The Light of Asia

The Light of Asia
Author: Jairam Ramesh
Publisher: India Viking
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2021-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780670094837

'The Light of Asia' is an epic poem by Sir Edwin Arnold that was first published in 1879. It is a narrative of the life and message of the Buddha. It quickly became a huge sensation and has continued to resonate powerfully across the world over the last century and a half. The poem captivated an Indian monk who remains an iconic personality-Swami Vivekananda. At about the same time, it deeply moved a young man in Colombo who has become famous in history as Anagarika Dharmapala. It caught the attention of an aspiring Indian lawyer in London in 1889. This man later became immortal as Mahatma Gandhi. A few years hence it impacted a teenager in Allahabad who would, in 1947, become the first Prime Minister of India-Jawaharlal Nehru. Two copies of the book adorned the bookshelves of B.R. Ambedkar, the prime architect of the Indian constitution. Weaving together literary, cultural, political and social history, Jairam Ramesh uncovers and narrates the fascinating story of this deeply consequential and compelling poem that has shaped our thinking of an ancient sage and his teachings. Jairam Ramesh brings into this unusual narrative the life of the multi-faceted poet himself who, among other things, was steeped in Sanskrit literature. Sir Edwin Arnold's English rendering of the Bhagavad Gita was one of Mahatma Gandhi's abiding favourites. Sir Edwin was also in many ways the man who shaped Bodh Gaya as we know it today.

Light of Asia

Light of Asia
Author: Suresh Chabria
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Motion pictures
ISBN: 9789383098026

The original (shorter) edition of this key historical reference to Indian silent cinema has been unavailable for years. This revised and expanded version has been edited by original author and former National Film Archive of India (NFAI) director Suresh Chabria. He has brilliantly and painstakingly pieced together a definitive historiography of Indian silent film that would have been all but lost were it not for his efforts.

Buddhism Illuminated

Buddhism Illuminated
Author: San San May
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0295744499

Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia are centers for the preservation of local artistic traditions. Chief among these are manuscripts, a vital source for our understanding of Buddhist ideas and practices in the region. They are also a beautiful art form, too little understood in the West. The British Library has one of the richest collections of Southeast Asian manuscripts, principally from Thailand and Burma, anywhere in the world. It includes finely painted copies of Buddhist scriptures, literary works, historical narratives, and works on traditional medicine, law, cosmology, and fortune-telling. Buddhism Illuminated includes over one hundred examples of Buddhist art from the Library’s collection, relating each manuscript to Theravada tradition and beliefs, and introducing the historical, artistic, and religious contexts of their production. It is the first book in English to showcase the beauty and variety of Buddhist manuscript art and reproduces many works that have never before been photographed.

Apparitions of Asia

Apparitions of Asia
Author: Josephine Park
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2014-09-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0190453397

Walt Whitman called the Orient "The Past! the Past! the Past!" but East Asia was remarkably present for the United States in the twentieth century. Apparitions of Asia reads American literary expressions during a century of U.S.-East Asian alliances in which the Far East is imagined as both near and contemporary. Commercial and political bridges across the Pacific generated American literary fantasies of ethical and spiritual accord; Park examines American bards who capitalized on these ties and considers the price of such intimacies for Asian American poets. l l The book begins its literary history with the poetry of Ernest Fenollosa, who called for "The Future Union of East and West." From this prime instigator of the Gilded Age, Park newly considers the Orient of Ezra Pound, who turned to China to lay the groundwork for his poetics and ethics. Park argues that Pound's Orient was bound to his America, and she traces this American-East Asian nexus into the work of Gary Snyder, who found a native American spirituality in Zen. The second half of Apparitions of Asia considers the creation of Asian America against this backdrop of trans-pacific alliances. Park analyzes the burden of American Orientalism for Asian American poetry, and she argues that the innovations of Lawson Fusao Inada offer a critique of this literary past. Finally, she analyzes two Asian American poets, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Myung Mi Kim, who return to modernist forms in order to reveal a history of American interventions in East Asia.

Archaeology of Asia

Archaeology of Asia
Author: Miriam T. Stark
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1405153032

This introduction to the archaeology of Asia focuses on casestudies from the region’s last 10,000 years of history. Comprises fifteen chapters by some of the world’sforemost Asia archaeologists Sheds light on the most compelling aspects of Asianarchaeology, from the earliest evidence of plant domestication tothe emergence of states and empires Explores issues of cross-cultural significance, such asmigration, urbanism, and technology Presents original research data that challenges readers tothink beyond national and regional boundaries Synthesizes work previously unavailable to western readers

The International Order of Asia in the 1930s and 1950s

The International Order of Asia in the 1930s and 1950s
Author: Dr Nicholas J White
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2013-06-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1409480534

This book reconsiders the nature and formation of Asia's economic order during the 1930s and 1950s in light of the new historiographical developments in Britain and Japan. Recently several Japanese economic historians have offered a new perspective on Asian history, arguing that economic growth was fuelled by the phenomenon of intra-Asian trade which began to grow rapidly around the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. On the other side, British imperial historians, P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, have presented their own interpretation of 'gentlemanly capitalism', in which they emphasize the leading role of the service sector rather than that of British industry in assessing the nature of the British presence overseas. In order to assess and test these new perspectives, this volume addresses three key issues. The first is to reconsider the metropolitan-peripheral relationship in Asia, focusing particularly on the role of the sterling area and its implications for Asian economic development. The second is to examine the formation of inter-regional trade relations within Asia in the 1930s and their revival and transformation in the 1950s. The final issue is the comparison of the international order of Asia of the 1930s with the 1950s, and the degree to which the Second World War represented a break-point in Asia's economic development. Dealing with issues of trade, economy, nationalism and imperialism, this book provides fresh insights into the development of Asia during the mid-twentieth century. Drawing on the latest scholarship it will prove invaluable to all who wish to better understand the position of countries such as Japan, China, India, Singapore, Malaysia and Korea within the wider international order.

Buddhist Tourism in Asia

Buddhist Tourism in Asia
Author: Courtney Bruntz
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0824881184

This innovative collaborative work—the first to focus on Buddhist tourism—explores how Buddhists, government organizations, business corporations, and individuals in Asia participate in re-imaginings of Buddhism through tourism. Contributors from religious studies, anthropology, and art history examine sacred places and religious monuments as they have been shaped and reshaped by socioeconomic and cultural trends in the region. Following an introduction that offers the first theoretical understanding of tourism from a Buddhist studies’ perspective, early chapters discuss the ways Buddhists and non-Buddhists imagine concepts and places related to the religion. Case studies highlight Buddhist peace in India, Buddhist heavens and hells in Singapore, Thai temple space, and the future Buddha Maitreya in China. Buddhist tourism’s connections to the state, market, and new technologies are explored in chapters on Indian package tours for pilgrims, thematic Buddhist tourism in Cambodia, the technological innovations of Buddhist temples in China, and the promotion of pilgrimage sites in Japan. Contributors then situate the financial concerns of Chinese temples, speed dating in temples in Japan, and the diffuse and pervasive nature of Buddhism for tourism promotion in Ladakh, India. How have tourist routes, groups, sites, and practices associated with Buddhism come to be possible and what are the effects? In what ways do travelers derive meaning from Buddhist places? How do Buddhist sites fortify national, cultural, or religious identities? The comparative research in South, Southeast, and East Asia presented here draws attention to the intertwining of the sacred and the financial and how local and national sites are situated within global networks. Together these findings generate a compelling comparative investigation of Buddhist spaces, identities, and practices.

Heart of Asia

Heart of Asia
Author: Nicholas Roerich
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Co
Total Pages: 164
Release: 1990-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780892813025

Roerich recounts his journeys to more than fifty monasteries and his meetings with lamas eager to share their spiritual insights and heritage with the Western world. His expeditions crossed thirty-five mountain passes, and included here are dramatic descriptions of snow blindness, mountain floods, and mysterious electrical phenomena, as well as intimate depictions of daily life in the rigorous yet beautiful Himalayan environment.

Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia

Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia
Author: Tani E. Barlow
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1997
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822319436

The essays in Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia challenge the idea that notions of modernity and colonialism are mere imports from the West, and show how colonial modernity has evolved from and into unique forms throughout Asia. Although the modernity of non-European colonies is as indisputable as the colonial core of European modernity, until recently East Asian scholarship has tried to view Asian colonialism through the paradigm of colonial India (for instance), failing to recognize anti-imperialist nationalist impulses within differing Asian countries and regions. Demonstrating an impatience with social science models of knowledge, the contributors show that binary categories focused on during the Cold War are no longer central to the project of history writing. By bringing together articles previously published in the journal positions: east asia cultures critique, editor Tani Barlow has demonstrated how scholars construct identity and history, providing cultural critics with new ways to think about these concepts--in the context of Asia and beyond. Chapters address topics such as the making of imperial subjects in Okinawa, politics and the body social in colonial Hong Kong, and the discourse of decolonization and popular memory in South Korea. This is an invaluable collection for students and scholars of Asian studies, postcolonial studies, and anthropology. Contributors. Charles K. Armstrong, Tani E. Barlow, Fred Y. L. Chiu, Chungmoo Choi, Alan S. Christy, Craig Clunas, James A. Fujii, James L. Hevia, Charles Shiro Inouye, Lydia H. Liu, Miriam Silverberg, Tomiyama Ichiro, Wang Hui