Epigraphia Zeylanica

Epigraphia Zeylanica PDF Author: Don M. de Z. Wickremasinghe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Inscriptions
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Includes transliterated text of the inscriptions.

Epigraphia Zeylanica

Epigraphia Zeylanica PDF Author: Don M. de Z. Wickremasinghe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Inscriptions
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Includes transliterated text of the inscriptions.

Epigraphia Zeylanica: Being Lithic and Other Inscriptions of Ceylon

Epigraphia Zeylanica: Being Lithic and Other Inscriptions of Ceylon PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Rewriting Buddhism

Rewriting Buddhism PDF Author: Alastair Gornall
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1787355152
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Rewriting Buddhism is the first intellectual history of premodern Sri Lanka’s most culturally productive period. This era of reform (1157–1270) shaped the nature of Theravada Buddhism both in Sri Lanka and also Southeast Asia and even today continues to define monastic intellectual life in the region. Alastair Gornall argues that the long century’s literary productivity was not born of political stability, as is often thought, but rather of the social, economic and political chaos brought about by invasions and civil wars. Faced with unprecedented uncertainty, the monastic community sought greater political autonomy, styled itself as royal court, and undertook a series of reforms, most notably, a purification and unification in 1165 during the reign of Parakramabahu I. He describes how central to the process of reform was the production of new forms of Pali literature, which helped create a new conceptual and social coherence within the reformed community; one that served to preserve and protect their religious tradition while also expanding its reach among the more fragmented and localized elites of the period.

Bibliotheca Orientalis

Bibliotheca Orientalis PDF Author: Luzac &co
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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The Athenaeum

The Athenaeum PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Catalogue

Catalogue PDF Author: Bernard Quaritch (Firm)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Antiquarian booksellers
Languages : en
Pages : 1028

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Belonging across the Bay of Bengal

Belonging across the Bay of Bengal PDF Author: Michael Laffan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350022632
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Belonging across the Bay of Bengal discusses themes connecting the regions bordering the Bay of Bengal, mainly covering the period from the mid-19th through the mid-20th centuries – a crucial period of transition from colonialism to independence. Focusing on the notion of 'belonging', the chapters in this collection highlight themes of ethnicity, religion, culture and the emergence of nationalist politics and state policies as they relate to the movement of peoples in the region. While the Indian Ocean has been of interest to scholars for decades, there has been a notable tilt towards historicizing the Western half of that space, often prioritizing Islamic trade as the key connective glue prior to the rise of Western power and the later emergence of transnational Indian nationalism. Belonging across the Bay of Bengal enriches this story by drawing attention to Buddhist and migrant connectivities, introducing discussions of Lanka, Burma and the Straits Settlements to establish the historical context of the current refugee crises playing out in these regions. This is a timely and innovative volume that offers a fresh approach to Indian Ocean history, further enriching our understanding of the current debates over minority rights and refugee problems in the region. It will be of great significance to all students and scholars of Indian Ocean studies as well as historians of modern South and Southeast Asia.

Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties across the Indian Ocean

Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties across the Indian Ocean PDF Author: Anne M. Blackburn
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082489488X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties across the Indian Ocean draws attention to the varied, historically contingent, and sometimes competing, arguments for and about sovereignty that operated in the Pali arena during the first half of the second millennium AD. It was a time of expanding interaction within the Indian Ocean just prior to Portuguese colonial presence in Southern Asia. Developing a linked series of case studies and examining territories now subsumed within the nation-states of Sri Lanka, Burma/Myanmar, and Thailand, Blackburn examines sovereign arguments expressed textually, as well as in the built environment, by persons with an interest in the teachings and institutions associated with Gotama Buddha. These cases show that no single model of Buddhist-inflected sovereignty dominated the Pali arena during this time, and that there was no stable vision of “Buddhist kingship.” Rather, over time, there was an accrual of possible models and pathways for argumentation about how sovereigns could and should relate to buddha-sāsana. Taking inspiration from diverse sources transmitted through multiple forms and media, arguments for and about sovereignty in the Pali arena were contested and rapidly changing. As the Indian Ocean increasingly shaped the flow of people, objects, and ideas, more peoples and territories participated in the Pali arena, attracted by its intellectual and aesthetic resources. Drawing on extensive scholarship and a wide range of multilingual source materials from premodern Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia, Anne M. Blackburn develops innovative conclusions about the relationships between textuality, sovereignty, maritime connectivity, and material culture in each of these areas. The book contributes simultaneously to several fields of study: the intellectual history of Southern Asia, literary and historical scholarship on Buddhism, and historical studies of the Indian Ocean. By offering accessible yet in-depth analysis, Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties across the Indian Ocean connects research fields and introduces new interpretive possibilities for the study of sovereignty, politics, premodern textual cultures, and Buddhism.

The History of the Buddha's Relic Shrine

The History of the Buddha's Relic Shrine PDF Author: Parākrama Paṇḍita
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195301390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Buddhist chronicles have long been had a central place in the study of Buddhism. Scholars, however, have relied almost exclusively on Pali works that were composed by elites for learned audiences, to the neglect of a large number of Buddhist histories written in local languages for popular consumption. The Sinhala Thupavamsa, composed by Parakama Pandita in thirteenth-century Sri Lanka, is an important example of a Buddhist chronicle written in the vernacular Sinhala language. Furthermore, it is among those works that inform public discussion and debate over the place of Buddhism in the Sri Lankan nation state and the role of Buddhist monks in contemporary politics.In this book Stephen Berkwitz offers the first complete English translation of the Sinhala Thupavamsa. Composed in a literary dialect of Sinhala, it contains a richly descriptive account of how Buddhism spread outside of India, replete with poetic embellishments and interpolations not found in other accounts of those events. Aside from being an important literary work, the Sinhala Thupavamsa. is a text of considerable historical and religious significance. It comprises several narrative strands that relate the life story of the Buddha and the manner in which Buddhist teachings and institutions were established on the island of Sri Lanka in ancient times. The central focus of this work concerns the variety of relics associated with the historical Buddha, particularly how the relics were acquired and the presumed benefits of venerating them. The text also relates the mythological history of the Buddha's previous lives as a bodhisattva and concludes with a prediction about the future Buddha Maitreya. Reflection on Buddhist ethics and instruction on the Dharma, or the Buddha's teaching, are found throughout the work, indicating that this historical narrative was meant both to recall the past and give rise to religious practice among contemporary readers and listeners.This new translation makes a significant work more widely accessible in the West and adds to our knowledge of how local Buddhist communities imagined and represented their religious and cultural heritages in written works.

The World's Writing Systems

The World's Writing Systems PDF Author: Peter T. Daniels
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195079930
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 970

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Book Description
Ranging from cuneiform to shorthand, from archaic Greek to modern Chinese, from Old Persian to modern Cherokee, this is the only available work in English to cover all of the world's writing systems from ancient times to the present. Describing scores of scripts in use now or in the past around the world, this unusually comprehensive reference offers a detailed exploration of the history and typology of writing systems. More than eighty articles by scholars from over a dozen countries explain and document how a vast array of writing systems work--how alphabets, ideograms, pictographs, and hieroglyphics convey meaning in graphic form. The work is organized in thirteen parts, each dealing with a particular group of writing systems defined historically, geographically, or conceptually. Arranged according to the chronological development of writing systems and their historical relationships within geographical areas, the scripts are divided into the following sections: the ancient Near East, East Asia, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Additional parts address the ongoing process of decipherment of ancient writing systems; the adaptation of traditional scripts to new languages; new scripts invented in modern times; and graphic symbols for numerical, music, and movement notation. Each part begins with an introductory article providing the social and cultural context in which the group of writing systems was developed. Articles on individual scripts detail the historical origin of the writing system, its structure (with tables showing the forms of the written symbols), and its relationship to the phonology of the corresponding spoken language. Each writing system is illustrated by a passage of text, and accompanied by a romanized version, a phonetic transcription, and a modern English translation. A bibliography suggesting further reading concludes each entry. Matched by no other work in English, The World's Writing Systems is the only comprehensive resource covering every major writing system. Unparalleled in its scope and unique in its coverage of the way scripts relate to the languages they represent, this is a resource that anyone with an interest in language will want to own, and one that should be a part of every library's reference collection.