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Adam And The Early Mesopotamian Creation Mythology, Saad D. Abulhab
Adam And The Early Mesopotamian Creation Mythology, Saad D. Abulhab
Publications and Research
The first monotheist human, Adam, was likely a god, in the Mesopotamian mythology, just as the Hebrew Genesis reluctantly revealed, and the assertive Quran slightly hinted. Specifically, he was the pre-monotheist, Sumerian god, Idim, who was also called GodEa and many other nicknames over the millenniums. The names Idim and Adam are even linguistically related, according to early Arabic root words analysis. As a Mesopotamian god, Idim was the creator of the first human, and the father of his immediate generations, as he was sometimes referred to in the ancient literature. He was the preserver of life on earth, and …
Islam And Buddhism: The Arabian Prequel?, Anna Akasoy
Islam And Buddhism: The Arabian Prequel?, Anna Akasoy
Publications and Research
Conventionally, the first Muslim-Buddhist encounters are thought to have taken place in the context of the Arab-Muslim expansions into eastern Iran in the mid-seventh century, the conquest of Sind in 711 and the rise of the Islamic empire. However, several theories promoted in academic and popular circles claim that Buddhists or other Indians were present in western Arabia at the eve of Islam and thus shaped the religious environment in which Muhammad’s movement emerged. This article offers a critical survey of the most prominent arguments adduced to support this view and discusses the underlying attitudes to the Islamic tradition, understood …
Disciplining Yoga: Foucauldian Themes In Sivananda Yoga Practice, Mark E. Eaton
Disciplining Yoga: Foucauldian Themes In Sivananda Yoga Practice, Mark E. Eaton
Publications and Research
This paper considers the yoga practices at the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center as “disciplinary” practices. Yoga has a long history of being interpreted as “discipline”; this paper will consider how it is disciplinary and what is being disciplined. To this end, this paper will frame Sivananda yoga as a discipline from two perspectives: Sarah Strauss’ characterization of yoga as an “oasis regime”; and Michel Foucault’s view of discipline as minute “carceral” elaborations of power. These approaches are contrasted and ultimately, following Foucault, yoga disciplines are understood as being constitutive of the subject. The disciplinary character of yoga at the Sivananda …