{"title":"The Mirror in Vedic India: Its Ancient Use and Its Present Relevance in Dating Texts","authors":"A. Parpola","doi":"10.23993/STORE.76275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23993/STORE.76275","url":null,"abstract":"The major first part of the paper collects as exhaustively as possible all references to 'mirror' occurring in Vedic literature (c. 1200-300 BCE), and presents them with sufficient context in Sanskrit and English in order to show how and why the mirror was used in Vedic rituals and Vedic culture in general, and what meaning was ascribed to it. The second part of the paper discusses a fact of major significance that emerges from this recording: in the extensive older Vedic literature of the Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas and Śrautasūtras (excepting the late Kātyāyana-Śrautasūtra) there is no reference to the mirror at all. Therefore it seems likely that the mirror was not known in Vedic India until it was introduced to South Asia from the Persian Empire at the end of the sixth century BCE. The later Vedic literature, starting possibly with the Āraṇyakas, but definitely with the early Upaniṣads, postdates 500 BCE. So far we have lacked a similar firm date for Vedic literature.","PeriodicalId":178307,"journal":{"name":"Studia Orientalia Electronica","volume":"111 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134496515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Intertextuality, Isiac Features, and the Shaping of the Sacred Feminine in Trimorphic Protennoia (NHC XIII, 1)","authors":"Nicolò Sassi","doi":"10.23993/STORE.76643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23993/STORE.76643","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this paper is to bring to light through intertextual analysis some dimensions of continuity between the Hellenistic and Imperial theology of Isis and the figure of the Sacred Feminine as it appears in the Trimorphic Protennoia (NHC XIII 1). Instead of attempting to establish a diachronic (=historical) relationship of dependence between sources (e.g., borrowing, allusion, influence), this study establishes correspondences that can be traced on the literary level. Through a reception-oriented analysis, it will be possible to show the continuity between the Isiac religion and the late ancient mysticism of the Trimorphic Protennoia. A late ancient reader would have experienced the Nag Hammadi text in dialogue with Isiac traditions, and this literary dialogue with the Isiac religion would have nurtured and shaped their understanding of the sacred feminine described in the Trimorphic Protennoia.","PeriodicalId":178307,"journal":{"name":"Studia Orientalia Electronica","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123767933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sound Changes in the (Pre-)Masoretic Reading Tradition and the Original Pronunciation of Biblical Aramaic","authors":"B. Suchard","doi":"10.23993/STORE.74104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23993/STORE.74104","url":null,"abstract":"For nearly a thousand years, the texts of the Hebrew Bible were transmitted both in writing, as consonantal texts lacking much of the information on their pronunciation, and orally, as an accompanying reading tradition which supplied this information. During this period of oral transmission, sound changes affected the reading tradition. This paper identifies a number of sound changes that took place in the reading tradition by comparing their effects on Biblical Hebrew to those on Biblical Aramaic, the related but distinct language of a small part of the biblical corpus: sound changes that affect both languages equally probably took place in the reading tradition, while those that are limited to one language probably preceded this shared oral transmission. Drawing this distinction allows us to reconstruct the pronunciation of Biblical Aramaic as it was fixed in the reading tradition, highlighting several morphological discrepancies between the dialect underlying it and that of the consonantal texts.","PeriodicalId":178307,"journal":{"name":"Studia Orientalia Electronica","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130835017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Glimpses of Loptuq Folk Botany: Phytonyms and Plant Knowledge in Sven Hedin’s Herbarium Notes from the Lower Tarim River Area as a Source for Ethnobiological Research","authors":"I. Svanberg, Patrick Hällzon, S. Ståhlberg","doi":"10.23993/STORE.76475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23993/STORE.76475","url":null,"abstract":"This interdisciplinary study discusses the vernacular phytonyms and other ethnobiological aspects of vegetation in the Loptuq (Loplik) habitat on the Lower Tarim River. This small Turkic-speaking group lived as fisher-foragers in the Lopnor (Lop Lake) area in East Turkestan, now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Information about this unique group, and especially the folk knowledge of plants in the area, is scant. In 1900, Swedish explorer Sven Hedin collected plant voucher specimens for the Swedish Natural History Museum in Stockholm. He noted local names on herbarium labels, thus providing modern researchers a rare glimpse into the Loptuq world. As the traditional way of life is already lost and the Loptuq language almost extinct, every trace of the former culture is of significance when trying to understand the peculiarities of human habitats and survival in arid areas. The ethnobiological analysis can further contribute to other fields, such as climate change, and define the place of the Loptuq on the linguistic and cultural map of Central Asia.","PeriodicalId":178307,"journal":{"name":"Studia Orientalia Electronica","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123839329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East: Approaches from Assyriology and Beyond","authors":"Heidi Kovanen","doi":"10.23993/store.83576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23993/store.83576","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":178307,"journal":{"name":"Studia Orientalia Electronica","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123874793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gendered Nationalism, Neo-Nomadism, and Ethnic-Based Exclusivity in Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Uzbek Nationalist Discourses","authors":"Fabio Belafatti","doi":"10.23993/STORE.69958","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23993/STORE.69958","url":null,"abstract":"Existing literature on gender and nationalism has postulated that nationalist narratives tend to convey patriarchal and restrictive views of gender roles, with women’s domesticity and subordination at the core of such interpretations. This paper tests this theory by looking at three examples of state-sponsored or state-produced communication in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, arguing that the simple existence of a regime’s nationalist ideological orientation is not per se sufficient to explain or anticipate the kind of gender narratives a regime will adopt. Instead, the paper calls for an analysis of internal political mechanisms and incentives in order to explain and anticipate the specific forms that discourses around gender will take in a given political environment. In order to do so, it tries to combine the rational choice-based “Selectorate Theory” (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003) with existing literature on nationalism and gender, to define a connection between political systems on the one hand and discourses on the other.","PeriodicalId":178307,"journal":{"name":"Studia Orientalia Electronica","volume":"395 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124291133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Changing Perceptions of Türk Identity Among the Medieval Nomads of Central Eurasia","authors":"I. Zimonyi","doi":"10.23993/STORE.69834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23993/STORE.69834","url":null,"abstract":"The Türk Khaganate and the ethnonym Türk have been used in modern nation-building processes among the Turkic-speaking peoples of Eurasia since the end of the nineteenth century. The historical importance of the name is exemplified by the country of Turkey today, the plan for a Turkic Republic in Central Asia in the 1920s, and the latest Kazak (Tatar) historiography after the fall of the Soviet Union. The study focuses on the meanings of Türk in the period of the Türk Khaganate (6th–8th centuries). Its first denotation is for an ethnic community or nationality, that is, a nomadic tribal confederation defined by use of the model of gens, including a common origin, language, and traditions with centuries of a stable political framework and the majority of society sharing common law. The second aspect of the usage of the term Türk, being political, referred to all peoples subject to the power of the Türk Khagan. After the fall of the Türk Khaganate, both meanings faded away due to the lack of political stability in the history of the Eurasian steppe, revealing an absence of ethnic continuity from the Middle Ages. However, fragments of Türk identity may have survived in the forms of language community, the Islamic legend of descent from an eponymos hero, and a nomadic way of life opposed to the territorial principles of settled civilisations.","PeriodicalId":178307,"journal":{"name":"Studia Orientalia Electronica","volume":"147 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116368258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Humorism and Characterization in Topan’s Mfalme Juha","authors":"Emiliano Minerba","doi":"10.23993/STORE.69814","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23993/STORE.69814","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses the character of King Juha, the protagonist of the comedy Mfalme Juha by Farouk Topan, using an approach that considers the humoristic dimension of this character. The definition of humorism employed here is that given by Pirandello: the result of an aesthetic process in which the comic effect deriving from an object of laughter is tempered and contrasted by a “sentiment of the contrary” that observes and builds empathy with the inner contradictions of the object itself. After a short outline of Mfalme Juha’s critical history which shows that the humoristic dimension of King Juha has never been considered in critiques, this paper focuses on an analysis of this character, in which the core feature of egocentricity is identified. Juha’s egocentricity and its humoristic nature are analysed in the character’s relationship with his subjects as their king and in his idea of art and culture; in both cases it is shown that what is important is not the wickedness or egoism of Juha, but his lack of comprehension of the world. Juha is incapable of understanding his environment and other people, since he can not doubt his own superiority: this puts him in several comic situations, but on the other hand makes him a victim of his smart subjects, so that he arouses a feeling of sympathy in which Pirandello’s sentiment of the contrary can be traced.","PeriodicalId":178307,"journal":{"name":"Studia Orientalia Electronica","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128847357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Quotative in Bashkir","authors":"Teija Greed","doi":"10.23993/STORE.69685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23993/STORE.69685","url":null,"abstract":"Evidentiality is a widely researched category in contemporary linguistics, both from the viewpoint of grammatical expression and also that of semantics/pragmatics. Amongst markers expressing information source is the illocutionary evidential quotative, which codes a speech report with an explicit reference to the quoted source. This article investigates the quotative particle tip in Bashkir, a Kipchak-Bulgar Turkic language spoken in the Russian Federation. In its default quotative meaning, tip signals direct speech and functions as a syntactic complementiser. This function was found to have extended from spoken utterances to coding thoughts and experiences in the context of semi-direct speech. A separate function of tip is its use as an adverbialiser signalling a logical relation and conveying the meaning of intention/purpose. \u0000Different categories were found to interact in the functions of tip. In the context of semi-direct speech, the meaning tip conveys is linked with the semantic dimension of subjectivity, which pertains to the cognitive processing and expressing of information by the speaker/experiencer. The interplay of the marker tip was investigated in conjunction with ten complement-taking verbs, whose degree and strength of subjectivity were found to range from neutral to strong. When combined with küreü ‘see’, tip introduces visual ambiguity and epistemic uncertainty, for example, in dream scenes. With the verbs beleü ‘know’ and išeteü ‘hear’, tip conveys a multisubjective meaning: in addition to signalling what the experiential subject has heard or found out, the marker also codes the involvement of some other subject, the original source, thus giving voice to multiple speakers and merging them.","PeriodicalId":178307,"journal":{"name":"Studia Orientalia Electronica","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133155844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Elephant's Footprint: An Ancient Indian Logic Diagram","authors":"D. Wujastyk","doi":"10.23993/STORE.70098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23993/STORE.70098","url":null,"abstract":"A seminal article by Margaret Baron, published in 1969, explored the history of set diagrams (Venn diagrams). However, Baron did not look beyond the evidence of European sources. This article presents evidence of a literary simile from ancient India that exemplifies the idea of a larger circle including within it many smaller circles, each circle standing for an ethical concept. The simile – an elephant's footprint enclosing the footprints of smaller animals – first appears in the Buddhist Canon, and it was used occasionally in South Asian literature through the following millennia until the eighteenth century. I argue that the Elephant's Foot simile can be added to Baron’s catalogue of historical cases where ancient authors were using language that implied a simple concept of logical sets.","PeriodicalId":178307,"journal":{"name":"Studia Orientalia Electronica","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125076143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}