploring the political developments of the later third century, in particular the military, administrative, and economic reforms undertaken by the tetrarchs. It then explores the presentation of the war between the tetrarchy and the British Empire of Carausius and Allectus (286‒96), taking as its core sources Pan. Lat. X, XI, and VIII. These speeches are unique in the panegyrical corpus, in that two of them (X and XI) were delivered while the usurpation they describe was still under way, the third (VIII) after it was defeated. In this chapter, we see how the British Empire was ‘othered’ as piratical and barbarian, and how conflict with it helped to create the distinctive ideology of the tetrarchy.


Author(s):  
David S. Potter

This chapter offers an analysis of how inscriptions can complement the narratives of Roman history from the third century BCE to the third century CE provided in literary sources. They reveal certain historical events or details that would otherwise be unknown, and they supplement the information offered by the surviving Roman historians .


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