BuddhistRoadPaper 6.3 "Inside Out: The Social Life of a Pair of Inscribed Book Covers from Ancient Khotan"

This paper presents the preliminary findings of an in-depth investigation of a pair of wooden book covers, each inscribed on the inside, which a Russian diplomat brought from the Tarim Basin to St. Petersburg. Pinpointing the find-spot of the covers as a significant archaeological site to the east of Khotan, the present research analyses the inscriptions, sheds new light on the materiality of the covers, and suggests that they were probably used as votive objects. A salient aspect of the covers is that they bear testimony to a close connection between the monastery, to which they once belonged, and some prestigious monasteries known from Chinese and Tibetan sources. Based on a careful reconstruction of the ties between these monasteries and their socio-religious implications, a tentative hypothesis is ventured on the nature of the binary system of Buddhist monasteries in the Kingdom of Khotan (ca. 1st c.?–1006).

Anthropomorphic Images at the Padjelanta Site, Northern Sweden: Rock Engravings in the Context of Sámi Myth and Ritual

The paper discusses three phases of scratched images from the Padjelanta site of Sámi rock art in Laponia, northern Sweden. Pre-dating the middle phase of Viking Age/Medieval period sailing boats is a set of stylised anthopomorphs. These early images resemble certain petroglyphs from Alta, goddess motifs on Sami drums, and the Earth Mother figure in the Manrlajsmyths. Possible ritual contexts for the Padjelanta images are discussed, including autumn reindeer hunting, human burials, and smallscale quarrying for asbestos and soapstone. As a tentative hypothesis, a link between the early anthropomorphs and the Sami goddess Máttaráhkká is proposed.

Foreign Language Deadly Boulevard: The Tentative Hypothesis of Novel Corona Virus Policy Manifestation to the English as a Foreign Language

This article is the purpose to argue the dramatic and crisis situation whichaffected by corona virus in widespread, especially English as a foreign languagewhich standing as foreign language pioneer that can be dead and or lost whenthat virus have mutual influence. The topics that discussed were the generalissues such as the impact of pandemic to social, politic, policymaker, education,and also English foreign language that spoke and learned by million peopleglobally. In fact, all of those issues have been interrelated to support mutualdevelopment of human being wealthiest. So forth, researcher believes that by theseveral of crisis will impact all of the sectoral to the deep of human disaster evenin short, long, and generation by generation. So that through this review, we canreflected, analyzed, and developed the suitable problem solving in used ofEnglish as a foreign language as practical foreign language and sustainableimplementation of foreign language inquiry in the mid of crisis.

H1N1–SARS-CoV-2 immunity hypothesis

The case of using cowpox to inoculate against deadlier smallpox is well known.It is also known that H1N1 (pdmH1N1) has been shown to provide an immunity to cold/flu viruses in a general way, with exception cases.I state and briefly discuss a tentative hypothesis concerning both H1N1 (pdmH1N1) and SARS-CoV-2. My limited understanding and data both seem to bear out the hypothesis. Of course, we need to find out more through empirical studies. However, even if the research shows that there is a weak immunity defense that H1N1 provides against SARS-CoV-2 (so, far weaker than the hypothesis proposes), that would still be a helpful and actionable piece of information at this time.I am hoping that someone else (I am unable to do so) would study the relation between H1N1 general immunity and SARS-CoV-2. My primary reason for disseminating this document is to encourage this potentially significant research.

Grammaticalized sources of Kurtöp verbal morphology

Kurtöp (Tibeto-Burman; Bhutan) has a rich set of finite verbal suffixes which encode evidentiality, mirativity, and egophoricity. This article examines the origins of these suffixes in a typological context, showing how many of them have developed via recent grammaticalizations. Synchronic processes of nominalization and clause-chaining have provided the ideal syntactic contexts for these grammaticalizations to take place. Many of the grammaticalization pathways found here are shown to be typologically common, such as ‘give’ becoming an applicative. We find one suffix, the egophoric, which is an obvious borrowing. Based on the data presented here, this article puts forth the tentative hypothesis that due to principles of iconicity, miratives will tend to be recent grammaticalizations. Similarly, the fact that the Kurtöp egophoric has been borrowed is also, arguably, iconic.

The Intergenerational Perception of the Causes and Effects of Language Loss in the Pijao Community of Natagaima, Colombia

The Pijao language was lost sometime during the last half of the 20th century and exactly how the language was lost has yet to be discerned. Using data from an investigation that examined perceptions of the causes and effects of the Pijao linguicide among focus groups of different ages in the Pijao community at Natagaima, Tolima, this article examines two themes that came out of the focus groups – how the language was lost and how the community has suffered since the loss of the Pijao language. The results show how loss of their native language has disadvantaged the Pijao as a result of pervasive linguistic essentialist attitudes pervasive in the country. At the national level, the Pijao have problems in terms of recognition from other indigenous groups, with many refusing to recognize the indigeneity of the Pijao on the grounds of lack of language, and at a local level with mestizos arguing the same. Additionally, the author offers a tentative hypothesis for the loss of the Pijao language in the south of Tolima – that the creation of indigenous reserves may have hastened the loss of the language.

Self-praise online and offline

In contrast to the assumptions of linguistic research on face-to-face interaction, CMC studies have shown that self-promotion is acceptable and even desired in certain online contexts. However, investigations of self-praise online repeatedly refer to the specific features of internet environment or internet communities that cause a temporary suspension of the constraint against self-praise. The constraint itself is treated as somewhat of an axiom. The assumption is, therefore, that the speech act of self-praise is face-threatening and disruptive and can only occur when certain conditions prevail, for example, when a disclaimer #humblebrag is provided. In the present study, I look at self-praise in private WhatsApp chats. Until now, self-praise has been investigated in broadcasting contexts of Twitter and Instagram. On the basis of the existing description of these naturally occurring episodes of self-praise, a retrieval strategy is developed to identify self-praise in a corpus through queries for collocations of lexical markers. An analysis of the episodes of self-praise retrieved from the WhatsApp corpus and some preliminary results from the corpus of spoken American English support the tentative hypothesis that self-praise is an unmarked speech behaviour that is a part of an everyday speech act repertoire. The existing claim about its special status could be explained through a combination of intuitive assumptions carried over from the influential studies of the pre-corpus era, and the retrieval methods that targeted the modified self-praise.

Chiastic Structure of the Vessantara J?taka: Textual Criticism and Interpretation Through Inverted Parallelism

The Vessantara J?taka is not only the most popular of all the Buddhist J?taka tales, but is important in the tradition as a whole, generally considered by the Therav?din tradition to display the epitome of the Bodhisatta’s perfection of giving (d?nap?ram?). While most studies have focused on philological approaches, numerous questions as to the text’s structure and how to interpret individual parts within that structure have remained unresolved (§1. The received tradition of the Vessantara J?taka). My study shall employ the theory of ‘chiasmus’ (inverted parallelism) to shed new light on both the key message of the story and also the sub-themes within it (§2. Chiastic structures as textual approach). In terms of textual criticism, I shall first elucidate the chiastic structure of the text and discuss how this structure can provide insights on text-critical readings (§3. Textual criticism: Chiastic units and structure). In terms of interpretation, I shall then see how the structure clearly demarcates the text’s scope through its prologue and conclusion with surrounding framework, its paired parallel sub-themes, and its central climax point, all in the light of its chiastic structure (§4. Interpretation: A chiastic reading). Finally, considering broader implications, on comparison with other recently discovered Buddhist textual chiasmi I shall present a tentative hypothesis as to the origins of such structures in the ‘bodhisatt(v)a’ literary genre (§5. Conclusions: Critical and interpretive implications).

De-stigmatising manipulation: An exercise in second-order empathic understanding

<p>Standard definitions of ‘manipulation’, especially regarding people with a borderline personality diagnosis, usually highlight the alloplastic purpose of manipulativity, i.e. the intention to produce a belief in, or action by another person. In this article, I will try to show that this is only one side of the coin, and shed light on a complementary aspect of manipulative behaviour: manipulation can serve an epistemic, rather than alloplastic, pragmatic motif – the attempt to establish contact with the other in order to achieve a more distinct experience and representation of the other. My tentative hypothesis is based on the meaning of manipulation as touching (‘manus’ means ‘hand’) in infant behaviour where manipulation is a means to explore, rather than a way to modify the other’s state of mind.</p>