Pub Date : 2023-03-17DOI: 10.1017/s1356186323000032
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Pub Date : 2023-03-16DOI: 10.1017/s1356186322000700
Ronan Lee
Few political figures dominate international representations of their country like Aung San Suu Kyi, and few have been so central to their country’s domestic politics for so long. When she first entered the political fray in 1988, the US president was Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev was general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Augusto Pinochet was the president of Chile. Aung San Suu Kyi’s domestic and international standing was arguably at its peak during her periods of house arrest in the 1990s and 2000s when she was revered within Myanmar (officially Burma until 1989) for her moral opposition to military rule, and lauded internationally as an iconic symbol of democracy and human rights. From 2016, her time in government as Myanmar’s state counsellor—the de facto prime minister—brought responsibility for her administration’s decisions and, at times, loud criticisms from both home and abroad. Michał Lubina’s latest book about Myanmar politics A Political Biography of Aung San Suu Kyi: A Hybrid Politician (released in September 2020, weeks before the general election and just months before the most recent military coup) is about Aung San Suu Kyi’s political practice. Lubina will be well-known to scholars and engaged observers of Myanmar. He has authored six books about the country and regularly presents his work at international conferences. (We have, on occasion, presented on the same panels, and I was discussant for the launch of this book at the 2021 Myanmar Institut conference.) Lubina’s biography enters a crowded market. There are dozens of books about Aung San Suu Kyi and there has been no shortage of journal articles and scholarly chapters either, which have considered virtually every aspect of Aung San Suu Kyi’s engagement with politics, including her political thought and the role of Buddhism in her politics, her role as a leader, her influence on both domestic politics and on international foreign policy, and, of course, her long-term failure to speak up for Rohingya human rights. There has even been a Luc Besson-directed feature film starring Michelle Yeoh as The Lady, advertised as ‘one of the greatest love stories set against a background of political turmoil’. Understandably, Lubina’s focus is different, scholarly, and, significantly, the book is the first political biography of Aung San Suu Kyi to cover both her years in opposition and most of her years in power from 2016. Lubina’s book is very readable, and its accessibility to those outside the academy and, importantly, to those in Myanmar and other parts of the Global South is enhanced too by its open access availability funded by the author’s home institution, Poland’s Jagiellonian University.
{"title":"A Political Biography of Aung San Suu Kyi: A Hybrid Politician By Michał Lubina. 158 pp. London, Routledge, 2020.","authors":"Ronan Lee","doi":"10.1017/s1356186322000700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1356186322000700","url":null,"abstract":"Few political figures dominate international representations of their country like Aung San Suu Kyi, and few have been so central to their country’s domestic politics for so long. When she first entered the political fray in 1988, the US president was Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev was general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Augusto Pinochet was the president of Chile. Aung San Suu Kyi’s domestic and international standing was arguably at its peak during her periods of house arrest in the 1990s and 2000s when she was revered within Myanmar (officially Burma until 1989) for her moral opposition to military rule, and lauded internationally as an iconic symbol of democracy and human rights. From 2016, her time in government as Myanmar’s state counsellor—the de facto prime minister—brought responsibility for her administration’s decisions and, at times, loud criticisms from both home and abroad. Michał Lubina’s latest book about Myanmar politics A Political Biography of Aung San Suu Kyi: A Hybrid Politician (released in September 2020, weeks before the general election and just months before the most recent military coup) is about Aung San Suu Kyi’s political practice. Lubina will be well-known to scholars and engaged observers of Myanmar. He has authored six books about the country and regularly presents his work at international conferences. (We have, on occasion, presented on the same panels, and I was discussant for the launch of this book at the 2021 Myanmar Institut conference.) Lubina’s biography enters a crowded market. There are dozens of books about Aung San Suu Kyi and there has been no shortage of journal articles and scholarly chapters either, which have considered virtually every aspect of Aung San Suu Kyi’s engagement with politics, including her political thought and the role of Buddhism in her politics, her role as a leader, her influence on both domestic politics and on international foreign policy, and, of course, her long-term failure to speak up for Rohingya human rights. There has even been a Luc Besson-directed feature film starring Michelle Yeoh as The Lady, advertised as ‘one of the greatest love stories set against a background of political turmoil’. Understandably, Lubina’s focus is different, scholarly, and, significantly, the book is the first political biography of Aung San Suu Kyi to cover both her years in opposition and most of her years in power from 2016. Lubina’s book is very readable, and its accessibility to those outside the academy and, importantly, to those in Myanmar and other parts of the Global South is enhanced too by its open access availability funded by the author’s home institution, Poland’s Jagiellonian University.","PeriodicalId":17566,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"787 - 789"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47804153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-16DOI: 10.1017/S1356186322000797
A. Macgregor
Abstract A well-known series of miniature figures produced in India from unfired clay, appropriately clothed and in many instances represented carrying out their respective secular or ritual duties, enjoyed a period of particular popularity on the world stage in the nineteenth century when they were appropriated as illustrative devices in museum displays and international exhibitions. Over the previous half-century or more they had emerged as products of a dynamic industry that responded to changes in taste as well as religious and artistic practice within Indian society, before being taken up by the West to serve new colonial imperatives. There they received perhaps their most enthusiastic reception at the India Museum, established in the headquarters of the East India Company in London in the early 1800s, and surviving beyond the suppression of the Company itself until they were dispersed to a number of other institutions in 1879. From an early appearance at the Great Exhibition in 1851, the figures also became a regular feature of the international exhibitions of the latter part of the century. Initially they celebrated the traditional crafts and practices of India but gradually were recruited to communicate other messages of Western industrial dominance and perceived artistic and industrial superiority. Although comparatively few of these figures survive intact in Western collections, the history of their considerable impact on the European stage can be enlarged upon with the aid of the documentary record.
{"title":"Modelling India. Unfired clay figurines and the East India Company's collections: from devotional icons to didactic displays","authors":"A. Macgregor","doi":"10.1017/S1356186322000797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186322000797","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A well-known series of miniature figures produced in India from unfired clay, appropriately clothed and in many instances represented carrying out their respective secular or ritual duties, enjoyed a period of particular popularity on the world stage in the nineteenth century when they were appropriated as illustrative devices in museum displays and international exhibitions. Over the previous half-century or more they had emerged as products of a dynamic industry that responded to changes in taste as well as religious and artistic practice within Indian society, before being taken up by the West to serve new colonial imperatives. There they received perhaps their most enthusiastic reception at the India Museum, established in the headquarters of the East India Company in London in the early 1800s, and surviving beyond the suppression of the Company itself until they were dispersed to a number of other institutions in 1879. From an early appearance at the Great Exhibition in 1851, the figures also became a regular feature of the international exhibitions of the latter part of the century. Initially they celebrated the traditional crafts and practices of India but gradually were recruited to communicate other messages of Western industrial dominance and perceived artistic and industrial superiority. Although comparatively few of these figures survive intact in Western collections, the history of their considerable impact on the European stage can be enlarged upon with the aid of the documentary record.","PeriodicalId":17566,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"769 - 786"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43944984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-16DOI: 10.1017/s1356186322000694
R. Matthee
This article examines the way in which Iran's eighteenth-century ruler Nader Shah was portrayed in contemporary Europe as well as in Iran, and how the resulting image—half national hero, half ruthless warlord—has resonated until today. In an age short on ‘great’ leaders, Nader spoke to the imagination like no other contemporary ruler, Western or Asian. Nader's subsequent record can be read as a palimpsest, a layered series of images of multiple world conquerors, from Alexander to Napoleon. The latter, who shared Nader's humble background and evoked a similar ambivalence, represented the closest analogue, turning him into the European Nader Shah. In the modern West, Nader no longer speaks to the imagination. Modern Iranians, by contrast, have come to see him as the Iranian Napoleon. While still ambivalent about him, they admire him as the ruler who regenerated the nation and ended foreign occupation, yet his undeniable cruelty and imperialism make him an awkward national hero.
{"title":"The wrath of God or national hero? Nader Shah in European and Iranian historiography","authors":"R. Matthee","doi":"10.1017/s1356186322000694","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1356186322000694","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the way in which Iran's eighteenth-century ruler Nader Shah was portrayed in contemporary Europe as well as in Iran, and how the resulting image—half national hero, half ruthless warlord—has resonated until today. In an age short on ‘great’ leaders, Nader spoke to the imagination like no other contemporary ruler, Western or Asian. Nader's subsequent record can be read as a palimpsest, a layered series of images of multiple world conquerors, from Alexander to Napoleon. The latter, who shared Nader's humble background and evoked a similar ambivalence, represented the closest analogue, turning him into the European Nader Shah. In the modern West, Nader no longer speaks to the imagination. Modern Iranians, by contrast, have come to see him as the Iranian Napoleon. While still ambivalent about him, they admire him as the ruler who regenerated the nation and ended foreign occupation, yet his undeniable cruelty and imperialism make him an awkward national hero.","PeriodicalId":17566,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46326676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-27DOI: 10.1017/S1356186322000529
Kelsey Granger
Abstract Dogs have played a vital and varied role in the social history of early China. Whether used as a source of food, a hunting-aid, or a sacrificial victim, dogs were intimately connected with human life and death. The placement and significance of dismembered and slaughtered dogs in human tombs have been a source of scholarly interest across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. However, less attention has been paid to sources which present us with a spectrum of concerns surrounding the treatment of dogs after their death. Should they be consumed, discarded, or buried? Which dogs were deserving of burial, and how were such burials viewed by human commentators? By analysing textual, archaeological, and material sources, this article explores the changing conceptualisation of dogs in life and in death through the medium of the tomb, showing how the transition from tomb-keeper to tomb-occupant reflects an increasingly anthropomorphic view of canine potential and moral fibre by the early medieval period.
{"title":"From tomb-keeper to tomb-occupant: the changing conceptualisation of dogs in early China","authors":"Kelsey Granger","doi":"10.1017/S1356186322000529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186322000529","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Dogs have played a vital and varied role in the social history of early China. Whether used as a source of food, a hunting-aid, or a sacrificial victim, dogs were intimately connected with human life and death. The placement and significance of dismembered and slaughtered dogs in human tombs have been a source of scholarly interest across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. However, less attention has been paid to sources which present us with a spectrum of concerns surrounding the treatment of dogs after their death. Should they be consumed, discarded, or buried? Which dogs were deserving of burial, and how were such burials viewed by human commentators? By analysing textual, archaeological, and material sources, this article explores the changing conceptualisation of dogs in life and in death through the medium of the tomb, showing how the transition from tomb-keeper to tomb-occupant reflects an increasingly anthropomorphic view of canine potential and moral fibre by the early medieval period.","PeriodicalId":17566,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"685 - 701"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45810238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-27DOI: 10.1017/S1356186322000402
H. Ham
Abstract Unlike other commentaries on the Sāṅkhyakārikā, the Yuktidīpikā (circa sixth to eighth centuries) problematised the Sāṅkhya tradition's equivocal attitudes toward the Veda. While submitting itself to the authority of the Veda, the Yuktidīpikā's commentary on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 illustrates how Sāṅkhya thinkers of the post-Gupta period safeguarded the identity of Brahmin renouncers. Aligning its doctrine with the Upaniṣad, the end of the Veda, the Yuktidīpikā launched a Sāṅkhya navigation of the central concern of Indian intellectuals, Vedic hermeneutics, and attempted to secure Sāṅkhya's place within Vedic orthodoxy. This article discusses the Yuktidīpikā's strategy for surviving the peer pressure of Vedic ritualists, as represented by the Mīmāṃsakas, while maintaining Sāṅkhya superiority by exploiting the inner division within the Veda.
{"title":"On being Orthodox renouncers: the Yuktidīpikā's establishment of the Sāṅkhya mode of life (Sannyāsa) in the name of the Veda","authors":"H. Ham","doi":"10.1017/S1356186322000402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186322000402","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Unlike other commentaries on the Sāṅkhyakārikā, the Yuktidīpikā (circa sixth to eighth centuries) problematised the Sāṅkhya tradition's equivocal attitudes toward the Veda. While submitting itself to the authority of the Veda, the Yuktidīpikā's commentary on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 illustrates how Sāṅkhya thinkers of the post-Gupta period safeguarded the identity of Brahmin renouncers. Aligning its doctrine with the Upaniṣad, the end of the Veda, the Yuktidīpikā launched a Sāṅkhya navigation of the central concern of Indian intellectuals, Vedic hermeneutics, and attempted to secure Sāṅkhya's place within Vedic orthodoxy. This article discusses the Yuktidīpikā's strategy for surviving the peer pressure of Vedic ritualists, as represented by the Mīmāṃsakas, while maintaining Sāṅkhya superiority by exploiting the inner division within the Veda.","PeriodicalId":17566,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"627 - 641"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42974207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-23DOI: 10.1017/S1356186322000487
Valters Negribs
Abstract ‘The dialogue between a cat and a mouse’ (Mārjāramūṣakasaṃvāda) is an animal fable used in the Mahābhārata to provide instruction in statecraft (nīti). This article argues that the Mahābhārata version of this tale must be based on an earlier soteriological allegory about a brahmin who provides spiritual liberation to a king in exchange for protection. The Mārjāramūṣakasaṃvāda abounds in terms and phrases that, in addition to their everyday meanings, have a technical or typical usage in the ascetic traditions of Ancient India. Moreover, the conversation between the cat and the mouse resembles that between a teacher and a disciple, rather than a discussion of a possible alliance between two kings. The hunter of the Mārjāramūṣakasaṃvāda can be identified with the Buddhist Māra. To support the plausibility of this soteriological reading, the article includes a discussion of Buddhist jātakas with a similar plot.
{"title":"‘The dialogue between a cat and a mouse’ in Mahābhārata 12.136 and narratives about spiritual liberation (mokṣa) in Ancient Indian literature","authors":"Valters Negribs","doi":"10.1017/S1356186322000487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186322000487","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract ‘The dialogue between a cat and a mouse’ (Mārjāramūṣakasaṃvāda) is an animal fable used in the Mahābhārata to provide instruction in statecraft (nīti). This article argues that the Mahābhārata version of this tale must be based on an earlier soteriological allegory about a brahmin who provides spiritual liberation to a king in exchange for protection. The Mārjāramūṣakasaṃvāda abounds in terms and phrases that, in addition to their everyday meanings, have a technical or typical usage in the ascetic traditions of Ancient India. Moreover, the conversation between the cat and the mouse resembles that between a teacher and a disciple, rather than a discussion of a possible alliance between two kings. The hunter of the Mārjāramūṣakasaṃvāda can be identified with the Buddhist Māra. To support the plausibility of this soteriological reading, the article includes a discussion of Buddhist jātakas with a similar plot.","PeriodicalId":17566,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"661 - 684"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49157704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-23DOI: 10.1017/S1356186322000621
M. Biran, Michael Shenkar, K. Tabaldiev, K. Akmatov, Valery A. Kolchenko
Abstract The Qara Khitai or Western Liao dynasty (1124–1218) is one of the most fascinating polities in medieval Eurasia, but also one of the least documented in terms of both literary sources and material culture. Founded by Khitan refugees who escaped from North China when the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) vanquished the Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125), the Qara Khitai soon established a multicultural empire in Central Asia, combining Khitan, Chinese, and Muslim elements. The Buddhist Qara Khitai ruled over their mostly Muslim population in rare harmony until the rise of Chinggis Khan (r. 1206–1227). Hitherto only a few objects—and not a single structure—have been associated with this powerful empire. We argue that the Kök-Tash mausoleum, excavated in 2017–2018 and originally interpreted as a unique subterranean Muslim mausoleum, is actually the first-ever identified Qara Khitai elite tomb. This unique tomb, located in the Kochkor valley of north-eastern Kyrgyzstan, about a day's ride from the Qara Khitai capital of Balāsāghūn, shares many similarities with the Liao tombs in North China, notably the typical Khitan mesh-wire burial suit. Yet it also uses local Central Asian materials and techniques, thereby manifesting how the Qara Khitai managed to retain their cultural identity in their new Central Asian and mostly Muslim environment. Moreover, identifying the Kök Tash mausoleum as a Qara Khitai tomb allows us to reassess several other unusual tombs excavated in the region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to suggest attributing them, too, to the Qara Khitai.
{"title":"The Kök-Tash underground mausoleum in north-eastern Kyrgyzstan: the first-ever identified Qara Khitai elite tomb?","authors":"M. Biran, Michael Shenkar, K. Tabaldiev, K. Akmatov, Valery A. Kolchenko","doi":"10.1017/S1356186322000621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186322000621","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Qara Khitai or Western Liao dynasty (1124–1218) is one of the most fascinating polities in medieval Eurasia, but also one of the least documented in terms of both literary sources and material culture. Founded by Khitan refugees who escaped from North China when the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) vanquished the Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125), the Qara Khitai soon established a multicultural empire in Central Asia, combining Khitan, Chinese, and Muslim elements. The Buddhist Qara Khitai ruled over their mostly Muslim population in rare harmony until the rise of Chinggis Khan (r. 1206–1227). Hitherto only a few objects—and not a single structure—have been associated with this powerful empire. We argue that the Kök-Tash mausoleum, excavated in 2017–2018 and originally interpreted as a unique subterranean Muslim mausoleum, is actually the first-ever identified Qara Khitai elite tomb. This unique tomb, located in the Kochkor valley of north-eastern Kyrgyzstan, about a day's ride from the Qara Khitai capital of Balāsāghūn, shares many similarities with the Liao tombs in North China, notably the typical Khitan mesh-wire burial suit. Yet it also uses local Central Asian materials and techniques, thereby manifesting how the Qara Khitai managed to retain their cultural identity in their new Central Asian and mostly Muslim environment. Moreover, identifying the Kök Tash mausoleum as a Qara Khitai tomb allows us to reassess several other unusual tombs excavated in the region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to suggest attributing them, too, to the Qara Khitai.","PeriodicalId":17566,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"713 - 745"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49490201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-20DOI: 10.1017/s1356186322000608
Suvaid Yaseen
The Ahl-i Hadith in South Asia has largely been studied as a textualist, puritan movement as a result of its exclusive emphasis on the Quran, Hadith sources, and connection with a variety of radical political and armed groups. In contrast, poetry has largely been associated with Sufi movements. This article questions this distinction and makes a historiographical intervention by examining the poetry of Maulana Muhammad Anwar Shopiani (d. 1940) in the Kashmiri, Persian, and Urdu languages. Through a close analysis of Shopiani's biography and poetry, the article complicates the hitherto available picture of the Ahl-i Hadith movement which Shopiani helped to take root in Kashmir. Doing so draws attention to the movement's novel literary aspect that engages with regional Sufi and sympathetic Hanafi thinking as well as with the broader Persianate literary traditions and transregional currents of revivalist thinking on the basis of the principle of taḥqīq, research. Even as Shopiani's message remains committed to a ‘factual’ iteration based upon Quran and Hadith sources, it is the concept of love, both in its spiritual and worldly manifestations, that emerges as central to his thought. It is through this that the paradox between the actual historical distance from Prophet Muhammad's time and the Ahl-i Hadith's ideological desire to revive that time by a literal enactment of the sunnah is resolved. In doing so, the article makes a methodological case for employing poetry as a source for writing an intellectual history from below which examines Islamic movements on their own terms.
{"title":"Poetry as history: Maulana Muhammad Anwar Shopiani and the Ahl-i Hadith movement in Kashmir","authors":"Suvaid Yaseen","doi":"10.1017/s1356186322000608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1356186322000608","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The Ahl-i Hadith in South Asia has largely been studied as a textualist, puritan movement as a result of its exclusive emphasis on the Quran, Hadith sources, and connection with a variety of radical political and armed groups. In contrast, poetry has largely been associated with Sufi movements. This article questions this distinction and makes a historiographical intervention by examining the poetry of Maulana Muhammad Anwar Shopiani (d. 1940) in the Kashmiri, Persian, and Urdu languages. Through a close analysis of Shopiani's biography and poetry, the article complicates the hitherto available picture of the Ahl-i Hadith movement which Shopiani helped to take root in Kashmir. Doing so draws attention to the movement's novel literary aspect that engages with regional Sufi and sympathetic Hanafi thinking as well as with the broader Persianate literary traditions and transregional currents of revivalist thinking on the basis of the principle of taḥqīq, research. Even as Shopiani's message remains committed to a ‘factual’ iteration based upon Quran and Hadith sources, it is the concept of love, both in its spiritual and worldly manifestations, that emerges as central to his thought. It is through this that the paradox between the actual historical distance from Prophet Muhammad's time and the Ahl-i Hadith's ideological desire to revive that time by a literal enactment of the sunnah is resolved. In doing so, the article makes a methodological case for employing poetry as a source for writing an intellectual history from below which examines Islamic movements on their own terms.","PeriodicalId":17566,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47823704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-02DOI: 10.1017/S1356186322000542
Marco Fattori
Abstract The aim of this article is to show that in Achaemenid Elamite the sign had a secondary phonetic value /me/. The evidence collected in support of this claim consists mainly in Elamite transcriptions of Iranian words in the Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions and in the Persepolis administrative texts, which are impossible or very difficult to account for only contemplating the usual value /man/.
{"title":"The value /me/ of the sign in Achaemenid Elamite","authors":"Marco Fattori","doi":"10.1017/S1356186322000542","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186322000542","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The aim of this article is to show that in Achaemenid Elamite the sign had a secondary phonetic value /me/. The evidence collected in support of this claim consists mainly in Elamite transcriptions of Iranian words in the Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions and in the Persepolis administrative texts, which are impossible or very difficult to account for only contemplating the usual value /man/.","PeriodicalId":17566,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"703 - 711"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43791746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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