This study will answer the factors that influence the innovation performance of small e-businesses in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of this study are expected to contribute to the development of innovation theory by enriching knowledge in the field of management science in general, especially entrepreneurship theory, especially those related to innovation performance, IT ambidexterity, dynamic capability, environmental uncertainty, and Resource-Induced Coping Heuristic. This study proposes novelty by examining the effect of acquiring, developing, and protecting resources as dimensions (...) of RICH on innovation performance in turbulent conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This theoretical aspect forms the basis for further research that will develop into a broader scope related to innovation performance in entrepreneurship in Indonesia. This fundamental research uses a questionnaire as a data collection tool tested for validity and reliability before being tested empirically using structural equation modeling partial least squares. Research shows that among the dimensions of RICH, protecting resources is the most influential on innovation performance, followed by acquiring resources and developing resources. Dynamic capability positively affects innovation performance. Environmental uncertainty positively affects dynamic capability. Environmental uncertainty positively affects innovation performance. IT capability positively affects dynamic capability. IT capability positively affects innovation performance. The development of small e-businesses needs to get significant attention. Small e-businesses need to develop mutually beneficial business partnerships and improve the quality of their human resources. (shrink)

Gender discrimination continues to plague organizations. While the advent of the Internet and the digitization of commerce have provided both a mechanism by which goods and services can be exchanged, as well as an efficient way for consumers to voice their opinions about retailers (i.e., via online rating systems), recent work has begun to uncover significant biases that manifest during the review process. In particular, it has been suggested that the gig-economy’s elimination of previously anonymous arm’s-length transactions may re-introduce bias (...) into perceptions of quality. In this work, we build upon research that has identified biases based on ascriptive characteristics in rating systems of ridesharing platforms. In doing so, we conduct an online experiment using a series of factorial vignettes to consider not only willingness to transact but post-transaction perceptions of quality. Findings suggest that female drivers are not penalized ex ante for taking on gender incongruent roles, i.e., driving, and experience no penalty when a rider reports a high-quality experience. However, conditional upon a lower quality experience, there is a disproportionate penalty for female drivers. Strikingly, we also observe that historic high quality does not serve as a buffer against such penalties, as prior literature would suggest. These findings underscore the challenges platforms face in ensuring their participants are being evaluated in a fair and impartial way, and highlight the difficulties present when non-employees (customers) are rating non-employees (drivers) of the firm. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Exclusivity and ParticularityJohn Dominic CrossanSeveral of the authors spoke of the imperial exclusivity so characteristic of Christianity. For José Ignacio Cabezón, “What Buddhists find objectionable is (a) the Christian characterization of the deity whose manifestation Jesus is said to be, and (b) the claim that Jesus is unique in being such a manifestation” (p. 56). For Bokin Kim, “most Christians hold to an exclusive view of Christ that claims (...) his uniqueness” (p. 76). For Rita Gross, “the exclusive claims made on behalf of Jesus by Christians appalled me even as a teenager, and my repugnance for exclusive truth claims on the part of religions—any religion—has not diminished since. Thus, part of my journey is working out both a theory and a praxis of religious pluralism that is neither relativistic nor universalistic, that encourages both commitment to one tradition and appreciation of other traditions” (p. 64). I myself find such exclusivistic claims for Christianity, or any other religion, insulting in theory and lethal in practice, objectionable in history and obscene in theology. They are implicitly genocidal even if political impotence limits the divine ethnic cleansing they imagine. But how, as Gross repeats, does one establish “a position that is neither relativistic nor exclusivistic”? (p. 65). My own answer is particularity, but I must explain that in terms of my understanding of Trinity, divinity, and particularity.Trinity seems a particularly and peculiarly Christian understanding of God, but my proposal is that the structure of the Holy is Trinitarian in all religions that I know about and even in all those I can imagine. I speak very deliberately about the Holy (not about God) as the infinite mystery that surrounds and supports, fascinates and terrifies us. It is that against which we interact as meaning-seeking beings. Be it absolute open meaninglessness or absolute univocal meaning, our interaction with it does not seem to be an option but a necessity. And my point is that the Holy is Trinitarian in structure. It is not just on the one hand that religion is Trinitarian in structure. But it is not on the other hand that the Holy in itself and apart from us is Trinitarian in structure. It is, I propose, that the Holy in itself as seen by us across the spectrum of world religious experience is Trinitarian in structure. That Trinity [End Page 97] involves, first, ultimate metaphor, that foundational image that imagines the Holy as, for example, power, person, state, or order, as nature, god/goddess, nirvana, or mandate of heaven. It involves, second, material manifestation, some physical object in which that metaphorical vision is peculiarly, specially, or even uniquely incarnated, some person, place, or thing, some individual or collectivity, some cave or shrine or temple, some clearing in the forest or tree in the desert where that ultimate referent is encountered and experienced. It involves, finally, preliminary preparation, for there must be at least one believer to begin with and eventually more to end with. But, as there are always nonbelievers as well, some prior affinity must exist, as it were, between this metaphor rather than that, this manifestation rather than that, and this believer rather than that. For me, therefore, all faith and all religion, not just my own Christianity, is Trinitarian in structure and that structure seems to inhere in the Holy itself, at least insofar as we can see it. For me, therefore, Christianity and Buddhism differ most profoundly on their ultimate metaphor for the Holy: it is person (God) for the former but state (nirvana) for the latter. In Christianity, of course, our ultimate metaphor is rather overinvested: it is person; and that person is parent; and that parent is father. But I leave those specifications aside for the moment.Divinity is the term I use for any material manifestation. By calling such manifestations divine I mean precisely that a religion’s ultimate metaphor is experienced by believers as peculiarly, specially, or even uniquely present in that physical phenomenon. In that sense I understand both Christ and the Buddha to be divine in exactly the same way—that is, as incarnations of the Holy but within different ultimate metaphors. Christ did... (shrink)

The chapter is divided into five sections. Firstly, I shall briefly describe the phenomenon of Kāpil Maṭh, a Sāṃkhya-Yoga āśrama founded in the early twentieth century by a charismatic Bengali scholar-monk Swāmi Hariharānanda Ᾱraṇya (1869–1947); while referring to Hariharānanda’s writings I will also consider the idea of the re-establishment of an extinct philosophical school. Secondly, I shall specify the method of analysis I apply while addressing the question raised in the title of my chapter and discuss some relevant Sanskrit and (...) Pāli sources. Thirdly, I intend to focus on Aśvaghoṣa’s record in reconstructing the Buddha’s argument against the self. Then I shall offer a possible defence of the self reinterpreted in Buddhist terms and formulated, so to say, ‘on behalf’ of the revived Sāṃkhya-Yoga school. Finally, I will conclude by explaining why and on what assumptions Sāṃkhya can benefit from Buddhist critiques. (shrink)

Like Buddhist traditions, Jain traditions preserve many stories about people’s past lives. Unlike Buddhist traditions, relatively few of these stories narrate the past lives of the tradition’s central figure, the jina. In Jainism there is no equivalent path to the bodhisatta path; the karma that guarantees jinahood is bound a mere two births before that attainment, and the person who attracts that karma cannot do so willfully, nor is he aware of it being bound. There is therefore no Jain equivalent (...) to the ubiquitous j?taka literature. In this paper I will explore what the absence of a j?taka genre in Jain traditions tells us about the genre’s role in Buddhism. Focusing upon the multi-life stories of Gautama Buddha and Vardham?na Mah?v?ra, I will ask how these two strikingly similar narratives betray some fundamental differences between Buddhist and Jain understandings of the ultimate religious goal and the method of its attainment. (shrink)

The life of Gautama, who came to be known as the Buddha, the Enlightened One, is famously said to have been irrevocably changed by his experience of three things: poverty, old age, and death – it was this experience that started him on the road to enlightenment. There is no doubt that the encounter with death can be a life-changing experience, perhaps more so than either poverty or old-age, and not only because death may be construed as an especially (...) powerful emblem of human suffering. Quite aside from the emotional impact of death, it would seem to have an inevitable and irreducible strangeness that challenges our sense of our own existence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 151-155 [Access article in PDF] Buddhism and Christianity: A Multicultural History of their Dialogue. By Whalen Lai and Michael von Bruck. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2001. xiv + 265 pp. This book is an abridged translation of Buddhismus und Christentum: Geschichte, Konfrontation, Dialog, first published in 1997 by Verlag C. H. Beck in Munich. I do not know how much has been lost in the abridgement, (...) but this English version remains a treasure trove that deserves to be read and digested by everyone engaged in Buddhist-Christian dialogue.From the English title, I expected a somewhat dry work of intellectual history, summarizing dated doctrinal debates. This book provides much more than that. Most valuable is its emphasis on the historical and cultural context of Buddhist-Christian encounters, especially the poisonous legacy of Western colonialism (which still survives today as economic neocolonialism). These quite varied contexts have usually been decisive for the success or failure of the encounter, and as this nuanced but frank study shows, the failures have been at least as notable as the successes. Here, too, we must remember the past if we want to do more than keep repeating it. As well as identifying specific problems, there is a perceptive analysis of the obstacles to openness and dialogue in each case.The penultimate chapter includes a discussion of our Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, its conferences, and this journal. As a relative newcomer to the conversations, I found this particular example of contextualizing fascinating. In just the few conferences I have been able to attend, there have been so many facets to the dialogue that it has been difficult to gain a sense of the whole, to understand how the main threads have developed and interwoven. How well do we remember what has already been discussed, and often agreed upon? It is important that we do not just keep repeating ourselves, and I know of no other book that conveys the historical dimension of the dialogue so well. The silent, contemplative aspects of the encounter are also addressed: cross-cultural meditation groups, Christian Zen teachers, and visits to each other's monastic centers.A useful foreword by Hans Kung reviews his own contributions, including his [End Page 151] paradigm analysis of six different "general constellations" found in the Christian tradition (the original Jewish-apocalyptic paradigm, the ancient ecumenical-Hellenistic paradigm, the medieval Roman Catholic paradigm, the Reformation Protestant-evangelical paradigm, the modernist progress-oriented paradigm, and now the postmodern ecumenical paradigm) and six other constellations in the Buddhist tradition (Gautama's original paradigm, the Theravada- sravakayana paradigm, the Mahayana paradigm, the tantric Vajrayana paradigm, a defensive modernist paradigm, and most recently an emerging postmodernist paradigm), with the implication that we need to be careful to clarify which of the paradigms we are comparing.Inevitably, the focus is limited: India and Sri Lanka are discussed at length, but not southeast Asia; China and Japan, but not Korea; Germany, but not the rest of Europe. The Indian chapter is mostly about Tibetans in exile. I was intrigued by the generation gap between older, conservative Tibetan monks and more freethinking younger ones. Otherwise, the Indian dialogue seems not to have been as intensive as many other places in Asia, which makes sense since there are relatively few Buddhists in India today. Given the mass conversions of Dalits, the social context has usually been the emancipation of disadvantaged social groups, and is further complicated now by the increasing influence of neo-Hindu political movements, which makes all interreligious exchange more sensitive.The Sri Lankan dialogue, perhaps more than any other, has been preoccupied with the heritage of colonialism. Sinhalese take pride in being citizens of the only country to have shaken off colonial rule with a successful Buddhist revolution, which reversed the power relationship between the two religions. Evidently most Sinhala Buddhists, including much of the sangha, accept the need to defend Buddhism and Buddhist culture militarily, if necessary. The ruling political class that succeeded the British, a largely Buddhist- and Marxist-inspired elite, opted for constructing a national identity... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nāgārjuna's Fundamental Doctrine of PratītyasamutpādaEwing ChinnIt seems fitting that the very last verse of Nāgārjuna's challenging work, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way), would present the reader with what seems to be a riddle: "I prostrate to Gautama, who through compassion, taught the true doctrine, which leads to the relinquishing of all views" (27 :30). This should be read with an earlier verse (13 : 8): "The (...) victorious ones have said that emptiness is the relinquishing of all views. For whomever emptiness is a view, that one will accomplish nothing."1 Since the last chapter deals with questions about the self and the world, it is understandable that so many commentators would assume that the "true doctrine" of which Nāgārjuna speaks is the doctrine of śūnyatā, but that gives a paradoxical character to these verses. Gautama recommends to us a doctrine that all this (we and all that we experience of the world) is śūnya, that is, empty of essence and thus of inherent, independent existence. And does this anti-realist, anti-essentialist view of things (as some would interpret śūnyatā) make possible and even constitute the relinquishing of all views, including his own? It cannot simply be the trivial and disingenuous claim that to accept the truth of śūnyatā is to relinquish all other wrong views. So is Nāgārjuna mysteriously refuting himself? Or is he uttering a paradox?I will argue that there is no paradox or problem of self-refutation, because the true doctrine that Nāgārjuna refers to is not śūnyatā but the doctrine of pratītyasa-mutpāda (dependent arising or origination). And what the verses assert is that if we understand and accept this doctrine, we will no longer have the need or inclination to hold any view about the nature of things, including the inclination to construct a view out of the declaration that "all this is śūnya." How this is possible, how accepting the doctrine makes possible the "relinquishing of all views," certainly depends on what kind of doctrine this is and how it is to be distinguished from a "view." Part of my argument, of course, is that neither pratītyasamutpāda nor the assertion that "all this is śūnya" should be taken as even implying any metaphysical views—either nihilism, absolutism, or anti-realism (the most common metaphysical interpretations). There is no doubt that a major target of Nāgārjuna's philosophical criticism is metaphysical realism. But this does not mean that the critic must hold some alternative metaphysical view.The logical place to begin is chapter 1, "Examination of Conditions," where the subject of discussion is the concept of pratītyasamutpāda, but it is not clear at all what Nāgārjuna is trying to establish about this concept. Jay Garfield, in his recent translation of and commentary on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā titled The Fundamental Wisdom of the MiddleWay, offers a unique interpretation of the point of this chapter, [End Page 54] and I will follow him to some extent in his analysis of the text.2 However, we will part ways at a crucial point in the chapter with regard to what Nāgārjuna is about.On the Nature and Significance of PratītyasamutpādaIn this first chapter, Garfield notes that "Nāgārjuna distinguishes two possible views of dependent origination or the causal process—one according to which causes bring about their effects in virtue of causal powers and one according to which causal relations simply amount to explanatorily useful regularities—and defends the latter."3 That is to say, according to Garfield, Nāgārjuna defends pratītyasamutpāda as a regularity or Humean theory of causation against an essentialist or realist interpretation. The latter contends that while we may cite one or more factors or events as the causal condition of some effect, it is the force or power in these conditions that is actually the cause of the effect. Nāgārjuna's basic criticism of this realist view is summarized in the fourth verse:Power to act does not have conditions. There... (shrink)

We conceive of the natural world as populated by relatively persistent material things standing in spatio-temporal relations to each other. They come into existence, exist for a time, and then pass away. We locate them relative to landmarks and to other material things in the landscape which they, and we, inhabit. We characterize them as things of a certain kind, and identify and re-identify them accordingly. The expressions we typically use to do so are, in the technical terminology derived from (...) Aristotle, names of substances.1 The term ‘substance’ has two distinct, but importantly linked, meanings. In the Aristotelian sense, a substance (more accurately, ‘a primary substance’) is a concrete individual thing of a given kind, such as a particular human being (Socrates), a given tree (such as Gautama’s Bo-tree) or a certain stone (the Kohinoor). The general kind (the ‘secondary substance’ in Aristotle’s terminology) to which the individual substance belongs is specified by a substance-name (‘human being’, ‘pipal tree’, ‘diamond’). Individual substances are the basic objects of reference and subjects of predication in our conceptual scheme. They are things of one kind or another (specified by a substance-name, as when we say that Socrates is a man). They are qualified by numerous properties, specified by non-substantial predicates (for example, is in the agora, is snub-nosed, or is a philosopher), but they are not themselves predicable of things – Socrates cannot be said to qualify anything or to be true of anything (as opposed to being like Socrates, which is a relational property some rare people may have) . Nor can the proper name ‘Socrates’ be said to be true of anything, by contrast with the identifying phrase ‘is Socrates’, which is true of the teacher of Plato, and tells us who he is. Characterizing an individual as a thing of a given kind by using such a (secondary) substance-name answers the question of what the thing is. Grasp of the substance name implies knowledge of what being a such-and-such consists in, in so far as that is logically (or, in the extended sense of the term, grammatically) determined.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Christian’s Appreciation of the BuddhaBonnie ThurstonEs gibt, so glaube ich, in der Tat jenes Ding nicht, das wir >Lernen< nennen.—Hermann Hesse, SiddharthaI must warn you at the beginning that what follows is an embarrassingly personal reflection—a confession even—and not a scholarly essay. I cannot be dispassionate about the Buddha, to whom in a roundabout way I owe both my status as an ordained Christian minister and perhaps the (...) greatest joy of my life, the study and practice of the Christian scripture. How? In February 1970 I was given a copy of Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, a fictionalized account of the Buddha’s life. Already an active Christian, it was this gift, received my senior year in high school, that introduced me to Buddhism and to the reality of spiritual journey and the possibility of enlightenment. While I know the Buddhist meaning of that term, it serves for Christians as well, because our God could not leave us in darkness but made light the first creature (Gen. 1:1–5) and came among us as light (John 1:1–5). 1 When in the fall of 1970 my brother traveled to Japan, the memento I requested was a small statue of the Buddha. It is beside me as I write. In 1983 when we moved to Germany, the second book I bought in German was Siddhartha; the first was the New Testament.Over the years I have had the opportunity to continue to study the life of the Buddha and the spread and development of his teachings. By the Buddha, of course, I mean Sakyamuni (“sage of the Sakyas”) Buddha (“enlightened one”), son of Suddhodana and Maya, whom they called Siddhartha (“wish fulfilled” or “goal realized”) and whom we also know as Gotama or Gautama (literally “superior cow”), whose dates are given variously as 560–480 B.C. or 460–380 B.C. 2 I am appreciative of what I have learned—applying the root meaning of that word, appretiare: “to see” or “to appraise.” The Buddha has helped me to see and to appraise or evaluate many aspects of life. The appreciation that follows, then, is both a grateful recognition as of benefits received and a sensitive awareness or an estimate. I have tried both to view the Buddha clearly and to appraise what he has meant in my life. In essence, Buddhism and the Buddha have been for me the means of establishing a personal, internal religious clarity about what I do believe, passionately. In a deeply Buddhist sense, the Buddha has been my raft. But he has not been my Savior.There is, as Tillich noted in Christianity and the Encounter with World Religions, a point “in the depth of every living religion... at which the religion itself loses its importance, and that to which it points breaks through its particularity.” 3 It has [End Page 121] helped me to understand religions as fingers and the Divine Reality as the moon to which they point. And I am convinced that Tillich’s breakthrough point is usually reached by means of deep penetration into one religious tradition. Jacques-Albert Cuttat was exactly correct: “The more deeply a person probes into his own religious faith, the more he is able to understand the religious faith of others from the inside; conversely, the more a person explores religious connections other than his own, the more he deepens his understanding of his own religion.” 4 This has been my experience. Dialogue with the Buddha has given me great clarity about the Christ. And the study and practice of Christianity has afforded me my glimpses of the moon.What, then, do I appreciate about the Buddha? What have I learned from him? To help focus my answer, I read or reread a number of different accounts of his life 5 and noted six specific aspects of his life and teaching (his quest itself; his powers of analysis; his pragmatism; his moral vision; his compassion; and the outcome of living, his ‘way’) that have attracted and taught me.First, I am appreciative of the Buddha’s quest itself. To put it simply, according to the accounts... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Possibility of a Postcolonial Buddhist Ethic of WealthCarol S. AndersonOrientalist images of Buddhism portray all Buddhist traditions as world-renouncing, austere, and ascetic: think of the pictures of saffron-clothed monks with bowls walking down a tree-lined street in Thailand, Sri Lanka, or Burma, eyes slightly downcast, heads shaven, bare feet. The quintessential definition of this image is the tenth precept: jātarūpa-rajata-paṭiggahaṇā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi, “I undertake the precept to (...) refrain from accepting gold and silver.”1 This precept, familiar to almost anyone who knows a bit about Buddhism, symbolizes our attitudes toward Buddhism as a religious tradition that rejects the messiness of money, jobs, and certainly wealth. Rejecting the daily grind of grubbing for actual money in favor of a disembodied and spiritual enlightenment is one of the most appealing stereotypes of Buddhism for many of us; our responsibility, however, is to realize that this image captures only a part of a much larger, longer, and more complex series of stories and histories.In the following pages, I sketch out the parameters for an approach to a Buddhist ethics of wealth. I make no claim that there is a singular Buddhist ethic on wealth and poverty, only that there are some assumptions that we need to discard and new avenues we might wish to explore.2 The image that rests at the center of this paper is the orientalist model of the monk who rejects money. Much of the early scholarship in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that sought to describe and understand “Buddhism” constructed a religion that was dominated by “world renouncing” monks who embodied the true vision of Gautama Buddha—most often represented by the Dhammacakkapavatāna-sutta (Talk on Turning the Wheel of Dhamma). According to this model, how do we know what the Buddha taught? By reading the texts.3 In this portrait of Buddhism, the text reigns supreme. “True” Buddhism is the Buddhism of the Pāli canon, and monks are the evidence of the truth of the Buddha’s teaching. The dominant economic model that emerged from these constructions of Buddhism is rooted in exchange, the exchange between monks and the laity through the ritual mechanism of dāna. Dāna (Pāli: giving) consists of an order of monks who vow to live without handling money, and in so doing, are reliant upon lay Buddhists who receive merit for supporting monks. I trust that this model is familiar to all of [End Page 139] us, since it rests at the core of nearly every portrait of Buddhism constructed in the past one hundred years.I offer three contexts for the tenth precept and the world-renouncing monk who refuses to handle “gold and silver” in the following pages: Buddhist challenges to capitalism, the model of dāna or the exchange between laity and monks and nuns, and the relationship between nuns and money. In each section, I sketch out the location of the tenth precept and draw attention to scholarship that offers us a reassessment of the orientalist notion that monks reject money. What makes this argument “postcolonial” is that I suggest that we rigorously reassess the usefulness of the legacy of that colonial image in our thinking about Buddhism and wealth, and wrestle with the ironies that accompany the tenth precept in Buddhism today.Monks, Marx, and MoneySome of the most compelling calls for economic justice of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are rooted in the image of a monk who refuses to handle money and who gives up owning more than he needs. Put briefly, the tenth precept ripples throughout the movements for economic reform that emerged in post-independent India, Sri Lanka, Burma, and modern Thailand. The symbolism of the world-renouncing monk who follows the tenth precept is refracted throughout Buddhist Marxist analyses of economic disparities and offers us our first vantage point from which to examine the parameters of a Buddhist ethic of wealth.The orientalist reading of monks as a representation of an ideology that rejects money and private ownership has given rise to a number of syntheses of Marxism, socialism, and... (shrink)

The first poems about the Prophet Muḥammad appeared while he was alive. These first examples, which are panegyrics (madīḥ, i‛tiẕār, fakhr and ris̱ā), largely reflect the characteristics of the pre-Islamic qaṣīda poetry. Due to the developments in the following centuries, the number of poems about the Prophet increased. And thus, a separate literary genre was formed under the name al-madīḥ al-nabawī. Especially the fact that sufi leaning poets contributed to the literary richness in this field. Another factor is the beginning (...) of the tradition of writing mawlid poems in memory of the birth of the Prophet Muḥammad. The thirteenth century was an important period for poems praising the Prophet Muḥammad. Two important poets emerged in this century. One of them is Egyptian poet al-Būṣīrī and the other is Baghdad's famous poet, Yaḥyā al-Ṣarṣarī. Even after his death, Ṣarṣarî’s works with high literary value were read and memorized in the circles of science, literature and Sufism. Due to his competence in the field, al-Ṣarṣarī was known as the poet of the Prophet and Ḥassān b. Thābit of his time. However, it is understood that his poems, which lost their importance in literary circles over time, were not studied as much as they deserved in the modern period. In this article, his life and works are introduced and basic language and stylistic features of his poems are examined. Also, the image of the Prophet in his poems was determined within the framework of the political conditions of the period.Summary: In the field of madīh nabawī, which first appeared in the ‘Asr al-Sa’āda and has continued to the present day, especially two names stand out in the 7th/13th century, when famous poets such as Macduddīn al-Vitrī (d. 662/1264), Ibn al-Muraḥḥal (d. 699/1300) and Ṣafiyyuddīn al-Ḥillī (d. 749/1348) were also raised. One of them is the Egyptian poet al-Būṣīrī (d. 695/1296), who left his mark on the field of madīh nabawī with his many poems, especially Qaṣīda Burda, and the other is the Iraqi poet Yahya al-Ṣarṣarī (d. 656/1258), who was named Shā‘iru Rasūlillāh (The poet of the Prophet) and Ḥassānu Vaḳtihī (Ḥassān of that period) because of the quality of his poems in this field.al-Ṣarṣarī, was born in the village of al-Ṣarṣar, near Baghdad, spent most of his life in the shadow of Baghdad’s political instability and the social collapse that developed in parallel. He was killed in 656/1258 by the Mongolian forces that invaded Baghdad. al-Ṣarṣarī was extremely knowledgeable in fiqh, hadith, language, and ‘ilm al-qirāa. Our poet adopted the views of the Hanbalī law school. In addition, he turned to Sufism and became a murīd (disciple) of Ali ibn Idrīs al-Ya‘kūbī, a student of Abdalqadīr al-Gīlanī who was accepted as the founder of Qādiriyya. He was closely attached to the Sunnah of the Prophet and was fond of reading the Quran. He was chaste and patient and was content with what he had himself. All his works are poetic and they all concern the madīh nabawī or fiqh.Since his poems, almost all of which are about the praise of the Prophet, have a high literary value, they were read, memorized and narrated for a long time in the circles of science, literature and Sufism. In terms of its structure, his poems are based on the traditional forms of Arab qasīda. In the introductory sections of his poems, he often expresses his longing for Madina. The main subject in poems is usually the Prophet and his superior features. In the last part, he usually says salāt for the Prophet and seeks help from him. It can be said that he used simple language in his poems. The vocabulary reflects the characteristics of the urban life in which he lived. The source of inspiration for his poems are the Qur’an and especially the hadith of the Prophet. He uses the potential of literary arts as much as possible while conveying his feelings. But he does not allow the correct information to be lost due to these arts on a serious subject such as depicting the Prophet. We can see a lot of badī‘ (creative) art in some of his poems. But we can immediately understand that these arts do not spoil the beauty of his expression. The poet provides rhythm and harmony in his poetry with the meter and rhyme in accordance with the classical Arabic qasida rules. In addition, he strengthens the musicality in poetry with puns (jinās) and repetition.The influence of the instability of the region where al-Ṣarṣarī lived on his poems is obvious. According to him, the main reason for the terrible situation that Muslims were in was that they were away from the way of the Prophet. He thought that it would be possible to go back to the old peaceful days by following the way of the Prophet. Perhaps as a result of this opinion, he allocated his qasīda to the narration of the Prophet and his Companions. In his poems, he describes the Prophet with his names, superior qualities, physical and moral characteristics. He says that the sentences describing the Prophet are the ornament of poems and believes that praising him is a mean of salvation in the next world. He also hoped that the poems he said in order to achieve spiritual ascension would protect himself against the troubled events of the period.In his poems, especially on the occasion of mawlīd, al-Ṣarṣarī mentions the Prophet’s physical characteristics and likens his smiling face to a bright full moon, his brows to the letter nûn, his teeth to pearls. He describes the Prophet as a man with black eyes, broad shoulders, born with kohl-lined eyes, and who emanates a beautiful scent as a requirement of his creation. The poet, who also touches on the Prophet’s powerful address, states that his speech is more effective than Luqman’s wise words by virtue of his jawami‘ al-kalim (comprehensive speech) and faṣl al-khiṭab (clear speech), and that his soft address, which states nothing other than the truth, is a blessing from Allah. He additionally describes the Prophet’s plain words, easy to understand by all, as more valuable than jewels. al-Ṣarṣarī, who praises the Prophet in terms of morality with basic human virtues such as bashfulness, justice, modesty, and courage, emphasizes that he is, a paragon of patience, perseverance, kindness, and compassion through analogies such as, “his clothes are peace and perseverance”, his “cover is kindness and forgiveness”. In his world of imagery, the Prophet’s benevolence is so abundant like the rain that the clouds cannot compete with him. Also, he does not shame anybody for what he gives. He bestows the most valuable possessions like gold and camels. Even the respectable personalities of the tribe benefit from his grace. He is so generous that he is giving even when the clouds are stingy about giving rain during times of drought. He welcomes with a smile those who approach him with requests. The donations he makes privately are entirely satisfying.The image of prophethood in al-Ṣarṣarī’s poems, is centralized around the thought of nūr Muhammadī (prophetic light) and the miracles of the Prophet. He reminds that the Prophet never gave up despite the calamities he encountered and that he was supported with extraordinary events in various stages of his life since he was born, and reflects the understanding that the prophet is spiritually supporting the community with his nūr, and in the case the community follow his sunnah, overcoming the Mongolian attacks, which seems like a miracle, is possible. The mention of Qattāl (warrior), Māḥī (eliminator of disbelief), Ẓāhir, Ẓāfir, Manṣūr and Muẓaffar (victorious) among the Prophet’s names, especially those that evoke the superiority he gained in his fight against the disbelievers, giving greater prominence to his courage and valor among his virtues are also related to the political and social conditions of the period. The couplets about the Companions of the Prophet following the couplets that describe the Prophet’s valor, the emphasis of their aid to the Prophet, and the particular mention of their fighter spirit may be considered in the same context. Perhaps, in this way, the poet aims to boost the courage of the Muslims who are exposed to Mongolian attacks with respect to protecting their spiritual and holy values against the enemy. (shrink)

Belief in miracles exists more or less in all religions in all ages. The Upanishads assert that the experience of religious insight and transformation is the only "miracle" worth considering, but popular Hinduism attributes miraculous powers to the ascetic yogis. Though Buddha Gautama deprecated his own miraculous powers as devoid of spiritual significance, accounts of his miraculous birth and life were later woven into his legend and into those of later Buddhist saints. The New Testament records miracles of healing (...) and other wonders performed by Jesus. Miracles also attest to the holiness of Christian saints. Muhammadrenounced miracles as a matter of principle (the Quran was the great miracle), but his life was later invested with miraculous details. Muslim popular religion, particularly under the influence of Sufism, abounds in miracles and wonder-working saints. Although ‘values’ speak about ideals and principles we are supposed to follow, it enumerates the standard of our mind we develop in the light of so called miracles and what it truly stands for. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The BuddhaTerry C. MuckWhen I think of the Buddha, the subject of my scholarly study, the picture my mind produces is soft and blurred at the edges—out of focus but not in a way that makes it difficult to see or understand. It is more in the way a photography studio uses background and light to project the subject forward. The Buddha, in my mind’s eye, seems friendly, accessible. (...) This Buddha, my Buddha, manages to combine great warmth and great mystery.By contrast, when I think of Jesus, the object of my faith, I see clearly a well-defined personality. There is no portraiture here. It is more like a candid snapshot taken by a very good camera with plenty of natural light; a great photograph, a picture that produces a clear image, in my mind at least, of a person I know and understand. It is a picture of someone walking around Palestine doing great deeds, a father to my Buddha brother—and to me.I love both the Buddha and Jesus. I have loved Jesus since early Sunday school days in Huntington, Indiana, at the Bible Baptist Church on Lake Street. I have loved the Buddha since I first began reading about him in graduate school at Northwestern University and listening to Walpola Rahula lecture about him in classes there. Both the Buddha and Jesus were great men, doing divine things that have changed the world for billions after them. The differences my mind produces are in the realm of qualities. I love them both, but I see them differently.Why the differences? I suppose one reason is that they are different. Gautama Buddha lived in sixth-century B.C.E. India where he was the son of a king, chose a life of religious itinerancy, and died of food poisoning at eighty years of age. Jesus lived in Palestine in the first century C.E. where he was the son of a carpenter, chose a life of religious itinerancy, and was crucified by the Roman authorities after being convicted on a charge of political subversion.They both chose a life of religious itinerancy, to be sure. But the meaning of each of those traveling lives has been the subject of great debate, both within and without their respective religious traditions. Disagreements abound. In fact, in one of those [End Page 105] odd quirks of human cantankerousness, the deeper one gets into each of the traditions, Buddhism and Christianity, the more diverse and passionate are the views about the Buddha and the Christ.The diversity of views deep within each tradition can be stunning to the average Buddhist and Christian on the street, who tend to have a rather homogenized view of each other—kind of a standard life story that could be easily summarized in the pages and pictures of a comic book. But deep within the traditions, Buddhists argue about Buddha nature, Buddha veneration, and the role the Buddha plays in human liberation. Christians argue about Jesus’ divine and human status, his uniqueness, and the role he plays in human salvation. One good thing about all this disagreement: it makes my musings about the Buddha and Jesus pale in comparison.Still, I would like to understand better. Why do I see the Buddha and Jesus differently?Socialization and HistorySurely the most important reason can be summarized in one word: socialization. I was raised to love Jesus, to believe in him. Here’s how I was raised to see Jesus: Jesus is God’s son, born to a woman named Mary and a man named Joseph. God sent Jesus to help human beings lost in a morass of bad deeds, psychological confusion, and social injustices. This melange of evil is so pervasive among human beings that solutions can only come from someone outside the system, willing to enter into the system and guide others out, both by what he says and by what he does—how he lives his life.What Jesus said, what Jesus did, and who Jesus was—all are unique. Others of us can try to live like Jesus—indeed, we should. But none of us, not one, can... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Buddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious OthersTerry C. MuckBuddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious Others. By Kristin Beise Kiblinger. Hants, England: Ashgate, 2005. 145 pp.Kristen Beise Kiblinger, who teaches in the religion department at Thiel College, has written a provocative and imaginative book. It is provocative in that [End Page 168] she appears to be doing buddhology even though she resists calling it that. She says she doesn't want to (...) take the voice of a buddhologian. She does not describe what is as a phenomenologist might or what was as an historian of religion might, or what should be as a buddhologian might. She describes what might be, as a—well, as a participant-philosopher might. She writes as an outsider taking the voice of an insider.Kiblinger chooses as her topic the relationship of Buddhists to people of other religions. She begins by noting that Buddhists themselves have not explicitly addressed this topic in their religious philosophizing, at least not to the extent Christians have. But, she suggests, implicitly they behave as if they do have a favored response to this issue. Citing a wide variety of Buddhist sources across the Buddhist spectrum, she concludes that inclusivism is the most natural position for Buddhists to take vis-à-vis the other religions. She describes that position in some detail, all the while persisting in her refusal to be considered a spokesperson in the insider sense.Kiblinger draws her examples from the way two historical figures related to people of non-Buddhist ideologies and from historical contacts Buddhism as a movement had with other religions or sects. The first historical figure is Siddhartha Gautama himself. The Buddha, Kiblinger notes, was not shy about identifying what made any religion (not just his dhamma) useful—the noble eightfold path. This path is the core of Gautama's dhamma, but it also appears in other religions in other forms. The Buddha put forth the presence of this content as the measure of a religion's usefulness (see the Mahaparinibbana Sutta). And of course the parable of the raft relativizes all religious teachings, making them true only to the extent that they enable humans to "cross the stream" of temporal existence, a common tenet of the inclusivist position in all its forms.Asoka represents a second example of Buddhist inclusivism for Kiblinger. In the seventh and twelfth of his Rock Edicts, Asoka makes clear that all members of all religious traditions are welcome to practice in his kingdom, even though he thinks Buddhism is the best position. He makes clear that both exclusivism and intolerance of other religious ideas are not acceptable positions in his way of looking at the spiritual dimension of the world. Existentially, Asoka's life story is a model of a reformed "exclusivist" finally embracing the all-truth-no-matter-where-you-find-it-is-still-truth position.Not just these giant figures model inclusivism. Buddhism as a movement has consistently, Kiblinger argues, behaved toward other movements as inclusivists would. She uses as a first example the Buddhist attitude toward Vedic sacrifice, the religious practice most liable to be cast aside by the new teaching of Gautama. We see in this example, Kiblinger says, "the technique of significant reinterpretation and new application rather than subordination" (p. 41). She also notes that a technique she calls "reinterpretation by ethicization" that does not throw out Vedic teaching altogether but claims at its root a teaching that was originally Buddhist.Evidence for the inclusivist position can also be found in the way Mahayanists treated Theravadins, or Hinayanists as Kiblinger refers to them. Scholars of Buddhism [End Page 169] have for the most part recognized that the term "hinayana," perhaps best translated as "lesser vehicle," is a pejorative term given to Theravadins by the Mahayanists, the "great vehicle" folks. Kiblinger argues that even though Mahayanists consider their tradition superior (a common trait of all inclusivists, Buddhist or not), they do so with an openness to the value of the way Theravadins approach the problem of enlightenment. Their way may not be the best, but it is a way, and in some contexts it may be an effective way. Mahayanists are able... (shrink)

Qaside-i Khamriyya (meaning Wine Eulogy) of sufi poet Ibn-i Fārıḍ, in which he explained divine love through the metaphor of wine, attracted great attention in Islamic world and was translated into Arabic, Persian and Turkish. Scholars such as Davud-i Qayseri (d. 751 AH/1350 AD), Kemal Pashazāde (d. 940 AH/1534 AD), Abdulghani an-Nablusi (d. 1143 AH/1731 AD), Ibn Acibe (d. 1224 AH/1809 AD) explained this eulogy in Arabic, while poets such as Ali b. Shihābiddin al-Hamadāni (d. 786 AH/1385 AD), Molla Cāmi (...) (d. 898 AH/1492 AD), Idris-i Bitlisi (d. 926 AH/1520 AD) wrote commentaries in Persian. On the other hand, authors such as Abdussalam b. Numan b. Khalil (d. 1000 AH/1592 AD [?]), Ismail Anqaravi (d. 1041 AH/1631 AD), Abdulmacid-i Sivasi (d. 1049 AH/1639 AD), Qara Musṭafa Khulūsi (d. 1344 AH/1926 AD), Meḥmed Naẓım (d. 1345 AH/1926 AD) and Ṭahir al-Mavlavi (d. 1371 AH/1951 AD) translated the eulogy into Turkish. One of the authors who translators of this eulogy was Mehmed Said Efendi, sheikh of Uskudar Salimiya Takka, who lived in the 19th century. His work named Ṭarab-angiz (meaning Pleasure-provoking) is a condensed commentary with ornate prose of Qaside-i Khamriyya. In previous studies, Ṭarab-angiz was partly examined, and there was no mention about the identity and personality of the author. In the present research, the life and personality of Meḥmed Said Efendi is explained and the text of his work is examined.Summary: In Turkish literature which developed under the influence of Islam, translations and commentaries have important a place along with original texts. Coming within the sphere of Islam in early 10th century, Turks embarked on translating the texts immediately in order to learn their new religion and to perform its practices and continued to do so since then. Because they lived in the same culture and civilization climate, Turks learned Islam from Persians and were influenced by Persian language. However, adherents of this new religion also made direct translations from Arabic texts. The translations initially were made from religious works, but in time social, cultural and literary works, such as Persian classics and major eulogies of Arabic Literature, were also translated into Turkish by Turkish scholars. Qaside-i Burde by Ka‘b b. Zuheyr’in (d. 24 AH/645 AD), Qaside-i Nūniyye by Ebu’l-Fetḥ Busti’nin (d. 400 AH/1010 AD), Qaside-i Ṭanṭarāniyye by Ṭanṭarāni’nin (d. 485 AH/1092 AD), Qaside-i Münferice by Ibnu’n-Naḥvi’nin (d. 513 AH/1119 AD), Qaside-i Emāli by Ali b. Othman al-Ushi’nin (d. 575 AH/1179 AD) and famous eulogy named Qaside-i Bur’e by Muḥammed b. Said al-Buṣiri’nin (d. 695 AH/1296 AD) were among such works.Qaside-i Khamriyya by sufi poet Ibn-i Fārıḍ (d. 632 AH/1235 AD), also called sultan of minstrels, in which he explained divine love through wine attracted great attention in Islamic world and was translated into many languages and many commentaries were written on it. One of the commentary writers about this eulogy is Meḥmed Said Efendi, a 19th century sufi. His work entitled Ṭarab-angiz is a condensed commentary with ornate prose of Qaside-i Khamriyya.Studies conducted so far has partly dealt with the Ṭarab-angiz and identity and personality of Meḥmed Said Efendi have never been mentioned. Ṣarac mentioned, “It is a printed work but its writer, printing date, and the place was not found on the printed work”, while Yıldırım used the expression of “a work whose writer and production date is not known.” In his Ph. D. thesis entitled Translation and Commentary Tradition in Classical Turkish Literature in Anatolia, Ṣadık Yazar noted that the work belongs to Meḥmed Said, which was later cited by Aqdag. The final statement on this issue was made by İnce in his work entitled Arabic, Persian and Turkish commentaries of Qaside-i Khamriyya by Ibnu’l Fārıḍ. He examined a total of 18 commentaries and stated that no information is available about the life of Meḥmed Said although he mentioned Ṭarab-angiz.The birth date and place of Meḥmed Said Efendi are unknown. He is grandchild of Ali Behjet Efendi (d. 1238 AH/1823 AD), one of sheiks in Salimiya Dervish Lodge in Uskudar and son of Meḥmed Hidāyetullah Efendi (d. 1288 AH/1871 AD). Following the death of his father, Meḥmed Said Efendi himself served as the head dervish of this dervish lodge for 25 years and became a famous figure. He died in 1313 AH/1896 AD and was buried in the cemetery of the Salimiya Dervish Lodge.Meḥmed Said Efendi was the sixth sheikh of Salimiya Dervish Lodge. In many sources, he was mentioned as a venerable, righteous, devoutly religious, virtuous, polite and scholarly man. Meḥmed Said Efendi is thought to be a member of Mavlavi lodge of Naqshbandi Ṭariqa. He had successors such as Naqshi sheikh Uskudari Balabani Ḥasan Ḥusnu Efendi (d. 1347 AH/1928 AD) and Ismail Efendi (d. after 1307 AH/1890 AD). The poet had a commentary named Ṭarab-angiz in prose form and had a quatrain within the praising eulogy of Sheikh Ḥāmil Efendi (d. 1322 AH/1904 AD), head sheikh of Beylerbeyi Bedevi Dervish Lodge.It is clear from the expression, “A work by Meḥmed Said, the Imam of Central Dervish Lodge of Sultan Salim III,” at the beginning of Edition no: 450 in Suleymaniye Library, Pertev Pasha Collection and from the record of “Work: Ṭarab-angiz, Author: Ibnu’l-Fārıḍ, Translator and postscript writer: Meḥmed Said” in Edition no: 7350 of Marmara University Faculty of Theology Library that this work belongs to Sheikh Meḥmed Said Efendi. However, exact production date of this printed work is not known. The work consisted of 28 pages and in some editions a two-page correct-false chart was added.As usual, the work starts with an introduction section with expressions of “By the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,” “Praise be to God,” and “Peace be upon Prophet Moḥammad.” This section also includes a praise for followers of Prophet Moḥammad, “Who made sphere of prophecy an eternal rose garden through the holy light of their enjoyed manners in addition to making the Shari’a candle shined and and converting them to great flowers of service with their strong inspiration torchs.” The commentator then embarked on praising Qaside-i Khamriyya, mentioning that the men of ability became helpless in explaination of beauty, charm and freshness of unique expression richness and refined allegory blossoms of the eulogy and that reaching the shore of rhetoric could be possible through diving into the guided wisdom of sea. In fact, according to commentator, the men of literature should be aware of the difficulty of translating this unique eulogy into Turkish language. However, everyone should dive into the sea of insight as a knowledge diver, collect its share in pearls of utterance and in emeralds of wits, arrange and put them in the string of prose”. Therefore, he wrote the commentary about the eulogy as a service to humanity and as a contribution to his own stock of comfort in the present and afterlife as much as he could, no matter how little it could be, and named it Ṭarab-angiz. Like most commentators of Qaside-i Khamriyya, Meḥmed Said Efendi commented on only about 33 couplets of the eulogy which contained a total of 41 couplets, and did not cover couplets from 23 to 30 in his work. The commentator used couplet-by- couplet translation method and started with praising for Ibn-i Fārıḍ and his couplets. Then, he gives the Arabic originals of the couplets and starts commentary with the expressions such as “couplets of great intuition, imagery couplets, product of couplet, enlightenment of couplet and concept of couplet.” In preface section of the work, the commentator, who usually quoted hadith texts in Arabic and poems, does not use them in his commentary. He only uses some lines of Arabic prayers and a quatrain of Molla Cāmi (d. 898 AH/1492 AD). This is a quatrain rubāi in Persian language meaning that “If you want no sorrow and no grief of the destiny, drink wine in a pub, because swirling of the goblet and worries of the world do not share the same place just as the tune and the sorrow do not coincide.” The lack of touching on the meaning of words, etymological structure and grammar rules in couplets makes it different from others, except the translation of Aḥmed Ṣāfi Bey. (shrink)

In the Qur’ān the most significant words used to indicate settlement are diyār, qarya, madīna, miṣr and balad. Among these, qarya and madīna are the most important ones. While Qarya means, county, city, urban, land and settlement, madīna means town. Miṣr is used for a city as well as for a specific name of a country. Diyār indicates a geographic border and the places of a settlement, and balad infers a political unity of a number of settlements. Due to this (...) use in ‘Arabic, the word balad is used as a country and a state at the same time. Recently, there are some studies focusing on examining the terms of qarya and madīna. Hovewer, we cannot encompass the semantic area of these words only by looking up their dictionary meaning and how they were used in the Qur’ān. Therefore, in this study the old cities are examined as they exist in their places. In this study, we have utilised from the modern and contemporary scientific findings which were made for urbanization and its history. For a better understanding of the concept of urbanization, some prophets’ stories have been revised. In Qur’ān the words indicating urbanization are related to society, nature, place, human, art, economy, politics and reconstruction. Therefore, the concepts of the diyār, qarya, madīna, miṣr and balad used to describe the settlements point to the relationship of society with different elements and activities.Summary: Cities, the birth of the cities, sociology, history, anthropology and cultural history are the major subjects in social science. Among them, the birth of cities are especially important for history, anthropology and sociology. For some researchers, cities are the most important revolution of humanity. Cities do not merely mean the places where the human settle down or form a society. In many human languages there is a strong relation between the words expressing civilization and settlement. There is a strong connection between cities and civilization. In Turkish, the word civilization/uygarlık comes from Uygurlar/Uighurs which means those who settled down first. Again in Turkish, the word of madaniyet which is originally Arabic is derived from madīna which means city. In English and French, civilization derives from civitas which is originally Latin. Civitas means a settlement and also the people who live within it. In ‘Arabic, the word hadārī, means settling in a place, is used for civilization, In this study, the words related to urbanization to which social science like sociology, history, anthropology and cultural history attribute a great importance are investigated from the mufassirs’ perspective. As a result of the researches, it was observed that the words qarya, madīna, diyār miṣr and balad were used in the Qur’ān in close terms with the city. Before examining the words which refer to city in the Qur’ān like qarya, madīna, diyār, mıṣr and balad, the approaches of sociology, history and anthropology are investigated for comparative purposes. According to modern and contemporary researches, jobs like art writing, music and architecture appeared after urbanization. The evolution of humanity from primitive period to modernity is because of urbanization. Cities are the crops of social relationships between people. Urbanization caused wider social interactions and the formation of more complicated societies. People who constitute societies and complicated relationships founded cities. With the increase of specialization and jobs, people of one or more job were able to meet the needs of each other through social cooperation.Before the urbanization the human-nature relation was more important but in cities human-human relation got more important. Cities caused social status to be a result of human-human relations. In these social categories, jobs like managers, merchants, guilds, soldiers and religious groups like religious leaders and darvīsh appeared. The physical features of a city are as important as their social structure. A city firstly has walls, administration, bazaar, laws, and the sense of common belonging among people.In the Qur’ān, it can be noticed that the history of settlement is developed chronologically. In the Qur’ān, the words qarya, madīna, diyār miṣr and balad are used in the meaning of the city. These words have a close relationship with people and society. For example, because societies and cities were not formed during the time of Adam, there is no word in the stories that evokes society and the city. The same is true for Idrīs. When we look at the narratives about Noah, for the first time there are words like the people, mala/the leaders of the community, erāzil/shameless, and the ship. Although no word meaning city or city is used in these stories, it is seen that society and social strata are formed. In the Hoad period, the word house, palace, building and Irem were used in addition to the word peoples/tribe. In addition to the words that express the civilized developments in the stories of Noah and Hoad, the existence of the words diyār and madīna draws attention during the reign of Ṣāleḥ. In the Qur’ān, the first terms related to urbanization were mentioned in the story of Hoad, and the words meaning settlement and city were mentioned in the story of Ṣāleḥ. Moreover, the words realm and madīna were used in the story of Ṣāleḥ. In the periods of Abraham and Moses, the words qarya and miṣr were added to this. The word Midian was used specifically for the city of Shu‘ayb, and the word balad was used for Mecca during the time of Prophet Muhammad.As mentioned in Noah’s era peoples and the states of people were present; in Hoad’s era, vineyard, garden, agriculture, houses, buildings and small scale settlements started to be constructed. In the Qur’ān, during the era of prophet Hoad, words like: vineyard, garden, agriculture, houses, building and palace, were used, however there is not a single word which means city. In Ṣāleḥ’s era the words dār and diyār were used in a general meaning? Therefore, it can be safely said that urbanization seriously started in Ṣāleḥ’s era. Additionally, dār also means house, vineyard, garden, grassland, region and home. Descriptions of dār, diyār and madīna in Ṣāleḥ’s parable point out the three directions of Thamūd peoples about urbanization. The word dār refers to the architectural features of their houses; the word diyār refers to their vineyards, gardens, houses and lands; and the word madīna refers to the largest and most important settlement in their homes. As modern and contemporary science has argued, according to the commentators, madīna is used for the settlements surrounded by walls, with its bazaar, army, ruler, tradesman and merchant.In the Qur’ān, the word qarya is closer to diyāri even if its used as madīna in some of the parables. Nevertheless, qarya is different from diyār due to its two distinctive features of political structure and intimacy. Qarya is a city or city state in some way, but it is not only a center but also a city or city state with a political structure with villages, towns, mountains, slopes and plains. So today, it refers to a city which has political integrity with its provincial borders or environment. Diyār was used for the places which were suitable for agriculture, while qarya was used for the cities of Sāmī people as a common word in Sāmī languages. For this reason, qarya was never used for the settlements of Copti, which are African communities; instead, the misr, which is a common word in Coptic and Arabic, was preferred. Even the word miṣr which means city in the Coptic language was used as a country name in the Egyptian regions. The word Balad indicates more a political formation, so it only means country. In the time period of Jahiliyyah they used balad for Mecca which owned a political formation.In the Qur’ān the words qarya and balad are used for Mecca but words like diyār, madīna and miṣr were never used for it. The use of the name qarya for Mecca indicates that it was established by a non-Arab like Abraham on the one hand and that it was the common place of all people. The word of madīna is not used to describe it because Mecca has not embody walls, bazaar, army or craftmanship. The reasons for not using diyār is because there are no vineyards or gardens. The lack of the word miṣr for Mecca also indicates that there is no influence of North African races such as Hāmī in Mecca.Briefly, Qarya is a settlement with its village and towns which is under administration. Madīna is a important center which exists inside qarya with walls, bazaar and architecture. Diyār is a settlement of the city center with houses, vineyards and gardens. Miṣr is a city where the Northern Africans are residing and Balad is a settlement where is prominences as political organization. (shrink)

This article examines the question of the freedom that a commentator has while commenting on a philosophical sūtra text. The texts covered are Gautama's Nyāyasūtras, Is'varakṛṣṣa's Sāṁkhyakārikā, and Patañjali's Yogasūtras.It is well known that every commentator believes that s/he is the one who has understood the true intention of the original author and therefore employs some interpretative tools to bring out the meaning of the text s/he is commenting on. Generally there are three devices that are commonly employed. One (...) is to supply some additional points that the commentator believes are missing in the sūtra text so as logically to connect the main ideas contained in the original text for clarity of the concept... (shrink)

Abrogation (naskh) is one of the controversial themes of Islamic studies, especially in later period that of principle of exegesis (uṣūl al-tafsīr). However, the recent studies on abrogation (naskh) do not offer a comprehensive analysis on the concept. In fact, the problem of naskh (abrogation) is in need of a systematic and holistic approach, which would only be possible with a detailed study on how the concept of abrogation (naskh) is understood in Islamic interpretive tradition (tafsīr). With this purpose in (...) mind, this article intends to examine two points regarding the term abrogation: first, the article will offer a analytical reflection on the diverse views of naskh, and then it will highlight how Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373) understood and applied this term to his hermeneutical framework. By doing so, the present study aims to show Ibn Kathīr’s position in Islamic interpretive tradition on the matter of naskh. The key conclusion of this study is that although Ibn Kathīr is one of the representatives of the traditional riwayah (sound transmission through a chain of exegetes) exegesis, he advances his interpretive hermeneutics with multiple aspects that also involves dirayah (personal opinion) exegesis (tafsīr). SUMMARY The problem of naskh (abrogation) is one of the most important and controversial themes of science and principle of exegesis (ʿilm wan a-l uṣūl al-tafsīr) in Islamic tradition. In order to understand naskh, which is claimed to be occurred in the Qur’ānic text, it is necessary to involve the time of the revelation of the Qur’ān. An analysis of this period reveals that first Muslims regard the naskh as a natural process of the revelation and do not dispute over this matter. In other words, the controversial theme naskh is perceived by first addresses of the Qur’ān as a hermeneutical characteristic of the Qur’ānic revelation. Therefore, naskh was not considered as a controversial concept and debated its origins based on the question whether it organically belonged to the revelation. It will be clear that the different views on naskh (abrogation), particularly after the time of the Companions is not a conceptual problem; rather Muslim scholars differed in their methodological approaches to naksh. Naskh has not been questioned as a concept in early Islamic tradition. Rather it has gradually developed over the centuries. Naskh has been elaborated with the terms of uṣūl al-fiqh (principles of Law), such as takhṣīṣ (specification) and taqyīd (restriction) and its conceptual meaning has been extended after, particularly Abū ʿAbdullah Muḥammad b. Idris b. ʿAbbas al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820). To sum up, naskh is regarded with a methodological perspective. However, in the field of Turkish Islamic studies, especially after the Cumhuriyet, the term naskh is not regarded as a natural consequence of the process of tanzīl (revelation of the Qur’ān) neglecting the gradual aspect of revelation and the disputes over the term has been concluded either rejecting or simply accepting this concept without providing a satisfactory result on the matter. This article examines one of the most prominent Muslim exegete Ibn Kathīr’s (d. 1373) approach to the problem of naskh in the context of previous modern scholarship on naskh (abrogation). However, the analysis of Ibn Kathīr’s perception of naskh does not claim to be exhaustive on the matter. This requires a more comprehensive study on the concept of naskh, which is clearly beyond the scope of this article. Therefore, the present study intends to specifically focus on general aspect of Ibn Kathīr’s understanding of naskh and how his perception is presented in modern studies. When Ibn Kathīr’s commentary is analysed, it becomes clear that his understanding of naskh is significant and not necessarily in line with his riwayah (sound transmission through a chain of exegetes) tafsīr (exegesis). For example, he notes the dates between abrogating and abrogated Qur’ānic verses and claims that it is necessary to find certain proofs to validate the claim of abrogation (naskh) for particular legal judgments and verses, which clearly shows that Ibn Kathīr approaches to the problem of naskh with a methodological perspective. Ibn Kathīr’s interpretation of the well known Qur’ānic verse Q 2.106 in a different sense and most importantly his consideration of the matter only in the Qur’ānic context are clear examples of his methodological approach. His interpretation of Q 2.106 simply shows that he meticulously distinguish between the acceptance of naskh as a concept and as an interpretive method. The modern studies on naskh, on the contrary, consider the matter only on the base of a conceptual analysis. Ibn Kathīr prefers to transmit the traditional opinions based on personal interpretation and interprets some Qur’ānic verses. This is clearly his method of re-interpretation based on rational thinking (taʾwīl). His way of rational reasoning leads Ibn Kathīr to the rejection of naskh (abrogation) and the restriction of Qur’ānic verses that are related to the theory of abrogating and abrogated verses (nāsikh-mansūkh). This clearly proves that Ibn Kathīr does not merely adopts and employs the method of riwayah, which is contrary to the supposition that he is the exegete of a commentary that heavily draws on hadith reports and transmitted traditional reports. In fact, this most importantly shows that Ibn Kathīr’s Qur’ān commentary can also be regarded as a dirayah (personal opinion) tafsīr (exegesis) and that there are enough material in traditional Muslim Qur’ānic exegesis to re-analyse the problem of naskh (abrogation). Relying on this last point, this article argues that a comprehensive analysis of naskh requires a research on the traditional interpretive sources. Therefore, it might be helpful to reconsider the matter of naskh with its conceptual background in the works of traditional Muslim exegetes rather than focusing only on whether the concept naskh exits or not in the origins of the Qur’ānic revelation. At this point, an analysis of Ibn Kathīr’s perception of naskh and his rational reasoning that is employed in his commentary will contribute to the understanding of the theory of naskh (abrogation) in the tradition of Qur’ānic exegesis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:T. S. Eliot, Dharma Bum:Buddhist Lessons in The Waste LandThomas Michael LeCarnerMany critics have argued that T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land is a poem that attempts to deal with the physical destruction and human atrocities of the First World War, or that he had somehow expressed the disillusionment of a generation. For Eliot, such a characterization was too reductive. He replied, "Nonsense, I may have expressed for them (...) their own illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not form part of my intention." He did not want to be the poet of a "lost generation" of war survivors, but rather, he wanted, like most poets, to write for all ages. To that end, Eliot sought to transcend time and space by bringing to The Waste Land scores of literary, cultural, and artistic allusions from a variety of sources including the Upanishads, Greek mythology, the Bible, Chaucer, Dante, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Leonardo Da Vinci. Ironically, within this menagerie of literary homages, Eliot has created a vast emptiness, a world of pain, suffering, desolation and despair, as if to suggest that even in the presence of all the greatest artistic and cultural achievements of mankind, we must understand that life is transitory and material things ephemeral.The idea that life is fleeting and filled with suffering is at the core of Buddhist thought and one that Eliot surely learned from his graduate studies at Harvard. Several scholars have examined the influence of Eastern philosophy, and in particular Buddhist thought, on Eliot's work, largely in the past forty years.1 My argument departs from this scholarship in two significant ways. First, I will read The Waste Land through the lens of Eliot's graduate studies, and in doing so will show how the poem functions as a didactic, artistic representation of the Buddhist doctrine of samsāra, an idea that views the world as transitory, overcome [End Page 402] with lustful desires, and forever bound to a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. From this perspective, we can see how Eliot's understanding of the original Buddhist texts, which informed much of his writing of The Waste Land, allowed him to see through the all-too-common misconceptions about Buddhism during the early part of the twentieth century. Lastly, we will see that Eliot looked at these misconceptions as a psychological projection of Europeans' discontent with their own lives in an uncertain time.Over the past three decades an increasing number of scholars have studied Eliot's graduate work. In 1985, Jeffrey Perl and Andrew Tuck published a study that examines the impact that Eliot's coursework and professors had on during his studies at Harvard.2 Perl and Tuck point out that Eliot devoted nearly one third of his graduate program to the study of Asian philosophy and philology. Eliot studied Sanskrit and Pali under C. R. Lanman, the preeminent Sanskrit specialist of the age. In his third year, Eliot took a course entitled "Schools of Religious and Philosophical Thought in Japan" with Professor Masaharu Anesaki, a course that had a profound impact on him. Eliot was exposed to several schools of Buddhism in his studies including the Kegon, Shingon, and Tendai, which are characterized as "descendants of the Madhyamika School, which was founded in the second century A.D. by Nāgārjuna, the Indian Buddhist philosopher." Nāgārjuna is widely considered the most influential Buddhist philosopher after Siddhartha Gautama himself and is the leading proponent of the Mādhyamika ("Middle Way") philosophy.The central teaching of Nāgārjuna was the doctrine of śūnyatā, or as it is often translated, "emptiness." For Mahāyāha Buddhists, all things are totally empty of any defining essence. Thus, all things are void of any fixed identity or inherent existence and remain in a constant state of impermanence, change, and flux. This is the fundamental premise of Mahāyāha Buddhism. Only through the realization of this emptiness in material things can one achieve Buddhahood. According to one standard text, "the real knowledge of Buddha nature is empty of empirical content, and it is the discovery of that emptiness or void, śūnyatā, of the true Buddha... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Epistemology in Pracīna and Navya NyāyaJonardon GaneriEpistemology in Pracīna and Navya Nyāya. By Sukharanjan Saha. Kolkata: Jadavpur University, 2003. Pp. 166.Epistemology in Pracīna and Navya Nyāya, by Sukharanjan Saha, usefully collates ten previously published essays on Indian epistemology: two longer essays first published in 1986 and a series of more recent shorter pieces. The leading thesis of the book is that the epistemology of the older writers in (...) the tradition of Nyāya-Vaiṣesika is, in important respects, better than the "new epistemology" originating with Gaṅgeśa. Sustained attention is given to the epistemology of the Vaiśeṣika thinker Praśastapāda (ca. A.D. 660), and the first six essays all "seek to show that Praśastapāda's views are more acceptable than those of Gaṅgeśa considered from the point of view of contemporary epistemology" (p. 4). The remaining essays argue in support of a similar conclusion with regard to certain ideas found in the older Nyāya of Gautama and Vātsyāyana. The titles of the essays collected here are: (1) "Epistemology in Pracīna and Navya Nyāya"; (2) "Kindred Points in an Old Epistemology" (1986); (3) "Gaṅgeśa's Reactions to Some Gettier-like Problems" (1986); (4) "The Unestab-lished Reason in Nyāya"; (5) "The Savyabhicāra Hetvābhāsa in Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika Schools"; (6) "The Thesis of Nirvikalpaka in Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika"; (7) "Truth as Avyabhicāritatva"; (8) "A Note on the Definition of Pramā; (9) "Nyāya Theory of Predication"; (10) "The Present and Its Knowledge"; and (11) "Types of Inference in Gautama and Vātsyāyana."Whether or not one finds oneself in agreement with Saha's specific arguments, the general conception of the book seems to me to be laudable. The astonishing [End Page 120] continuity of the Indian philosophical tradition makes it all too easy to survey the history of Indian philosophy and assume that historical development runs in tandem with philosophical progression. It is tempting to think, for example, that Gaṅśa, reviewing the epistemology of the older tradition, and considering the various objections that had been brought against it by external critics like Śrīharṣa and the later Buddhists, produced a new theory that was both an improvement on and a systematization of earlier Nyāya epistemology. To succumb to this temptation would be a mistake, however, for at least two reasons. First, it might be that the discussion of the earlier thinkers was, though less sophisticated, "closer to the ground," so to speak, than that of their successors. The comparative absence of theoretical baggage may have enabled those earlier writers to remain true to the facts, even when they could not easily be explained or systematized. This does indeed seem to be the case with the sūtra texts, and it is also very noticeably the case with Praśastapāda, who exhibited, for instance in his discussion of motion, an openness to the facts rather than closure born of theoretical over-commitment.Second and relatedly, it might be that the earlier thinkers had not yet closed down the range of topics and approaches deemed worthy of philosophical discussion or exploration. Thus, again in the sūtras, we find the beginnings of discussions on an enormous array of issues and hypotheses, not all of which were subsequently picked up or extended in later theory. Saha, for example, argues that Gaṅgeśa committed the later tradition to a rigid causal theory of knowledge, and suggests further that because of this he "failed to appreciate the richness of the philosophical insight of the founders of the system of philosophy to which he owes his allegiance" (p. 69). If this is right, then a return to the earlier strata of the tradition might well lead to an enrichment of our understanding of the range of philosophical possibility. Saha's approach, then, helps to guard the modern student of Indian philosophy from mistakenly thinking that "newer is always better," just as we have learned to be on guard against the older and contrary... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Epistemology in Pracīna and Navya NyāyaJonardon GaneriEpistemology in Pracīna and Navya Nyāya. By Sukharanjan Saha. Kolkata: Jadavpur University, 2003. Pp. 166.Epistemology in Pracīna and Navya Nyāya, by Sukharanjan Saha, usefully collates ten previously published essays on Indian epistemology: two longer essays first published in 1986 and a series of more recent shorter pieces. The leading thesis of the book is that the epistemology of the older writers in (...) the tradition of Nyāya-Vaiṣesika is, in important respects, better than the "new epistemology" originating with Gaṅgeśa. Sustained attention is given to the epistemology of the Vaiśeṣika thinker Praśastapāda (ca. A.D. 660), and the first six essays all "seek to show that Praśastapāda's views are more acceptable than those of Gaṅgeśa considered from the point of view of contemporary epistemology" (p. 4). The remaining essays argue in support of a similar conclusion with regard to certain ideas found in the older Nyāya of Gautama and Vātsyāyana. The titles of the essays collected here are: (1) "Epistemology in Pracīna and Navya Nyāya"; (2) "Kindred Points in an Old Epistemology" (1986); (3) "Gaṅgeśa's Reactions to Some Gettier-like Problems" (1986); (4) "The Unestab-lished Reason in Nyāya"; (5) "The Savyabhicāra Hetvābhāsa in Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika Schools"; (6) "The Thesis of Nirvikalpaka in Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika"; (7) "Truth as Avyabhicāritatva"; (8) "A Note on the Definition of Pramā; (9) "Nyāya Theory of Predication"; (10) "The Present and Its Knowledge"; and (11) "Types of Inference in Gautama and Vātsyāyana."Whether or not one finds oneself in agreement with Saha's specific arguments, the general conception of the book seems to me to be laudable. The astonishing [End Page 120] continuity of the Indian philosophical tradition makes it all too easy to survey the history of Indian philosophy and assume that historical development runs in tandem with philosophical progression. It is tempting to think, for example, that Gaṅśa, reviewing the epistemology of the older tradition, and considering the various objections that had been brought against it by external critics like Śrīharṣa and the later Buddhists, produced a new theory that was both an improvement on and a systematization of earlier Nyāya epistemology. To succumb to this temptation would be a mistake, however, for at least two reasons. First, it might be that the discussion of the earlier thinkers was, though less sophisticated, "closer to the ground," so to speak, than that of their successors. The comparative absence of theoretical baggage may have enabled those earlier writers to remain true to the facts, even when they could not easily be explained or systematized. This does indeed seem to be the case with the sūtra texts, and it is also very noticeably the case with Praśastapāda, who exhibited, for instance in his discussion of motion, an openness to the facts rather than closure born of theoretical over-commitment.Second and relatedly, it might be that the earlier thinkers had not yet closed down the range of topics and approaches deemed worthy of philosophical discussion or exploration. Thus, again in the sūtras, we find the beginnings of discussions on an enormous array of issues and hypotheses, not all of which were subsequently picked up or extended in later theory. Saha, for example, argues that Gaṅgeśa committed the later tradition to a rigid causal theory of knowledge, and suggests further that because of this he "failed to appreciate the richness of the philosophical insight of the founders of the system of philosophy to which he owes his allegiance" (p. 69). If this is right, then a return to the earlier strata of the tradition might well lead to an enrichment of our understanding of the range of philosophical possibility. Saha's approach, then, helps to guard the modern student of Indian philosophy from mistakenly thinking that "newer is always better," just as we have learned to be on guard against the older and contrary... (shrink)

On the development of competency and professionalism of teachers and education in Indonesia.

Text on the fundamentals of Nyaya philosophy with Gujarati commentary.

Nyaya Sutra offers a new English translation of the text ascribed to Aksapada, an Indian philosopher who lived around the beginning of the Common Era. The translation is accompanied by the original Sanskrit text and an original commentary. The commentary explains every sutra separately and identifies the sources of the Nyaya Sutra. It analyses the way older ideas on epistemology, logic and soteriology were presented as a new coherent system of thought. The book puts forward that the main goal of (...) the Nyaya Sutra: to define what it considered the basic tenets of a soteriology and how the goal of this soteriology could be reached by rationally applying epistemological and logical methods to finding out the truth. In turn, this truth was thought to lead to the ultimate soteriological goal of freedom from suffering. Showing the coherence of the text and its ultimate goal being soteriological, the new commentary also discusses many scholarly issues regarding the Nyaya Sutra and its position in the history of Indian philosophy. This book will be of interest to researchers studying Indian philosophy, world philosophies, epistemology, logic, philosophical method, art of debate, soteriology, rationalism, spirituality, Hinduism, Indian religions and religious studies. (shrink)

Peace is a universal ideal, but its political life is a great paradox: "peace" is the opposite of war, but it also enables war. If peace is the elimination of war, then what does it mean to wage war for the sake of peace? What does peace mean when some say that they are committed to it but that their enemies do not value it? Why is it that associating peace with other ideals, like justice, friendship, security, and law, does (...) little to distance peace from war? Although political theory has dealt extensively with most major concepts that today define "the political" it has paid relatively scant critical attention to peace, the very concept that is often said to be the major aim and ideal of humanity. In War for Peace, Murad Idris looks at the ways that peace has been treated across the writings of ten thinkers from ancient and modern political thought, from Plato to Immanuel Kant and Sayyid Qutb, to produce an original and striking account of what peace means and how it works. Idris argues that peace is parasitical in that the addition of other ideals into peace, such as law, security, and friendship, reduces it to consensus and actually facilitates war; it is provincial in that its universalized content reflects particularistic desires and fears, constructions of difference, and hierarchies within humanity; and it is polemical, in that its idealization is not only the product of antagonisms, but also enables hostility. War for Peace uncovers the basis of peace's moralities and the political functions of its idealizations, historically and into the present. This bold and ambitious book confronts readers with the impurity of peace as an ideal, and the pressing need to think beyond universal peace. (shrink)

Massimiliano Tomba's Insurgent Universality locates an “alternative legacy of modernity” in how revolutionary movements across three centuries and four continents interpreted and claimed different pasts, concepts, and alternatives for themselves. These movements, from the Communards to the Zapatistas to the Russian Revolutionaries, engaged in democratic experiments in self-government, radical equality, and collective possession. In this forum, Tomba's interlocutors offer reflections and questions about the position of the critical historian, universality, and colonialism. Tomba's response explains the stakes of his project with (...) two further examples of his historiographic practice. (shrink)

À partir du cadre de consultation d’évaluation préalable à la prise en charge dans la consultation transculturelle, l’auteur aborde deux situations d’accompagnement culturellement éclairé à la parentalité par don traditionnel d’enfant et par adoption dans la première situation et par don à la fois légal et légitime d’ovocytes dans la seconde. Les représentations culturelles de la parentalité chez les deux familles migrantes se trouvent dynamisées par la loi du pays d’accueil et les techniques de procréation médicalement assistée pour donner lieu (...) à des métissages et à de nouvelles manières de faire famille en situation migratoire. L’étrangeté des représentations et des pratiques culturelles de la parentalité implique un décentrage clinique évitant leur interprétation par des troubles psychiques ou leur réduction à des croyances n’ayant pas ou peu de poids face à la science. (shrink)

Classical work on Nyaya philosophy; includes Nyāyabhāṣya and Sunandā commentary.

This article studies the politics and ethics in Ibn Ṭufayl’s twelfth-century allegory, Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. I discuss this allegory alongside Ibn Sīnā’s own Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and Absāl and Salāmān, first, to show that their representations of politics are not reducible to epistemology, and second, to argue that Ibn Ṭufayl inverts the political principles depicted in Ibn Sīnā’s two tales. The paper focuses on how the characters in each allegory interact with one another, and it reconstructs the neglected politics (...) and ethics of the allegories’ seemingly minor characters. I argue that in Ibn Tufayl’s descriptions of Ḥayy’s failure to convert the neighboring islanders, the islanders consistently act in accordance with three political ideals: association, hospitality, and friendship. The islanders’ reactions to Ḥayy’s arrival and to his attempts to ‘educate’ them show each of these ideals broken down into an antinomy. Ibn Tufayl’s critique of these political ideals turns on their internal potential for self-subversion. (shrink)