Considérations sur une technique du Rasāyana āyurvédique

Summary Rejuvenation techniques, inspired by a common classical tradition, are described in Caraka (Cikits I, 1–4) and in Suruta (Cikits XXVII–XXX), followed up by the Nvantaka (Bower Ms., sl.188–200) and by the Astngahrdayasamhit (Uttara XXXIX). Valuable mediaeval tk comment on the details of these techniques and indeed interesting modern examples of a treatment closely following the ancient medical texts are known.[Contrary to the cure taking place in the open air and in the sun (vttapika), the practice of rejuvenation characterized by the ku is applied indoors in premises called kut or gra, built according to definite rules (site, architecture, etc.). The patient enters at a time astrologically auspicious, after performing certain rites and preparing his mind for a treatment which is as perilous as it is laborious.The rites of the operation and the unusual type of abode, difficult to interpret, permit, however, an examination of the textual data in a different light from that of the scholiasts themselves, who remain very guarded, and even obscure, on important points of detail. Here one must presume an initiation ceremony whose method was used for the legendary sages as well as patients of today. The technique which is called retreat in a hut implies the idea of regressus ad uterum. Rejuvenation which constitutes, from the biological point of view, a regeneration of the body (kyakalpa) must be considered on the symbolical plane as a new birth: the patient is assimilated to the embryo, and to the uterus correspond both the hut described in the classical yurvedic treatises and the dark enclosed premises recommended by the modern kavirj.

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Texte intégral dont fut tirée la communication présentée au séminaire Médecine et pharmacopée en Asie, organisé dans le cadre du XXIX^e Congrès international des orientalistes, qui a eu lieu à Paris, du 16 au 22 juillet 1973. Voir le texte abrégé dans XXIX ^e Congrès international des orientalistes. Résumés des communications [IV]: Section 11, Colloques, Séminaires, [Nogent s/Marne 1973 ], pp. 46–47.     

GrenzWerte—55. Deutscher Geographentag in Trier

Unter dem Motto GrenzWerte wird der 55. Deutsche Geographentag vom 1. bis 8. Oktober 2005 in Trier stattfinden. Inmitten der Großregion SaarLorLux/Rheinland-Pfalz/Wallonien, die selbst von Grenzen unterschiedlichster Art durchzogen und umgeben ist, werden die Öffnung Europas nach Osten und weitere interessante Grenzaspekte Deutschlands thematisiert. Vielerorts wird diskutiert über Grenzen, die erreicht sind, beispielsweise im Verkehrswesen, beim Umweltschutz oder in Nachhaltigkeitsfragen. Das Motto GrenzWerte hat diesen Trend aufgegriffen und ließ neben der räumlichen auch eine inhaltliche Grenzdimension entstehen. Darüber, welche Anknüpfungspunkte sich daraus für die Angewandte Geographie ergeben, sprach der stellvertretende Vorsitzende des DVAG, DIPL.-GEOGR. KAI PARTALE , mit dem Vorsitzenden des Ortsausschusses für den Geographentag in Trier und Professor für Angewandte Geographie und Raumentwicklung an der Universität Trier, PROF. DR. HEINER MONHEIM.     

Low-Fired Earthenwares in the African Diaspora: Problems and Prospects

Local earthenware associated with enslaved African populations in the Americas, variously called Colono-Ware, Afro-Caribbean Ware. Yabbas, and Criollo ware, has received considerable attention from researchers. What unifies this disparate group of ceramics is not method of manufacture, design and decoration, or even form and function but the association or potential association with African diaspora populations. The ceramics incorporate some skills and techniques possibly brought by African potters to the Americas, as well as skills reflecting European and Native American traditions, and local adaptations in form, function, and manufacture. Analogies linking African ceramic traditions to American industries have at times been employed uncritically and have relied on generalized characteristics to infer overly specific meanings. With particular reference to low-fired earthenwares from Jamaica, this paper examines the historical and cultural context of these ceramics and the methodological and theoretical problems faced in their interpretation.     

Domesticated Landscapes: The Subsistence Ecology of Plant and Animal Domestication

Harvesting different species as foods or raw materials calls for differing skills depending on the species being harvested and the circumstances under which they are being taken. In some situations and for some species, the tactics used are mainly behavioral—that is, people adjust, or adapt, their own actions to fit the behavior and circumstances of the species they are taking. Under other circumstances and for other species, the skills and tactics used may call for greater environmental preparation or manipulation. Therefore, instead of trying to distinguish people today and in the past as either foragers or farmers, it makes sense to define human subsistence behavior as an interactive matrix of species and harvesting tactics, that is, as a provisions spreadsheet.     

On the Origins of Pottery

Renewed research interest in the origins of pottery has illuminated an array of possible precipitating causes and environmental contexts in which pottery began to be made and used. This article is an attempt at synthesizing some of these data in hopes of stimulating further research into this intriguing topic. Following a review of theories on the origins of pottery, discussion proceeds to a survey of geographic and cultural contexts of low-fired or unfired pottery, highlighting the role(s) of pottery among contemporary hunter-gatherers and summarizing data pertaining to varied uses of pottery containers. It is argued that objects of unfired and low-fired clay were created as part of early prestige technologies of material representations beginning in the Upper Paleolithic and are part of an early software horizon. Clay began to be more widely manipulated by nonsedentary, complex hunter-gatherers in the very Late Pleistocene and early Holocene in areas of resource abundance, especially in tropical/subtropical coastal/riverine zones, as part of more general processes of resource and social intensification (such as competitive feasting or communal ritual). Knowledge of making and using pottery containers spread widely as prestige technology and as practical technology, the kind and timing of its adoption or reinvention varying from location to location depending on specific needs and circumstances.     

Philosophy of archaeology: Current issues

Recent literature reflects continuing concern with problems such as explanation, skepticism, and objective knowledge. Some authors urge archaeologists to abandon positivism in favor of new philosophical approaches, such as feminism, Marxism, hermeneutics, and critical theory. Ethical issues have received increased attention as archaeologists have become involved in determining public policy with regard to disposition of artifacts and uncovering of human burials.     

Southern African San Rock Painting as Social Intervention: A Study of Rain-Control Images

Many aspects of southern African San rock art images can be understood in the light of nineteenth- and twentieth-century ethnography. San beliefs about different kinds of rain-animals and the secrecy that attended rain-control rites informed different kinds of social relations between rain-controllers themselves and between them and other people. San communities were less egalitarian than is often supposed, though ongrounds that are commonly overlooked. These points are made in reference to a hitherto unknown painted site.De nombreux aspects de lart rupestre sud-africain peuvent être compris à la lumière de documents ethnographiques des dix-neuvième et vingtième siècles. La croyance des San en différentes sortes danimaux de pluie et le secret environnant les rites de contrôle de lapluie ont révélé plusieurs types de relations sociales entre les faiseurs de pluie eux-mêmes, ainsi quentreceux-ci et les autres personnes. Les communautés san étaient moins égalitaires quon le suppose souvent, bien que cela napparaisse que sur des bases généralement négligées. Ces points sont développés en référence à un site orné jusquà présent inconnu.     

Über den ursprung der voneinander abweichenden Strukturen der Munda- und Khmer-Nikobar-Sprachen

Vorbemerkung Da die Bezeichnung Mon-Khmer zweideutig ist - sie umfasst nämlich einmal nur die Mon-Khmer-Sprachen im engeren Sinne, also Mon, Khmer, Bahnar, Mnong usw., zum anderen aber diese Sprachen und die verwandten Gruppen Khasi, Nikobar, Palaung-Wa, Semang, Sakai und Jakud - sei hier vorgeschlagen, den Terminus Mon-Khmer nur noch im engeren Sinne zu verwenden und ihn im weiteren Sinne gegen die Bezeichnung Khmer-Nikobar einzutauschen, da dadurch Irrtümer vermieden und ausserdem die zu bezeichnenden Sprachgruppen besser charakterisiert werden als durch die zu einer Gruppe gehörenden Sprachen Mon und Khmer. Die gesamte Ostobergruppe der austroasiatischen Sprachen wird durch die beiden charakteristischen und wichtigen Sprachen, die alte Literatursprache Khmer und die besonders altertümliche Nikobar-Gruppe, wohl am besten repräsentiert. Die Bezeichnung Mon-Annam-Sprachen ist wegen des Übergangscharakters des Vietnamesischen abzulehnen. Die Khmer-Nikobar-Sprachen stehen also den Mundasprachen in Vorderindien gegenüber.     

Common Recollections: Resisting Enclosure “by Agreement” in Seventeenth-Century England

Through the enclosure of upland common wastes, an upwardly mobile yeomanry and lesser gentry sought to shift the emphases of local economies toward agrarian capitalism and strove to establish tighter control over burgeoning rural industries. An examination of the township of Castleton in the Pennine uplands of Derbyshire, where the 1691 enclosure proceedings and survey still survive, demonstrates that the typical historical view of such (non-Parliamentary) enclosure agreements is highly problematic. Confronted with the loss of customary common rights, poorer Castleton tenants were compelled to enclose strips within the open arable fields in order to husband animals. By attempting to preserve routines of daily life, however, they also resisted enclosure—through the conservation of common rights and customary practices and through efforts to maintain continuity in agricultural and lead-extraction activities.     

Struggling with the Past

Many postprocessual archaeologists have argued that active individuals make history. The apotheosis of the individual has been achieved under the rubric identity, the most pervasive theoretical term of the last few years. This focus obscures the fundamental idea that individuals do not exist in isolation. The relational concept of struggle will help us past this theoretical impasse. This concept has many components including real struggles in the past, our struggles to know the past, and using the past to struggle in the present. Our goal is to struggle past identity politics and the individual by focusing on peoples' real struggles in real cases.     

Resisting Traditions: Ceramics, Identity, and Consumer Choice in the Outer Hebrides from 1800 to the Present

On a number of levels, peripheral status has been imposed on the Outer Hebrides (Scotland) since the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745. Drawing on a series of interviews with Hebridean families, this paper explores the changing meanings of ceramics imported into the islands from the early nineteenth century and displayed on wooden dressers. It is argued that in renegotiating their identity in the face of a series of externally generated economic changes, rural communities in the Hebrides have acted as thoughtful consumers, appropriating mainland material culture to their own ends. Throughout this process, imports have behaved ambiguously. This ambiguity is crucial to our understanding of the relationship—here characterized not as resistance but as resistant adaptation—between the Hebrides and the mainland.     

From Pottery to Politics: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Political Factionalism, Ethnicity, and Domestic Pottery Style in the Ecuadorian Amazon

A long-standing assumption in archaeological theory is that pottery in the domestic context represents a form of passive style that does not enter into symbolic communication in the political domain. This paper presents ethnoarchaeological data to establish a link between women's active political behavior and pottery style in the domestic context in a small-scale, segmental society in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Analysis of individual variables of style shows that Achuar and Quichua women signify their political alliances in the painted decoration of their domestic pottery more strongly than they signify so-called passive processes of learning associated with early enculturation and ethnicity. Furthermore, analysis of women's judgments of pottery as Achuar or Quichua indicates that they decode cues to political alliances in the pottery of other women, including cues to political differences within and between groups. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the principles underlying women's stylistic behavior as part of the political processes involved in the construction and maintenance of social identity and social boundaries.     

Erhalt der biologischen Vielfalt—ein Instrument zur Armutsminderung?

Vor dem Hintergrund, daß Pflanzen, Tiere und Mikroorganismen seit Jahrtausenden von Menschen als Nahrungsund Rohstoffquelle genutzt werden, greift die in der öffentlichen und politischen Diskussion teilweise stattfindende Gleichsetzung von Erhalt der Biodiversität mit Naturschutz oder Artenschutz zu kurz. So hat sich die Völkergemeinschaft im Rahmen des Übereinkommens über die biologische Vielfalt (CBD) angesichts ihrer zentralen Funktion für das globale Überleben und ihrer Gefährdung auf eine deutlich umfassendere Definition von Biodiversität festgelegt: Neben der Vielfalt von Tieren und Pflanzen werden auch die genetischen Codes und die verschiedenen Lebensräume eingeschlossen. Auch die Stoßrichtung der Konvention geht deutlich über die eines altruistischen Naturschutzes hinaus: Soziale und ökonomische Zielsetzungen werden formuliert, da der Erhalt der biologischen Vielfalt vor allem der Sicherung menschlicher Lebensgrundlagen dient. Inzwischen sind 187 Staaten und die Europäische Union der Konvention beigetreten. Deutschland hat sich als Vertragsstaat verpflichtet, die Entwicklungsstaaten bei der Erreichung der Ziele zu unterstützen.     

Fitting into a New Place: Irish Immigrant Experiences in Shaping a Canadian Landscape

Escaping one heritage of British colonialism for another, Irish immigrants to Canada in the nineteenth and early twentieth century helped to shape the image of Canada and Canadian nationalism. In this paper, I compare the diversity of Irish immigrant experiences in Canadas urban and wilderness landscapes. The Irish immigrant experience in major urban centers is well documented. Community neighborhoods, Church activities and domestic and manual labor constitute just part of the stories of urban Irish Canadians in cities such as Toronto. The popular conception of the Irish as strictly city people is strengthened by the lack of discussion of the Irish immigrant role in taming (and ideologically shaping) the wilderness of Western Canada. It is argued that this has to do with the colonial image of the Irish from which British imperialist Canada sought to distinguish itself.     

The prehistory of Cyprus: Problems and prospects

The archaeological record of prehistoric Cyprus is rich, diverse, well-published, and frequently enigmatic. Regarded by many as a bridge between western Asia and the Aegean, Cyprus and its past are frequently seen from scholarly perspectives prevalent in one of those two cultural areas. Its material culture, however, differs radically from that of either area. Apart from the early colonization episodes on the island (perhaps three during the pre-Neolithic and Neolithic), evidence of foreign contact remains limited until the Bronze Age (post-2500 B. C.). This study seeks to present the prehistory of Cyprus from an indigenous perspective, and to examine a series of archaeological problems that foreground Cyprus within its eastern Mediterranean context. The study begins with an overview of time, place, and the nature of fieldwork on the island, continues with a presentation and discussion of several significant issues in Cypriot prehistory (e.g., insularity, colonization, subsistence, regionalism, interaction, social complexity, economic diversity), and concludes with a brief discussion of prospects for the archaeology of Cyprus up to and beyond 2000.     

Le droit a l'adhyayana selon la Mīmāmsā

Summary This paper is a short survey of five Mmms authors - in chronological order, abara, Kumrila, Prabhkara, likantha, Prthsrathi Mira - in reference to the right (adhikra) of learning by heart the Veda (adhyayana). More or less explicitly, they dismiss it for the social class of the dra, and their gloss on the first stra of the dra is highlighted with the help of this view. The paper summarizes also a number of points raised by this complicated stra.     

The Woodland and Mississippian traditions in the prehistory of Midwestern North America

Cultural developments in Midwestern North America between 5000 and 400 B.P. are reviewed and related to two overlapping, but contrasting, cultural traditions: Woodland and Mississippian. Significant changes in prehistoric subsistence systems, settlement patterns, and sociopolitical organization are reviewed within a three-division framework, beginning with a Transitional period (5000–2000 B.P.) when Late Archaic and Early Woodland societies settled into different regions, constructed regional markers (cemeteries, mounds, earthworks), and established economic and social relations with both neighboring and more distant groups. This was followed by the Middle Woodland period (2000–1500 B.P.) that is associated with the Hopewell climax of long-distance exchange of exotic materials, mound building, and ceremonial activities, although all Middle Woodland groups did not participate in this Hopewell interaction sphere. In the Late Prehistoric period (1500–400 B.P.), the Woodland tradition persisted in some areas, while the Mississippian tradition developed from local Late Woodland societies elsewhere. Finally, the patterns of interaction between the two traditions are discussed.     

Stirrings at the Periphery: History, Archaeology, and the Study of Dian

Early Chinese texts speak of the Han state conquering the kingdom of Dian in southwest China in 109 B.C. The limited historical record is complemented by archaeolgical discoveries pointing to the presence in Yunnan province of a complex Bronze Age society whose association with the historical Dian has been generally accepted. Historiographic and nonprocessual in nature, archaeology in Yunnan has yet to generate the data needed for a deeper understanding of Dian social structure and change. Whatever its shortcomings, however, Dian archaeology plays a consistent and important role within a system of thought which gives preeminence to the historical record.     

Working Without a Net: Recent Trends in Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology

This paper reviews ceramic ethnoarchaeological research conducted subsequent to Kramer's (1985) seminal stock-taking. Among current trends are a continued interest in the relationship between ceramics and economic specialization, the degree to which manufacture constitutes a technological style, and the link between pots and formation processes as represented in assemblage sizes, use-lives, and recycling. At the same time, some pesky theoretical issues continue to be sidestepped in the current literature. Despite its reputation as a pleasant break from the real business of archaeology, this paper argues that ceramic ethnoarchaeology can and should play a more substantial role in archaeological investigations.