List price
USD $139.00
Browse results
A Critical Edition of a Seventeenth-century Volga-Turkī Source
Editor / Translator:
The Book of the Činggis Legend is a product of the steppe’s oral historiography, referring to events from the 13th−17th centuries, and presents the collective historical consciousness of the nomadic peoples of the Volga region's Turco-Tatar world.
The stories offer abundant information on the society, way of thinking and morals of the nomads, one of them can even be regarded as a kind of nomad “mirror of princes”. The other ones incorporate such crucial events in the Volga region as the islamization of nomad clans, epidemic, famine, the appearance of Halley’s Comet, the uprising of the Bashkirs, etc.
This book includes the first critical text edition of the source, the first full translation into English along with a glossary, historical comments, a huge apparatus and the three most complete facsimiles of the manuscript.
The stories offer abundant information on the society, way of thinking and morals of the nomads, one of them can even be regarded as a kind of nomad “mirror of princes”. The other ones incorporate such crucial events in the Volga region as the islamization of nomad clans, epidemic, famine, the appearance of Halley’s Comet, the uprising of the Bashkirs, etc.
This book includes the first critical text edition of the source, the first full translation into English along with a glossary, historical comments, a huge apparatus and the three most complete facsimiles of the manuscript.
A Critical Edition of a Seventeenth-century Volga-Turkī Source
The Book of the Činggis Legend is a product of the steppe’s oral historiography, referring to events from the 13th−17th centuries, and presents the collective historical consciousness of the nomadic peoples of the Volga region's Turco-Tatar world.
The stories offer abundant information on the society, way of thinking and morals of the nomads, one of them can even be regarded as a kind of nomad “mirror of princes”. The other ones incorporate such crucial events in the Volga region as the islamization of nomad clans, epidemic, famine, the appearance of Halley’s Comet, the uprising of the Bashkirs, etc.
This book includes the first critical text edition of the source, the first full translation into English along with a glossary, historical comments, a huge apparatus and the three most complete facsimiles of the manuscript.
The stories offer abundant information on the society, way of thinking and morals of the nomads, one of them can even be regarded as a kind of nomad “mirror of princes”. The other ones incorporate such crucial events in the Volga region as the islamization of nomad clans, epidemic, famine, the appearance of Halley’s Comet, the uprising of the Bashkirs, etc.
This book includes the first critical text edition of the source, the first full translation into English along with a glossary, historical comments, a huge apparatus and the three most complete facsimiles of the manuscript.
Mobility, Interactions, Responses
Byzantium is more and more recognized as a vibrant culture in dialogue with neighbouring regions, political entities, and peoples. Where better to look for this kind of dynamism than in the interactions between the Byzantines and the Armenians? Warfare and diplomacy are only one part of that story. The more enduring part consists of contact and mutual influence brokered by individuals who were conversant in both cultures and languages. The articles in this volume feature fresh work by younger and established scholars that illustrate the varieties of interaction in the fields of literature, material culture, and religion.
Contributors are: Gert Boersema, Emilio Bonfiglio, Bernard Coulie, Karen Hamada, Robin Meyer, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Claudia Rapp, Mark Roosien, Werner Seibt, Emmanuel Van Elverdinghe, Theo Maarten van Lint, Alexandra-Kyriaki Wassiliou-Seibt, and David Zakarian.
Contributors are: Gert Boersema, Emilio Bonfiglio, Bernard Coulie, Karen Hamada, Robin Meyer, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Claudia Rapp, Mark Roosien, Werner Seibt, Emmanuel Van Elverdinghe, Theo Maarten van Lint, Alexandra-Kyriaki Wassiliou-Seibt, and David Zakarian.
Mobility, Interactions, Responses
Byzantium is more and more recognized as a vibrant culture in dialogue with neighbouring regions, political entities, and peoples. Where better to look for this kind of dynamism than in the interactions between the Byzantines and the Armenians? Warfare and diplomacy are only one part of that story. The more enduring part consists of contact and mutual influence brokered by individuals who were conversant in both cultures and languages. The articles in this volume feature fresh work by younger and established scholars that illustrate the varieties of interaction in the fields of literature, material culture, and religion.
Contributors are: Gert Boersema, Emilio Bonfiglio, Bernard Coulie, Karen Hamada, Robin Meyer, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Claudia Rapp, Mark Roosien, Werner Seibt, Emmanuel Van Elverdinghe, Theo Maarten van Lint, Alexandra-Kyriaki Wassiliou-Seibt, and David Zakarian.
Contributors are: Gert Boersema, Emilio Bonfiglio, Bernard Coulie, Karen Hamada, Robin Meyer, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Claudia Rapp, Mark Roosien, Werner Seibt, Emmanuel Van Elverdinghe, Theo Maarten van Lint, Alexandra-Kyriaki Wassiliou-Seibt, and David Zakarian.
Series Editor:
Edited by Angela Schottenhammer, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
This series focuses on the manifold commercial, human, political-diplomatic and scientific interactions that took place across the continental (overland) and maritime Silk Routes. This includes exchanges of ideas, knowledge, religions, and the transfer of cultural traditions, including forms of migration. Geographically speaking the series covers networks (or routes) across the Eurasian continent, the broader Indian Ocean (from East Asia as far as Africa), and the Asia-Pacific world, that is, trans-Pacific connections from Asia to the American continent. A special interest lies in the history of science and technology and knowledge transfer along and across these routes.
The series focuses particularly on historical topics but contemporary studies are also welcome.
This series focuses on the manifold commercial, human, political-diplomatic and scientific interactions that took place across the continental (overland) and maritime Silk Routes. This includes exchanges of ideas, knowledge, religions, and the transfer of cultural traditions, including forms of migration. Geographically speaking the series covers networks (or routes) across the Eurasian continent, the broader Indian Ocean (from East Asia as far as Africa), and the Asia-Pacific world, that is, trans-Pacific connections from Asia to the American continent. A special interest lies in the history of science and technology and knowledge transfer along and across these routes.
The series focuses particularly on historical topics but contemporary studies are also welcome.
Thinking in Many Tongues
Was plurilingualism the exception or the norm in traditional Eurasian scholarship? This volume presents a selection of primary sources—in many cases translated into English for the first time—with introductions that provide fascinating historical materials for challenging notions of the ways in which traditional Eurasian scholars dealt with plurilingualism and monolingualism. Comparative in approach, global in scope, and historical in orientation, it engages with the growing discussion of plurilingualism and focuses on fundamental scholarly practices in various premodern and early modern societies—Chinese, Indian, Mesopotamian, Jewish, Islamic, Ancient Greek, and Roman—asking how these were conceived by the agents themselves. The volume will be an indispensable resource for courses on these subjects and on the history of scholarship and reflection on language throughout the world.
Thinking in Many Tongues
Was plurilingualism the exception or the norm in traditional Eurasian scholarship? This volume presents a selection of primary sources—in many cases translated into English for the first time—with introductions that provide fascinating historical materials for challenging notions of the ways in which traditional Eurasian scholars dealt with plurilingualism and monolingualism. Comparative in approach, global in scope, and historical in orientation, it engages with the growing discussion of plurilingualism and focuses on fundamental scholarly practices in various premodern and early modern societies—Chinese, Indian, Mesopotamian, Jewish, Islamic, Ancient Greek, and Roman—asking how these were conceived by the agents themselves. The volume will be an indispensable resource for courses on these subjects and on the history of scholarship and reflection on language throughout the world.
Abstract
The Suda is a tenth-century CE Byzantine encyclopedia and lexicon, which compresses into the compass of a single work all the most important knowledge available of the past and renders it accessible for the readers of a sprawling empire. Its author and date are unknown and even the meaning of its title is controversial. What makes the Suda unique among Byzantine works of compilatory scholarship is that it uses the structure of a dictionary that explains difficult lexical terms in order to include as well a large number of entries that provide historical, geographical, or biographical information, thus disguising an encyclopedia as a lexicon or, perhaps more fairly, creating a hybrid that combines within a single work both genres that had hitherto been separated. This explains the considerable success of the Suda, which notwithstanding its huge size was copied relatively often by medieval scribes and printed a number of times since the Renaissance.
Abstract
What is a “barbarian” language, and why does Homer apply this definition only to the population of the Carians in Asia Minor? A chapter of Strabo’s Geography (1st c. BCE) attempts to clarify the meaning of this term in the Iliad, but also with an eye to what linguistic “barbarism” has become in Strabo’s own day.
Abstract
In the first century BCE, in the middle of a profound political and social crisis, the Roman polymath Varro explained to his fellow citizens the mysteries of their own Latin language by applying the linguistic conceptions of Greek scholars to his profound antiquarian erudition concerning such matters as religious rituals, political and legal institutions, obsolete and regional words, and archaic poetic texts. Although his systematic treatise on the Latin language, De Lingua Latina, has only partially been preserved and although its many etymologies are unsystematic and often (by our standards) erroneous, it exercised an enormous influence upon all later scholars working on the history and grammar of the Latin language well into modern times. For a modern linguistic science of etymology, it is easy to belittle Varro; but to do so does justice neither to his own achievement nor to his historical significance.
Abstract
The handbook of the Stoic philosopher and rhetorician Lucius Annaeus Cornutus (1st century CE) provides a good example of the ways in which Stoics applied etymology to the names, epithets, and other words connected with the Greek gods. It goes through a number of the most important Greek gods, starting with the heavens and moving downwards to end with the Underworld. For each god, it explains the meaning of the personal name, epithets, other associated terms, attributes, and often myths, usually by means of etymological analysis and in terms of the tenets of Stoic philosophy. However, Cornutus does not limit himself to this etymological approach to the words associated with divinities: instead, he combines etymological accounts of single words with allegorical interpretations of mythic narratives, events, and objects.
Abstract
In the dialogue Cratylus written by Plato, this fourth-century BCE Greek philosopher provides an extensive analysis of etymology and considers its value as a potential tool for philosophical investigation. Etymologies are introduced as evidence into a debate on whether names are correct by convention or by nature. Understanding etymologies means understanding the messages that the primeval name-givers used them for in order to communicate their philosophical doctrines. The etymological procedure unpacks and expands the word’s sounds into a brief definition of that same word; if the name-giver has chosen the name wisely, that definition or description will be correct. Socrates ends up concluding that etymology on its own, without a solid philosophical foundation, is not very useful.
Abstract
In the dialogue Phaedrus, written by Plato, this fifth-century BCE Greek philosopher presents an intense philosophical analysis of the nature of the human soul, in terms of desires for the beautiful, and explores the real and possible relations between philosophy and rhetoric. Near the end of the dialogue, Socrates tells a philosophical myth, doubtless invented by Plato himself, about the Egyptian origins of writing: once upon a time, the Egyptian god Theuth (otherwise known as Thoth) presented a series of his cultural inventions to King Thamus (better known as Ammon) for his approval; and Thamus accepted or rejected them one by one on the basis of their utility or harmfulness. When they came to writing, Theuth praised its merits enthusiastically—and Thamus rejected it out of hand, saying it would not be a remedy for human memory, as Theuth had claimed, but instead a poison for it.