A Popular Survey of Indian Linguistic Traditions

“Linguistics in Ancient India in the Context of Culture and Ritual” (Moscow, Vodoley, 2020, 244 p.) by O. A. Voloshina, published in Russian, presents a popular survey of Indian linguistic traditions, with a particular focus on descriptive methods of Pāṇini's grammar. A popular book on this topic written in Russian is indeed highly in demand. However, the book by Voloshina is not a popular, high-quality book, rather an imperfect compilation. The references in the book are mainly irrelevant or out of date. Works of contemporary leading scholars in Vedic studies are totally ignored. As a result, the book contains a number of errors and wrong conclusions, let alone numerous typos in Sanskrit. The author fails to distinguish consistently between historical description, the ideology of Vedic texts, and their subsequent interpretation in the frames of Hinduism. Chapters of the book that deal with Pāṇini's grammar provide parallels with concepts of modern linguistics. These seem promising, though sometimes a bit straightforward. The author is suggested to distinguish between descriptive and comparative parts in the chapters on Pāṇini.

An Impossible Task? Reconciling Europeanism and National Popular Culture in Caliban (1947–51)

A kind of hybrid between high-profile political and literary periodicals and successful popular book digests targeted at a mass audience, the French magazine Caliban (1947–51) both tried to adjust to a fast-changing global marketplace and to defend a form of cultural legitimacy based on national claims against globalist domination. This article traces the evolution of the magazine’s editorial venture in relation to questions connected to the issues of modernity and mobility. In particular, it aims at examining Caliban’s implacable ‘anti-digest’ stance.

Post-editese in Literary Translations

In the present study, we investigate the post-editese phenomenon, i.e., the unique features that set machine translated post-edited texts apart from human-translated texts. We use two literary texts, namely, the English children's novel by Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (AW) and Paula Hawkins' popular book The Girl on the Train (TGOTT) translated from English into Brazilian-Portuguese to investigate whether the post-editese features can be found on the surface of the post-edited (PE) texts. In addition, we examine how the features found in the PE texts differ from the features encountered in the human-translated (HT) and machine translation (MT) versions of the same source text. Results revealed evidence for post-editese for TGOTT only with PE versions being more similar to the MT output than to the HT texts.

PHARMACEUTICAL STUDY OF MUTTA TAILA

Sahasrayoga is a popular book on the Keraleeya tradition of Ayurvedic treatment. Sahasrayogam means one thousand formulations and on a rough estimate, it appears that the number of formulations varies from 700 to 1200 in various versions. It also appears that the number of formulations has been added periodically to the original text based on their practical experiences, which increased the total number of formulations. Mutta Taila is an Ayurvedic medicated oil mentioned in classical text Sahasrayoga in which the ingredients are egg yolks, Kumari and Nimba Taila. It is also mentioned in Siddha medicine in the name of Anda Taila by Abdulla Sahib’s Anubhava Vaidhya Navaneedham. This preparation is used in the treatment of Sanniroga (Delirium), fever with sluggishness, convulsions, and paralysis in children. It is also indicated in cerebral palsy. In the present study, a step is made to do the pharmaceutical preparation of Mutta Taila. An attempt has been made to do the pharmaceutical study of Mutta Taila. Mutta Taila was prepared as per the traditional method and evaluated for its organoleptic characteristics. The final product of Mutta Taila was having the desired consistency and quality. The yield of Mutta Taila was less with more quantity of egg yolks. The importance of adding Nimba Taila in the process of Mutta Taila preparation was discussed. In the present study, the detailed pharmaceutical process of Mutta Taila preparation and observations with changes observed in physical parameters has been discussed.

Unbiased Fuzzy Estimators in Fuzzy Hypothesis Testing

In this paper, we develop fuzzy, possibilistic hypothesis tests for testing crisp hypotheses for a distribution parameter from crisp data. In these tests, fuzzy statistics are used, which are produced by the possibility distribution of the estimated parameter, constructed by the known from crisp statistics confidence intervals. The results of these tests are in much better agreement with crisp statistics than the ones produced by the respective tests of a popular book on fuzzy statistics, which uses fuzzy critical values. We also present an error that we found in the implementation of the unbiased fuzzy estimator of the variance in this book, due to a poor interpretation of its mathematical content, which leads to disagreement of some fuzzy hypotheses tests with their respective crisp ones. Implementing correctly this estimator, we produce test statistics that achieve results in hypotheses tests that are in much better agreement with the results of the respective crisp ones.

Death by Honey and Bees

Intense political and religious divisions plagued mid-seventeenth-century English society following the execution of King Charles I and the English civil war conflicts. Against this backdrop, a fringe, troublesome Puritan preacher named Samuel Clarke published a history of Protestant martyrs, A Generall Marytrologie (1651), modeled after John Foxe’s popular Book of Martyrs (1563). Clarke’s less famous but more sensational version offered a zealous, often embellished, graphic account of religious persecution designed to incite anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment. Significantly, his rousing text was supported by eighty crude and provocative engraved images depicting grotesque scenes of abuse and brutal sexual violence repeatedly positioning women and children as victims of “Papist” torture. To modern viewers, the inflammatory visuals are startling and disturbing, but they were enabled by several factors including a censored publishing industry in lockstep with Protestant ideology; a largely illiterate population swayed by traditions of narrative storytelling and visual messaging; and a fractious political environment in which leading figures actively positioned the Irish and Catholics as a menace to English society.

Material Images and Mental Ziyāra: Depicting the Prophet’s Grave in North African Devotional Books (Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt)

The Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt (Guidelines to the Blessings) is a very popular book of prayers over the Prophet Muḥammad, originally written around the mid-fifteenth century by Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Jazūlī (d. 869/1465). The Dalāʾil is probably the only illustrated religious text in the Maghreb, where the image has been the subject of more profound reluctance than in the rest of the Muslim world. They show the sacred tomb of the Prophet inside the mosque of Medina, as well as his minbar, his miḥrāb and his sandals (naʿl), one of the most venerated relics in Islam. If the images in North African books have been systematically interpreted in a superficial way, this article proposes a reading at the crossroads of art history, codicology and a careful examination of the main text and the precious annotations added by the readers of some unpublished manuscripts. We will then understand that these illustrations have gradually acquired an autonomous place within the book. They act alongside the text, as memorial images of the sacred space hosting the holy body of the Prophet, and as a virtual substitute for the pilgrimage to Medina. It is in fact through this act, be it physical or virtual, that Muslims hope to visualize, in a dream, the figure of their loved one, Muḥammad.

Appraisal of Steven Pinker’s Position on Enlightenment

Steven Pinker presents four ideals of Enlightenment in his popular book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. He argues his case brilliantly and convincingly through cogent arguments in a language comprehensible to the reader of the present century. Moreover, whether it is reason or science or humanism or progress, he defends his position powerfully. He justifies his views by citing 75 graphs on the upswing improvement made by humanity in terms of prosperity, longevity, education, equality of men and women, health, political freedom and medical breakthroughs. Though Pinker makes an excellent case for the positive contributions of Enlightenment; however he ignores the negative aspects that are responsible for causing a great schism between the white race and others who are black and brown. The paper highlights some of these negative comments made by such Enlightenment thinkers as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Chambers, Down and Down and others. Through their literary and scientific writings, these scholars and researchers downgraded the black and brown races, thus causing a rift that led to slavery, colonialism and apartheid. The paper reveals these negative aspects ignored by Pinker in his otherwise well-researched book on Enlightenment. Since Pinker presents a one-sided case by including only the positive contributions of Enlightenment, I recommend that he should write a sequel to his present work outlining the negative aspects responsible for numerous political, social and environmental problems facing humanity today. By using dialectical logic in place of logic of contraries, he might be able to synthesize both the positive and negative aspects of Enlightenment. He can then argue that humanity might be propelled to make progress more efficiently at a faster pace toward humanism and world peace.

BIO-OCEANOGRAPHER, ZOOLOGIST LEV IVANOVICH MOSKALEV (04.01.1935–04.12.2020)

The article is dedicated to the memory of L.I. Moskalev – renowned bio-oceanographer, zoologist who spent his entire scientific career at the Laboratory of Ocean Bottom Fauna. L.I. Moskalev participated in more than 30 deep-sea voyages, spent 200 hours diving in manned submersibles “Pisces” and “Mir”, published about 100 scientific papers and a popular book «Masters of the Deep» (2005). Colleagues will remember Lev Moskalev – an extraordinary and deep person and a true patriot of the Laboratory and P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology

Tegelasvõrgustikud kahes raamatus Reinuvader Rebasest / Character networks in two books about Reynard the Fox

Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwaldi „Reinuvader Rebane“ (1850) oli loomaeeposežanri esimeseks tutvustuseks eesti keeles. Ernst Peterson-Särgava kogumik „Ennemuistsed jutud Reinuvader Rebasest“ (1911) on sarnaste rebasejuttude valimik lastele. Mõlemas teoses on ühisosa eesti folkloorsete loomamuinasjuttudega. Võrgustikuanalüüsi kasutades analüüsitakse kahe raamatu tegelaskonda. Mõlemas teoses tegelastena esitatud loomade kogum ja nendevaheliste suhete võrgustik katab enamiku eesti loomamuinasjuttude põhitegelastest. Mõlemas teoses on täheldatav vaenuliku võrgustiku domineerimine sõbraliku võrgustiku üle. Tsensuurist ja enesetsensuurist tulenevad muutused raamatutes ei ole tegelasvõrgustikesse olulisi muutusi toonud. Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s Reynard the Fox, a 12-chapter work of fiction loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epic poem Reineke Fuchs and Aleksander Friedrich Franz Hoffmann’s popular book Geschichte von Reineke dem Fuchs, first introduced the genre of the animal epic into the Estonian language. Ernst Peterson-Särgava’s collection of stories for children Old Tales about Reynard the Fox (1911) had a somewhat similar structure; most of its tales are connected with the fox and have been brought together by the author to form a 20-chapter book of tales for children. The former book on the fox more strongly resembles a animal epic, the latter rather appears to be a less rigorously connected collection of animal tales. Both works, however, have elements in common with the animal tales of Estonian folklore. Both introduce the tales of the animal epic with a tricksterly protagonist to the Estonian readership, yet the focus of the works is slightly different. Similarly to the animal epic, Kreutzwald’s book gives a survey of Reynard the Fox’s misdeeds as he is summoned to the court presided by the Lion, but after giving a skilful talk in his own defence the fox is judged to be not guilty and is promoted to become the ruler of the whole state in the end. Peterson-Särgava starts the description of the events from a little girl named Pille who lives at a farm close to the forest; thereafter different confrontations between the woodland creatures and their shenanigans concerning the old man and woman are described, while the book ends with the fox’s death. Both works have had to undergo censorship in their various editions. Several paragraphs were cut from the 1850 edition of Kreutzwald’s Reineke the Fox at the behest of the censor, and even more were omitted from the second edition. The cut text was mostly restored in the third edition (1869). In the first Soviet-time edition of Peterson-Särgava’s text, that appeared in 1947, the author made not only stylistic changes but also those prompted by self-censorship. The character networks of the books, however, have remained almost uninfluenced by censorship and the authors’ self-censorship; the only character omitted was God to whom the old man started to climb in Peterson-Särgava’s work. Network analysis is used to study the characters of the two books. The communication of the characters is annotated as concerns communication at least one character is conscious of within the limits of an episode, as is the (positive or negative) modality of the communication. Visual representation of the interaction of character networks is an efficient way of obtaining an overview both of a work’s characters as well as the relationships between them. Narratives such as literary stories about animals and animal tales serve as a good basis for analysing character pairs as in animal tales characters usually appear in twos with much dialogue between them. The network has been visualised using Gephi software. The number of animals represented as characters in Kreutzwald’s Reynard the Fox and Peterson-Särgava’s Old Tales about Reynard the Fox, as well as the network of the relationships between the animals covers most of the main characters of Estonian animal tales. The character lists of both books mostly contain the animals who appear in the list of the top dozen most popular animals in the animal tales of Estonian folklore. Reynard the Fox, the protagonist of both books, appears as the central character judging by the number of links connected to him. In Kreutzwald’s book also the lion, as well as the more important side characters the bear, the cat and the wolf appear in important positions in the network of characters connected with the fox; in Peterson-Särgava’s book the positions are held by the wolf, the bear, the old man and his daughter Little Pille. The general outlook of the network is also influenced by the fact that several characters only appear once or twice in the book and have no independent roles from the perspective of the plot; Kreutzwald in particular has used (based on Goethe) a lengthy list of animals who do not participate in other activities to make it obvious to the reader that there were indeed many animals who suffered from the fox’s actions. Both books mention a character other than the fox first and a part of the plot centres around them – in Kreutzwald it is the Lion and in Peterson-Särgava it is Little Pille who seemingly emerges as the protagonist in the opening chapter. An analysis of the modality of the characters’ relations in both works reveals the domination of the unfriendly network over the friendly network. In Kreutzwald’s book about the fox positive and negative associations appear to an almost equal measure, while in Peterson-Särgava’s work most of the links between characters are negative. Although the communication acts appearing in the two fox-centred books discussed rather tend to be hostile, the books still retain a certain charm and delightfulness that has kept them among the people’s reading material throughout the years. It is tricksterly cleverness, after all, that on occasion turns out to be the best means to cope with the obvious ills in life.