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Topic Review
Way of the Five Pecks of Rice
The Way of the Five Pecks of Rice (Chinese: 五斗米道; pinyin: Wǔ Dǒu Mǐ Dào) or the Way of the Celestial Master, commonly abbreviated to simply The Celestial Masters, was a China Taoist movement founded by the first Celestial Master Zhang Daoling in 142 CE. At its height, the movement controlled a theocratic state in the Hanzhong valley, north of Sichuan. In 215 CE, the state was incorporated into Cao Cao's Kingdom of Wei, and the followers of the Celestial Master were dispersed all over China. The Celestial Masters believed that qi pervaded everything, and in order to achieve immortality, the correct balance of qi had to be present within the body. Having a poor quantity of qi in the body, would result in illness, and eventually death. Meditation could be used to restore qi to the body, but sex was to be avoided, as it could result in the loss of qi. If there was the correct balance of qi within the body upon death, an adherent could 'feign death' and be reborn. If not, an adherent would be transported to an earthly prison where he would face eternal torment. The Hanzhong state was divided into 24 regions which were led by an official. Each district had a civil register which recorded people's names and ranks. Three times a year, the registers were updated at the same time as an important feast. While a child's rank rose automatically, adults had to raise their own rank through religious achievement or marriage. Higher ranked people had more divine generals at their command, which could be used to fight demons that caused bad luck or disease. The state had a system of law that encouraged confession and benevolence rather than strict punishment. Criminals were asked to confess their crimes and meditate, and were given public work to do as a sentence. Few texts written by the Hanzhong Celestial Masters survive, with the most important being the Xiang'er commentary to the Dao De Jing. While the Hanzhong state lasted for only twenty-five years, their beliefs influenced all subsequent Daoist movements.
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  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Theophory in the Bible
Theophory refers to the practice of embedding the name of a god or a deity in, usually, a proper name. Much Hebrew theophory occurs in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. The most prominent theophory involves names referring to: El, a word meaning might, power and (a) god in general, and hence in Judaism, God and among the Canaanites the name of the god who was the father of Baal. Yah, a shortened form of Yahweh. Levantine deities (especially the storm god, Hadad) by the epithet baal, meaning lord. In later times, as the conflict between Yahwism and the more popular pagan practices became increasingly intense, these names were censored and baal was replaced with bosheth, meaning "shame".
  • 1.6K
  • 30 Nov 2022
Topic Review
The SSHPA Project
Social Sciences & Humanities Peer Awards (SSHPA) is an ecosystem of a scientific database and a science communication website. The project was funded by Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under the National Research Grant No. 502.01-2018.19. The SSHPA database was validated by Nature's Scientific Data.
  • 1.6K
  • 30 Jul 2021
Topic Review
African American Studies
African American studies (alternately Black studies, or Africana studies, among other terms) is an interdisciplinary academic field that is primarily devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of black people from the United States . African American studies are a sub-field of African diaspora studies and Africana studies, the study of the people of African origin worldwide. The field has been defined in different ways, but taken broadly, it not only studies African slave descendants but also any community of the African diaspora linked to the Americas. The field includes scholars of African American (as well as Caribbean, African, and Afro-European) literature, history, politics, and religion as well as those from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. And, increasingly, African American Studies departments are hiring and partnering with STEM scholars. Intensive academic efforts to reconstruct African American history began in the late 19th century (W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America, 1896). Among the pioneers in the first half of the 20th century were Carter G. Woodson, Herbert Aptheker, Melville Herskovits, and Lorenzo Dow Turner. Programs and departments of African American Studies were first created in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of inter-ethnic student and faculty activism at many universities, sparked by a five-month strike for black studies at San Francisco State. In February 1968, San Francisco State hired sociologist Nathan Hare to coordinate the first black studies program and write a proposal for the first Department of Black Studies; the department was created in September 1968 and gained official status at the end of the five-months strike in the spring of 1969. The creation of programs and departments in black studies was a common demand of protests and sit-ins by minority students and their allies, who felt that their cultures and interests were underserved by the traditional academic structures. Black studies is a systematic way of studying black people in the world – such as their history, culture, sociology, policies, experience, issues and religion. It is a study of the black experience and the effect of society on them and their effect within society. This study aims to, among other things, help eradicate many racial stereotypes. Black studies implements history, family structure, social and economic pressures, stereotypes, and gender relationships.
  • 1.6K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Silappatikaram
Silappatikāram (Tamil: சிலப்பதிகாரம், IPA: ʧiləppət̪ikɑːrəm, lit. "the Tale of an Anklet"), also referred to as Silappathikaram or Silappatikaram, is the earliest Hindu-Jain Tamil semi-legendary epic. It is a poem of 5,730 lines in almost entirely akaval (aciriyam) meter. The epic is a tragic love story of an ordinary couple, Kannaki and her husband Kovalan. The Silappathikaram has more ancient roots in the Tamil bardic tradition, as Kannaki and other characters of the story are mentioned or alluded to in the Sangam literature such as in the Naṟṟiṇai and later texts such as the Kovalam Katai. It is attributed to a prince-turned-monk Iḷaṅkõ Aṭikaḷ, and was probably composed in the 5th or 6th century CE. The Silappatikaram is set in a flourishing seaport city of the early Chola kingdom. Kannaki and Kovalan are a newly married couple, in love, and living in bliss. Over time, Kovalan meets Matavi (Madhavi) – a courtesan. He falls for her, leaves Kannaki and moves in with Matavi. He spends lavishly on her. Kannaki is heartbroken, but as the chaste woman, she waits despite her husband's unfaithfulness. During the festival for Indra, the rain god, there is a singing competition. Kovalan sings a poem about a woman who hurt her lover. Matavi then sings a song about a man who betrayed his lover. Each interprets the song as a message to the other. Kovalan feels Matavi is unfaithful to him, and leaves her. Kannaki is still waiting for him. She takes him back. Kannagi and Kovalan leave the city and travel to Madurai of the Pandya kingdom. Kovalan is penniless and destitute. He confesses his mistakes to Kannagi. She forgives him and tells him the pain his unfaithfulness gave her. Then she encourages her husband to rebuild their life together and gives him one of her jeweled anklets to sell to raise starting capital. Kovalan sells it to a merchant, but the merchant falsely frames him as having stolen the anklet from the queen. The king arrests Kovalan and then executes him, without the due checks and processes of justice. When Kovalan does not return home, Kannagi goes searching for him. She learns what has happened. She protests the injustice and then proves Kovalan's innocence by throwing in the court the other jeweled anklet of the pair. The king accepts his mistake. Kannagi curses the king and curses the people of Madurai, tearing off her breast and throwing it at the gathered public. The king dies. The society that had made her suffer, suffers in retribution as the city of Madurai is burnt to the ground because of her curse. In the third section of the epic, gods and goddesses meet Kannagi and she goes to heaven with god Indra. The royal family of the Chera kingdom learns about her, resolves to build a temple with Kannagi as the featured goddess. They go to the Himalayas, bring a stone, carve her image, call her goddess Pattini, dedicate a temple, order daily prayers, and perform a royal sacrifice. The Silappathikaram is an ancient literary Jain masterpiece. It is to the Tamil culture what the Iliad is to the Greek culture, states R. Parthasarathy. It blends the themes, mythologies and theological values found in the Jain, Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions. It is a Tamil story of love and rejection, happiness and pain, good and evil like all classic epics of the world. Yet unlike other epics that deal with kings and armies caught up with universal questions and existential wars, the Silappathikaram is an epic about an ordinary couple caught up with universal questions and internal, emotional war. The Silappathikaram legend has been a part of the Tamil oral tradition. The palm-leaf manuscripts of the original epic poem, along with those of the Sangam literature, were rediscovered in monasteries in the second half of the 19th century by UV Swaminatha Aiyar – a pandit and Tamil scholar. After being preserved and copied in temples and monasteries in the form of palm-leaf manuscripts, Aiyar published its first partial edition on paper in 1872, the full edition in 1892. Since then the epic poem has been translated into many languages including English.
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  • 08 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Lalitaditya Muktapida of Kashmir
Lalitaditya Muktapida of Kashmir, an eminent 8th-century ruler, is a significant yet often overlooked figure in Indian history. Known for his unparalleled military prowess, Lalitaditya never lost a battle, whether against the Arabs or his contemporaries. Beyond his martial achievements, he was a prolific builder, responsible for the construction of numerous cities and monumental structures, including the grand Martand Sun Temple and his capital, Parihaspura. His reign in Kashmir was characterised by wide territorial control and cultural flowering.
  • 1.6K
  • 02 Jul 2024
Topic Review
Mechanism
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes (principally living things) are similar to complicated machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other. The doctrine of mechanism in philosophy comes in two different flavors. They are both doctrines of metaphysics, but they are different in scope and ambitions: the first is a global doctrine about nature; the second is a local doctrine about humans and their minds, which is hotly contested. For clarity, we might distinguish these two doctrines as universal mechanism and anthropic mechanism.
  • 1.6K
  • 11 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Futurism (Christianity)
Futurism is a Christian eschatological view that interprets portions of the Book of Revelation, the Book of Ezekiel, and the Book of Daniel as future events in a literal, physical, apocalyptic, and global context. By comparison, other Christian eschatological views interpret these passages as past events in a symbolic, historic context (Preterism and Historicism), or as present-day events in a non-literal and spiritual context (Idealism). Futurist beliefs usually have a close association with Premillennialism and Dispensationalism.
  • 1.6K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Imagined Interaction
Imagined interactions (IIs) are a type of social cognition and mental imagery grounded in symbolic interactionism in which individuals imagine conversations with significant others for a variety of purposes (Honeycutt, 2003; 2015). The research program was founded and created by James M. Honeycutt in 1987, who was designated an LSU Distinguished Professor in 2012. He provided a keynote address at the American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery at Yale University in 1987 discussing the functions of imagined interactions and mental imagery. In 2006, Honeycutt's book, "Imagined Interactions: Daydreaming about Communication" (2003), was awarded Distinguished Book of the Year by the National Communication Association for developing the original formulations and the II construct which has provided a beneficial mechanism for operationalizing the study of intrapersonal communication, social cognition, daydreaming, and mental imagery. Furthermore, imagined interactions can be used in sports imagery as athletes "imagine" positive outcomes of their executions on specific plays or formations (Keaton, Gearhart, & Honeycutt, 2014).
  • 1.6K
  • 15 Nov 2022
Topic Review
The All
The All (also called The One, The Absolute, The Great One, The Creator, The Supreme Mind, The Supreme Good, The Father, and The All Mother) is the Hermetic, pantheistic, pandeistic or panentheistic (and thus also panpsychism/monopsychism/unus mundus/anima mundi) view of God, which is that everything that is, or at least that can be experienced, collectively makes up The All. One Hermetic maxim states, "While All is in The All, it is equally true that The All is in All." The All can also be seen to be androgynous, possessing both masculine and feminine qualities in equal part.
  • 1.6K
  • 18 Oct 2022
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