History Of The Panj B From The Remotest Antiquity To The Present Time

Louis E. Fenech offers a compelling new examination of one of the only Persian compositions attributed to the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708): the Zafar-namah or 'Epistle of Victory.' Written as a masnavi, a Persian poem, this letter was originally sent to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (d. 1707) rebuking his most unbecoming conduct. Incredibly, Guru Gobind Singh's letter is included today within the Sikh canon, one of only a very small handful of Persian-language texts granted the status of Sikh scripture. As such, its contents are sung on special Sikh occasions. Perhaps equally surprising is the fact that the letter appears in the tenth Guru's book or the Dasam Granth in the standard Gurmukhi script (in which Punjabi is written) but retains its original Persian language, a vernacular few Sikhs know. Drawing out the letter's direct and subtle references to the Iranian national epic, the Shah-namah, and to Shaikh Sa'di's thirteenth-century Bustan, Fenech demonstrates how this letter served as a form of Indo-Islamic verbal warfare, ensuring the tenth Guru's moral and symbolic victory over the legendary and powerful Mughal empire. Through analysis of the Zafar-namah, Fenech resurrects an essential and intiguing component of the Sikh tradition: its Islamicate aspect.

Includes 1 phototype of a medallion of Washington, 3 steel engravings, 1 collotype portrait, 24 pages of Levytype half-tones. A number of editions of this book were produced. In this revised edition plates differ from the original, and 1 Gutekunst is replaced by a print from another firm, Wells and Hope Co. The important illustrations are the early Levytype half-tones of the coins. Like many early examples, these simple plates show uneven execution. -- Hanson collection catalog, p. 86.

This book presents an analysis of the foundations organised by the Birla family in India. Several generations were involved in the renovation and establishment of sanctuaries, temples and other sacral buildings. As a result, between 1933 and 1998, nineteen Birla Mandirs were established, mainly in northern and central India. All the temples have the capacity to surprise with their various decorative motifs, not seen in other places, which – apart from their aesthetic function – above all bear important symbolic content. Therefore, is it possible to treat the Birla Mandirs as a specific medium – the carrier of a particular message that is not only religious, but with a significance that permeates other layers of social and political discourse. This message, as the authors of the book claim, have a bearing on the socio-political thought of India – supported by the creation and propagation of ideas related to identity and a national art. It also conveys the idea of hierarchical Hindu inclusivism which, although considering all religions as equal, treats Hinduism in a unique way – seeing within it the most perfect form of religion, giving man the opportunity to learn the highest truth. The book also examines whether the temples founded by the Birla family and the religious activities undertaken therein apply the concept of “inventing” tradition, and whether traditions created (or “modernised”) in contemporary times are a way of enhancing the appeal of the message conveyed from temple to society. “The Vastness of Culture” is a series of publications presenting cultural studies and emphasizing the role of comparative research and analyses that reveal similarities, differences and intercultural influences. In our publications, cultures and civilizations are in a state of constant flux, engaging in dialogue, creating new understandings, competing for meaning under the influence of global content, without any clear boundaries, but with a vastness that forces questions to be raised.

Many a nation has walked God’s earth, has long enjoyed its good things, has come into being and passed away, without our knowing anything of its history, or even whether it had a history at all. For no nation has a history except one that makes history, that is to say, that influences the course of human development. It is with races as with individuals; none is kept in mind by posterity save those who have distinguished themselves by ideas that have modified the life of mankind, or (which comes to the same thing) have been pioneers in fresh fields of action. The greater the spiritual gain a nation has brought to the rest of the world, the longer and more steadily its life has flowed in the channels it was the first to make, the longer is its history told among them. The nations of history are those which have put forward, in one fashion or another, their claim to the dominion of the world. Thus we may fitly ask what claim it is that is made upon our interest by the history of the Jewish nation. And the answer will be, that nothing which excites our attention, or stirs us to admiration or imitation in the history of other nations, is here present in any large measure. Israel was always a small, nay, a petty nation, settled in a narrow space, never of any considerable importance in the political history of the East; it never brought forth a Ramses II, a Sargon, an Esarhaddon, an Asshurbanapal, a Nebuchadrezzar, or a Cyrus to bear its banner into distant lands. Yet, for all this, the history of Israel has, for us, an interest quite different from that of those other nations of antiquity. And if, as we see, Israel is far surpassed in martial glory by the peoples of the great empires, and by the Romans in their influence on the development of law, there are yet other points in which it must yield unquestioned precedence to other nations of antiquity. We do not find in Israel the same feeling for beauty as among the Greeks, who, like no nation before them or after, showed forth the laws of beauty in every sphere of intellectual life, and to this day, in such matters, stand forth in a perfection which has never again been attained, far less excelled. Among the Hebrews there is nothing analogous, nothing comparable to what we admire in the Hellenic people. It has no epic, nothing that can be compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, against which the Germans set the Nibelungen Lied, and the Finns the Kalewala; it has not the slightest rudiments of a drama—the Song of Songs and Job are not dramas. There is a school of lyrical poetry unsurpassed for all time, and the music that corresponds to it. But the bent towards science, which actuates the Greeks, is wholly lacking—wholly lacking the bent towards[2] philosophy. Nor was it ever eminent in ancient days, in the walks of commerce, enterprise and invention, by which, also, a nation may conquer the world; its intellectual life is absolutely one-sided, a one-sidedness that produces on us the effect of extreme singularity. But the attraction it has for us does not lie in this singularity. It is due, rather, to the circumstance that this small nation has exerted a far greater influence over the course of the history of the whole human race than the Greeks or Romans, that to us it has become typical in many more respects than they. Our present modes of thought and feeling, our lives and actions, are far more profoundly influenced by the world of thought and feeling which Israel brought to the birth, than by that of Greece or Rome. Our whole civilisation to-day is saturated with tendencies and impulses which have their origin in Israel. To be continue in this ebook...