History of Religions of Eastern Origins Commons^™

Manuscript Variations Of Dabistān-I Mazāhib And Writing Histories Of Religion In Mughal India, Sudev Sheth

Manuscript Studies

A text that has found renewed interest among scholars of early modern India is the Persian compendium of religion called Dabistān-i Maẕāhib. Written between 1645 and 1658, the Dabistān presents a lively ethnographic and historical account of customs and habits of various major and minor religious communities in northern India during the heyday of the Mughal Empire (1526-1707). Written like a travelogue, it moves between various modes of description including mythical revelations, storytelling, ethnographic notes, and authorial commentary. The Dabistān-i Maẕāhib is also valuable because it is the earliest work outside of the Sikh literary tradition that contains first-hand accounts ...

The Others (2001) By Alejandro Amenábar In The Light Of Valentinian Thought, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article offers a Valentinian interpretation of the Hollywood film The Others (2001). A particular attention is paid to the ways in which cinematic motifs and narrative elements of the film draw on myths, ideas and symbolic imagery present in Valentinian works, especially in the Gospel of Truth (NHC I, 3) and the Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3). In the course of the heuristic analysis, the paper argues that although the film employs Valentinian ideas, it depicts different understanding of the world. This issue is addressed in the last part of the article by situating the film within broader ...

Book Review Of Sarah Barringer Gordon's The Mormon Question: Polygamy And Constitutional Conflict In Nineteenth-Century America, Nathan B. Oman

Nathan B. Oman

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of New Perspectives In Mormon Studies: Creating And Crossing Boundaries, Nathan B. Oman

Nathan B. Oman

No abstract provided.

"Secret Combinations": A Legal Analysis, Nathan B. Oman

Nathan B. Oman

No abstract provided.

"Out Of Zion Shall Go Forth The Law", Nathan B. Oman

Nathan B. Oman

No abstract provided.

Who Is The Viṣṇu Of The Viṣṇu Purāṇa?, Sucharita Adluri Ms.

Sucharita Adluri

Between the 12th to the 14th centuries, two commentaries on the Viṣṇu Purāṇa were composed by Viṣṇucitta (~12th CE) and Śrīdhara (13th–14th CE). Known as the Viṣṇucittīya and Ātmaprakāśa, they are interpretations from the perspectives of Viśiṣṭādvaita and Advaita Vedānta respectively. While the purāṇa weaves together Viṣṇu mythology of a creator god active in the world and worshipped in various forms with the upaniṣadic doctrine of the highest Self, this characterization undergoes various permutations in the hands of the two exegetes. In examining their commentarial strategies, this paper broadens our understanding of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa as not simply a ...

Chang (Beer): A Social Marker, Ritual Tool, And Multivalent Symbol In Tibetan Buddhism, Kayla J. Jenkins

MSU Graduate Theses

In this thesis, I analyze the use of beer (Tib. chang) in Tibetan tantric Buddhism and emphasize its importance for studying themes of purity and pollution, meaning, and power in this context. In doing so, I argue that beer functions as a social marker and influences gender dynamics in Tibet. Beer also functions as a religious ritual tool for transactions of power. Lastly, beer is present as a multivalent symbol in Tibetan tantric songs and stories, useful as both a negative and positive metaphor for qualities or states of mind. As something that informs social, religious, and literary worlds within ...

Syrian Crisis Representation In The Media: The Cnn Effect, Framing, And Tone, Savannah S. Day

The University of Mississippi Undergraduate Research Journal

Over the past seven years of the Syrian Civil War, Syrian refugees have been painted in a negative light by news media outlets around the world. History of media coverage regarding global humanitarian crises shows that with various tools and processes, media can shape public opinion and policy in whichever direction it desires, and oftentimes policymakers and the public are quick, as well as emotional, to react. In this paper, my objectives are to analyze specific examples of this CNN Effect phenomena within news coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis, as well as generally explain the negatively correlating relationship between ...

(Re-) Staging Translation: Meaningful Interaction With Hindu Devotional Objects In The Western Museum, Emma Efkeman

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this thesis, the Hindu devotional object will be tracked through many contexts and its role will change based on its geographic and cultural location. First, the original ritual context will be established, paying specific attention to ceremonial processes and actions that activate the objects. Next, I will sketch the approaches to interpretation used in the two museum spaces. In this movement between spaces, the Hindu object is de- and then re-contextualized. Museums can discover from this narrative the many ways that meaning is constructed, within and outside of a Western framework. It is this pivotal period of re-contextualization that ...

Augustine On Rhetoric And Flourishing, Jon P. Radwan

Jon P. Radwan

Recapture, Transparency, Negation And A Logic For The Catuṣkoṭi, Adrian Kreutz

Comparative Philosophy

The recent literature on Nāgārjuna’s catuṣkoṭi centres around Jay Garfield’s (2009) and Graham Priest’s (2010) interpretation. It is an open discussion to what extent their interpretation is an adequate model of the logic for the catuskoti, and the Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā. Priest and Garfield try to make sense of the contradictions within the catuskoti by appeal to a series of lattices – orderings of truth-values, supposed to model the path to enlightenment. They use Anderson & Belnaps's (1975) framework of First Degree Entailment. Cotnoir (2015) has argued that the lattices of Priest and Garfield cannot ...

An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Prince ShōToku’S ShōMangyō-Gisho And Two Dunhuang Buddhist Manuscripts: A Debate Over Originality And Canonical Value, Mark Dennis

Manuscript Studies

This article investigates the relationship between two manuscript fragments discovered in Dunhuang, China referred to as Nai 93 and Tama 24, and the Shōmangyō-gisho, a Buddhist text written in classical Chinese attributed to Japan’s Prince Shōtoku (574-622). Shōtoku is remembered in Japanese history as the country’s first patriarch of Buddhism, revered for his patronage of the nascent faith and his great erudition. His studies under a Korean Buddhist monk led, according to early historical texts, to his composing the Shōmangyō-gisho and two other Buddhist commentaries that have been greatly valued throughout Japanese Buddhist history.

But the discovery of ...

Who Is The Viṣṇu Of The Viṣṇu Purāṇa?, Sucharita Adluri Ms.

Philosophy & Comparative Religion Department Faculty Publications

Between the 12th to the 14th centuries, two commentaries on the Viṣṇu Purāṇa were composed by Viṣṇucitta (~12th CE) and Śrīdhara (13th–14th CE). Known as the Viṣṇucittīya and Ātmaprakāśa, they are interpretations from the perspectives of Viśiṣṭādvaita and Advaita Vedānta respectively. While the purāṇa weaves together Viṣṇu mythology of a creator god active in the world and worshipped in various forms with the upaniṣadic doctrine of the highest Self, this characterization undergoes various permutations in the hands of the two exegetes. In examining their commentarial strategies, this paper broadens our understanding of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa as not simply a ...

The Blind Arhat And The Old Baby: Liberation By Wisdom, The Dry-Insight Practitioner, And The Pairing Of Calm And Insight, David V. Fiordalis

Faculty Publications

The distinction between “calm” (Pāli: samatha; Sanskrit: śamatha) and “insight” (P: vipassanā; Skt: vipaśyanā) is one of several ostensibly related dichotomies that have exerted a significant influence on classical and contemporary understandings of Buddhist practices, institutions, and history, as well as of the Buddhist path(s) to and conception(s) of awakening. However, scholars continue to debate whether Buddhists ever conceptualized two (or more) different paths or conceptions of this goal. Much of the debate has been based on the interpretation of doctrinal and theoretical materials. This essay takes as its starting point the concept of “liberation by wisdom” (P ...

“There Are No Dharmas Apart From The Dharma-Sphere”: Shakya Chokden’S Interpretation Of The Dharma-Sphere, Yaroslav Komarovski

Faculty Publications, Classics and Religious Studies Department

As is well known to contemporary scholarship and demonstrated by the works contained in the present volume, the Tibetan term zhentong (gzhan stong, being empty of other) refers not to any one unanimous view or system of thought but to a wide variety of philosophical theories formed primarily in India and Tibet. Those theories are often contrasted with rival rangtong (rang stong, being empty of self)¹ theories in their interpretations of reality, buddhahood, path, and other elements of the Buddhist worldiew. While many of those elements are equally open to the zhentong and rangtong interpretations, some suit one better ...

Mara Bojic, Marija Maracic, Josipa Karaca

SICANJE

No abstract provided.

Identity Negotiation, Saudi Women, And The Impact Of The 2011 Royal Decree: An Investigation Of The Cultural, Religious, And Societal Shifts Among Women In The Saudi Arabian Public Sphere, Maha Alshoaibi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Historically, Saudi Arabian culture has been deeply rooted in tradition, religious customs, family-oriented structures, and gender derived expectations for men and women alike. Saudi Arabian culture emphasizes a patriarchal family structure where men financially provide for their family whereas women are expected to manage internal household duties such as raising children, upholding household affairs, and working within a limited scope of employment. The concept of Saudi Arabian women integrating into the public workforce has been a source of contention and debate for the last several hundred years. Due to recent changes in political and economic events, a royal decree issued ...

Buddhist Law In Burma: A History Of Dhammasattha Texts And Jurisprudence, 1250–1850, D. Christian Lammerts

UH Press Book Previews

Burma and neighboring areas of Southeast Asia comprise the only region of the world to have developed a written corpus of Buddhist law claiming jurisdiction over all members of society. Yet in contrast with the extensive scholarship on Islamic and Hindu law, this tradition of Buddhist law has been largely overlooked. In fact, it is commonplace to read that Buddhism gave rise to no law aside from the vinaya, or monastic law. In Buddhist Law in Burma, D. Christian Lammerts upends this misperception and provides an intellectual and literary history of the dynamic jurisprudence of the dhammasattha legal genre between ...

Li Zehou And Confucian Philosophy, Roger T. Ames, Jinhua Jia

UH Press Book Previews

For more than a century scholars both inside and outside of China have undertaken the project of modernizing Confucianism, but few have been as successful or influential as Li Zehou (b. 1930). Since the 1950s, Li’s extensive efforts in this regard have in turn exerted a profound influence on Chinese modernization and resulted in his becoming one of China’s most prominent social critics. To transform Confucianism into a contemporary resource for positive change in China and elsewhere, Li has reinterpreted major ideas and concepts of classical Confucianism, including a rereading of the entire Analects, replete with his own ...