Author: Geok Goh
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
ISBN: 1501757997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
The recorded history of precolonial Burmese empire and the modern state of Myanmar starts with the kingdom of Bagan in the eleventh century. The oldest surviving written records and structures are from the reign of King Anawrahta (1044–1077). Anawrahta converted to Theravada Buddhism and created a vibrant Buddhist state in the Irrawaddy River basin. Anawrahta is a folk hero to this day in Myanmar and is widely credited as a charismatic and pious leader who consolidated various ethnic groups throughout the region into a single nation. The Wheel-Turner and His House traces the archaeological and historical record of Anawrahta and his seminal position in forming modern Myanmar, based on the few sources that have been recovered. The Great Chronicle, an important history of the country written by the 18th-century Burmese nobleman U Kala, forms the basis for much of the knowledge we have about Anawrahta today. Geok Yian Goh examines U Kala's work in light of the context of U Kala's own time and points out the bias of his royal court, as well as the scribe's personal views from the elaborate narratives he produced. She looks at other sources as well, including unpublished palm-leaf manuscripts, to disentangle earlier knowledge about Anawrahta and eleventh-century Bagan. Placing the overall study of Burmese historical tradition within the larger manuscript culture of Asia, Goh presents a critique of theoretical issues in history, especially the relationship between the past and memory. In order to analyze the expansion of Anawrahta's historical image that formed the development of a Buddhist ecumene in the eleventh and twelth centuries, Goh utilizes published and unpublished texts in Burmese and classical Chinese, along with northern Thai and Sri Lankan texts, many of which Goh makes available for the first time in English.
The Wheel-Turner and His House
Author: Geok Goh
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
ISBN: 1501757997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
The recorded history of precolonial Burmese empire and the modern state of Myanmar starts with the kingdom of Bagan in the eleventh century. The oldest surviving written records and structures are from the reign of King Anawrahta (1044–1077). Anawrahta converted to Theravada Buddhism and created a vibrant Buddhist state in the Irrawaddy River basin. Anawrahta is a folk hero to this day in Myanmar and is widely credited as a charismatic and pious leader who consolidated various ethnic groups throughout the region into a single nation. The Wheel-Turner and His House traces the archaeological and historical record of Anawrahta and his seminal position in forming modern Myanmar, based on the few sources that have been recovered. The Great Chronicle, an important history of the country written by the 18th-century Burmese nobleman U Kala, forms the basis for much of the knowledge we have about Anawrahta today. Geok Yian Goh examines U Kala's work in light of the context of U Kala's own time and points out the bias of his royal court, as well as the scribe's personal views from the elaborate narratives he produced. She looks at other sources as well, including unpublished palm-leaf manuscripts, to disentangle earlier knowledge about Anawrahta and eleventh-century Bagan. Placing the overall study of Burmese historical tradition within the larger manuscript culture of Asia, Goh presents a critique of theoretical issues in history, especially the relationship between the past and memory. In order to analyze the expansion of Anawrahta's historical image that formed the development of a Buddhist ecumene in the eleventh and twelth centuries, Goh utilizes published and unpublished texts in Burmese and classical Chinese, along with northern Thai and Sri Lankan texts, many of which Goh makes available for the first time in English.
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
ISBN: 1501757997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
The recorded history of precolonial Burmese empire and the modern state of Myanmar starts with the kingdom of Bagan in the eleventh century. The oldest surviving written records and structures are from the reign of King Anawrahta (1044–1077). Anawrahta converted to Theravada Buddhism and created a vibrant Buddhist state in the Irrawaddy River basin. Anawrahta is a folk hero to this day in Myanmar and is widely credited as a charismatic and pious leader who consolidated various ethnic groups throughout the region into a single nation. The Wheel-Turner and His House traces the archaeological and historical record of Anawrahta and his seminal position in forming modern Myanmar, based on the few sources that have been recovered. The Great Chronicle, an important history of the country written by the 18th-century Burmese nobleman U Kala, forms the basis for much of the knowledge we have about Anawrahta today. Geok Yian Goh examines U Kala's work in light of the context of U Kala's own time and points out the bias of his royal court, as well as the scribe's personal views from the elaborate narratives he produced. She looks at other sources as well, including unpublished palm-leaf manuscripts, to disentangle earlier knowledge about Anawrahta and eleventh-century Bagan. Placing the overall study of Burmese historical tradition within the larger manuscript culture of Asia, Goh presents a critique of theoretical issues in history, especially the relationship between the past and memory. In order to analyze the expansion of Anawrahta's historical image that formed the development of a Buddhist ecumene in the eleventh and twelth centuries, Goh utilizes published and unpublished texts in Burmese and classical Chinese, along with northern Thai and Sri Lankan texts, many of which Goh makes available for the first time in English.
The World Imagined
Author: Hendrik Spruyt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108491219
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
Spruyt takes an inter-disciplinary approach to explain how collective belief systems organized three non-European societies c.1500-1900, and how these polities engaged the European colonial powers.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108491219
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
Spruyt takes an inter-disciplinary approach to explain how collective belief systems organized three non-European societies c.1500-1900, and how these polities engaged the European colonial powers.
Living with the Vinaya
Author: Ryosuke Kuramoto
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824899407
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Around the first century BCE, Buddhist monks formed monasteries and established relationships with kings and lay people. The rules monks live by, the Vinaya, are a pivotal source of meaning for them and their dealings with society and form the basis of multiple monasticisms across geographical regions and throughout history. The ways in which the Vinaya is understood and practiced, therefore, must take into account the kind of monasticism that emerges from it. In Living with the Vinaya, Ryosuke Kuramoto examines the process of creating monasticism in contemporary Myanmar by focusing on how monks acquire, possess, and consume material goods. To live as a monk means to obtain resources from society and to own and use these according to monastic rules. Over the centuries, as monks interacted more with the world beyond the monastery, the question of what a monk “should be” became a concern for not only monks, but also government authorities and lay people. How monks interpreted and observed the Vinaya became a question of legitimacy and power. Kuramoto’s ethnographic analysis reveals the constant (re)creation of monasticism in Myanmar resulting from the interactions between monks and these groups in response to this question. He identifies some of the key mechanisms by which monasticism and broader Buddhist institutions are created and transformed and concludes that monastic governance is inseparable from the Buddhist state and the society that surrounds it.
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824899407
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Around the first century BCE, Buddhist monks formed monasteries and established relationships with kings and lay people. The rules monks live by, the Vinaya, are a pivotal source of meaning for them and their dealings with society and form the basis of multiple monasticisms across geographical regions and throughout history. The ways in which the Vinaya is understood and practiced, therefore, must take into account the kind of monasticism that emerges from it. In Living with the Vinaya, Ryosuke Kuramoto examines the process of creating monasticism in contemporary Myanmar by focusing on how monks acquire, possess, and consume material goods. To live as a monk means to obtain resources from society and to own and use these according to monastic rules. Over the centuries, as monks interacted more with the world beyond the monastery, the question of what a monk “should be” became a concern for not only monks, but also government authorities and lay people. How monks interpreted and observed the Vinaya became a question of legitimacy and power. Kuramoto’s ethnographic analysis reveals the constant (re)creation of monasticism in Myanmar resulting from the interactions between monks and these groups in response to this question. He identifies some of the key mechanisms by which monasticism and broader Buddhist institutions are created and transformed and concludes that monastic governance is inseparable from the Buddhist state and the society that surrounds it.
Unearthly Powers
Author: Alan Strathern
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108477143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
Book Description
This ground-breaking study sets out a new understanding of transformations in the interaction between religion and political authority throughout history.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108477143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
Book Description
This ground-breaking study sets out a new understanding of transformations in the interaction between religion and political authority throughout history.
The Artisan of Ipswich
Author: Robert Tarule
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801887529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
Thomas Dennis emigrated to America from England in 1663, settling in Ipswich, a Massachusetts village a long day's sail north of Boston. He had apprenticed in joinery, the most common method of making furniture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain, and he became Ipswich's second joiner, setting up shop in the heart of the village. During his lifetime, Dennis won wide renown as an artisan. Today, connoisseurs judge his elaborately carved furniture as among the best produced in seventeenth-century America. Robert Tarule, historian and accomplished craftsman, brilliantly recreates Dennis's world in recounting how he created a single oak chest. Writing as a woodworker himself, Tarule vividly portrays Dennis walking through the woods looking for the right trees; sawing and splitting the wood on site; and working in his shop on the chest -- planing, joining, and carving. Dennis inherited a knowledge of wood and woodworking that dated back centuries before he was born, and Tarule traces this tradition from Old World to New. He also depicts the natural and social landscape in which Dennis operated, from the sights, sounds, and smells of colonial Ipswich and its surrounding countryside to the laws that governed his use of trees and his network of personal and professional relationships. Thomas Dennis embodies a world that had begun to disappear even during his lifetime, one that today may seem unimaginably distant. Imaginatively conceived and elegantly executed, The Artisan of Ipswich gives readers a tangible understanding of that distant past.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801887529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
Thomas Dennis emigrated to America from England in 1663, settling in Ipswich, a Massachusetts village a long day's sail north of Boston. He had apprenticed in joinery, the most common method of making furniture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain, and he became Ipswich's second joiner, setting up shop in the heart of the village. During his lifetime, Dennis won wide renown as an artisan. Today, connoisseurs judge his elaborately carved furniture as among the best produced in seventeenth-century America. Robert Tarule, historian and accomplished craftsman, brilliantly recreates Dennis's world in recounting how he created a single oak chest. Writing as a woodworker himself, Tarule vividly portrays Dennis walking through the woods looking for the right trees; sawing and splitting the wood on site; and working in his shop on the chest -- planing, joining, and carving. Dennis inherited a knowledge of wood and woodworking that dated back centuries before he was born, and Tarule traces this tradition from Old World to New. He also depicts the natural and social landscape in which Dennis operated, from the sights, sounds, and smells of colonial Ipswich and its surrounding countryside to the laws that governed his use of trees and his network of personal and professional relationships. Thomas Dennis embodies a world that had begun to disappear even during his lifetime, one that today may seem unimaginably distant. Imaginatively conceived and elegantly executed, The Artisan of Ipswich gives readers a tangible understanding of that distant past.
Bagan and the World
Author: Goh Geok Yian
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 9814786020
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
The archaeological site of Bagan and the kingdom which bore its name contains one of the greatest concentrations of ancient architecture and art in Asia. Much of what is visible today consists of ruins of Buddhist monasteries. While these monuments are a major tourist attraction, recent advances in archaeology and textual history have added considerable new understanding of this kingdom, which flourished between the 11th and 14th centuries. Bagan was not an isolated monastic site; its inhabitants participated actively in networks of Buddhist religious activity and commerce, abetted by the site’s location near the junction where South Asia, China and Southeast Asia meet. This volume presents the result of recent research by scholars from around the world, including indigenous Myanmar people, whose work deserves to be known among the international community. The perspective on Myanmar’s role as an integral part of the intellectual, artistic and economic framework found in this volume yields a glimpse of new themes which future studies of Asian history will no doubt explore. span, SPAN { background-color:inherit; text-decoration:inherit; white-space:pre-wrap }
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 9814786020
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
The archaeological site of Bagan and the kingdom which bore its name contains one of the greatest concentrations of ancient architecture and art in Asia. Much of what is visible today consists of ruins of Buddhist monasteries. While these monuments are a major tourist attraction, recent advances in archaeology and textual history have added considerable new understanding of this kingdom, which flourished between the 11th and 14th centuries. Bagan was not an isolated monastic site; its inhabitants participated actively in networks of Buddhist religious activity and commerce, abetted by the site’s location near the junction where South Asia, China and Southeast Asia meet. This volume presents the result of recent research by scholars from around the world, including indigenous Myanmar people, whose work deserves to be known among the international community. The perspective on Myanmar’s role as an integral part of the intellectual, artistic and economic framework found in this volume yields a glimpse of new themes which future studies of Asian history will no doubt explore. span, SPAN { background-color:inherit; text-decoration:inherit; white-space:pre-wrap }
Imperial Borderlands
Author: Marie de Rugy
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004469850
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
This book presents a connected history of South-East Asian borderlands, drawing on late nineteenth-century British and French geographical policies and practice. It focuses on the ‘scramble’ in Asia, when, in 1885, the British Raj incorporated Upper Burma and the French created a Protectorate in Annam-Tonkin, the Northern part of present-day Vietnam. Fought over by the imperial states and neighbouring nations, the frontier zones were fashioned and represented not only by the two European powers, but also by the Chinese Empire, the Kingdom of Siam, and the local populations. The counterpoint between the discourses produced and the cartographical practices on the ground, in the longue durée, reveals the interacting processes of territory-building in all their unpredictability. This book is the updated version of the author’s Aux confins des empires. Cartes et constructions territoriales dans le nord de la péninsule indochinoise (1885–1914) (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2018). It is translated by Saskia Brown, an experienced academic translator from French in the humanities and social sciences.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004469850
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
This book presents a connected history of South-East Asian borderlands, drawing on late nineteenth-century British and French geographical policies and practice. It focuses on the ‘scramble’ in Asia, when, in 1885, the British Raj incorporated Upper Burma and the French created a Protectorate in Annam-Tonkin, the Northern part of present-day Vietnam. Fought over by the imperial states and neighbouring nations, the frontier zones were fashioned and represented not only by the two European powers, but also by the Chinese Empire, the Kingdom of Siam, and the local populations. The counterpoint between the discourses produced and the cartographical practices on the ground, in the longue durée, reveals the interacting processes of territory-building in all their unpredictability. This book is the updated version of the author’s Aux confins des empires. Cartes et constructions territoriales dans le nord de la péninsule indochinoise (1885–1914) (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2018). It is translated by Saskia Brown, an experienced academic translator from French in the humanities and social sciences.
The Oxford World History of Empire
Author: Peter Fibiger Bang
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197532772
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1353
Book Description
This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history. Volume Two: The History of Empires tracks the protean history of political domination from the very beginnings of state formation in the Bronze Age up to the present. Case studies deal with the full range of the historical experience of empire, from the realms of the Achaemenids and Asoka to the empires of Mali and Songhay, and from ancient Rome and China to the Mughals, American settler colonialism, and the Soviet Union. Forty-five chapters detailing the history of individual empires are tied together by a set of global synthesizing surveys that structure the world history of empire into eight chronological phases.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197532772
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1353
Book Description
This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history. Volume Two: The History of Empires tracks the protean history of political domination from the very beginnings of state formation in the Bronze Age up to the present. Case studies deal with the full range of the historical experience of empire, from the realms of the Achaemenids and Asoka to the empires of Mali and Songhay, and from ancient Rome and China to the Mughals, American settler colonialism, and the Soviet Union. Forty-five chapters detailing the history of individual empires are tied together by a set of global synthesizing surveys that structure the world history of empire into eight chronological phases.
Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History
Author: Zoltán Biedermann
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1911307843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
The peoples of Sri Lanka have participated in far-flung trading networks, religious formations, and Asian and European empires for millennia. This interdisciplinary volume sets out to draw Sri Lanka into the field of Asian and Global History by showing how the latest wave of scholarship has explored the island as a ‘crossroads’, a place defined by its openness to movement across the Indian Ocean.Experts in the history, archaeology, literature and art of the island from c.500 BCE to c.1850 CE use Lankan material to explore a number of pressing scholarly debates. They address these matters from their varied disciplinary perspectives and diverse array of sources, critically assessing concepts such as ethnicity, cosmopolitanism and localisation, and elucidating the subtle ways in which the foreign may be resisted and embraced at the same time. The individual chapters, and the volume as a whole, are a welcome addition to the history and historiography of Sri Lanka, as well as studies of the Indian Ocean region, kingship, colonialism, imperialism, and early modernity.
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1911307843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
The peoples of Sri Lanka have participated in far-flung trading networks, religious formations, and Asian and European empires for millennia. This interdisciplinary volume sets out to draw Sri Lanka into the field of Asian and Global History by showing how the latest wave of scholarship has explored the island as a ‘crossroads’, a place defined by its openness to movement across the Indian Ocean.Experts in the history, archaeology, literature and art of the island from c.500 BCE to c.1850 CE use Lankan material to explore a number of pressing scholarly debates. They address these matters from their varied disciplinary perspectives and diverse array of sources, critically assessing concepts such as ethnicity, cosmopolitanism and localisation, and elucidating the subtle ways in which the foreign may be resisted and embraced at the same time. The individual chapters, and the volume as a whole, are a welcome addition to the history and historiography of Sri Lanka, as well as studies of the Indian Ocean region, kingship, colonialism, imperialism, and early modernity.
Titan
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 782
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 782
Book Description