India & South Asia (up to 7th cen.)
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Writing Down the Myths
What are myths? Are there ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ versions? And where do they come from? These and many other related questions are addressed in Writing Down the Myths a collection of critical studies of the contents of some of the most famous mythographic works from ancient classical medieval and modern times and of the methods motivations and ideological implications underlying these literary records of myth.
While there are many works on myth and mythology and on the study of this genre of traditional narrative there is little scholarship to date on the venerable activity of actually writing down the myths (mythography) attested throughout history from the cultures of the ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean to those of the modern world. By assembling studies of the major literary traditions and texts through a variety of critical approaches this collection poses - and seeks to answer - key questions such as these: how do the composers of mythographic texts choose their material and present them; what are the diverse reasons for preserving stories of mythological import and creating these mythographic vessels; how do the agenda and criteria of pre-modern writers still affect our popular and scholarly understanding of myth; and do mythographic texts (in which myths are so to speak captured by being written down) signal the rebirth or the death of mythology?
Worlds of the Silk Roads: Ancient and Modern
Definitions of Inner Asia vary greatly. Inner Asia includes those lands that have linked the major agrarian civilisations of Eurasia from China to India to the Mediterranean and Europe since the late Neolithic period. In the 19th century it became customary to refer to the trade routes between these regions as the 'Silk Roads'. But silk was just one of the goods exchanged through Inner Asia. religions diseases coins cuisines artistic fashions political titles all travelled the Silk Roads as did Buddhism Christianity Manichaeism and Islam. Seen in this way Inner Asia appears as the central knot in the vast tapestry of Eurasian history. To take Inner Asian history seriously is to see the underlying unity of Eurasian history. S.N.C. Lieu From Iran to South China: The Eastward Passage of Manichaeism L. Cansdale Jews on the Silk Roads C. Benjamin An Introduction to Kushan Research D. Christian State Formation in the Inner Eurasian Steppes S. Helms Ancient Chorasmia: The Northern Edge of Central Asia from the 6th Century B.C. to the mid-4th Century A.D. H. Hendrischke Chinese Concerns with Central Asia C. Mackerras Some observations on Xinjiang in the 1990s W. Maley The Dynamics of Regime Transition in Afghanistan K. Nourzhanov Traditional Kinship Structures in Contemporary Tajik Poilitics S. Akbarzadeh Reformism in the Bukharan Khanate G. Lafitte Re-orienting Mongolia F. Patrikeef Baron Ungern and the Eurasian Empire R. Pitty Russia and Eurasia in International Relations A. Van Tongerloo Turkestan: a Treasury of Civilisations G. Watson Central Asia as Hunting Ground: Sporting Images of Central Asia T. Matthew Ciolek 'Digital Caravanserais': Essential Online Resources for Inner Asian Studies.