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Books > History > World history > BCE to 500 CE
While researching for my book about the Indian Air Force Himalayan
Eagle - The Story of the Indian Air Force, I came across some very
interesting details about the military/warrior traditions of India
that seemed at odds with the general image of a country thought to
be spiritual and pacifist - the Buddha and "Mahatma" Gandhi
immediately spring to mind in this context. The details were
intriguing enough for me to embark upon another ambitious project -
to gather together and collate the data available on this Indian
warrior tradition and its resurgence in modern-day India. This work
is the presentation of certain pertinent details that are available
in the open sources but told in a comprehensive, objective and
readable form so that an interested reader gains a better
understanding of India's little-known martial and warrior history!
It is a narrative of the warrior/military traditions of India going
back to its pre-Vedic roots and covers the birth of the Indian
warrior caste, the Kshatriyas. How these warriors dominated among
the empire builders, and how their pre-eminence was superseded by
civilian rule, a change in the political scene of India that was to
have ramifications from the 10th to 20th century CE. The title
chosen for this work may confuse those readers who are aware that
the emperor Ashoka eschewed violence for pacificism as a Buddhist.
The lions in the title refer to the four represented on the Ashoka
pillars at Sarnath, each facing to the points of the compass and
which are symbolic of the present-day warriors of the country, the
Indian armed forces, guarding against intrusions from any point.
What are the interrelationships between the language of rhetoric
and the code of imperial images, from Constantine to Theodosius?
How are imperial images shaped by the fact that they were produced
and promoted at the behest of the emperor? Nine contributors from
Spain, Italy, the U.K. and the Netherlands will guide the reader
about these issues by analyzing how imperial power was articulated
and manipulated by means of literary strategies and iconographic
programmes. The authors scrutinize representations from Constantine
to Julian and from the Valentinians to Theodosius by considering
material culture and texts as interconnected sources that engaged
with and reacted to each other.
Only one surviving source provides a continuous narrative of
Greek history from Xerxes' invasion to the Wars of the Successors
following the death of Alexander the Great--the Bibliotheke, or
"Library," produced by Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus (ca.
90-30 BCE). Yet generations of scholars have disdained Diodorus as
a spectacularly unintelligent copyist who only reproduced, and
often mangled, the works of earlier historians. Arguing for a
thorough critical reappraisal of Diodorus as a minor but far from
idiotic historian himself, Peter Green published Diodorus Siculus,
Books 11-12.37.1, a fresh translation, with extensive commentary,
of the portion of Diodorus's history dealing with the period
480-431 BCE, the so-called "Golden Age" of Athens.
This is the only recent modern English translation of the
Bibliotheke in existence. In the present volume--the first of two
covering Diodorus's text up to the death of Alexander--Green
expands his translation of Diodorus up to Athens' defeat after the
Peloponnesian War. In contrast to the full scholarly apparatus in
his earlier volume (the translation of which is incorporated) the
present volume's purpose is to give students, teachers, and general
readers an accessible version of Diodorus's history. Its
introduction and notes are especially designed for this audience
and provide an up-to-date overview of fifth-century Greece during
the years that saw the unparalleled flowering of drama,
architecture, philosophy, historiography, and the visual arts for
which Greece still remains famous.
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text.
Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book
(without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.
1896 Excerpt: ...highly praised; Itiv. p. III. Praise of the true
Brahman, S. Nip. p. 116. 7 Ang. N. II, p. 68. 8 Ang. N. I, p. 149:
"Atta te, purisa, jSnati saccam va yadi va musa." The addition The
other sources, the smrti-sile iadviddm and the dcarah s&dhunam
of Manu, have not been lost sight of by the Buddhists. To these
categories belong the duties qualified as panditapaiinatta and
sappurisapahfiatta, and consisting in almsgiving, in ahimsd, and in
supporting father and mother1. It is hardly accidental that almost
all passages where moral duties are enjoined are either wholly or
partly in metrical form, and this circumstance in combination with
the fact of those passages containing so much that is contrary to
the fundamental articles of the creed, leads us to the inference
that the sect originally had no moral code at all, except the
prohibitions and duties prescribed to the members of the Order,
which only partly coincide with the laws of society in general. If
we wish to form a just estimate of the character of Buddhist
morals, such as laid down in the final redaction of the canonical
books, we must bear in mind: 1. that the prescriptions were
intended to supply the wants both of the ecclesiastics and of the
laity; 2. that the Arhats are, to a certain extent, above common
morality. The Sage, muni, has no attachment, does nothing what is
pleasant nor what is unpleasant2. Those who are wise abandon their
children3. A man who leaves his poor wife, the mother of his child,
in order to become a. monk, and obstinately refuses to take care of
her and the child, is held up to the admiration of the world as
having done something very grand. Still at other times we read that
one's wife is the best friend, and that a wife is the most
excellent of goods, though rep...
This book recovers Dionysus and Apollo as the twin conceptual
personae of life’s dual rhythm in an attempt to redesign
contemporary theory through the reciprocal affirmation of event and
form, earth and world, dance and philosophy. It revisits Heidegger
and Lévi-Strauss, and combines them with Roy Wagner, with the
purpose of moving beyond Nietzsche’s manifold legacy, including
post-structuralism, new materialism, and speculative realism. It
asks whether merging philosophy and anthropology around issues of
comparative ontologies may give us a chance to re-become earthbound
dwellers on a re-worlded earth.
In The Iconography of Family Members in Egypt's Elite Tombs of the
Old Kingdom,, Jing Wen offers a comprehensive survey of how ancient
Egyptians portrayed their family members in the reliefs of an elite
tomb. Through the analysis of the depiction of family members, this
book investigates familial relations, the funerary cult of the
dead, ancestor worship, and relevant texts. It provides a new
hypothesis and perspective that would update our understanding of
the Egyptian funerary practice and familial ideology. The scenes of
family members are not a record of family history but language
games of the tomb owner that convey specific meaning to those who
enter the chapel despite time and space.
This book provides an updated view of our knowledge about Phrygian,
an Indo-European language attested to have been spoken in Anatolia
between the 8th century BC and the Roman Imperial period. Although
a linguistic and epigraphic approach is the core of the book, it
covers all major topics of research on Phrygian: the historical and
archaeological contexts in which the Phrygian texts were found, a
comprehensive grammar with diachronic and comparative remarks, an
overview of the linguistic contacts attested for Phrygian, a
discussion about its position within the Indo-European language
family, a complete lexicon and index of the Phrygian inscriptions,
a study of the Phrygian glosses and a complete, critical catalogue
of the Phrygian inscriptions with new readings and interpretations.
This interdisciplinary volume is a 'one-stop location' for the most
up-to-date scholarship on Southern Levantine figurines in the Iron
Age. The essays address terracotta figurines attested in the
Southern Levant from the Iron Age through the Persian Period
(1200-333 BCE). The volume deals with the iconography, typology,
and find context of female, male, animal, and furniture figurines
and discusses their production, appearance, and provenance,
including their identification and religious functions. While
giving priority to figurines originating from Phoenicia, Philistia,
Jordan, and Israel/Palestine, the volume explores the influences of
Egyptian, Anatolian, Mesopotamian, and Mediterranean (particularly
Cypriot) iconography on Levantine pictorial material.
This volume gathers brand new essays from some of the most
respected scholars of ancient history, archaeology, and physical
anthropology to create an engaging overview of the lives of women
in antiquity. The book is divided into ten sections, nine focusing
on a particular area, and also includes almost 200 images, maps,
and charts. The sections cover Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia,
Cyprus, the Levant, the Aegean, Italy, and Western Europe, and
include many lesser-known cultures such as the Celts, Iberia,
Carthage, the Black Sea region, and Scandinavia. Women's
experiences are explored, from ordinary daily life to religious
ritual and practice, to motherhood, childbirth, sex, and building a
career. Forensic evidence is also treated for the actual bodies of
ancient women. Women in Antiquity is edited by two experts in the
field, and is an invaluable resource to students of the ancient
world, gender studies, and women's roles throughout history.
This book presents a new model for understanding the collection of
ancient kingdoms that surrounded the northeast corner of the
Mediterranean Sea from the Cilician Plain in the west to the upper
Tigris River in the east, and from Cappadocia in the north to
western Syria in the south, during the Iron Age of the ancient Near
East (ca. 1200 to 600 BCE). Rather than presenting them as
homogenous ethnolinguistic communities like "the Aramaeans" or "the
Luwians" living in neatly bounded territories, this book sees these
polities as being fundamentally diverse and variable, distinguished
by demographic fluidity and cultural mobility. The Syro-Anatolian
City-States sheds new light via an examination of a host of
evidentiary sources, including archaeological site plans,
settlement patterns, visual arts, and historical sources. Together,
these lines of evidence reveal a complex fusion of cultural
traditions that is nevertheless distinctly recognizable unto
itself. This book is the first to specifically characterize the
Iron Age city-states of southeastern Turkey and northern Syria,
arguing for a unified cultural formation characterized above all by
diversity and mobility and that can be referred to as the
"Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex."
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