Download or read book Secrets of the Fallen Pagoda written by Eugene Yuejin Wang and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The capital of Tang China (618 - 907), Chang'an (present day Xi'an), was a hub for economic and cultural exchange. Nearby lies the Famen Temple, one of the most revered Buddhist sites in China. A finger bone relic of the Buddha and magnificent Tang dynasty objects of gold, silver, ceramics, and glass were sealed within an underground crypt there. For more than 1000 years, these treasures were forgotten until their chance discovery in 1987. Together with objects from other leading museums in Shaanxi, the exhibition covered by this text is a rare showcase of Tang aesthetics and culture for the first time in Southeast Asia. This catalogue accompanies an exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum of treasures from the Famen Temple crypt and other Tang dynasty artworks. Essays examine relic worship at the Famen Temple and the Buddhist world of the Tang, the rationale for the arrangement of donations in the crypt chambers, and the Tang dynasties contacts with the wider world. Figures and murals from tombs, magnificent reliquary boxes, rare ceramics, and gold and silver metalwork tell the story of life and culture during the Tang.
Download or read book Authentic Replicas written by Hsueh-man Shen and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As belief in the Buddha grew and his teachings were transmitted across Asia, Buddhist images, scriptures, and relics were duplicated and reduplicated to satisfy the needs of increasing numbers of the faithful. Yet how were these countless copies of sacred objects able to retain their authenticity and efficacy? Authentic Replicas explores how Buddhists in medieval China (seventh to twelfth centuries) solved this conundrum through the use of traditional methods of replication such as stamping, mold casting, and woodblock printing to create objects that fulfilled the spiritual aspirations of those who possessed them. Setting aside Western notions about the relative value of copies versus the “original,” the book posits Buddhist ideas on what imbues an object with credibility and authority and offers fresh insights into the ways authenticity was represented and reproduced in the Chinese Buddhist context. Each section of the volume focuses on an area of artistic output to provide readers with a thorough grasp of the theological concepts underpinning each act of duplication. Part I looks at the replication of sutras to clarify how the spiritual value of a handwritten sutra differed from a printed one. In Part II, clay tablets, woodblock prints, silk paintings, and cave murals are examined to trace iconographic lineages and uncover the divine identity in each new replica. The chapters in Part III describe in detail the copying of the Buddha’s bodily relics and the endlessly repeated votive act of burying these in stupas. Of particular significance is the visual and textual vocabulary used on reliquaries to persuade adherents to believe in the actual presence of the Buddha concealed inside. Deftly weaving together data and research from several disciplines, including Buddhist studies, archaeology, and art history, Authentic Replicas vividly conveys how replication lay at the heart of Buddhist worship in medieval China, offering a new understanding of how religious belief guided the artistic output of an entire age.
Download or read book The Four Gods Figurines as Tomb Guardians written by Lok Man Yang and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-29 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book employs a biographical approach to comprehensively study a set of Tang era-tomb guardian figurines, known as the Four Gods (Sishen), comprising a pair of warriors (Dangkuang and Dangye) and a pair of hybrid beasts (Zuming and Dizhou). These objects were exclusively used by officials until 841 AD and were mainly found in capitals then. They disappeared in the 9th century AD. The book is divided into three sections. Part one focuses on their symbolism through names, images, burial contexts, associated ritual regulations, and the interplay of all of these, revealing their dual significance – apotropaic and political, tied to ritual propriety, nuo exorcism, yin-yang divination, and more. Part two explores their connection to other supernatural tomb figurines in the early and middle Tang periods, challenging previous theories and highlighting regional standardization. Additionally, this part delves into the Four Gods’ regulated production, government oversight, and role in funerary processions. Part three examines their disappearance due to shifting views on the afterlife and diminishing national power. It also explores changes in the usage of related tomb objects after the Tang era, focusing on protective functions and spatial concepts.
Download or read book Zen and Material Culture written by Pamela D. Winfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-07 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stereotype of Zen Buddhism as a minimalistic or even immaterial meditative tradition persists in the Euro-American cultural imagination. This volume calls attention to the vast range of "stuff" in Zen by highlighting the material abundance and iconic range of the Soto, Rinzai, and Obaku sects in Japan. Chapters on beads, bowls, buildings, staffs, statues, rags, robes, and even retail commodities in America all shed new light on overlooked items of lay and monastic practice in both historical and contemporary perspectives. Nine authors from the cognate fields of art history, religious studies, and the history of material culture analyze these "Zen matters" in all four senses of the phrase: the interdisciplinary study of Zen's matters (objects and images) ultimately speaks to larger Zen matters (ideas, ideals) that matter (in the predicate sense) to both male and female practitioners, often because such matters (economic considerations) help to ensure the cultural and institutional survival of the tradition. Zen and Material Culture expands the study of Japanese Zen Buddhism to include material inquiry as an important complement to mainly textual, institutional, or ritual studies. It also broadens the traditional purview of art history by incorporating the visual culture of everyday Zen objects and images into the canon of recognized masterpieces by elite artists. Finally, the volume extends Japanese material and visual cultural studies into new research territory by taking up Zen's rich trove of materia liturgica and supplementing the largely secular approach to studying Japanese popular culture. This groundbreaking volume will be a resource for anyone whose interests lie at the intersection of Zen art, architecture, history, ritual, tea ceremony, women's studies, and the fine line between Buddhist materiality and materialism.
Download or read book Secrets of Moth written by Daniel Arenson and published by Moonclipse. This book was released on 2014-02-14 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our world is broken. Our people are torn. The sun no longer rises. Evening no longer falls. In the lands of endless sunlight, we fear the darkness, we forge swords, we march to war. In the shadows of eternal night, we hide, we pray, we die. Soldiers of sunlight and children of darkness--we were once one. We were torn apart. We must be one again. We are the people of Moth. Our world must once more turn.
Download or read book Landscape and Space written by Jaś Elsner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Landscape has been a key theme in world archaeology and trans-cultural art history over the last half century, particularly in the study of painting in art history and in all questions of human intervention and the placement of monuments in the natural world within archaeology. However, the representation of landscape has been rather less addressed in the scholarship of the archaeologically-accessed visual cultures of the ancient world. The kinds of reliefs, objects, and paintings discussed here have a significant purchase on matters concerned with landscape and space in the visual sphere, but were discovered within archaeological contexts and by means of excavation. Through case studies focused on the invention of wilderness imagery in ancient China, the relation of monuments to landscape in ancient Greece, the place of landscape painting in Mesoamerican Maya art, and the construction of sacred landscape across Eurasia between Stonehenge and the Silk Road via Pompeii, this book emphasises the importance of thinking about models of landscape in ancient art, as well as the value of comparative approaches in underlining core aspects of the topic. Notably, it explores questions of space, both actual and conceptual, including how space is configured through form and representation.
Download or read book Shaping the Story of Singapore written by Nala H. Lee and published by Singapore Research Nexus. This book was released on with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shaping the Story of Singapore Volume III features 32 projects on Singapore and the region that are led by FASS faculty members. Representing 12 Departments–Chinese Studies; Communications and New Media; Economics; English, Linguistics, and Theatre Studies; Geography; History; Japanese Studies; Malay Studies; Political Science; Psychology; Social Work; and Sociology and Anthropology–this volume reveals how academic research in the humanities and social sciences can help us better understand Singapore and its neighbours.
Download or read book Visualizing Dunhuang written by Jun Hu and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Located at the crossroads of the northern and southern routes of the ancient Silk Road on the edge of the Taklamakan desert in western China, Dunhuang is one of the richest Buddhist sites in China with nearly 500 cave temples constructed between the fourth and the fourteenth century. The sculptures, murals, portable paintings, and manuscripts found in the caves represent every aspect of Buddhism, both doctrinally and artistically. From its earliest construction to the present, Dunhuang has been visualized in many ways by the architects, builders, and artists who made the caves to twentieth-century explorers and photographers, conservators, and contemporary artists. This book explores ways in which Dunhuang has been visualized from its creation to contemporary times. Essays by leading scholars from the U.S., Europe, and China cover a wide range of topics, from the architecture of cave temples to painting and sculptural programs, Buddhist ritual practices, expeditionary photography, conservation, and the contributions of Dunhuang to art history"--
Download or read book Imagining Asia s written by Andrea Acri and published by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. This book was released on 2019-10-23 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a continent lying to the east of Europe, Asia has been malleable to different spatial and temporal imaginations and politics. Recent scholarship has highlighted how the seemingly self-contained regional configurations of West and Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and East Asia carved by the Area Studies paradigm reflect changing (geo)political and economic interests than historical or cultural roots. This volume advances the question as to what Asia is, and as to whether there existed one or many Asia(s). It seeks to explore Asian societies as interconnected formations through trajectories/networks of circulation of people, ideas, and objects in the longue durée. Moving beyond the divides of Area Studies scholarship and the arbitrary borders set by late colonial empires and the rise of post-colonial nation-states, this volume maps critically the configuration of contact zones in which mobile bodies, minds, and cultures interact to foster new images, identities, and imaginations of Asia.
Download or read book India China and the World written by Tansen Sen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pathbreaking study provides the first comprehensive examination of India-China interactions in the broader contexts of Asian and world history. By focusing on material exchanges, transmissions of knowledge and technologies, networks of exchange during the colonial period, and little-known facets of interactions between the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China, Tansen Sen argues convincingly that the analysis of India-China connections must extend beyond the traditional frameworks of nation-states or bilateralism. Instead, he demonstrates that a wide canvas of space, people, objects, and timeframe is needed to fully comprehend the interactions between India and China in the past and during the contemporary period. Considering as well the contributions of people and groups from beyond India and China, Sen also explores the interactions between Indians and Chinese outside the Asian continent. The author’s formidable array of sources, pulled from archives and libraries around the world, range from Chinese travel accounts to Indian intelligence reports. Examining the connected histories of the two regions, Sen fills a striking gap in the study of India and China in a global setting.
Download or read book Art Hats In Renaissance City Reflections Aspirations Of Four Generations Of Art Personalities written by Renee Foong Ling Lee and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art Hats in Renaissance City is an anthology of the personal reflections and aspirations of four generations in the new ecostructure in Singapore, from those who help formulate policies to that of the individual artists, who have helped develop and build an exciting arts and cultural scene from scratch and into a viable economic model. As evidenced by the professions featured in this anthology, the scope of work within the creative and cultural industries is diverse, from backgrounds such as history, communications, management, economics, law, science, art, psychology and entertainment.Beyond theory, the anthology offers an authentic voice of real and lived experiences of the go-to people, their personal role in heritage development, and their thoughts and insights on our, albeit developing, art scene since Singapore's independence.In this anthology, discover the following and more!
Download or read book The Pagoda Mystery written by Alice P. Lin and published by . This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Secrets of Spirituality Occult written by Helena Blavatsky and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2023-11-08 with total page 2915 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eBook has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. This edition uncovers the fundamental unity from which everything springs and shows the Occult side of Nature that has never been approached by the Science of modern civilization. Isis Unveiled The Secret Doctrine The Key to Theosophy The Voice of the Silence Studies in Occultism From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan Nightmare Tales
Download or read book The Pagoda Mystery written by Maurice WORTH (pseud.) and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book EurASEAA14 Volume II Material Culture and Heritage written by Helen Lewis and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume comprises papers presented at the EurASEAA14 conference in 2012, updated for publication. It focuses on topics under the broad themes of archaeology and heritage, material culture, environmental archaeology, osteoarchaeology, historic and prehistoric archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and long-distance contact, trade and exchange.
Download or read book The Pagoda Tree written by Claire Scobie and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weaving together the uneasy meeting of two cultures, The Pagoda Tree is a captivating story of love, loss and fate. Tanjore, 1765. Maya plays among the towering granite temples of this ancient city in the heart of southern India. Like her mother before her, she is destined to become a devadasi, a dancer for the temple. She is instructed in dance, the mystical arts and lovemaking. It is expected she will be chosen as a courtesan for the prince himself. But as Maya comes of age, India is on the cusp of change and British dominance has risen to new heights. The prince is losing his power and the city is sliding into war. Maya is forced to flee her ancestral home, and heads to the bustling port city of Madras, where East and West collide. Maya captivates all who watch her dance. Thomas Pearce, an ambitious young Englishman who has travelled to India to make his fortune, is entranced from the moment he first sees her. But their love is forbidden, and comes at enormous cost. 'Claire Scobie's seductive prose and immaculate layering of period detail capture India at her most exotic.' Susan Kurosawa 'Women's stories are rarely told in history, nor particularly honoured. The Pagoda Tree offers a powerful, sensual perspective on a time of great transformation in India.' Sarah Macdonald, author of Holy Cow 'A rich and enthralling story handled with great skill by someone with a profound understanding of her material.' David Roach, screenwriter and film director 'A richly textured tale full of the sights, sounds and smells of India, with all its complex beauty and troubled history … ' Sydney Morning Herald 'A novel to be savoured … Its layering, the unravelling of the story, the subtext of the fortunes made and lost on cotton and silk, the evocative descriptions of saris themselves are all part of [its] tapestry.' The Age '[The Pagoda Tree] offers new ways of seeing the past.' Canberra Times 'Scobie's prose is eloquent … a fascinating, unique plot representing an interesting era in [India's] history.' The Mercury 'A story told with great panache.' Country Style 'Claire Scobie travels a vast and exotic terrain in her first novel.' Weekly Review 'This first novel by Claire Scobie would make a spectacular film.' Goodreading Magazine 'A nuanced and sophisticated exploration of the socio-historical realities that are inevitable when cultures collide.' The Hoopla
Download or read book Fallen Angels A Mercy Allcutt Mystery Book 3 written by Alice Duncan and published by ePublishing Works!. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Angelica Gospel Hall Member Murdered, Local P.I. Suspected in Fallen Angels, a Historical Cozy Mystery from Alice Duncan --1926, Los Angeles, CA-- Mercy Allcutt has had exciting times as secretary to private investigator, Ernie Templeton. While it’s true she’s been in what she considers a wee bit of trouble--Ernie considers out-and-out danger--a time or two, she’s determined to continue learning the ways of the “real” world. However, when she sets out to find her wandering boss, Ernie, one hot September afternoon, she not only discovers a corpse, she also finds Ernie, bound and gagged. Even worse, when the police arrive to investigate the crime, they peg Ernie as the killer. Mercy isn’t about to let the police get away with that, no matter how many times Ernie tells her to butt out of the case. The only question is whether she’ll survive her investigatory efforts before she becomes one more “Fallen Angel.” Publisher Note: Readers who enjoy cozy mysteries in historical settings are sure to appreciate the Mercy Allcutt series set in 1920s Los Angeles, California. No vulgarity or explicit sex for those who appreciate a clean and wholesome read. Winner of:The 2012 NM/AZ book of the year award for mystery "Mercy Allcutt is a delight." ~Carola Dunn The Mercy Allcutt Mystery Series Lost Among the Angels Angels Flight Fallen Angels Angels of Mercy Thanksgiving Angels Angels Adrift Christmas Angels
