The fifteenth chapter of the Ḍākārṇava, a late Buddhist tantra, describes an elaborate maṇḍala containing one hundred and eight kinds of fauna, among its other inhabitants. While most of these fauna names are known to derive from a tenth-century tantric treatise, the Laghutantraṭīkā, over two dozen names have not previously been identified with particular kinds of fauna. This study investigates the novel fauna names of the tantra in connection with its probable natural and linguistic environment in the medieval coastal northeast of the Indian subcontinent, and proposes new identifications drawing on salient lexical, medical and scientific literature.
Iveta Stibraniova, Pavlina Bartikova, Jozef Dzubara
Tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV, Flaviviridae), a small enveloped flavivirus with an unsegmented positive-stranded RNA genome, is the most prominent member of the mammalian group of tick-borne flaviviruses. TBEV, originally isolated in 1937, is identified as Orthoflavivirus encephalitidis now. TBEV causes the most important arboviral disease of the human central nervous system (CNS) in Europe and Northeast Asia. It is transmitted to hosts primarily by ticks of the genus Ixodes and Dermacentor, but can also be acquired by ingestion of infected unpasteurized dairy products. Approximately one-third of all human TBEV infections are associated with severe clinical neurological disease. The remaining two-thirds are asymptomatic or present with mild clinical symptoms. In hosts, TBEV tend to induce different types of immune effector mechanisms. Components of innate immunity - natural killer cells, complement proteins, macrophages and dendritic cells usually provide rapid and intense protection in the acute phase of infectious diseases. In turn, cell-mediated immunity provided by T and B lymphocytes plays an important role in virus clearance and protective immunity, and thus influences the outcome of disease. The virus-host relationship is not passive. Therefore, viruses themselves respond actively to host immune defence activities. This is made possible by a number of mechanisms that ensure their escape from the host’s immune surveillance. The aim of this review is to summarize the history of the last 50 years as well as advances in research on the immunology of TBEV, specifically in the Central European area.

 This article examines the relationship between two contemporary perspectives on conceptualizing a global history of religion. The first is anchored in an entangled conceptual history, reconstructing the genealogy of “religion” back to the colonial nineteenth century. The second favours a multicentred perspective in studying knowledge systems and general concepts independent of the West and predating global modernity. By analysing Japanese religious history, the article illustrates both the potential for and the necessity of integrating these two approaches.
Manoshi Das Turjo, Khushboo Suchit Mundada, Nuzhat Jabeen Haque
et al.
BackgroundSuicide stands as a global public health concern with a pronounced impact, especially in low- and middle-income countries, where it remains largely unnoticed as a significant health concern, leading to delays in diagnosis and intervention. South Asia, in particular, has seen limited development in this area of research, and applying existing models from other regions is challenging due to cost constraints and the region’s distinct linguistics and behavior. Social media analysis, notably on platforms such as Facebook (Meta Platforms Inc), offers the potential for detecting major depressive disorder and aiding individuals at risk of suicidal ideation.
ObjectiveThis study primarily focuses on India and Bangladesh, both South Asian countries. It aims to construct a predictive model for suicidal ideation by incorporating unique, unexplored features along with masked content from both public and private Facebook profiles. Moreover, the research aims to fill the existing research gap by addressing the distinct challenges posed by South Asia’s unique behavioral patterns, socioeconomic conditions, and linguistic nuances. Ultimately, this research strives to enhance suicide prevention efforts in the region by offering a cost-effective solution.
MethodsThis quantitative research study will gather data through a web-based platform. Initially, participants will be asked a few demographic questions and to complete the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire assessment. Eligible participants who provide consent will receive an email requesting them to upload a ZIP file of their Facebook data. The study will begin by determining whether Facebook is the primary application for the participants based on their active hours and Facebook use duration. Subsequently, the predictive model will incorporate a wide range of previously unexplored variables, including anonymous postings, and textual analysis features, such as captions, biographic information, group membership, preferred pages, interactions with advertisement content, and search history. The model will also analyze the use of emojis and the types of games participants engage with on Facebook.
ResultsThe study obtained approval from the scientific review committee on October 2, 2023, and subsequently received institutional review committee ethical clearance on December 8, 2023. Our system is anticipated to automatically detect posts related to depression by analyzing the text and use pattern of the individual with the best accuracy possible. Ultimately, our research aims to have practical utility in identifying individuals who may be at risk of depression or in need of mental health support.
ConclusionsThis initiative aims to enhance engagement in suicidal ideation medical care in South Asia to improve health outcomes. It is set to be the first study to consider predicting participants’ primary social application use before analyzing their content to forecast behavior and mental states. The study holds the potential to revolutionize strategies and offer insights for scalable, accessible interventions while maintaining quality through comprehensive Facebook feature analysis.
International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)DERR1-10.2196/55511
Medicine, Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics
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.
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This study investigates the use and linguistic properties of refusal strategies by Jordanians and Syrian refugees in Jordan. To achieve this objective, a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), consisting of 10 situations: three requests, three offers, two invitations, and two suggestions was used. The participants were 40 (20 male and 20 female) Jordanians and 40 (20 male and 20 female) Syrian refugees in Jordan. The mixed-method data analysis resulted in a total of 1351 refusals: 719 Jordanian refusals and 632 Syrian refugees’ refusals. The refusals were classified by semantic formulas, directness (a dimension of communication style), and frequency of semantic formulas. The results show that the two groups utilize different semantic formulas with different frequencies when making their refusals. The two groups used a different number of direct and indirect formulas. Although the two groups belong to the Arabic culture, the differences were significant. One main difference is that Jordanians’ refusals were more direct and were often expressed as negative willingness, while the Syrian refugees’ refusals were less direct, providing an explanation of their refusals. The results also indicate that gender is a significant variable where females in the two samples tended to respond with lengthy responses when making their refusals, employing at least three refusal strategies.
Kazuki Tagawa, Tadatsugu Hosoya, Kimihiko Hyakumura
et al.
Laos, a mountainous and landlocked country located in Southeast Asia, has the highest percentage of people using insects as food in the world. Lao people obtain edible insects through harvesting in the natural environment and purchasing at food markets. There has been no comprehensive survey about sales of insects at food markets in the wider areas, and our understanding of sales of insects in Laos is limited. Our study aims to identify environmental factors affecting the sales and the diversity of edible insects sold at food markets in Laos. We visited 37 and 55 markets, during the dry and rainy seasons respectively, in northern Laos to record species of sold insects. We then analyzed the correlations between insect sales and three potential factors (seasons, provinces, and urbanization indices around the markets). There was no significant difference in the percentage of markets selling insects between in the dry and rainy seasons; 40–50% of the markets sold insects in both seasons. The composition of sold insects differed between in the dry and rainy seasons, which reflects the seasonality and life history of each insect species. There tended to be more groups of insects for sale in the Vientiane capital than in the other provinces in both seasons. This trend may reflect that it is more difficult to obtain edible insects through wild harvesting in highly urbanized Vientiane capital than in the other provinces, and the commercial demand for insects is increasing. This possibility is directly supported by the positive correlation between the urbanization index and the insect sales in the rainy season. Laos has recently undergone rapid urbanization, particularly in the Vientiane capital, and we predict that commercial demand for edible insects will be much higher in the Vientiane capital and the urbanized cities in the future.
Goals. The purpose of the publication is to introduce into scientific circulation previously unknown documentary sources connected with the organization of the Museum of Oriental Cultures at the Buryat Institute of Social Sciences of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Materials and Methods. A frontal search was carried out in the personal archive fund of Purbo B. Baldanzhapov, kept at the Center of Oriental Manuscripts and Xylographs of the Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, SB RAS.The classification and systematization of the identified array of office-work materials was carried out, the types of documents have been identified, their thematic and chronological spectrum was determined. Results. It was determined that the F29 collection contained Purbo Baldanzhapov`s memoranda, reference materials, personal letters to the leaders of the Buryat ASSR about the urgent need to expand the USSR’s ties with the countries of the East, Buddhist organizations and individual figures, about the necessity of formation of a specialized department — the Museum of Oriental Cultures.The article also analyzes the block of administrative office documentation, containing orders of the Buryat Institute of Social Sciences on the formation of the Museum, the Regulations on the Museum, staffing, work reports. Conclusions. As a result of the study, a unique documentary array has been revealed showing, on the one hand the history of one of the stages of the formation of oriental studies in Transbaikalia, on the other — a little-known page in the history of museum affairs in the region.It is emphasized that these materials reflect the mechanisms, forms and methods of organizing scientific and museum activities in the second half of the 1960s. — the period of reforms and reorganizations in Soviet science. The identified sources will become the basis for further research by historians, orientalists, museologists, etc.
History of Asia, Political institutions and public administration - Asia (Asian studies only)
Between the ninth and seventh centuries BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire became the largest the world had yet seen. In the process of imperial conquest, the Assyrian state incorporated previously foreign territories and people into their world. Landscapes, materials, and the labor of conquered bodies became a part of the Assyrian royal palaces of northern Iraq, both as elements of their construction and as themes emphasized within the extensive visual programs of the palace reliefs. Within and through visual depiction of enemy bodies and foreign landscapes, in the process of being (often violently) reshaped by Assyrian hands, Neo-Assyrian kings brought the farthest reaches of their world into the center of imperial power. This article considers how specific strategies of representation in palace art allowed the Assyrian palace to serve as a microcosm of the empire and a map of its borders. Palace art emphasized the remade, reworked, or recreated, defining “Assyrianness” as that which remakes and has been remade. As a central act of remaking, I examine representations of captive or submissive foreigners, whose presence in the reliefs commemorates their humiliation while compounding and enhancing it in the very ways that these figures are depicted: cringing, deficient, and physiologically incorrect. I pay particular attention to examples from the late King Ashurbanipal’s reign, in which foreign leaders are singled out through representation with distinctive facial features. I argue that this act of (literally) drawing distinctions was an inherently imperial process, one that both expressed and enabled an ideology of expansion and control.
Este ensaio pretende explorar a música do cantor, compositor e multi-instrumentista Marku Ribas. Utilizando-se das chaves teóricas propostas por Paul Gilroy, assim como de correntes epistemológicas como a Negritude[1] e o pan-africanismo, para abarcar o conteúdo estético e político da obra de Marku, situada numa estrutura rizomórfica da afrodiáspora, assim como de reafirmação de uma identidade negra. O texto está dividido em três seções. O ensaio primeiro discute a trajetória do músico antes de sua viagem, em 1968, à França. Posteriormente, há a análise do disco do grupo em que Marku Ribas participou em Paris, o Batuki. E, por último, uma discussão sobre seus dois primeiros discos solo, gravados em 1972 e 1975.
Palavras-chave: Marku Ribas - exílio - música do Atlântico negro - afrodiáspora; pan-africanismo.
Abstract:
This essay explores the music of singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Marku Ribas. By using theoretical ideas proposed by Paul Gilroy, and epistemological lines of thought such as Négritude and pan-Africanism, this essay illustrates the expression of a rhizomorphic structure of African diaspora and a reaffirmation of black identity as seen in Marku’s oeuvre. Divided into three sections, the essay first discusses the musician’s trajectory before his trip to France in 1968. The analysis then turns to the group Batuki’s homonymous album, of which Marku participated in Paris. Lastly, the essay closes with an examination of his first two solo albums, which were recorded in 1972 and 1975.
Keywords: Marku Ribas – exile – music of the black Atlantic – African diaspora – pan-Africanism.
[1] Neste artigo utilizamos as palavras “Negritude” e “negritude” com diferentes significados: a primeira com “N” maiúsculo se refere ao movimento da Négritude de Cesáire, Senghor e Damas, movimento político-literário da década de 1930 desenvolvido pelos autores em Paris, França. Já a grafia com “n” minúsculo se refere a um conceito multifacetado: “negritude passou a ser um conceito dinâmico, o qual tem um caráter político, ideológico e cultural. No terreno político, negritude serve de subsídio para a ação do movimento negro organizado. No campo ideológico, negritude pode ser entendida como processo de aquisição de uma consciência racial. Já na esfera cultural, negritude é a tendência de valorização de toda manifestação cultural de matriz africana. Portanto, negritude é um conceito multifacetado, que precisa ser compreendido à luz dos diversos contextos históricos.”. Petrônio Domingues, “Movimento da negritude: uma breve reconstrução histórica”, Mediações – Revista de Ciências Sociais, Londrina, v. 10, n. 1 (2005), pp. 25-40. É também uma alternativa de tradução do termo blackness.
This contribution examines the instrumentalization of homophobia in Senegal by developing on the concept of political homophobia. Since 2008, non-heterosexuality in Senegal has been the subject of frequent attacks in mass-media, political discourses and religious speeches. An analysis of political and public rhetoric reveals that political homophobia is a modular phenomenon inscribed in broader power dynamics between Senegalese society and the West, religious authorities and political leaders, and between political leaders and their opponents. The instrumentalization of political homophobia by political leaders and religious authorities emerges as a strategy to strengthen their position in a context of crisis.
History of Africa, African languages and literature
Human impact on natural environment has seriously increased over the last few centuries. However, it is only from the mid-twentieth century that a greater sensitivity has developed around environmental problems. With an eye on the development of the African environmentalism, the paper considers the reaction of some African writers and their efforts towards the conservation of physical environment and climate change through their literary works as narrative and poetry genres.
For the last few decades a large number of microlithic sites have been reported in the Jira river valley. All these sites have yielded very rich stone tool antiquities. But these prehistoric lithic assemblages are found in different contexts and geographical locations. A number of open air sites are found in this region which can be categorized into four major types like Foot hill contexts, River Banks, Rocky knobs and Piedmont areas. Prehistoric settlements of all these contexts in this region vary from one to another in use of raw materials and technology. Recent explorations made by author in Jira valley have brought to light some Rocky knob sites in lower part of this valley. In this paper a preliminary study has been made to discuss the cultural antiquity reported from the Rocky Knob sites.
The debate over ‘Differences’ and ‘Disadvantage’ in the Constituent Assembly which has shaped the mainstream political discourse on the abrogation of the preferential treatment policies for the religious minorities represents the de facto narrative of their restriction to the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). This article shatters this de facto narrative to arrive at an actual one and argues that reservation in the public employment for the religious minorities was not abrogated because they were considered socially and economically less backward than SCs and STs but was abrogated in a surreptitious manner; a manner which did not take cognisance of the nationalist deliberations in the Constituent Assembly and the debate over the ‘Differences’ and ‘Disadvantage’, with no particular reflective influence of these deliberations and debates upon the form which the preferential treatment policies in India were to finally assume. The article establishes this disconnect between the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly and the form the preferential treatment policies finally assume in India.
Uno de los aspectos más problemáticos de la violencia contra las mujeres en contextos domésticos es la presencia de culturas del silencio que rodean y esconden estas acciones reprobables. La canción popular es una respuesta que constituye un intento de poner en evidencia la realidad del abuso doméstico en foros públicos y activos. No se puede decir de manera categórica que esta expresión artística será capaz de detener la violencia intergénero; no obstante, como declaración pública difundida en forma de oralidad primaria y secundaria, la canción popular se nutre de fuentes de difusión muy amplias que pueden tener un efecto emocional e íntimo. Por lo tanto, es apropiado considerarla una poderosa forma artística de exploración y discusión sobre la violencia destructiva contra las mujeres en varias sociedades.
Juan José Ramírez Bonilla (coord.), Tailandia y México II. Primicias del Programa de Estudios sobre Tailandia en México, México, Miguel Ángel Porrúa (col. Las Ciencias Sociales), 2013, 128 pp.
Bektaşilik, which was established in Sulucakarahöyük as the central and improved by Hacı Bektaş Veli after his coming from Central Asia to Anatolia and providing unity and integrity in Anatolia, has been a subject matter to the literary work in the context of intertextuality and in order to presented a representative type of Hacı Bektaş Veli. İsmet Kırdar’s comic book, is one of these works. In Hacı Bektaş Velî, character types, legendary life, historical aspect, nationalism, Bektaşilik, and collective memory are abundant. According to this, Hacı Bektaş Veli, conveys features of an exalted “veli type,” which is among idealized types. There are proximal connections between his legendary life and his life in the novel and between the official history and the history in the novel. In the novel Hacı Bektaş Velî, Hacı Bektaş Veli is portrayed as a figure that have Turkishİslamic consciousness. The novel, which includes various elements of Bektaşilik, also indicates Hacı Bektaş Veli’s position in the society in terms of collective memory. Therefore, the aim of this article is both to introduce a less known novel and to analyze elements of Bektaşilik with respect to literary appreciation