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International and Area Studies Commons

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Full-Text Articles in International and Area Studies

Enlightening The Bats: Sound And Place Making In Burmese Buddhist Practice, Andrew Dicks Nov 2015

Enlightening The Bats: Sound And Place Making In Burmese Buddhist Practice, Andrew Dicks

Andrew Dicks

In Burma (Myanmar), the Abhidhamma, a rigorous and abstract soteriological treatise situated within the vast Pali Buddhist canon, is the focus of both monastic and lay practitioners’ close study and popular veneration. In particular, the Paṭṭhāna, the last and most complex volume of the Abhidhamma, is envisioned as a keystone in the long-term preservation of the Buddha’s teachings, which are also understood to inevitably disappear. As a result of these conditions and understandings, a popular ritualized and amplified recitation of this difficult text has developed in order to maintain the text’s presence in popular consciousness. This is a conscientious move …


Beyond Exile: The Ramayana As A Living Narrative Among Indo-Fijians In Fiji And New Zealand, Kevin Miller Dec 2014

Beyond Exile: The Ramayana As A Living Narrative Among Indo-Fijians In Fiji And New Zealand, Kevin Miller

Kevin C. Miller

Drawing on the themes of collective memory, cultural ideologies, and narrative constructions, this chapter proposes to examine the narrative of the Ramayana epic, its exegesis through performance, and its continued relevance to identity formation among Indo-Fijian Hindus both within Fiji and its Pacific Rim diaspora. Based on the recasting of the “twice-migrated” Indo-Fijian as the “twice-banished” by certain observers, we might expect the meaning of the Ramayana in the lives of Indo-Fijian Hindus in New Zealand to shift towards the theme of Rama’s exile, just as it did for the indentured laborers who made the original journey to Fiji. Nevertheless, …


"On Translating Taiji", Joseph Adler Dec 2014

"On Translating Taiji", Joseph Adler

Joseph Adler

No abstract provided.