Journal of Asian Civilizations

Some notes on the role of women in Early Buddhism

2023-04-13T06:50:47+00:00

This note analyses, with selected examples, the role of women in ancient Buddhist literature and epigraphy, with a brief focus on the comparison of their role in two macro-regions of the ancient Buddhist ecumene: Gandhāra and Central India. Furthermore, the note briefly discusses the link between desire and gender, finally considering the emphasis on gender as an obstacle towards enlightenment rather than a help.

The Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan, 1956-1986. (Conference delivered in Islamabad on the 26th of October 1986)

2023-03-26T17:21:20+00:00

The present manuscript was recently retrieved in the archives of the Mission House in Saidu Sharif by Prof. Luca M. Olivieri, Director of the Italian Archaeological Mission, who asked me to edit the manuscript and update the references. The manuscript is the text of a public lecture given by Domenico Faccenna in 1986. The lecture was delivered on October 27, at a conference in Islamabad, which was jointly organized by the International Islamic University and IsMEO, and promoted by the Italian Embassy. In the lecture, Faccenna gives an overview of the activities carried out by the Mission over the thirty years of uninterrupted presence in Pakistan—from the beginning of the work in 1955 to 1985-1986—and highlights the three main areas of inquiry: pre- and proto-historic period, pre-Islamic historic period, and Islamic period. fig. While it may seem that they come late, it is still important to publish Faccenna’s words even now, more than 35 years after this lecture. This piece in fact lays out in a quick but incisive sketch many of the ideas that Faccenna would later develop in other work, such as his masterpiece, Il fregio figurato dello stupa principale nell’area sacra buddhista di Saidu Sharif I [The figured frieze of the main stupa in the Buddhist sacred area of Saidu Sharif I], published in 2001, still one of the foundational text for the study of Gandhāran art.2 It is fascinating to trace historically the first instances of many of the ideas we read about in his later work: we are seeing here Faccenna thinking in sweeping strokes through the archaeological objects and through the territory to give his audience a summary of thirty years of accomplishments by the men and women of the Italian Archaeological Mission. It is a grand overview that takes into consideration not only the materiality of the things themselves, but also their relationships with their archaeological context—which is historical and cultural, but also human and environmental. The present manuscript, therefore, offers a great counterpart to Faccenna’s more specialized academic work while at the same time, it also clearly recaps thirty years of archaeological work in the Swat Valley and connects it to other work carried out in the neighboring regions by both Pakistani and other European archaeological excavations. In an effort to remain as close to the script of the lecture as possible, I have tried to preserve the semi-formal nature of the text, and I edited it minimally for the sake of consistency and clarity. This operation included moving some paragraphs to group together similar content so that it could be put under headings, and changing some language to make it more legible. I have also added footnotes with references to the works of other scholars mentioned in the talk, as well as to recent fundamental work by scholars who have developed some intuitions and ideas Faccenna is advancing in this conference. Although my edits cannot in any way improve on the clarity of Faccenna’s ideas, I hope that my editorial intervention (albeit minimal) will make the content of the talk widely accessible to all.

Mineralogical analysis of schist stone from the Buddhist Complex of Zar Dheri (Mansehra, Pakistan)

2023-03-26T17:40:54+00:00

The Buddhist monastic site of Zar Dheri is of great historical importance due to its unique architectural elements and artistic style. In the 1990s, the archaeological mission of the Tokyo National Museum found the site with the main stupa. The archaeology department of the Hazara University of Mansehra, with the financial support from the Higher Education Commission under National Research Programme for Universities (NRPU), carried out a recovery excavation in 2020 to document what remained. The result of this excavation revealed important material remains, including pottery, bones, inscriptions, fragments of stone sculptures and structural remains. These remains are being used to reconfirm the chronology of the site. The present research was conducted to clarify the provenance of the schist stone used by the craftsmen of Zar Dheri for the production of sculptures. For this purpose, a portable XRF analyser, a non-destructive technique for measuring elemental composition from Magnesium (Mg) to Uranium (U) was used to analyse three samples from Zar Dheri and three from the local query. The mineralogical analysis of the schist stone indicates that the source from which the artists obtained the raw material is located in Kaly Parr, approximately 1 km north of the Zar Dheri site.

Buddhist Exchanges between Ancient Pakistan and China

2023-04-12T18:06:49+00:00

There is a long history of Buddhist communication between ancient China and ancient Pakistan (the region where Pakistan is located now). From the 1st to 7th century AD, three waves of Buddhist Communication between the two regions emerged, with a large scale of eastward spread of Buddhism and westward pilgrimage. A two-way traffic of communication was formed when Chinese Buddhism travelled backward to ancient Pakistan. The history of friendly exchanges between China and Pakistan thus can be dated back 2000 years earlier. This interaction along the “Silk Road” has great implications for the “Belt and Road” initiative and the communication between China and Pakistan.

The Indo-European Origin of the Burushaski Language and the Dene-Caucasian Hypothesis

2023-03-26T17:56:30+00:00

The paper is a detailed response to John Bengtson’s and Václav Blažek’s critique of the theory of the Indo-European origin of Burushaski. The scholars (2011) (BB) published in The Journal of Language Relationship an extensive piece in which they take issue with the hypothesis on the Indo-European origin of the language isolate Burushaski and provide examples of their Dene-Caucasian interpretation. This article addresses and discusses the validity of their claims and presents the relevant evidence. All the material presented in this paper at the phonological, morphological and lexical level demonstrates clearly and unequivocally that the language isolate Burushaski is at its core an Indo-European language, perhaps creolised in contact with another non- Indo-European language. The grammatical correspondences in the case system and in the category of number, in the adjectival suffixes, in all of the demonstrative pronouns and adverbs, the personal pronouns, partially in the numerals, in the entire non-finite verbal system, verbal suffixes and prefixes outline the IE make up of Burushaski. A language comparison that has a large number of grammatical correspondences is significantly much stronger. At the lexical level, the evidence is even more powerful and surpasses the tentative Dene-Caucasian hypothesis.

The Bahraano Sahib Ritual Performance of Jhule Lal in Sindh, Pakistan

2023-03-26T18:05:26+00:00

This paper addresses the performance and perspective of Bahraano Sahib Ritual at Jhule lal. Bahraano Sahib is a vernacular and main central ritual of the Sindhi Hindus at the Jhule Lal complex in Sindh, Hyderabad which is almost performed on every new Sindhi month of the moon sighting Nao Chand, Cheti Chand and Jat Jo Melo (annual fair), which has also an essential role for the remembrance as well as the celebration of the Jhule Lal by the Hindus in Sindh at the Jhule Lal complex. The twelve Bahraanas are celebrated annually at the Juhle Lal complex. This ritual shows the aesthetic relationship of the disciples with Jhule Lal. The Bahraano Sahib ritual was started as an Indus Cult (Darya Panth). Therefore, offering the Bahraano Sahib is a way to feed the species that live in the Indus water. Nowadays, Jhule Lal’s devotees bring the Bahraano Sahib from different parts of Sindh on the Cheti Chand to offer Jhule Lal and immerse into the Balanbo Sahib (well). The Bahraano Sahib is the central and prominent Ritual practice of the Sindhi religious culture because it makes the necessary memories and attachment of the Jhule Lal between India and Pakistan (Boivin and Rajpal 2018).