Hasil untuk "Asian. Oriental"

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How do members of a novel profession gain recognition for their expertise and negotiate its value? This article examines this historically rooted yet persistently relevant question by focusing on the experiences of agronomists, forestry engineers, and veterinarians in the late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey (1890s–1930s). These then-nascent professions faced shared challenges: agronomists worked to earn the trust of farmers, veterinarians contested with farriers over livestock care, and all three professions confronted public scepticism, ridicule, and inadequate compensation despite their extensive scientific training and vital contributions to the economy, public health, and environmental conservation. Drawing on their writings in mainstream press and professional journals, as well as historical interviews with them, this study explores the strategies agronomists, forestry engineers, and veterinarians employed to carve out a new social and economic space for themselves. By analysing their efforts, the article uncovers how experts in emerging fields navigate resistance while striving to redefine societal rewards to secure a place in the new world they are helping to shape – one where economic recognition should be rooted in scientific contributions, which they present as the foundation of progress and advancement.

Nilay Özlü

This study examines three imperial collections housed within sultanic pavilions at Topkapı Palace during the late Ottoman era. Originally constructed in the 15th century during the reign of Mehmed II (the Conqueror) for the sultan’s personal use, these pavilions underwent significant functional and symbolic transformations over time. The Fatih Kiosk, once a private space where the sovereign collected and contemplated his collection of valuables, was repurposed as the Ottoman Imperial Treasury. The Privy Chamber, which was once the ruler’s bedroom and throne room, became the Chamber of Sacred Relics, where Islamic relics were safeguarded and venerated. Meanwhile, the Tiled Pavilion, a garden kiosk situated in the palace’s outer gardens, was converted into the Ottoman Museum of Antiquities in the late 19th century. These three royal pavilions were opened up for visits during the 19th century for diverse audiences holding different collections. By analysing the spaces, objects, audiences, and visiting rituals associated with these collections, this article explores Ottoman strategies of collecting and display. Reading these collections as proto-museal institutions, this research argues that the intertwined methods and discourses of exhibiting established the foundations of Ottoman and Turkish museology.

Tadmor, Eli

In Erra and Išum IV 3, the god Išum tells Erra, a deity of war and disease, “you changed your divinity and seemed like a man” (ilūtka tušannīma tamtašal amēliš). Scholars have interpreted the line in two different ways. The first is that Erra came to resemble mortals in his behavior. The second is that he became human-like in his physical form. This article weighs the two positions while drawing on (1) parallel passages in Ludlul bēl nēmeqi and Enūma eliš; (2) a revealing metaphor Išum uses elsewhere in Erra IV to describe Erra’s slaughter of Babylon’s inhabitants; and (3) a re-analysis on the meanings and uses of the word ilūtu (divinity), and argues that Erra is not said by Išum to have behaved like a mortal, but rather to have assumed human form. It then proposes, albeit tentatively and speculatively, that Erra’s human form is implied to be that of a usurper king who rose against the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina, with him then being Erra’s human avatar – the god of violence in mortal guise.

Heidi E. Fjeld, Inger K. Vasstveit

This article explores the use of amulets on children’s bodies, drawing on empirical examples from Mugum in western Nepal and theoretical insights from anthropology of personhood, kinship and infrastructure. Taking four-year old Tashi and his family in Mugum as a starting point, we show how the status of toddlers and small children is “extraordinary”; they are physically fragile, emotionally uncontrolled, and weakly connected, and in need of special protection. In the complex transition to ordinary personhood, amulets serve as one of many “technologies of protection” for children (Garrett 2013, 189). We suggest that amulets act as a stable infrastructure that enables a hope for children to live ordinary lives, and argue that the significance of these means of protection intersects closely with notions of marginality. Note: To have Tibetan script correctly displayed, please download the PDF file and open it in a desktop application.

Abdul Razaq, Giovanni Forcina, Urban Olsson et al.

Weaverbirds are a speciose group of colorful passerines inhabiting the Old World Tropics. Nevertheless, the Oriental weaverbirds (Ploceus spp.), widespread across southern Asia, are much less diverse and restricted to a few ecological niches compared to their African counterpart. To investigate their phylogeography, we retrieved 101 samples of Baya Weaver (P. philippinus), Streaked Weaver (P. manyar), Black-Throated Weaver (P. benghalensis) and Asian Golden Weaver (P. hypoxanthus) along with GenBank sequences of Finn's Weaver (P. megarhynchus). We reconstructed the first molecular phylogeny based on a dataset consisting of both mitochondrial and nuclear genes, dating the most recent common ancestor of Oriental Ploceus to ∼11 mya. Subsequent speciation appears to have been a combination of divergence within the Indian subcontinent and dispersal across a barrier situated between the Indian subcontinent and the Indochinese region, which provided habitats with a varying degree of isolations and ultimately promoted divergences in allopatry. Two descendants of the earliest nodes, P. megarhynchus and P. hypoxanthus, are both rare and local, often found near large river systems, which perhaps reflects niche conservatism and a lack of adaptive potential. The three smaller species are all widespread, common and less habitat specific. The most recent divergence, between western and eastern P. philippinus populations, is supported by both phylogenetic and morphological evidence, pointing toward limited gene flow between them. However, a zone of intergradation may exist in Myanmar and Brahmaputra flood plains, thus preventing a recommendation for species level recognition without further study.

Katja Triplett

Buddhist ritual healing and medical therapies included care for domestic animals, such as the horse. In pre-modern Japan, equine medicine (ba’i 馬医) was not restricted to the treatment of military horses; it was also practiced in a religious context. The Scroll of Equine Medicine (Ba’i sōshi emaki 馬医草紙絵 巻, 1267) is an enigmatic picture scroll held by the Tokyo National Museum. It extends to more than six meters and contains images of ten divine figures related to the healing of horses, followed by seventeen pictures of plants, and a postscript emphasizing that the content of the scroll should be kept secret. Many of the plants listed in the scroll are either associated with the world of Buddhism, e.g. Yakushi-sō 薬 師草, ‘Medicine Buddha plant,’ or with horses, e.g. metsu-sō 馬頭草, ‘horsehead plant.’ Previous analyses of the scroll largely focused on the botanical identification of the sketches of the plants. This article reviews current interpretations of the scroll and explores the question of whether the plant names were thought to empower the plants to be used as potent materia medica for veterinary purposes. Based on earlier analyses, I suggest a new interpretation of the scroll from a study of religions perspective taking into consideration that some of the plant names in the scroll indicate both health-related and salvific potency. I also address the possible use of the scroll. The scarcity of textual information and the choice of textual detail and imagery in this ‘secret’ scroll suggests that it was used in the context of an oral transmission and empowerment ritual. The scroll itself seems to have been an object of ritual empowerment, rather than a compendium of materia medica for practical daily use when caring for horses.

Sienna R. Craig

Bérénice Bernard

Jihye Hwang, Eun Hwa Choi, Bia Park et al.

A white-spotted flower chafer Protaetia brevitarsis seulensis widely distributed in Asian countries is traditionally used in oriental medicine. This study explored gene expression abundance with respect to wing development and metamorphosis in P. b. seulensis based on the large-scale RNA-seq data. The transcriptome assembly consists of 23,551 high-quality transcripts which are approximately 96.7% covered. We found 265 wing development genes, 19 metamorphosis genes, and 1,314 candidates. Of the 1,598 genes, 1,594 are included exclusively in cluster 4 with similar gene co-expression patterns. The network centrality analyses showed that wing development- and metamorphosis-related genes have a high degree of betweenness centrality and are expressed most highly in eggs, moderately in pupa and adults, and lowest in larva. This study provides some meaningful clues for elucidating the genetic modulation mechanism of wing development and metamorphosis in P. b. seulensis.

Güldeniz Kıbrıs

Trubich Olga Anatolyevna

The paper analyzes the management activities of professor-orientalist A.M. Pozdneev, the first director of Oriental Institute in Vladivostok, who also served as the head of the Vladivostok Men’s Gymnasium. The study was conducted in the context of the problem of the formation and development of oriental studies in the Russian Far East. It highlights the role of the directorial body in the management of two different educational institutions is particularly important The paper also shows the difficulties of the director’s working conditions related to the specifics of the educational process at the university and the gymnasium, the difference in the contingent of students, which required the head to search for various scientific and pedagogical approaches, the ability to work with both the faculty of Oriental Institute and the pedagogical staff of the gymnasium, as well as the territorial remoteness of the Far Eastern outskirts from the center, which significantly complicated the organization and management and administrative activities of the director A.M. Pozdneev. It demonstrates the results of a hard work of Professor A.M. Pozdneev on the implementation of the state policy tasks in the field of development of higher oriental education in the Far East in the conditions of complex international relations with neighboring Asian states.

Arjun Chapagain

For ethnic inhabitants in the rural areas, medicinal plants are not only the cultural, sacred medicinal ingredients of traditional medicine, part of traditional belief and biodiversity but also an important cash crop to support their livelihood. With the commercialization of traditional medicine and medicinal plant-based industries worldwide, Nepalese medicinal plants are in high demand. This photo essay presents the various steps from the cultivation to the cross-border trade of Swertia chirayita (Roxb.) H. Karst., a traditional valuable medicinal plant, and a beautiful landscape of Nepal-China border. The essay contains fourteen photographs each described with captions in detail with the information collected during field work. The ethnographic study on cross border trade of medicinal plants was conducted in 2020 at Bhotkhola routes in the northeastern Nepal. Bhotkhola-Tibet border control in 2008 has politically ruptured the original link of traditional exchange among people, goods, and ideas by displacing the community from its everyday borderlands. However, the cross border trade is performed by traditional networks of Bhotiya communities such as rural ethnic inhabitants, farmers, small budget dealers, and traditional practitioners through formal and informal supply chains. The government authorities from both the countries are responsible for regulating, monitoring, and permitting medicinal plants supply from harvesters to cross-border traders.

Peiling Zhou, Peiling Zhou, Ruifang Li et al.

Nowadays, obesity and its associated chronic diseases have become a steadily growing public health problem, spreading from the older to younger age groups. Studies have contended that the built environment, particularly the food environment and walkability, may contribute to the prevalence of childhood obesity. In Asian countries which are characterized by rapid urbanization, high population density and oriental diets, little is known about how such urban built environment affects the onset of childhood obesity. This study juxtaposes the effect of food environment, walkability, and outdoor activity spaces at the neighborhood level upon childhood body weight in a mid-sized city in China. This observational study utilizes a retrospective time-trend study design to examine the associations between neighborhood built environment and children's body weight in Zhanjiang City, a mid-sized city in Guangdong Province, China. Robust multiple linear and logistic regression models were used to estimate associations between the built environments and child BMI and weight status (i.e., overweight/obesity and obesity only). This study finds that: (1) Western-style fast food and Chinese-style fast food have divergent impacts on childhood body weight. At neighborhood level, while increased exposure to Western-style fast food may increase child BMI and the risk of overweight and obesity, increased exposure to Chinese-style fast food, on the contrary, may reduce child BMI and the risk of overweight and obesity, indicating a positive health impact of Chinese-style fast food. (2) However, the positive health impacts brought about by Chinese-style fast food, walkable environments and accessible traditional fruit/vegetable markets have gradually disappeared in recent years. This study is among the first to simultaneously consider the divergent and changing impact of food environment upon childhood body weight in urban China. The findings provide important implications for healthy city design and the management of food retail industry in addressing the obesity epidemic in younger generations living in Asian cities. As prominent differences exist in food culture between Asian and Western cities, more attention should be paid to healthy food environment in future studies and related urban planning strategies formulation.

Jason Busniewski

Bal Gopal Shrestha

Duncan J. Poupard

This article is a pan-Himalayan story about how the turtle, as a cultural symbol within Sino-Tibetan divination iconography, came to more closely resemble a frog. It attempts a comparative analysis of Sino-Tibetan divination manuals, from Tibetan Dunhuang and Sinitic turtle divination to frog divination among the Naxi people of southwest China. It is claimed that divination turtles, upon entering the Himalayan foothills, are not just turtles, but become something else: a hybrid symbol transformed via cultural diffusion, from Han China to Tibet, and on to the Naxi of Yunnan. Where borders are crossed, there is translation. If we go beyond the linguistic definition of translation towards an understanding of transfer across semiotic borders, then translation becomes the reforming of a concept from one cultural framework into another. In this way, cultural translation can explain how divination iconography can mutate and transform when it enters different contexts; or in other words, how a turtle can come to lose its shell.

Jacqueline H. Fewkes

This article is based on a series of interviews with a group of female Islamic scholars—alima—in Leh, Ladakh, who were the first four women from the region to receive a religious education in a formal madrassa (religious school). The women interviewed attended Jamiatus Salehat, a Deobandi religious boarding school located in Malageon Maharashtra (India), in the late 1980s. They graduated in 1991, returning to Ladakh to teach religion in the area. Today, these four women conduct public religious teachings for women in both Leh and Nubra valleys, and educate their family members about Islam as well. Segments of interviews conducted in 2012 with three of these alima of Ladakh are provided here to create portraits of the women that reflect their thoughts and experiences in their own voices. While these interviews illustrate the ways that local and global practices of 'being Muslim' are mutually constitutive, they suggest many other narratives as well. Unedited interview transcripts are therefore the focal point of this perspective piece to provide readers with a sense of other possibilities of interpretation and resist the formation of a dominating unified narrative.

S. G. Batyreva

The article is devoted to the cultural analysis of the tradition in the study of fine arts of Buddhism. The subject of the research are Buddhist artifacts from the collection of the Kiev Museum of Western and Oriental Art named after B. and B. Khanenko which are considered as a cultural heritage of Kalmykia. It was formed during the interaction of tradition and innovation. The art shows historical destiny of the iconographic canon in the artistic culture of Northern Buddhism. Traditional psychogenetic particular worldview, ceremonial culture and folklore are projected in the iconography, defining “local” nature of art. The analysis of the Kalmyk artistic tradition revealed visible local features of graphic images of iconographic interpretation. Selectivity of pantheon deities observed in particular images of Kiev collection is explained by the history of the people who lived beyond the bounds of their ethnic homeland. It is a local variant of the Central Asian pantheon, where archaic traces of nomadic mythology preserved in a different cultural environment can be found.  Inscriptions in Old Kalmyk todo bichig script (usually on the left border of the painting) and in Cyrillic script with yat on the lower edge of the images of Amitābha Buddha, Green Tārā Bodhisattva and Bhaisajyaguru Buddha are the specific features of the described religious paintings. Vertical ligatured todo bichig script (Kalmyk: Амидава, Отчи бурхн, Ноhан дәрк) written in ink faded to pale brown is the indisputable defining feature of Kalmyk painting. Kalmyk art developed gradually both in separate formal details of paintings and in general aesthetic interpretation of images. Canonization of deities involves introduction of border scenes, symbolic attributes and accented symmetrical front compositions into the painting. On the whole, concise symmetrical scenes with unelaborated plot which tend to emphasize main image’s personification that is the center of a religious painting and believers’ direct object of worship prevail in Old Kalmyk art.

Prabhakar S Krishnachary, Vijaykumar G Shankarappa, Rajendra Rajarathnam et al.

Thelaziasis is an Arthropod-born disease of the eye and adnexa caused by Thelazia callipaeda, a nematode parasite transmitted by drosophilid flies to carnivores and humans. Because of its distribution mainly confined to South Asian countries and Russia, it is commonly known as Oriental Eye worm. It is often under-reported and not been given its due clinical importance. We report first case of human Thelaziasis from Hassan District, Karnataka. Five creamy-white, translucent worms were removed from the conjunctival sac of a 74-year-old male patient. Based on morphological characters, the worms were identified as nematodes belonging to the genus Thelazia and speciation was confirmed by CDC, Atlanta as callipaeda. Rarity of the disease and its ability to cause both extra and intraocular manifestations leading to ocular morbidity is the reason for presenting this case. From the available data, this is the first case report from Karnataka, India.

Pengfei Cai, Xianyu Piao, Shuai Liu et al.

BACKGROUND: Schistosomiasis japonica remains a significant public health problem in China and Southeast Asian countries. The most typical and serious outcome of the chronic oriental schistosomiasis is the progressive granuloma and fibrosis in the host liver, which has been a major medical challenge. However, the molecular mechanism underling the hepatic pathogenesis is still not clear. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using microarrays, we quantified the temporal gene expression profiles in the liver of Schistosoma japonicum-infected BALB/c mice at 15, 30, and 45 day post infection (dpi) with that from uninfected mice as controls. Gene expression alternation associated with liver damage was observed in the initial phase of infection (dpi 15), which became more magnificent with the onset of egg-laying. Up-regulated genes were dominantly associated with inflammatory infiltration, whereas down-regulated genes primarily led to the hepatic functional disorders. Simultaneously, microRNA profiles from the same samples were decoded by Solexa sequencing. More than 130 miRNAs were differentially expressed in murine liver during S. japonicum infection. MiRNAs significantly dysregulated in the mid-phase of infection (dpi 30), such as mmu-miR-146b and mmu-miR-155, may relate to the regulation of hepatic inflammatory responses, whereas miRNAs exhibiting a peak expression in the late phase of infection (dpi 45), such as mmu-miR-223, mmu-miR-146a/b, mmu-miR-155, mmu-miR-34c, mmu-miR-199, and mmu-miR-134, may represent a molecular signature of the development of schistosomal hepatopathy. Further, a dynamic miRNA-gene co-expression network in the progression of infection was constructed. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: This study presents a global view of dynamic expression of both mRNA and miRNA transcripts in murine liver during S. japonicum infection, and highlights that miRNAs may play a variety of regulatory roles in balancing the immune responses during the development of hepatic pathology. The data provide robust information for further researches on the pathogenesis and molecular events of hepatopathy induced by schistosome eggs.