Yimye's Blog

Link to the final project

Yeseul Lisa Yim — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 01:19:42 +0000

http://rlg245finaleproject.tumblr.com/

Jews and silkroad

Yeseul Lisa Yim — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:15:26 +0000

As Wood mentions in her book-length study of the Silk Road, Jewish scroll texts were found among the possessions of the Abbott Wang at the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas in Dunhuang (Wood: 90). However, the literature documenting a Jewish presence in either China or along the Silk Road route itself, which traversed many kingdoms, is scanty. It was not until the 20th century that archaeologists and historians even became aware that Jews were living and working in China and that they also lived in settlements along the Silk Route. Cansdale examines the historical documents from a number of dig sites as well as the uncovering of evidence during dam construction in mid 20th century. Her evidence is based on the small number of written materials and artifacts from locations that reveal a Jewish presence, either in the form of traveling through or in fixed settlements. Much of this has to be reconstructed using a general knowledge of Jewish peoples lives in the first centuries after the destruction of their temple and the forced out-migration from Egypt and ancient Palestine.
Was there truly a Jewish Khan who ruled an empire that stretched from the Sea of Azov to the Caspian Sea? (Cansdale: 25) Did Jewish merchants practice their religion in Cathay? What was the status of the Jewish people living in what is now Afganistan? How did they travel, overland or by sea-routes or both? Islamic rule over the Byzantine East brought Christians and Jews under Islamic rule. While they had to pay higher taxes and were faced with some restrictions on their lives, the Islamic rulers generally allowed Jews to live openly and to travel as merchants in any lands, including Christian, Muslim and to Buddhist-Confucian China (Cansdale:24-27). Jews settled in India, to a large extent in Persia, and as evidence shows, along areas of the Silk Route. They traveled both by land, from Persia and India and by sea, ending up in port cities of China where they engaged as traders and merchants bring exotic goods back to their points of origin.
As Cansdale notes the Jews were called Radhanites in one area, importing “male and female slaves, brocade, furs and swords” from the West and “musk aloe wood, camphor and cinnamon besides a variety of other unnamed goods” from the East (Cansdale: 29) Cansdale believes that the origin point for these Jewish merchants was Bagdad, not France as some scholars have speculated. Her reasoning has to do with the way that people traveled, and the kind of dangers and hardships associated with passage along the Silk Road overland over the sea-routes to the East (Cansdale: 28-29).
It would be valuable to understand Jewish experience in these territories and cultures from Jewish texts themselves. It is also interesting to ponder why there is, if these texts do not exist, so little information on Jewish life during these centuries in the vast areas stretching from India to China. How did their culture and religious ideas impact or influence Chinese, Indian, Persian people? Was Islam affected in any way by Jewish cultural traditions? These are the kinds of questions that seem to be discussed when looking at Buddhism, Islam and Christian syncretic trends in a variety of times and locations? Why is this subject area so voiceless?

Bibliography

Cansdale, Lena “Jews on the Silk Roads”

Wood, Frances, The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Great Game

Yeseul Lisa Yim — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:32:08 +0000

The superiority and the racism of the European explorers along the Silk Road in the 19th century and into the mid-20th century is evident in Wood’s description of their attitudes towards the people in whose lands they were map making, collecting artifacts and exploring for lost, ancient cities. This creates a strange contradiction in the motives, attitudes and behaviours of such prominent visitors as the Russian Przhevalsky or the Swede Hedin. The tone of Wood’s writing, however, reveals the usual mix of criticism of the worst aspects of European feelings of superiority, with a wide-eyed fascination with their actual ‘adventures’ as explorers.
This in part comes from the excerpts that she reprints from the actual books and journals that the explorers themselves wrote, recording their experiences. There is a kind of hardy, boy’s world of adventure. One thinks of the movie Indiana Jones or something like that, but in the Spielberg movie there is not really any of the irony or awareness of what might be wrong about the archaeologist/adventurer entering ancient cities to bring artifacts from those cultures back to European societies, museums and collectors. The entire period of European movement into Central and South Asia in the colonial period occurs, as the book seems to show us, because of the already established bases in India. In addition, geographical closeness between Russia and China enabled the Russians, in an expansionist nationalist period, to become among the new invaders in lands where borders were always possibly about to be breached.
Just as when we watch reports of the Americans or British invading Iraq in the 2000s we are understanding the entry into sovereign territory through catchy titles, like “Operation Desert Storm”. Wood refers to Oscar Wilde’s witty discussion of European expansion and rivalries in Asia as the “Great Game”. This is a very good way to describe something that is largely disturbing. The entire period does feel like a game; again like a boy’s adventure story. In fact one can imagine that the explorers not only risked their lives, and saw the lives of their crews come to an end as they obsessively pushed forward with determination to reach Tibet, for example, as a great game. Exploring, mapping, naming, discovering treasures – these seem to be almost kinds of ‘rushes’: emotional and perhaps even a way to find something meaningful, as if men have to explore and name to prove their superiority over that which they name, in the process of achieving this.
It was an age of science and a period of self-conscious interest in cataloguing things. Said has noted this in his writings on Orientalism: the way that the Western intellectual and academics and adventurers wanted to create an Orient, mysterious and controllable. Two things are very striking: one, the difference between the excitement to find things from cultures where no living people are anymore and make those artifacts and places into mythology, and 2) to put down the actual inhabitants that are alive at the time of the travels. This is a strange thing that becomes even stranger when we learn that Hedin, for example, met with Hitler and that they discussed eating yogurt and how to have a long life.
To conclude, the Europeans battled and fought over territory that had been fought over for centuries: they brought new dynamics to the region, such as increased firepower and technology that by the 20th century enabled the British to overpower the Tibetans. Our knowledge of the ancient civilizations again mainly comes from the European reconstructing of them from artifacts; there are it seems less observational sources of life and times in the Silk Route towns written by the ancient peoples who lived, worked and travelled along the routes. As well, one last thing: the difficulty of mastering the terrain, and being able to travel along the harsh routes, show us indeed something about what life would have been like over centuries of travel, exchange of ideas, trade, commerce, warfare and syncretism. The Europeans had new technology but they did not have the skill or endurance or knowledge of the landscape that the Asians, Indians, Chinese, Tibetans, Mongolians had.

Studying Islam in a Post 9/11 world

Yeseul Lisa Yim — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:19:07 +0000

The two articles show how there is a great gap between the way Islam is viewed in the post 9/11 period and the way historic Islamic culture we have started to study in this course was appreciated or understood during the times of Classical Chinese civilization. This raises a number of troubling questions, such as the militant Islamists of the 21st century who claim that the true Islamic faith is of a severe and fundamentalist shape are very wrong and creating a strange portrayal of their own religious traditions.
Examining the way religious traditions intersected, grew and lived together along the Silk Road enables one to see the process of syncretic traditions emerging. Although religions took a shape more closely related to already existing dominant religious traditions of an area, i.e. a Chinese Buddhism different in shape from Indian Buddhism, as Edward Said in his article in The Nation suggests we always live in a world of intersections, not separate moral or political systems.
War, strife, religious expansion through aggression – as Said maintains – are found in all the religious traditions throughout history. Today, Christian-Western aggression towards people living in impoverished areas of the world who happen to practice different religions appears to ‘us’ as threatening. Terrorism is a method to induce fear and crush the other’s society. But are all Islamic people involved in this? The answer is no. Said calls this a cartoon approach to complex problems. This is propaganda on both sides of the tense divide of a post 9/11 world.
Hirschkind and Mahmood raises issues about the oversights of American feminism and American foreign policy in their supposed rescue of Islamic women from the Taliban. They suggest that the U.S. has to take responsibility for the plight of women in Afghanistan, particularly considering that the U.S. armed and trained the extremists in the Afganistan/Pakistan region in the first place. Out of this process emerged the movements like Taliban and even Al Qaeda, which, Said, critical of the West as much as he is of terrorism, identifies as somehow intertwined problems – both approaches morally suspect.
Fears of the ‘other’ and aggressive concepts like my religion or culture is better than yours could be argued are examples of pessimism in the human spirit: people are bad and the ones ‘over there’ are even worse. Studying history in our class brings a different way of looking at religion: we see the rich cultural and spiritual aspects of Islam, but we also see how the West tried, from the medieval period on, to place its culture, religious values and political systems in a superior position to the traditional East. Just as much, Chinese and Persian cultures felt they were superior to each other and to the West.
My sense is that there are opposing conflicting sides, always, but there are also more balanced and relaxed views about commonalities and respect for diversity. Islamic societies, for example, once gathered the great libraries keeping records of Ancient Greek and Roman culture that would eventually help reshape Europe during the Renaissance. Islam allowed and protected Judeo-Christian religionists to live safely in their kingdoms. Today we have the big libraries and the idea that we are protecting civilization from those who would attack its very liberal beliefs.
How are we to move beyond this kind of us-them scenario? Unfortunately as these two articles show it is easier today to create easy to digest messages that are nothing more than propaganda or stereotypes which create divisions and increase hatred. Said’s sense that both the West and the Islamic societies are participating in this war of turning each other into enemies and villains, requires us to think harder and more deeply about how ‘enemies’ are manufactured, rather than just blindly agreeing with what we are told. Believing in simple stories causes us to fear our neighbours and in doing so, makes them more wary of us: both of us are on edge staring at each other, wondering who is going to strike first.

Blog “Islam”

Yeseul Lisa Yim — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:35:00 +0000

Today unfortunately there are so many stereotypes and negative ideas about the Islamic religion, even though it is one of the main religious traditions in the world, with links to Judaism and Christianity. The Quran states that the Prophet Mohammed is the last Prophet to speak directly to, or receive messages from God, making his visions the final truth. This puts Jesus in a lower position, i.e. he is to Muslims a Godly Prophet but not the final word of customs, rituals, ceremonies, and final days.
Islam was an earthly religion, in that its leaders are not only religious men but also warriors and kings. To Christians, from the medieval period onward, this is perceived as a threat, and at times was truly a threat – in the shape of military battles between Christian and Islamic forces such as the Crusades.
China’s ancient cultures and mix of Buddhist, Daoist and later Confucian state ethics made it difficult for Islam to gain a strong foothold in Imperial China, despite the efforts of Islamic traders and missionaries who traveled along the Silk Road, most likely from Central Asia where Islam made greater inroads. In addition, as Ayoub notes, Islam spread more fully in parts of South East Asia like Indonesia, so that there were other possible routes of transmission apart from India and Central Asia or the Middle East.
Because of the high international traffic along the Silk Road, and the highly developed material, scientific and spiritual traditions in Chinese territories, Islamic people were passing through and, as it is a religion that is based on trying to convert people, as is Christianity as well, attempting to transform China into a more Islamic based society. According to Ayoub this was never achieved, in part because Chinese felt superior to Islam as well as other religious traditions deemed foreign, or more foreign than the adoption of Buddhism.
If as Ernst contends there has always been misunderstandings and antagonism between Christians and Muslims, with Christians in the West feeling superior to Islam, and threatened by its ideas, the Chinese view of their own superiority to Islam shows how while religious traditions can become intertwined or syncretic, there is also a history of antagonism or mistrust existing between religious and cultural groups.

group topic “Manichaesim”

Yeseul Lisa Yim — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:33:41 +0000

This is a Persian Iranian religious belief system originating with the prophet Mani in the 3rd century A.D. It is an elaborate religious tradition with a duality basic to it – that of the opposition between good (light) and evil (darkness).
It is a religion which spread widely across both the East and West, reaching China, where in the medieval period Christians like Marco Polo mistook it for a Christian religion. In fact there are reasons why Christians would have thought it was related to or a version of Christianity, like Nestorian Christianity because it was a religious tradition that incorporated into it Jesus, Buddha and other “God” figures. In this way, like Islam, it does not emerge out of totally separate traditions, and as a result links between many ancient religions that were prominent in the early centuries A.D. can be established, even though Manichaeism was seen as more of a threat than able to be embraced or exist alongside other religious traditions.
The Mani-Codex, as Aitke writes, shows that Mani came himself from some variant of Christian-Judaism cult, at a time when the two religions shared traditions directly rather than were separated out from each other. Mani in fact competed directly with the Christian Church which banned the religion from Rome after Rome became Christian. Its appeal lies in its discussion of good and evil existing in every one rather than outside of man, giving it an almost psychological nature in the war in the soul. (Aitke)
While it incorporated ideas and symbols from any religion dominating in the region it spread to, revealing a high degree of scholarship on the part of Mani and his main followers, there is a question about whether it is syncretic or not. Syncretic religions usually mean that there are two or more systems that become joined, like Native people in Canada transforming Catholic Saints into or alongside of nature spirits, finding harmony or intermingling, but in Manichaeism there is more of a constant core of set beliefs (the duality principle) that still underlies and gives the religion its uniqueness. If anything it seems to suggest a way to find a universal set of religious symbols in all religions and then how to integrate those concepts into its overarching and complex system, perhaps as a means to try to show its superiority over other religions, or to prove it is the true, one system that all others belong to.

Blog Cosmopolitan Chang’an

Yeseul Lisa Yim — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:31:37 +0000

The two readings by Hanson and Schafer discuss a period in Chinese history, the T’ang Dynasty, during which time, for three centuries, a great expansion of wealth, influx of foreigners, from envoys to merchants, and flourishing of the arts, from poetry to visual art, characterizes the entire period. It is both mercantile in nature as well as based on regal court culture, war and systemization of philosophy into material culture.
Both of the scholar-writers are Western and there is perhaps a hint of exoticism that seeps into the writing, especially true in Schafer who uses a very descriptive writing style to enable the reader to visualize not only the splendours of the material culture, but also the various periods of corruption, warfare and decay. In one way, it is fascinating reading because it gives a glimpse into a long-ago time in history where a kind of ‘international’ commerce and intersection of culture, wealth, and arts were centred in cities in Asia: Canton, Chiao-chou, Yang-chou.
Schafer’s writing reads like a Hollywood movie version though, or a Hong Kong historical martial arts entertainment with its discussion of dangerous pirates, invading armies, corrupt despots as well as more moral leaders and their struggles. The fantastic romanticism of courtesans for wealthy merchants and the beautiful poetry that life in urban China inspired makes the reader compare that time in history to our own consumer, jet-set culture.
Hanson clarifies to a greater extent the fundamental differences between modern day capitalist democracy and life in the Chinese capital at least in one period of the T’ang. This city of Changan was built in a rectangle with distinct walled zones and under a very strict set of rules and regulations including curfews for all people. The very wealthy and the extremely poor lived in different directions, and placement of the palace or merchant markets were not only distinct but also symbolic in meaning, i.e. relationships between areas revolving around hierarchies of status within the culture of officials with their exams and in contrast the foreign and Chinese merchant market districts based on commerce and trade.
As Schafer and Hanson both note foreigners, including Persians and Indians and Turks were prevalent in T’ang dynasty, living in cities and shaping culture through the intersection of different cultures meeting in urban spaces and along the various overland and ocean trade routes. Deeper understanding of the lifestyle, the views, the material conditions, religious and political philosophies, peace and struggle might be enhanced by reading more actual texts from Chinese authors of the time to help distinguish the past as it was lived at the time more clearly from the way Schafer’s book, in particular, creates an almost too modern way to imagine a very different historical time period.
On the other hand both articles make it evident that a highly developed, complex and diverse society existed in the T’ang that denies ideas of lack of change or dynamism in ancient China, which is a Western Orientalist claim.

Dunhuang

Yeseul Lisa Yim — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:33:39 +0000

Dunhuang was an oasis area at the Western edge of China, and therefore a key location for the Silk Route. The society there went through many changes over historical time. There was links between the centre and the outskirts of China — cultural transmission occurred through the high level of travel through the area; of soldiers, monks, government officials, merchants, both Chinese as well as foreigners. China during the T’ang dynasty was a very open society in general. (Wood: 75)

Buddhism became the most important religious tradition organizing of daily life at Dunhuang; at least it seems so from the artefacts. The caves were the domain of the Buddhist monastery which may account for this sense of Buddhism dominating the region. The caves are called the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas close to the actual town border in the desert. (Wood: 88) Because it was a central oasis on the edge of the China frontier, it was a town which would attract Buddhist adherents, men and women monks and nuns, and also travelers, scholars, Silk Road merchants, explorers and so on. Here the daily events would probably consist of much prayer, meditation and ceremonies to aid travelers on their way to setting out to the vast desert to the West. (Wood: 88-90) It was also a place where families prospered, evident in the amount of material goods including clothing and daily implements found there. (Course Kit)

The caves are full of astrology star charts, silk paintings and thousands of Buddha statues. There is a great deal of wealth contained in the caves in the form of cups, bowls, dice, and terracotta and earthenware statues: of monks, of religious adherents, of warriors and mythological figures. (Dunhuang Museum Booklet in course kit) It must have been a lively place due to the numbers of people moving through the region, and a place where someone could make a life helping perform ongoing rituals to help people with their fortune – rituals to maintain life, happiness and good luck.

It was a society full of rowdy drinking parties of merchants or soldiers, private clubs associated in some way with Buddhist temples, and of a mix of men and women who searching for meaning, joined Buddhist monasteries, which were very strict and hierarchical in nature. Knowledge of life at the time comes from the letters found describing events, such as late night drinking sessions by merchants and soldiers or written petitions by family members to government officials showing how the centralization of Confucianism was also part of life in Dunhuang by the 9th century at least. (Dunhuang Museum Booklet 244-247)

Life was most likely a mix of rough and dangerous or for the time, luxurious and wealthy, depending on the social class: merchant, priest, artisan, scholar and so on. Many wars were ongoing, and much hardship and sadness was part of domestic life at times – husbands and wives in fear for the whereabouts of one another, as evidence in letters from the 10th century. (pg 249) The Buddhist monks operated schools where both Buddhism and Confucianism was taught, showing the reach of the Confucian civil bureaucracy throughout China by the 9th century. Life was also full of music and dance. Traveling players would come through the area, and music was part of household entertainment.

To conclude, it would have been a time where there was a mix of ongoing ritual practices in the town and in the Buddhist caves. It was a multicultural place, one where poverty and wealth mixed, and where there was an international exchange of ideas. Cultural changes would take place from the merging and exchange of cultural ideas, and the oasis was a place from which new ideas would cross the desert both into and out of China. Life there was most likely exciting, highly spiritual and ritualistic, and definitely fascinating for passing through.
huang was an oasis area at the Western edge of China, and therefore a key location for the Silk Route. The society there went through many changes over historical time. There was links between the centre and the outskirts of China — cultural transmission occurred through the high level of travel through the area; of soldiers, monks, government officials, merchants, both Chinese as well as foreigners. China during the T’ang dynasty was a very open society in general. (Wood: 75)

Zoroastrianism

Yeseul Lisa Yim — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:53:37 +0000

Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest faiths of established human civilizations. It is an Indo-Iranian religious system that contains both a supreme being who is all good and an evil demon figure. There are also specific rituals, such as that of the erection of towers where the dead are removed to. There were three rings to the towers, an outer one for men, a middle one for women’s corpses, and a third inner ring for children. In religious systems there is often a practical reason for ritual beliefs. The idea that a demon called Avestan would immediate pollute bodies after they died, and hence the dead had to be placed away from human civilization, makes sense from both a hygienic and symbolic perspective. It allows people to have ways to mourn and deal with dying through a year long process where the natural decay of bodies allows for a symbolic return to nature.

Early religions would have developed their concepts based on values relating to the environment and human technological capability to master nature. Religions always seem to be about man’s relationship to the natural world, interpersonal ways to organize community, and connected to hopes and fears. When one society encounters or discovers the ideas of another, a degree of interweaving of concepts is understandable, as well as the discrimination and suppression of religious ideas by more powerful military or political civilizations in case of war or conquest. Zoroastrianism was as much a syncretic religion as Buddhism or Islam or Judeo-Christianity, but is less important today than the three monotheistic faiths, due to number of adherents

In Zoroastrianism the good deity, Ahura Mazda, not only creates the world but also needs people to think about him and worship him in order for the universe to be in balance. In addition, individual lives need to be lived in harmony with the principle of good he represents. The evil deity is called druj and is an ever-present negative force in the cosmology. In this religion there are many lesser deities aligned on either the good or evil side. One of the most interesting ideas is a final judgment day. All the dead return to the presence of the good. This transformation comes at the end of time and is ushered in by the appearance of a saviour.

Like other monotheistic traditions, a prophet — in this case Zoroaster — brings the message of the religion to the world, just as Mohammad in Islam or Moses in Jewish religion. Ancient Greeks knew about Zoroaster through trade and war with Persia, and Roman society’s dominant pantheism was replaced by the Christian religion when the Roman Empire collapsed. Ideas from Zoroastrianism seem to be part of Christianity, such as the saviour, Jesus, but in a different form or name. This shows us not only universal ideas of God and spiritual beliefs exist in human societies, but that the importance of religion lies in how it shapes and give meaning to man in his social communities.

What is religion?

Yeseul Lisa Yim — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:50:31 +0000

Religion has been studied by scholars in different ways, but there are disciplines: academic fields such as sociology, anthropology or archaeology that provide us with methods to compare and contrast specific religious beliefs without judging them as right or wrong. It is very important to look at the myths of cultures, if there is documentation of any sort that may help us understand how a society deals with fundamental problems. These problems include birth and death. Therefore the meaning of life is key to what religions help us process. The beliefs, usually called sacred beliefs, are often secret in nature, with only certain members or elites in a particular society having access to perform rituals and ceremonies associated with awareness and intent of higher beings or spirits.

The study of religion therefore involves looking at the wide range of ideas or faith including ritual, communal and private individual practices that most people in a society follow in a tradition of worship practices. The different beliefs of cultures from ancient times point to fundamental human universal aspects, but there are variants depending on the social organization of the society. To be critical, comparative and scientific in looking at religion as belief in things unseen or sacred, does not deny the beliefs truth – however it allows for what are called classification and comparison of differences and similarities between religions over time.

The intellectual discussion about whether primitive man was more collective and unable to conceive of meaning outside the beliefs of his tribe or group, and the idea that now there is a more sceptical rational questioning modern man, reveals how religious ideas evolve and compete with science. We may have other explanations for phenomena today other than presence of spirits, demons, Gods, Goddesses. But many would argue without faith man is unbalanced. Moral and ethical reasoning emerges, whether it takes a secular form or maintains a metaphysical component, in the context of culture: history, economics, living conditions – and this is what is studied by religious scholars as well as interpretation of the sacred works that frame religious beliefs.