History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura, ca. 150 BCE - 100 CE

History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura, ca. 150 BCE - 100 CE PDF Author: Sonya Rhie Quintanilla
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047419308
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
This volume provides the first comprehensive analysis and chronology of the earliest known stone sculptures from the north Indian city of Mathura, dating prior to the famous Kushan period. It includes numerous new attributions of objects based primarily on epigraphic and visual analysis. The sculptures attributable to these pre-Kushan periods reveal new evidence for the reasons behind the emergence of the anthropomorphic image of the Buddha at Mathura, the predominance of a heterodox sect of Jainism, and the proliferation of cults of nature divinities. This book provides a wealth of reference material useful for historians of early Indian art, religion, and epigraphy. The book is illustrated with over three hundred photographs, and it includes epigraphic appendices with complete transcriptions and updated translations.

History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura, ca. 150 BCE - 100 CE

History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura, ca. 150 BCE - 100 CE PDF Author: Sonya Rhie Quintanilla
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047419308
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 538

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume provides the first comprehensive analysis and chronology of the earliest known stone sculptures from the north Indian city of Mathura, dating prior to the famous Kushan period. It includes numerous new attributions of objects based primarily on epigraphic and visual analysis. The sculptures attributable to these pre-Kushan periods reveal new evidence for the reasons behind the emergence of the anthropomorphic image of the Buddha at Mathura, the predominance of a heterodox sect of Jainism, and the proliferation of cults of nature divinities. This book provides a wealth of reference material useful for historians of early Indian art, religion, and epigraphy. The book is illustrated with over three hundred photographs, and it includes epigraphic appendices with complete transcriptions and updated translations.

History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura

History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura PDF Author: Sonya Rhie Quintanilla
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004155376
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 539

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Book Description
This volume provides the first comprehensive chronology of the earliest known stone sculptures from the north Indian city of Mathura. It includes new evidence for the reattribution of objects, emergence of the anthropomorphic Buddha image, and predominance of a heterodox sect of Jainism.

Material Culture and Asian Religions

Material Culture and Asian Religions PDF Author: Benjamin Fleming
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113501373X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Traditionally, research on the history of Asian religions has been marked by a bias for literary evidence, privileging canonical texts penned in ‘classical’ languages. Not only has a focus on literary evidence shaped the dominant narratives about the religious histories of Asia, in both scholarship and popular culture, but it has contributed to the tendency to study different religious traditions in relative isolation from one another. Today, moreover, historical work is often based on modern textual editions and, increasingly, on electronic databases. What may be lost, in the process, is the visceral sense of the text as artifact – as a material object that formed part of a broader material culture, in which the boundaries between religious traditions were sometimes more fluid than canonical literature might suggest. This volume brings together specialists in a variety of Asian cultures to discuss the methodological challenges involved in integrating material evidence for the reconstruction of the religious histories of South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia. By means of specific ‘test cases,’ the volume explores the importance of considering material and literary evidence in concert. What untold stories do these sources help us to recover? How might they push us to reevaluate historical narratives traditionally told from literary sources? By addressing these questions from the perspectives of different subfields and religious traditions, contributors map out the challenges involved in interpreting different types of data, assessing the problems of interpretation distinct to specific types of material evidence (e.g., coins, temple art, manuscripts, donative inscriptions) and considering the issues raised by the different patterns in the preservation of such evidence in different locales. Special attention is paid to newly-discovered and neglected sources; to our evidence for trade, migration, and inter-regional cultural exchange; and to geographical locales that served as "contact zones" connecting cultures. In addition, the chapters in this volume represent the rich range of religious traditions across Asia – including Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, and Chinese religions, as well as Islam and eastern Christianities.

Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World

Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World PDF Author: Kurt A. Raaflaub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118413113
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World presents a cross-cultural comparison of the ways in which ancient civilizations thought about the past and recorded their own histories. Written by an international group of scholars working in many disciplines Truly cross-cultural, covering historical thinking and writing in ancient or early cultures across in East, South, and West Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Americas Includes historiography shaped by religious perspectives, including Judaism, early Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism

The Authenticity of the Early Buddhist Texts

The Authenticity of the Early Buddhist Texts PDF Author: Bhikkhu Sujato
Publisher: Buddhist Publication Society
ISBN: 955240410X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Are there any authentic Buddhist texts? If so, what are they? These are questions of tremendous spiritual and historical interest, about which there is a range of opinions that often appear to be irreconcilable. Traditionalists insist that the texts were “spoken by the Buddha” in the most literal of senses, while sceptics assert that we cannot know anything about the Buddha for certain, and further, that the notion of authenticity is irrelevant or pernicious. Most academic scholars of early Buddhism cautiously affirm that it is possible that the early Buddhist texts as contained in the Sutta and Vinaya Pitaka contain some authentic sayings of the Buddha. A sympathetic assessment of relevant evidence by the authors of this book shows that this is a drastic understatement and that it is very likely that the bulk of the sayings in the texts that are attributed to the Buddha were actually spoken by him. Rarely has the question of authenticity of the Buddhist texts been systematically investigated. Seeing the lack of an easily accessible summary of the evidence, the authors assembled this survey.

Problems of Chronology in Gandhāran Art

Problems of Chronology in Gandhāran Art PDF Author: Wannaporn Rienjang
Publisher: Archaeopress
ISBN: 1784918555
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Since the beginning of Gandhāran studies in the nineteenth century, chronology has been one of the most significant challenges to the understanding of Gandhāran art. Many other ancient societies, including those of Greece and Rome, have left a wealth of textual sources which have put their fundamental chronological frameworks beyond doubt. In the absence of such sources on a similar scale, even the historical eras cited on inscribed Gandhāran works of art have been hard to place. Few sculptures have such inscriptions and the majority lack any record of find-spot or even general provenance. Those known to have been found at particular sites were sometimes moved and reused in antiquity. Consequently, the provisional dates assigned to extant Gandhāran sculptures have sometimes differed by centuries, while the narrative of artistic development remains doubtful and inconsistent. Building upon the most recent, cross-disciplinary research, debate and excavation, this volume reinforces a new consensus about the chronology of Gandhāra, bringing the history of Gandhāran art into sharper focus than ever. By considering this tradition in its wider context, alongside contemporary Indian art and subsequent developments in Central Asia, the authors also open up fresh questions and problems which a new phase of research will need to address. Problems of Chronology in Gandhāran Art is the first publication of the Gandhāra Connections project at the University of Oxford’s Classical Art Research Centre, which has been supported by the Bagri Foundation and the Neil Kreitman Foundation. It presents the proceedings of the first of three international workshops on fundamental questions in the study of Gandhāran art, held at Oxford in March 2017.

Early Asceticism in India

Early Asceticism in India PDF Author: Piotr Balcerowicz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317538536
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Ājīvikism was once ranked one of the most important religions in India between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE, after Buddhism, ‘Brahmanism’ and before Jainism, but is now a forgotten Indian religion. However, Jainism has remained an integral part of the religious landscape of South Asia, despite the common beginnings shared with Ājīvikism. By rediscovering, reconstructing, and examining the Ājīvikism doctrine, its art, origins and development, this book provides new insight into Ājīvikism, and discusses how this information enables us to better understand its impact on Jainism and its role in the development of Indian religion and philosophy. This book explains how, why and when Jainism developed its strikingly unique logic and epistemology and what historical and doctrinal factors prompted the ideas which later led to the formulation of the doctrine of multiplexity of reality (anekānta-vāda). It also provides answers to difficult passages of Buddhist Sāmañña-phala-sutta that baffled both Buddhist commentators and modern researchers. Offering clearer perspectives on the origins of Jainism the book will be an invaluable contribution to Jaina Studies, Asian Religion and Religious History.

Merpeople

Merpeople PDF Author: Vaughn Scribner
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789143136
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A wide-ranging, beautifully illustrated history of mermaids and mermen from the classics to cosplay. People have been fascinated by merpeople and merfolk since ancient times. From the sirens of Homer’s Odyssey to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and the film Splash, myths, stories, and legends of half-human, half-fish creatures abound. In modern times “mermaiding” has gained popularity among cosplayers throughout the world. In Merpeople: A Human History, Vaughn Scribner traces the long history of mermaids and mermen, taking in a wide variety of sources and using 117 striking images. From film to philosophy, church halls to coffee houses, ancient myth to modern science, Scribner shows that mermaids and tritons are—and always have been—everywhere.

India and Iran in the Long Durée

India and Iran in the Long Durée PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004460632
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
This book is the result of a conference held at the University of California, Irvine, covering the contacts between Iran and India from antiquity to the modern period.

The Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek World

The Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek World PDF Author: Rachel Mairs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351610279
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 653

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Book Description
This volume provides a thorough conspectus of the field of Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek studies, mixing theoretical and historical surveys with critical and thought-provoking case studies in archaeology, history, literature and art. The chapters from this international group of experts showcase innovative methodologies, such as archaeological GIS, as well as providing accessible explanations of specialist techniques such as die studies of coins, and important theoretical perspectives, including postcolonial approaches to the Greeks in India. Chapters cover the region’s archaeology, written and numismatic sources, and a history of scholarship of the subject, as well as culture, identity and interactions with neighbouring empires, including India and China. The Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek World is the go-to reference work on the field, and fulfils a serious need for an accessible, but also thorough and critically-informed, volume on the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms. It provides an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the Hellenistic East. The Introduction and Chapter 17 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license