Author: Akira Shimada
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004232834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
The book provides an updated chronology of the Amar?vat? st?pa and argues its close link with the long-term development of urbanization of this region between ca. 200 BCE-250 CE based on the latest archaeological, art-historical and epigraphic evidence.
Author: Akira Shimada
Publisher: British Museum Research Publication
ISBN: 9780861592074
Category : Amaravati (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"Buddhism originated in north India and spread to other parts of the subcontinent in the third century BCE. The Andhra region, located along the south-east coast of India, welcomed Buddhism and an important shrine was built at Amaravati, probably to house relics of the Buddha brought from the north. Amaravati was enlarged and embellished over several centuries from about 200 BCE, transforming it into what ancient inscriptions describe as a mahācetiya or 'great shrine'. Although one of the most important Buddhist monuments in India, Amaravati declined from the 14th century. It was re-discovered and then excavated during the 19th century. In 1880 more than 120 of the Amaravati sculptures entered the collection of the British Museum, while other pieces found their way to museums in India, Europe and America. The papers in this book emerged from a conference at the British Museum held in September 2014 that brought together leading specialists from around the world to address aspects of Amaravati and its sculpture. Subjects covered in this volume include the rediscovery of the site at the end of the 18th century as well as its recreation and reinterpretation in the 21st century. The art of Amaravati is also placed in the context of other sites and remains from the Andhra region which, despite its importance, has been relatively neglected in the study of the religious and visual cultures of South Asia." -- Publisher's website
Author: Donald F. McCallum
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824831144
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
In his detailed analysis of the four temples, McCallum considers historiographical issues, settings and layouts, foundations, tiles, relics, and icons and allows readers to follow their chronological evolutions.
Author: Lawrence Chua
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824887735
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
“Utopia” is a word not often associated with the city of Bangkok, which is better known for its disorderly sprawl, overburdened roads, and stifling levels of pollution. Yet as early as 1782, when the city was officially founded on the banks of the Chao Phraya river as the home of the Chakri dynasty, its orientation was based on material and rhetorical considerations that alluded to ideal times and spaces. The construction of palaces, monastic complexes, walls, forts, and canals created a defensive network while symbolically locating the terrestrial realm of the king within the Theravada Buddhist cosmos. Into the twentieth century, pictorial, narrative, and built representations of utopia were critical to Bangkok’s transformation into a national capital and commercial entrepôt. But as older representations of the universe encountered modern architecture, building technologies, and urban planning, new images of an ideal society attempted to reconcile urban-based understandings of Buddhist liberation and felicitous states like nirvana with worldly models of political community like the nation-state. Bangkok Utopia outlines an alternative genealogy of both utopia and modernism in a part of the world that has often been overlooked by researchers of both. It examines representations of utopia that developed in the city—as expressed in built forms as well as architectural drawings, building manuals, novels, poetry, and ecclesiastical murals—from its first general strike of migrant laborers in 1910 to the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1973. Using Thai- and Chinese-language archival sources, the book demonstrates how the new spaces of the city became arenas for modern subject formation, utopian desires, political hegemony, and social unrest, arguing that the modern city was a space of antinomy—one able not only to sustain heterogeneous temporalities, but also to support conflicting world views within the urban landscape. By underscoring the paradoxical character of utopias and their formal narrative expressions of both hope and hegemony, Bangkok Utopia provides an innovative way to conceptualize the uneven economic development and fractured political conditions of contemporary global cities.
Author: Lars Fogelin
Publisher: AltaMira Press
ISBN: 0759114447
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
How do archaeologists explore the various dimensions of religion? Lars Fogelin uses archaeological work at Thotlakonda in Southern India as his lens in a broader examination of Buddhist monastic life. He discovers the tension between the desired isolation of the monastery and the mutual engagement with neighbors in the Early Historic Period. He also sketches how religious architectural design and use of landscape helped to shaped these relationships. Drawing on historical accounts, religious documents, and inscriptions, as well as results of his systematic archaeological survey, Fogelin is able to shed new light on the ritual and material workings of Early Buddhism in this region, and shows how archaeology can contribute to our understanding of religious practice.
Author: Joseph Walser
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231506236
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Joseph Walser provides the first examination of Nagarjuna's life and writings in the context of the religious and monastic debates of the second century CE. Walser explores how Nagarjuna secured the canonical authority of Mahayana teachings and considers his use of rhetoric to ensure the transmission of his writings by Buddhist monks. Drawing on close textual analysis of Nagarjuna's writings and other Buddhist and non-Buddhist sources, Walser offers an original contribution to the understanding of Nagarjuna and the early history of Buddhism.
Author: Rebecca M. Brown
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119019532
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 691
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Book Description
A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture presents a collection of 26 original essays from top scholars in the field that explore and critically examine various aspects of Asian art and architectural history. Brings together top international scholars of Asian art and architecture Represents the current state of the field while highlighting the wide range of scholarly approaches to Asian Art Features work on Korea and Southeast Asia, two regions often overlooked in a field that is often defined as India-China-Japan Explores the influences on Asian art of global and colonial interactions and of the diasporic communities in the US and UK Showcases a wide range of topics including imperial commissions, ancient tombs, gardens, monastic spaces, performances, and pilgrimages.
Author: Vidya Dehejia
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Author: Vikram Lall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789670138039
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Author: Erik J. Hammerstrom
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231539584
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
Kexue, or science, captured the Chinese imagination in the early twentieth century, promising new knowledge about the world and a dynamic path to prosperity. Chinese Buddhists embraced scientific language and ideas to carve out a place for their religion within a rapidly modernizing society. Examining dozens of previously unstudied writings from the Chinese Buddhist press, this book maps Buddhists' efforts to rethink their traditions through science in the initial decades of the twentieth century. Buddhists believed science offered an exciting, alternative route to knowledge grounded in empirical thought, much like their own. They encouraged young scholars to study subatomic and relativistic physics while still maintaining Buddhism's vital illumination of human nature and its crucial support of an ethical system rooted in radical egalitarianism. Showcasing the rich and progressive steps Chinese religious scholars took in adapting to science's rising authority, this volume offers a key perspective on how a major Eastern power transitioned to modernity in the twentieth century and how its intellectuals anticipated many of the ideas debated by scholars of science and Buddhism today.
