Erzählende Wandmalereien

Erzählende Wandmalereien PDF Author: Dieter Schlingloff
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447042482
Category : Buddhist art and symbolism
Languages : de
Pages : 524

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Book Description


Material Culture and Asian Religions

Material Culture and Asian Religions PDF Author: Benjamin Fleming
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135013721
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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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.

Fortified Cities of Ancient India

Fortified Cities of Ancient India PDF Author: Dieter Schlingloff
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1783083492
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
Authored by one of the leading scholars of German Indology, “Fortified Cities in Ancient India” offers a comparative exploration of the development of towns and cities in ancient India. Based on in-depth textual and archeological research, Professor Dieter Schlingloff’s work presents for the first time the striking outcomes of intertwining data garnered from a wide range of sources. This volume scrutinizes much of the established knowledge on urban fortifications in South Asia, advancing new conceptions based on an authoritative, far-reaching study.

Buddhism and Gandhara

Buddhism and Gandhara PDF Author: Himanshu Prabha Ray
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351252747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Gandhara is a name central to Buddhist heritage and iconography. It is the ancient name of a region in present-day Pakistan, bounded on the west by the Hindu Kush mountain range and to the north by the foothills of the Himalayas. ‘Gandhara’ is also the term given to this region’s sculptural and architectural features between the first and sixth centuries CE. This book re-examines the archaeological material excavated in the region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and traces the link between archaeological work, histories of museum collections and related interpretations by art historians. The essays in the volume underscore the diverse cultural traditions of Gandhara – from a variety of sources and perspectives on language, ethnicity and material culture (including classical accounts, Chinese writings, coins and Sanskrit epics) – as well as interrogate the grand narrative of Hellenism of which Gandhara has been a part. The book explores the making of collections of what came to be described as Gandhara art and reviews the Buddhist artistic tradition through notions of mobility and dynamic networks of transmission. Wide ranging and rigorous, this volume will appeal to scholars and researchers of early South Asian history, archaeology, religion (especially Buddhist studies), art history and museums.

Early Asceticism in India

Early Asceticism in India PDF Author: Piotr Balcerowicz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317538528
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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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.

Dice and Gods on the Silk Road

Dice and Gods on the Silk Road PDF Author: Brandon Dotson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004464379
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
What do dice and gods have in common? What is the relationship between dice divination and dice gambling? This interdisciplinary collaboration situates the tenth-century Chinese Buddhist “Divination of Maheśvara” within a deep Chinese backstory of divination with dice and numbers going back to at least the 4th century BCE. Simultaneously, the authors track this specific method of dice divination across the Silk Road and into ancient India through a detailed study of the material culture, poetics, and ritual processes of dice divination in Chinese, Tibetan, and Indian contexts. The result is an extended meditation on the unpredictable movements of gods, dice, divination books, and divination users across the various languages, cultures, and religions of the Silk Road.

NAKO

NAKO PDF Author: Gabriela Krist
Publisher: Böhlau Verlag Wien
ISBN: 3205202678
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
The Nako temple complex from the 12th century is an extraordinary testimony of early Tibetan Buddhism not anymore preserved in today’s Tibet. Endangered by the rough environment, improper treatment and frequent earthquakes, the outstanding monuments were re-discovered by scholars from Austrian universities in the 1980s. The transdisciplinary research project carried out over more than 20 years led to in-depth studies, preservation and model-like conservation of the temples and their artworks.

Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks

Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks PDF Author: Jason Neelis
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004194584
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
This exploration of early paths for Buddhist transmission within and beyond South Asia retraces the footsteps of monks, merchants, and other agents of cross-cultural exchange. A reassessment of literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources reveals hisorical contexts for the growth of the Buddhist saṅgha from approximately the 5th century BCE to the end of the first millennium CE. Patterns of dynamic Buddhist mobility were closely linked to transregional trade networks extending to the northwestern borderlands and joined to Central Asian silk routes by capillary routes through transit zones in the upper Indus and Tarim Basin. By examining material conditions for Buddhist establishments at nodes along these routes, this book challenges models of gradual diffusion and develops alternative explanations for successful Buddhist movement.

The Glorious Deeds of Purna

The Glorious Deeds of Purna PDF Author: Joel Tatelman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136815007
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
By providing an annotated translation of, and applying the methods of literary criticism to, a first-century account of the life of the saint Purna, this study introduces the reader to the richness and complexity of an essential Buddhist genre.

The Glorious Deeds of Pūrṇa

The Glorious Deeds of Pūrṇa PDF Author: Joel Tatelman
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe
ISBN: 9788120818071
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
The avadana literature is the largess corpus of Sanskrit Buddhist texts available to us. By providing an annotated translation of, and applying the methods of literary criticism to, a first-century account of the life of the saint Purna, the present study introduces the reader to the richness and complexity of a genre which has played an essential role in Buddhist self-understanding for over two thousand years. Buddhist tradition identifies the monk Purna of Surparaka as the great evangelist who introduced Buddhism to the land of Sronaparantaka, which corresponds to much of the present Indian State of Gujarat. The Introduction which discusses methodological issues in some detail, is followed by an annotated translation of the text and by a detailed literary analysis. After brief concluding remarks, the appendices present translations of four other versions of the life of Purna.