Download or read book The Buddhas of Bamiyan written by Llewelyn Morgan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Main description: For 1,400 years, two colossal figures of the Buddha overlooked the fertile Bamiyan Valley on the Silk Road in Afghanistan. Witness to a melting pot of passing monks, merchants, and armies, the Buddhas embodied the intersection of East and West, and their destruction by the Taliban in 2001 provoked international outrage. Llewelyn Morgan excavates the layers of meaning these vanished wonders hold for a fractured Afghanistan. Carved in the sixth and seventh centuries, the Buddhas represented a confluence of religious and artistic traditions from India, China, Central Asia, and Iran, and even an echo of Greek influence brought by Alexander the Great's armies. By the time Genghis Khan destroyed the town of Bamiyan six centuries later, Islam had replaced Buddhism as the local religion, and the Buddhas were celebrated as wonders of the Islamic world. Not until the nineteenth century did these figures come to the attention of Westerners. That is also the historical moment when the ground was laid for many of Afghanistan's current problems, including the rise of the Taliban and the oppression of the Hazara people of Bamiyan. In a strange twist, the Hazaras-descendants of the conquering Mongol hordes who stormed Bamiyan in the thirteenth century-had come to venerate the Buddhas that once dominated their valley as symbols of their very different religious identity. Incorporating the voices of the holy men, adventurers, and hostages throughout history who set eyes on the Bamiyan Buddhas, Morgan tells the history of this region of paradox and heartache.
Download or read book The Future of the Bamiyan Buddha Statues written by Masanori Nagaoka and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Open Access book explores heritage conservation ethics of post conflict and provides an important historical record of the possible reconstruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, which was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in Danger in 2003 as “Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley”. With the condition that most surface of the original fragments of the Buddha statues were lost due to acts of deliberate destruction, this publication explores a reference point for conservation practitioners and policy makers around the world as they consider how to respond to on-going acts of destruction of cultural heritage. Whilst there has been an emerging debate to the ethics and nature of heritage reconstruction, this volume provides a plethora of ideas and approaches concerning the future treatment of the Bamiyan Buddha statues. It also addresses a number of fundamental questions on potential heritage reconstruction: how it will be done; who will decide; and what it should be done for. Moreover when it comes to the inscribed World Heritage properties, how can reconstructed heritage using non-original materials be considered to retain authenticity? With a view to serving as a precedent for potential decisions taken elsewhere in the world for cultural properties impacted by acts of violence and destruction, this volume introduces academic researches, experiences and observations of heritage conservation theory and practice of heritage reconstruction. It also addresses the issue not merely from the point of a material conservation philosophy but within the context of holistic strategies for the protection of human rights and promotion of peace building.
Download or read book Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road written by Johan Elverskog and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the contemporary world the meeting of Buddhism and Islam is most often imagined as one of violent confrontation. Indeed, the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 seemed not only to reenact the infamous Muslim destruction of Nalanda monastery in the thirteenth century but also to reaffirm the stereotypes of Buddhism as a peaceful, rational philosophy and Islam as an inherently violent and irrational religion. But if Buddhist-Muslim history was simply repeated instances of Muslim militants attacking representations of the Buddha, how had the Bamiyan Buddha statues survived thirteen hundred years of Muslim rule? Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road demonstrates that the history of Buddhist-Muslim interaction is much richer and more complex than many assume. This groundbreaking book covers Inner Asia from the eighth century through the Mongol empire and to the end of the Qing dynasty in the late nineteenth century. By exploring the meetings between Buddhists and Muslims along the Silk Road from Iran to China over more than a millennium, Johan Elverskog reveals that this long encounter was actually one of profound cross-cultural exchange in which two religious traditions were not only enriched but transformed in many ways.
Download or read book The Places in Between written by Rory Stewart and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rory Stewart recounts the experiences he had walking across Afghanistan in 2002, describing how the country and its people have been impacted by the Taliban and the American military's involvement in the region.
Download or read book International Cultural Heritage Law in Armed Conflict written by Marina Lostal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-30 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using contemporary case studies, this book offers a novel legal perspective on the protection of cultural heritage during war.
Download or read book Aisha s Cushion written by Jamal J. Elias and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Media coverage of the Danish cartoon crisis and the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan left Westerners with a strong impression that Islam does not countenance depiction of religious imagery. Jamal J. Elias corrects this view by revealing the complexity of Islamic attitudes toward representational religious art. Aisha’s Cushion emphasizes Islam’s perceptual and intellectual modes and in so doing offers the reader both insight into Islamic visual culture and a unique way of seeing the world. Aisha’s Cushion evaluates the controversies surrounding blasphemy and iconoclasm by exploring Islamic societies at the time of Muhammad and the birth of Islam; during early contact between Arab Muslims and Byzantine Christians; in medieval Anatolia and India; and in modern times. Elias’s inquiry then goes further, to situate Islamic religious art in a global context. His comparisons with Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu attitudes toward religious art show them to be as contradictory as those of Islam. Contemporary theories about art’s place in society inform Elias’s investigation of how religious objects have been understood across time and in different cultures. Elias contends that Islamic perspectives on representation and perception should be sought not only in theological writings or aesthetic treatises but in a range of Islamic works in areas as diverse as optics, alchemy, dreaming, calligraphy, literature, vehicle and home decoration, and Sufi metaphysics. Unearthing shades of meaning in Islamic thought throughout history, Elias offers fresh insight into the relations among religion, art, and perception across a broad range of cultures.
Download or read book Dispelling the Darkness written by Donald S. Lopez Jr. and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-10 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction to Inquiry concerning the doctrines of previous lives and emptiness -- Selections from Inquiry concerning the doctrines of previous lives and emptiness -- Introduction to Essence of the Christian religion -- Essence of the Christian religion -- A final thought
Download or read book Confession of a Buddhist Atheist written by Stephen Batchelor and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does Buddhism require faith? Can an atheist or agnostic follow the Buddha’s teachings without believing in reincarnation or organized religion? This is one man’s confession. In his classic Buddhism Without Beliefs, Stephen Batchelor offered a profound, secular approach to the teachings of the Buddha that struck an emotional chord with Western readers. Now, with the same brilliance and boldness of thought, he paints a groundbreaking portrait of the historical Buddha—told from the author’s unique perspective as a former Buddhist monk and modern seeker. Drawing from the original Pali Canon, the seminal collection of Buddhist discourses compiled after the Buddha’s death by his followers, Batchelor shows us the Buddha as a flesh-and-blood man who looked at life in a radically new way. Batchelor also reveals the everyday challenges and doubts of his own devotional journey—from meeting the Dalai Lama in India, to training as a Zen monk in Korea, to finding his path as a lay teacher of Buddhism living in France. Both controversial and deeply personal, Stephen Batchelor’s refreshingly doctrine-free, life-informed account is essential reading for anyone interested in Buddhism.
Download or read book Handbuch der Orientalistik written by Kurt A. Behrendt and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kurt Behrendt in this book for the first time and convincingly offers a description of the development of 2nd century B.C.E. to 8th century C.E. Buddhist sacred centers in ancient Gandhara, today northwest Pakistan.
Download or read book The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art written by Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2007 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Danger on Peaks written by Gary Snyder and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2014-09-22 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When first published in 2004, Danger on Peaks was the poet's first new collection of poems in twenty years. Perhaps his most personal, autobiographical collection, it begins with the young poet ascending Mt. St. Helens in 1945, a climb accidentally timed with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was 15 years old. Almost sixty years later, after the great Buddhas at Bamiyan Valley were bombed and with the victims of the World Trade Center also "turned to dust," the poet composed a prayer while at Short Grass Temple in Senso–ji, a pilgrim on the path of Kannon, Goddess of Mercy. This remarkable collection was greeted with broad praise, and as Julia Martin proclaimed, "Moving between relative and absolute ways of seeing, [Snyder] responds to the experience of global conflict and personal pain by reminding readers of the continuity of wildness, affirming the value of art, and invoking an ancient practice of wisdom and compassion."
Download or read book If You Meet the Buddha on the Road written by Michael Jerryson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is said that the famous ninth century Chinese Buddhist monk Linji Yixuan told his disciples, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." The deliberately confounding statement is meant to shock people out of complacent ways of thinking. But beyond the purposeful jolt from complacency there is another intention. This axiom suggests that, for liberation, one should seek the Buddha nature that resides within, rather than a mere Buddha exterior. The metaphor of killing the Buddha dislodges a person from the illusion that enlightenment lies outside the body. The proclamation also highlights the power of violence, even on a symbolic level. Violence abounds in Buddhist thoughts, doctrine, and actions, however unacknowledged or misunderstood. If You Meet the Buddha on the Road addresses an important absence in the study of religion and violence: the religious treatment of violence. In order to pursue an understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and violence, it is important to first consider how Buddhist scriptures and followers understand violence. Drawing on Buddhist treatments of violence, Michael Jerryson explores the ways in which Buddhists invoke, support, or justify war, conflict, state violence, and gender discrimination. In addition, the book examines the ways in which Buddhists address violence as military chaplains, cope with violence in a conflict zone, and serve as witnesses of blasphemy to Buddhist doctrine and Buddha images.
Download or read book The Beekeeper Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq written by Dunya Mikhail and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of a beekeeper who risks his life to rescue enslaved women from Daesh Since 2014, Daesh (ISIS) has been brutalizing the Yazidi people of northern Iraq: sowing destruction, killing those who won’t convert to Islam, and enslaving young girls and women. The Beekeeper, by the acclaimed poet and journalist Dunya Mikhail, tells the harrowing stories of several women who managed to escape the clutches of Daesh. Mikhail extensively interviews these women—who’ve lost their families and loved ones, who’ve been sexually abused, psychologically tortured, and forced to manufacture chemical weapons—and as their tales unfold, an unlikely hero emerges: a beekeeper, who uses his knowledge of the local terrain, along with a wide network of transporters, helpers, and former cigarette smugglers, to bring these women, one by one, through the war-torn landscapes of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, back into safety. In the face of inhuman suffering, this powerful work of nonfiction offers a counterpoint to Daesh’s genocidal extremism: hope, as ordinary people risk their own lives to save those of others.
Download or read book Heathen written by Kathryn Gin Lum and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Schaff Prize, American Society of Church History S-USIH Book Award, Society for U.S. Intellectual History Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History, Organization of American Historians “A fascinating book...Gin Lum suggests that, in many times and places, the divide between Christian and ‘heathen’ was the central divide in American life.”—Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker “Offers a dazzling range of examples to substantiate its thesis. Rare is the reader who could dip into it without becoming much better informed on a great many topics historical, literary, and religious. So many of Gin Lum’s examples are enlightening and informative in their own right.”—Philip Jenkins, Christian Century “Brilliant...Gin Lum’s writing style is nuanced, clear, detailed yet expansive, and accessible, which will make the book a fit for both graduate and undergraduate classrooms. Any scholar of American history should have a copy.” —Emily Suzanne Clark, S-USIH: Society for U.S. Intellectual History In this sweeping historical narrative, Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the heathen has been maintained from the colonial era to the present in religious and secular discourses—discourses, specifically, of race. Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term “heathen” fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Americans still treat large swaths of the world as “other” due to their assumed need for conversion to American ways. Race continues to operate as a heathen inheritance in the United States, animating Americans’ sense of being a world apart from an undifferentiated mass of needy, suffering peoples. Heathen thus reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.
Download or read book Middle Land Middle Way written by Shravasti Dhammika and published by Buddhist Publication Society. This book was released on 2008-12-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive guidebook to the places in India made sacred by the Buddha’s presence. Beginning with an inspiring account of Buddhist pilgrimage, the author then covers sixteen places in detail. With maps and colour photos, an essential companion for pilgrim and traveler.
Download or read book Architects of Buddhist Leisure written by Justin Thomas McDaniel and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhism, often described as an austere religion that condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture in Asia. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists have been produced both within and outside of monasteries across the region—in Nepal, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Justin McDaniel looks at the growth of Asia’s culture of Buddhist leisure—what he calls “socially disengaged Buddhism”—through a study of architects responsible for monuments, museums, amusement parks, and other sites. In conversation with noted theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, McDaniel argues that such sites highlight the importance of public, leisure, and spectacle culture from a Buddhist perspective and illustrate how “secular” and “religious,” “public” and “private,” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, places like Lek Wiriyaphan’s Sanctuary of Truth in Thailand, Suối Tiên Amusement Park in Saigon, and Shi Fa Zhao’s multilevel museum/ritual space/tea house in Singapore reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons and sectarian developments. They present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise: Together they form a gathering, not a movement. Despite the ingenuity of lay and ordained visionaries like Wiriyaphan and Zhao and their colleagues Kenzo Tange, Chan-soo Park, Tadao Ando, and others discussed in this book, creators of Buddhist leisure sites often face problems along the way. Parks and museums are complex adaptive systems that are changed and influenced by budgets, available materials, local and global economic conditions, and visitors. Architects must often compromise and settle at local optima, and no matter what they intend, their buildings will develop lives of their own. Provocative and theoretically innovative, Architects of Buddhist Leisure asks readers to question the very category of “religious” architecture. It challenges current methodological approaches in religious studies and speaks to a broad audience interested in modern art, architecture, religion, anthropology, and material culture.
Download or read book The Buddha Image written by Yuvraj Krishan and published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. This book was released on 1996 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrations: 247 b/w illustrations Description: This book deals with crucial though controversial questions in Buddhist art: the origin of the Buddha image and the iconography of the Buddha images. The earliest Buddhist art of Sanchi and Bharhut is aniconic : The Buddha is represented in symbols only. In the later Buddhist art of Gandhara and Mathura, the Buddha is represented in human form: he is the principal subject of sculptural art. The book seeks to explore the geographical area in which the image of the Buddha first emerged and whether the Buddhist doctrines-Hinayana or Mahayana-had anything to do with this transformation. The Buddha image, as developed eventually at Sarnath, became the model for the Buddha images in whole of Asia, south-east, central and eastern Asia. The iconographic features of the Buddha image are superficially an aberration, being in apparent conflict with the doctrine. The Buddha had cut off his hair at the time of his renunciation; the rules of the order enjoin that a monk must be tonsured and must discard and eschew all riches. However, in his images, the Buddha has hair on his head; later he is also endowed with a crown and jewels. After an exhaustive examination of the views of various scholars, the book answers these questions and resolves the controversies on the basis of literary, numismatic and epigraphic sources. More importantly it makes use of the valuable evidence from the contemporaneous Jaina art : Aniconism of early Jaina art and the iconographic features of Jaina images. The implications of this study are also important : Does India owe idolatry to Buddhism? Was this of foreign inspiration? Was the Buddha image fashioned after the Vedic Brahma and whether the Buddha's usnisa and Buddhist art motifs are rooted in the Vedic tradition? The book is profusely illustrated and provides rich and stimulating fare to students of Indian art in general and of Buddhist art in particular.
