scholarly journals Precious Items Piling up Like Mountains: Buddhist Art Production via Fundraising Campaigns in Late Koryŏ Korea (918–1392)

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 885
Author(s):  
Maya Stiller

Considering visual culture alongside written source material, this article uncovers the socioeconomic aspect of Korean Buddhist monastic life, which has been a marginalized field of research. Arguing against the idea of an “other-worldly” Buddhism, the article specifically discusses the ways in which Buddhist monasteries conducted fundraising activities in late Koryŏ period (918–1392 CE) Korea. Via fundraising strategies, which targeted wealthy aristocrats as well as the commoner population, Buddhist monks managed the production and maintenance of Buddhist material culture, such as the construction of shrines, the casting of precious sculptures, and the carving of thousands of woodblocks used for the printing of sacred Buddhist scriptures. While the scholarship on Koryŏ Buddhism has traditionally focused on meditation, doctrine, state sponsored rituals, and temples’ relationships with the royal court, this study expands the field by showing that economic activities were salient features of Koryŏ Buddhism “on the ground.” By initiating and overseeing fundraising activities, Buddhist manager-monks not only gained merit, but also maintained the presence and physical appearance of Buddhist temples, which constitute the framework of Buddhist ritual and practice.

Author(s):  
Alasdair Pettinger

The fourth chapter takes off from Douglass’s meeting in Edinburgh with the phrenologist George Combe in order to investigate Douglass’ complex attitudes towards mid-century racial science and visual culture. Douglass’ own suspicion of the prevailing assumption that physical appearance offered a reliable guide to character was intensified by the awareness that the novelty of his appearance was drawing audiences, already familiar with the performances of blackface minstrel troupes, which toured Scotland at the same time. It also helps to explain his willingness to overrule his Irish publisher over which portrait to use for the frontispiece of a new edition of his Narrative, after arriving in Glasgow with only a few copies left. Following the dispute in some detail, the chapter goes on to suggest why Douglass disliked the first portrait so much and took great pains to have it replaced.


Author(s):  
L.E. Goodman

Physician, philosopher and perhaps the greatest Hebrew poet since the Psalms, Judah Halevi studied the Neoplatonic Aristotelianism widespread in Islamic Spain, but his loyalty to Judaic traditions, love of Israel and poetic empathy for the sufferings and aspirations of his people made him a powerful critic of that philosophical tradition. His philosophical masterpiece, the Kuzari, is a fictional dialogue set at the court of the king of the Khazars, a people of the Volga basin whose leaders had converted to Judaism in the early ninth century. Reports of the Khazar realm sparked Halevi’s imagination and gave him the backdrop for this effort to celebrate and shape his ancestral faith. Beyond heartening his fellow Jews in times of upheaval, Halevi confronted philosophical questions that conventional thinkers often begged or ignored. He found the erudite Neoplatonism of his day too confining to God, too speculative and a priori. Tellingly, he condemns Neoplatonism for cultural vacuity, moral sterility and spiritual escapism: while Christians and Muslims, with the highest spiritual intentions, earnestly set about one another’s murder, the philosophers fail to differentiate one faith from another. What is needed, Halevi reasons, is not a still more spiritual intellectualism but a historically and geographically rooted tradition concretely directed by God’s love. Halevi did not, as romantics often suppose, simply turn his back on reason, or on philosophy generically. Rather, he used his own philosophical gifts and poetic tact to retune philosophy to the ground notes of Jewish experience. He retained but structurally adapted the Neoplatonic linkage of God to the world via emanation, replacing the elaborate hierarchy of star souls with the simple manifestation of God’s word, the ’Amr. Like Philo’s Logos, Halevi’s ’Amr was at once an attribute of God, his wisdom and a manifestation of God immanent in nature. Since the ’Amr is an imperative, it connotes power, volition and command, not just logical entailment or necessitation. Since it is immanent, it allows fuller appropriation than was possible for many philosophers and many of the pietists and mystics in their wake, of the material side of nature, including human nature: language, material culture – including agriculture and other economic activities – law and politics belong to realm of God’s expression. Particularity is not isolated from God. Poetry and works of imagination can be expressions of the divine, not just stepchildren mediating the ever more abstract and abtruse flights of the intellect. Zion could be acknowledged as the land where the divine afflatus was most clearly articulated as a way of life. Longing for Zion need no longer be sublimated in prayer; rather, Israel’s songs of longing for the robust life of the land of God’s grace would voice a spiritual imperative that demanded practical expression and historical realization.


1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Smith

Recent theoretical and methodological developments within anthropological archaeology have transformed the discipline in such a way that archaeology is now beginning to make contributions to a number of areas of social science. Two of the more significant of these areas are the question of socioeconomic change over long time spans and the study of past economic systems. The former contribution arises out of the stratigraphie character of the archaeological record and the development of increasingly accurate methods of measuring past time. Archaeological studies typically deal with change over periods of time equivalent to or even longer than Braudel’s (1980)“longue durée”(e.g., Sanders, Parsons, and Santley, 1979; Blanton et al., 1981), and many archaeologists see this diachronic social perspective as the primary contribution of archaeology to social science knowledge (Plog, 1973). The second major contribution of archaeology—the study of past economic systems—is made possible by archaeologists’ reliance upon material culture. Beyond the obvious link between material objects and the study of ancient technology, material culture can be quite revealing about many types of economic activities as well as other sociocultural phenomena (e.g., Gould and Schiffer, 1981). This focus on material objects is so crucial to archaeologists that some have suggested that the major social science contribution of the field is its concern with the relationship between behavior and material culture in modern as well as ancient societies (e.g., Rathje and Schiffer, 1982; Rathje, 1979).


Buddhism ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kieschnick

The study of material culture belongs to a relatively young discipline that examines artifacts as well as ideas about, and practices related to, artifacts, with artifacts defined as material objects created or modified by people. Aspects of research in material culture overlap with art history, archaeology, and anthropology, but studies in material culture approach the subject from a different perspective, focusing on areas not necessarily emphasized in these disciplines. Unlike traditional art history, material culture studies concentrate on the function of objects, devoting little attention to their aesthetic qualities, with more emphasis, for instance, on miracles associated with icons than on the style or iconography of icons; unlike traditional archaeology, material culture studies do not necessarily focus on extant artifacts, giving as much attention to references to objects in texts as to extant objects; and, unlike traditional anthropology, material culture studies often give great emphasis to historical development, often over vast expanses of time. While the field of material culture studies has flourished for decades, religious studies have been slow to recognize the importance of material things. Many areas of religion in which material culture plays a prominent role remain largely unexplored, including the place of objects in ritual, religious emotion, pilgrimage, and doctrine. Readers interested in the material culture of Buddhism will want to consult entries for Buddhist art, archaeology, and anthropology as well; in the entries below, the focus is on areas of material culture not necessarily emphasized in these disciplines as well as on studies within these disciplines that are especially relevant to the study of material culture. The term visual culture overlaps with much of what is considered material culture, but excludes objects associated with other senses, such as taste, smell, and touch, which are covered by the term material culture. The material culture approach is particularly well suited for exploring the qualities of particular classes of objects. What is it about relics as body parts that accounts for their appeal? Why are miracles so often associated with physical representations of holy figures and how do these differ from textual representations? How do clothing and food differ from language as a medium of communication? To highlight this aspect of research in Buddhist material culture, the scholarship listed below is divided according to type of object. At the same time, material culture studies also offer an opportunity to examine attitudes toward the material world as applied to a wide variety of objects normally separated by discipline. The doctrine of merit inspired the creation of a wide variety of different types of objects, and the monastic ideal of renunciation permeates many different areas of Buddhist material culture.


Author(s):  
Maksim Volkov

The relevance of our study is due to the recent trends of comprehensive consideration of issues related to the financial, economic and economic activities of Orthodox monasteries. In the conditions of the revival of monastic life in modern Russia these aspects of monastic work are of particular interest to researchers and allow us to draw some historical parallels, as well as to comprehend many related issues in this direction. The study was tasked with presenting a genera-lized summary analysis of the economic status of Orthodox male monasteries of the eparchy dur-ing the synodal period, as well as reviewing the main articles of income and expenditure of mone-tary amounts. The facts collected and systematized in this study are intended to reveal the specifics and peculiarities of ownership of the male monasteries with their lands. Land tenure and various economic objects were a powerful economic help in the conditions of the established division of monasteries into regular and non-standard types after the 1764 reform. As a result, from the second half of the 18th century, most of the cloisters were forced to seek new non-state sources of income. In the process of the gradual accumulation of the land fund over the next century, the role of economic possessions, which, as a rule, were leased and provided a solid and stable extrabudgetary income, both in regular and non-standard monasteries, increased.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Raphael Nkaka ◽  
Charles Kabwete Mulinda

This article revisits the sacred kingship in ancient Rwanda. The existing literature presented it as either obvious or doubtful. Using local sources and exploring theories related to sacred kingship, we argue that the kingship in Rwanda was sacred. We also identify the role that this sacred kingship played in the processes of unification the territory of Rwanda, creation of material culture, origins and consolidation of the kingship and the kingdom. The most important role of the sacred kingship appears to have been mainly the legitimization of the King’s power. We use documentary research and the historical method to present and discuss the following narratives related to the Rwandan kingdom: the tale of origins or the myth of Kigwa, the royal ideology during the reign of Mibambwe III Sentabyo, Gihanga seen as the Incarnation of the Sacred Kingship, the sacrality of Power as source of legitimacy of King Ruganzu II Ndori, and the role of the sacred kingdom through the rituals of the royal court known as Ubwiru. Key words: Rwandan sacred kingship, power rituals, Rwandan history


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-57
Author(s):  
Vladimir Degtiar

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to describe how the material culture of the indigenous hunters and fishermen of the Udehe in the Far East of Russia have been transformed by outside influence, from an autonomous and already sophisticated culture to a dependent and modernized one. The discussion centres around the means of water transport, two kinds of dugout boats (the bat and omorochka) because they were and still are essential for hunting and fishing, which are the main economic activities of Udehe. The author demonstrates how this one part of material culture has changed in manufacturing and use, and what has changed in the everyday life due to this transformation.


Author(s):  
Эльза Венеровна Мигранова

Целью данной статьи является рассмотрение отражения в паремическом наследии башкирского народа такой важной составляющей системы жизнеобеспечения, как традиционная пищевая культура, а также прошлых хозяйственных занятий народа. Многие башкирские пословицы дошли до нас из глубокой древности, некоторые появились несколько позднее, иные — даже ближе к нашему времени. В качестве основного источника нами использованы башкирские пословицы в переводе на русский язык из 7-го тома свода «Башкирское народное творчество» (Уфа, 1993); оригиналы пословиц на башкирском языке содержатся в издании «Башkорт халыk ижады» (Уфа, 1980). Значительный вклад в сбор и изучение паремического наследия башкир внесли дореволюционные и советские исследователи башкирского края, а также современные ученые-фольклористы. Среди них особо следует выделить доктора филологических наук Ф. А. Надршину, сфера научных интересов которой, в числе прочих вопросов, касалась и изучения паремического наследия башкирского народа. Из пословиц можно получить представление и о древнейших, допроизводственных видах хозяйственной деятельности башкир (охота, рыболовство, собирательство, в том числе собирательство меда диких пчел — бортничество), и о производящих — скотоводство, птицеводство, земледелие, садоводство и огородничество. Продукты питания, о которых упоминается в башкирских пословицах, можно условно разделить на несколько категорий — это продукты животного происхождения (мясо, молоко, яйца, рыба); растительная пища (крупы, злаки, овощи, дикие коренья и травы); а также мед, специи и т. д. Большое внимание в пословицах уделялось качеству продуктов; в них отображен и порядок приема пищи; гостеприимство народа, традиционные башкирские праздники и обряды, а также пища, приготовляемая к ним; пищевые табу, соблюдение которых было обязательным в башкирском обществе и т. д. Так, например, осуждалось пьянство; водка считалась причиной многих болезней и даже смерти. В народной среде было принято бережное, рачительное отношение к продуктам питания, что также нашло отражение в пословицах и поговорках. В далеком прошлом у башкир, как у многих других язычников, с пищей были связаны определенные культы и поверья. К тому же, сохранившиеся в народной памяти отголоски неурожайных голодных лет, дали значительный материал для появления пословиц о необходимости ценить еду. Исходя из анализа имеющихся материалов, можно еще раз подтвердить, что пословицы — это ценный источник для изучения истории башкирского народа, его духовной и материальной культуры. The purpose of this article is to consider the reflection in the paremic heritage of the Bashkir people of such an important component of the life support system as traditional food culture, as well as the past economic activities of the people. Many Bashkir proverbs originated come down to us from ancient times, some appeared a little later, others-even closer to our time. As the main source, we used Bashkir proverbs translated into Russian from volume 7 of the series “Bashkir folk Art” (Ufa, 1993); The originals of proverbs in the Bashkir language are contained in the publication “Bashkort Halyk Izhady” (Ufa, 1980). A significant contribution to the collection and study of the Bashkir paremic heritage was made by pre-revolutionary and Soviet researchers of the Bashkir territory, as well as modern folklore scientists. Among them, it is particularly necessary to highlight F. A. Nadrshina, whose sphere of scientific interests, among other issues, concerned the study of the paremic heritage of the Bashkir people. The food products mentioned in Bashkir proverbs can be divided into several categories: animal products (meat, milk, eggs); vegetable food (cereals, vegetables, wild roots and herbs); fish, honey, spices, as well as dishes prepared from them. Much attention was paid to the quality of products in the paremias; they also reflect the order of eating; the hospitality of the people, traditional Bashkir holidays and rituals, as well as food prepared for them; food taboos, the observance of which was mandatory in Bashkir society, etc. For example, drunkenness was condemned; vodka was considered the cause of many diseases and even death. Among the people, a careful, prudent attitude to food was promoted, which was also reflected in proverbs and sayings. In the distant past, the Bashkirs, like many other pagans, had certain cults and beliefs associated with food. In addition, the echoes of the lean famine years preserved in the people's memory also provided significant material for the appearance of proverbs about the need to appreciate food. Based on the analysis of the available materials, we can conclude that proverbs are a valuable source for studying the ethnography of Bashkirs, its spiritual and material culture.


2017 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 35-51
Author(s):  
Kari Tapio Korolainen

Drawing is discussed here, both from the historical and from the contemporary folklore and material culture stance. Folklore collector Samuli Paulaharju’s (1875–1944) drawings serve as a point of departure; again, cultural studies constitute the background, as the notion of representation and the construction of folkloristic-ethnologic knowledge are stressed. Material and visual culture comprises yet other central viewpoints. The research material consists of Paulaharju’s folkloristic descriptions (at the SKS) of the interlacements, as knots and lattices. The materials are discussed in the context of magic and belief, at first, and of folk games and plays further back. The research question is: how Paulaharju constructs the meanings of the interlacements by means of drawings? The method of membership categorization analysis (MCA) is combined with multimodal analysis, since the drawing–texts relations are analysed in detail. Thus, the examination demonstrates, that not only several drawing methods are utilised, but also the contexts, as agrarian life, appear diversified when the drawings are concerned. Then, by applying drawing innovatively and experimenting with it, Paulaharju operated between distinct viewpoints, and also challenged the established folkloristic practises. Accordingly, wide interestedness and learning-by-drawing are emphasised more than drawing as a restricted – or restrictive – orientation.


Caminhando ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-21
Author(s):  
Frederico Pieper ◽  
Luís Américo Silva Bonfim ◽  
Helmut Renders - Translation of João Batista Ribeiro Santos

The eight texts in the dossier Religion, Material Culture and Visual Culture together prove the relevance of the theme for different areas of religious studies and theological studies: textual studies, including founding, ecclesiastical, doctrinal and historical texts; material studies, both archaeological and architectural, including public spaces; ritualistic studies, of bodies in movement and in multiple relationships, with people, with oneself, God, spaces and artifacts; and, last not least, visual studies, including logos, ornaments, religious, liturgical and religious arts, symbols and virtual spaces. All of this takes place in a descriptive, analytical way or deepens in its epistemological foundation, often still, in an interdisciplinary way, adding, not infrequently, to the research on religion established and considered consecrated new perspectives, representing new challenges.


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