Dreams and Conversions: A Comparative Analysis of Catholic and Buddhist Dreams in Ming and Qing China: Part I

Since the Church fathers, oneirology and dream revelations were regarded with considerable suspicion among theologians and ecclesiastical authorities, though dreams remained a powerful and pervasive feature of religious expression at a popular level. Among converts in Ming-Qing China, where lay initiatives were necessarily important given the paucity of European priests, holy dreams were crucial in the formation and consolidation of a powerful religious subculture. The following is a version of the keynote address delivered at the Fourth Biennial Meeting of the Religious History Society, in July 2004 in Newcastle, Australia.     

Dreams and Conversions: A Comparative Analysis of Catholic and Buddhist Dreams in Ming and Qing China. Part Two

A database of holy dreams, assembled from Jesuit reports of the 17th century, forms the basis for qualitative and quantitative analyses, the results of which are compared with a second database of holy dreams drawn from Buddhist sources of the 17th and 18th centuries. The comparative analysis of religious images, doctrines, and the social history of dreams allows for some tentative observations on the psychology of Christian conversion and the sociology of Christian community formation in late Ming and early Qing China.     

梦追天路列车行

夏都西宁历经几多沧桑阵痛,分娩瑰丽夏都雏形,楼群擎起立体诗挤瘦困顿,郁金香铺满世纪梦避暑览胜,河湟目送天路列车系一袭清爽,载诱惑从起点向世界屋脊追寻……塔尔寺母爱令黄教始祖落地生根,长出菩提树栖息人之初悟性,八大如意塔托起千秋信仰,金瓦寺酥油花映亮芸芸众生。灵魂在磬音梵声中净化,世俗在桑烟缭绕中消遁。七彩土乡彩虹的故乡牡丹的家,千里寻芳翩跹蝶恋花;五峰的飞瀑互助的酒,浸透民族魂的青稞陈酿醉天下!阿姑“花儿”携风拂去旅人心上尘,亮相央视的“轮子秋”缤纷风俗画。金银滩原子城难忘《在那遥远的地方》天籁音,难忘举国狂…     

Italians don't remember their own history: A historiographic Sonderweg

The denial of the past is a disease of the Italian character. From the relationship of Italians with their own history, from the nineteenth century to the present day, the author traces the roots of a national Sonderweg.     

Wandering Spirits: Chen Shiyuan's Encyclopedia of Dreams

Savage Childhood: A Study of Kafir Children. By DUDLEY KIDD. London: A. and C. Black. 1906. By R. R. Marett.

Religion in Evolution. By F. B. Jevons, Littd. London: Methuen &; Co. 1906. By E. Sidney Hartland.

The Religious Songs of Connacht. By Douglas Hyde. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Dublin: W. H. Gill &; Son. IOS. By Eleanor Hull.

Folk-Lore of Women, as Illustrated by Legendary and Traditionary Tales, Folk-rhymes, Proverbial Sayings, Superstitions, etc. By T. F. Thiselton-Dyer, M.A. By W. Crooke.

Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race. By the Late T. W. Shore. London : Elliot Stock, 1906.

Ancient Law. By Sir Henry Sumner Maine, with Introduction and Notes by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart. London: John Murray, 1906.

The Tribal System in Wales. By Frederic Seebohm. London: Longmans, 1904. By F. M. Stenton.     

Fouffeen Mountain Summits:the Dreams and Glory of Chinese Mountaineers

As the first mountaineering team to challenge the fourteen world‘s highest mountain summits,these Chinese mountaineers have finally realized their dream.They are all ethnic Tibetans and have gone through hardship and dangers over the years;some of them have even contributed their lives to the realization of the project.Finally,three of them have accomplished it and set a marvelous record in world mountaineering that is unprecedented.     

Fouffeen Mountain Summits:the Dreams and Glory of Chinese Mountaineers

As the first mountaineering team to challenge the fourteen world's highest mountain summits,these Chinese mountaineers have finally realized their dream.They are all ethnic Tibetans and have gone through hardship and dangers over the years;some of them have even contributed their lives to the realization of the project.Finally,three of them have accomplished it and set a marvelous record in world mountaineering that is unprecedented.     

Tuna Dreams: Resource Nationalism and the Pacific Islands' Tuna Industry

The 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea was expected by many to lead to a drastic redistribution of income from the world's fisheries. This article explores the extent to which this happened by examining the case of the Pacific Islands' tuna industry. The analysis shows that even though these developing countries gained legal jurisdiction over some of the largest tuna stocks in the world, they encountered tremendous obstacles when they attempted to convert those tenure rights into concrete economic gains. Notwithstanding their success in organizing and co-operating amongst themselves, the Pacific Island countries (PICs) were unable to compel the distant water fishing nations to pay them more than a nominal access fee. When the PICs tried instead to develop their own tuna industries, they were disadvantaged by being located at the raw material end of the commodity chain. This case study suggests that a change in property rights is only a starting point for achieving increased equity in a global natural resource industry; not only do the new resource owners have to develop expertise in managing their ‘property’; they also need to develop a good understanding of the organization and operation of these natural resource industries.     

为老屋喝彩

每每独步于乔家大院那幽长的甬道时,微风轻拂,光影摇曳,总会油然而生一种不知名状的心绪来,崇仰?自豪?抑或兴奋,还是感叹?真有几分理不清道不明。     

Algonquians and Algonquianists: A new old tradition

Cowan, William, ed. Actes du Quatorzième Congrès des Algonquinistes. Ottawa: Carleton University. 1983. ix + 396 pp. including maps, photographs, and chapter references. $15.00 paper.     

A world apart: geography, Australian quarantine, and the mother country

In many respects the Australian colonies were what one person called "the proud offspring of a grand old mother." Yet when it came to the prevention of imported infectious disease, Britain's Australian colonies were not a chip off the old block. British opposition to the lengthy and costly imposition of quarantine had intensified throughout the nineteenth century, eventuating in the abolition of human quarantine in 1896. The Australian colonies, on the other hand, which had based their first quarantine regulations on British law and remained constantly aware of changing medical trends in the mother country, gradually expanded the breadth and capabilities of their maritime quarantine as the century progressed. Although other European powers and British colonies progressively adopted systems of medical inspection more in line with British port prophylaxis and away from quarantine, the Australian colonies invested increasing amounts of time and money into more elaborate quarantine stations and regulations. In this article I examine some of the basic features of coastal disease prevention in the Australian colonies and how they differed from British controls. Australia's distance from Britain was emphasized in the quarantine debates geographically as well as in policy. I argue that the often controversial differences in quarantine policy were for the most part a product of Australia's geographical location. The natural prophylactic of Australia's remoteness was not a reason to minimize quarantine in the colonies but rather served to increase it; whereas, it was argued that "the geographical position of England deprived it of the advantages...derived from a comprehensive quarantine system." I discuss this seeming anomaly in light of other arguments that have claimed that the close proximity of a state to the acknowledged origin of a disease was likely to increase its eagerness to quarantine.     

The Role of Dreams in Guru Chos dbang's Autobiography: Notes on Dreams in Two Volumes of Guru Chos dbang's Writings

According to the relevant historical documents,Guru Chos dbang is a controversial figure.He is considered one of the five prominent gTer-ston (treasure discoverers) in several chronicles of Nyingma tradition,however,Bu ston Rin chen grub claims in his comments on mantra practice in Tibet that Guru Chos dbang offered perverted teachings and fabricated false treasures.This is a topic of extreme interesting to many researchers,and there are several of works of English scholarship including Janet Gyatso's work on Guru Chos dbang's autobiography analyzing its narrative methods.There is still more remaining to figure out.     

Dreams,Laki, and Mourning: A Psychoanalytic Ethnography of the Yagwoia ‘Inner Feminine’

This is a three‐part study of dream‐experiences and their existential reality in the life‐world of the Yagwoia of the Papua New Guinea highlands. The focus is on a single conjugal couple, their life‐trajectory, and the articulation of their bond as specifically expressed in their dreams. In the first instalment is presented the general cosmo‐ontological background of Yagwoia dreaming and the fundamental dialectics of the contra‐sexual self‐identity of the couple manifest in their oneiric encounters. The second part explores the intrinsic relationship between dreaming and the practice of gambling which in the Yagwoia life‐world is a domain of men's homo‐social participation in the self‐generative life‐death flow of the world‐body at large. In this aspect, Yagwoia gambling exhibits its true characteristic as an extension and modification of the male‐exclusive domain of hunting, warfare, and the ceaseless in‐/ex‐corporation of the cosmic life‐death flow. The third part continues to explore this cosmic dialectics in the context of the death of the woman and its impact on her man through the period of mourning. The study as a whole presents a cosmo‐poetic ethnography of the Yagwoia dream life developed through the systematic long‐term field‐work grounded in phenomenology and psychoanalysis.