Unusual Sculptures of Buddhist Deities in Japan in the Halo of Legends and Historical Facts

Diverse, unusual images of Buddhist deities are ubiquitous in Japan. In a number of ways, they differ from traditional temple images, demonstrating a deviation from the canon, which dictates certain, centuries-old norms and rules regarding postures, position of feet, fingers, gestures, symbols. Simplification of expressive means, a stylized image become the predominant features in the image of extraordinary images. The appearance of unusual Buddhist sculptures in the plastic field of the country is often associated with the existence of legends, traditions, and also facts that took place throughout the history of Japan among the population. The iconography of unusual Buddhas is very diverse and encompasses both the Buddhas themselves and the bodhisattvas, Kings of Light, Heavenly Kings, and so on. Six-armed Jizō, Rope-tied Jizō, Yata Jizō, Child-giving Jizō are added to the familiar images of the Bodhisattva Jizō. Amida Buddha, who is habitually portrayed as sitting frontally, appears in a new form – standing and in profile or with his head bowed. A very colourful group is represented by deities sitting on zoomorphic thrones – lions, elephants, riding birds – knocked out of the canonical image. The traditional images of the Eleven-headed, Thousand-armed Bodhisattva Kannon always seemed unusual, although they became familiar. However, placing the bodhisattva on a mount bird – a four-legged, eight-headed raven gives reason to consider this sculpture unusual. In unusual sculptures, there is a deviation from the norm, an abstraction from the traditional image. Aesthetic ideals are not realized through a complex of canons, rather through a new figurative language, not yet fixed by tradition.

DATING THE NEW TESTAMENT

Based on a thorough analysis of the chronicles of Ancient and New Rome, Ancient Russia, Great Bulgaria and Arabic sources, as well as the texts of the Gospels, the author made a reconstruction of the ancestral tree of Jesus Christ and the events of the New Testament, linking them to real historical figures and astronomical phenomena. In addition, the author compares the facts of the appearance of the canonical image of Jesus Christ on icons, mosaics and frescoes, the Holy Shroud, and coins of ancient states. The author justifies the dating of the events of the New Testament to the beginning of the XI century on the basis of established facts, and not the generally accepted canons of faith.

О МАРИНЕ МИХАЙЛОВНЕ ГРОМЫКО

Аннотация. В воспоминаниях о М. М. Громыко автор отталкивается от «канонического образа», который сложился в Новосибирске в академической среде в связи с научной деятельностью Громыко и ее личностью (в поступках, поведении, взаимоотношениях с коллегами). Автору удалось познакомиться с Мариной Михайловной, и общение с ней подтвердило, что образ соответствует реальности. В воспоминаниях присутствует важная информация о деталях складывания научной школы Н. Н. Покровского в Новосибирске и роли М. М. Громыко в этом процессе. Abstract. In the memoirs of M. M. Gromyko, the author starts from the «canonical image» that has developed in Novosibirsk in the academic environment in connection with the scientific activities of Gromyko and her personality (in actions, behavior, relationships with colleagues). The author managed to get to know Marina Mikhailovna and communication with her confirmed that the image corresponds to reality. The memoirs contain important information about the details of the formation of the scientific school of N. N. Pokrovsky in Novosibirsk and the role of M. M. Gromyko is in this process.

Introduction: 1968 Thought and its Usual Suspects

Conceived 51 years after the global workers’ and student revolt of May 1968, this Focus will break down the theoretical and literary legacy of May into three intervals of 17 years. In 1985, 17 years after 1968, Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut published a book, La pensée 68, in which they canonized the view that the theoretical underpinning of May ’68 was provided by French structuralist thinkers, notably Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Lacan (see Ferry and Renaut 1985; for the English translation, see Ferry and Renaut 1990). Seventeen years later, in 2002, Kristin Ross’s book May ’68 and its Afterlives effectively replaced this canonical image with the notion that French structuralists were all either completely absent or showed at least great reserve during the events of May and that, moreover, the closest theoretical allies of the protesters and strikers were in fact the main philosophical targets of structuralist anti-humanists, namely Jean-Paul Sartre and Herbert Marcuse with their schools of humanist Marxism (see Ross 2002). Seventeen years after Ross’s seminal book, it may be time to negate both the thesis from 1985 and Ross’s antithesis from 2002, and ask the following simple question: why, despite the massive presence of Sartre and Marcuse, and the equally massive absence of Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu and Lacan, but also Gilles Deleuze and Louis Althusser, has the memory politics of May ’68 during the past half-century included the canonization of structuralism and post-structuralism at the expense of none other than humanism, be it Marxist or non-Marxist?