Ancient Term Research Articles

Roślinne dusze miejsc. O genius loci w kontekście critical plant studies

This article analyzes the category of genius loci in the context of contemporary plant studies. It aims to restore the ancient term’s connotations related to nature and to use the idea of the “soul of a place” to rethink local, site-specific interspecies relations. The author reinterprets the notion of “soul” and conducts a comparative analysis of Michael Marder’s Plant-Thinking and Tadeusz Sławek’s essays on genius loci, which helps to outline the similarities and differences between the post-phenomenological approach of the authors in question and New-Materialist accounts of relationality. Key-words: genius loci, plant studies, interspecies, soul of plants, soul of place, nature of brownfields

Linguogeographic phenomena in the development of orographic terms in Kazakh language

Relevance. An important role in naming the object is played by people's attitude to the object based on peculiarities of everyday life and traditions. In Kazakh language the names of geographical features were given on the basis of people's world view and were often used for the orientation purposes. It is important to look into the past in order to learn more about the peculiarities of the current concepts of particular people. Purpose. The purpose of the study is to discuss the names of the terrain and the characteristics of their development in the Kazakh language. Methodology. The names of the terrain and the characteristics of their development can be considered in three different directions in accordance with the laws of unified nature of the language: first, the relationship between the level of nature study of the population and the principles of naming; second, the problems of using terms related to the names of geographical features in modern science; third, the tendencies of development of orographic terms in Kazakh language. Results. The main peculiarity of nature study by nomads is that they do not stay in one place, but are constantly on the move. The study concludes that the great changes in the life of humanity require the adaptation of the vocabulary to the modern times. Names describing the image of the Great Steppe should become active members of the language of science in accordance with modern requirements. Conclusions. General and singular names of geographical features in Kazakh language are developing in this way, taking common terms in the international space and adapting ancient terms to the requirements of the new time. Keywords: toponyms, naming the object, image of the territory, human-natural relations, vernacular

Confucianism, Business Leaders, and Party-State Power in Contemporary China

From the beginning of the twenty-first century onwards, China has witnessed a Confucian revival in the business world. Often associated with a revitalisation of cultural tradition among the population, this new trend is characterised by a resurgence of the Confucian merchant (儒商, rushang) model, an ancient term that originally referred to a new type of merchants in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), who were close to literati circles. In parallel with this increasing interest in Confucianism by many economic elites, there has been an integration of certain elements of Confucianism into official political discourse through various moral edification campaigns. Based on an analysis of this new official discourse and the fieldwork we carried out between 2016 and 2020 within three private companies, this article aims to analyse interactions between three elements: Confucianism, party-state power, and business leaders claiming to be “Confucian.”

Methods of teaching the history of the Kyrgyz language in middle school

Relevance. The relevance of this paper lies in the necessity to develop and popularise the Kyrgyz language among the younger generation to preserve the Kyrgyz national culture.Purpose. The purpose of this study is to analyse ancient Kyrgyz words and texts, compare them with other words where the origin matches contemporary terms, and utilise this information in teaching the history of the Kyrgyz language in schools.Methodology. The following methods were employed in this study: structural-functional method, dialectical method, synthesis method, logical and comparative analysis, and the method of generalisation.Results. The study established that the Kyrgyz language is ancient, although some works indicate that Kyrgyz script emerged after joining the Soviet Union. Ancient Kyrgyz is the language of the Yenisei Kyrgyz people. Similarities between the ancient meanings of ancient terms and the meanings used today were observed by comparing ancient words found in written sources with words in modern Kyrgyz language, vocabulary, and literature or studies.Conclusions. When learning a language in educational institutions, it is essential to pay more attention to explaining lexical, grammatical, phonetic differences, and similarities. Considering that people in different regions speak different dialects, a system of diverse exercises should be developed. The practical value of this study lies in the fact that all theoretical principles, conclusions, and recommendations can be used in educational institutions by teachers and students to enhance their knowledge of the history of the Kyrgyz language and other researchers for detailed investigation of this issue.

Wonder and Wisdom: Wandering through Space and Time

My article undertakes a journey to connect pathways between wonder and wisdom, starting with ancient Greek philosophy, the love of wisdom. Every journey, whether physical, emotional, intellectual, and/or spiritual, has at its core a conception of where one is situated in space and time. The ancient term kaleo (to be called, summoned, or invited) is relevant to the expression of my inner voice in these current wanderings of thought. To wonder is to consider origins: the wonder of time; the wonder of space; the wonder of life on earth. Understanding the world we inhabit and the cosmos we observe has been prevalent in religious, philosophical, and psychological thought throughout the millennia. An attribution to Socrates is the adage, “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom,” that derives from Plato’s Dialogues concerning the nature of knowledge, with Socrates recounted as saying: “Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.” As in ancient times, how our planet earth, the sun, and the moon relate to the planets of our solar system and the galaxies; the composition of the stars; the music of the spheres; and the manifestation of humanity in the universe intrigue us to wonder. And to wander is to follow a winding pathway, like the course of the twisting Meander River in Asia Minor of antiquity. My reasoning for going on this winding, wondrous journey in exploring the wisdom of the past is to enhance and illuminate knowledge for present application and future consideration, transcendence, and transformation of nous, or mind.

General

Two splendid Oxford Handbooks deserve the opening slot of my review. The Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography contains forty chapters, each of which closes with a helpful section on recommended further reading. The editors have organized the material in five very well-conceived parts. The first section, ‘Mythography from Archaic Greece to the Empire’, naturally wrestles with the question: When does mythography start? Two initial chapters provide their answers, and the rest of the contributions in this section offer an overview of mythography in Greek (Hellenistic and Imperial period) and Latin. The second section aims to provide an overview of individual mythographers: the stars of this section are Apollodorus, Antoninus Liberalis, Parthenius, Conon, and Hyginus. The eighteen chapters provide informative and concise introductions to authors who specialized in mythography, but also to the mythographic tendencies in authors such as Pausanias or Ovid, as well as in the scholia and even mythographical papyri. The third section is on the typical genres or interpretative models with which mythography tends to intersect: rationalizing historical approaches, philosophical allegoresis, etymologizing, catasterism, local historiography, paradoxography, creative approaches to mythography in ancient education, the role of mythography in political discourse, geography, and, finally, an investigation of the ancient terms used to designate the activity and the writings of a mythographer. The fourth section, ‘Mythography and the visual arts’, is a provocative and highly interesting experiment in viewing visual representations of myth as a mythography of sorts: can vases, frescoes, and sarcophagi be seen as visual pendants to literary mythography? These three contributions are all highly rewarding and thought-provoking. The closing, fifth, section offers richly rewarding discussions of the role of mythography in the age of Christianity, starting with the way early Christian writers draw on Greek and Latin mythographers, followed by chapters on mythography in the Byzantine Empire, the Latin West, and in the Renaissance.

On Women in Ancient Greek Culture, Drama and Education

Women in ancient Greek culture, drama and education is a question which has been at the centre of the theoretical debate and creative experiences at least from the middle of the twentieth century until today. This paper proposes to revisit this question based on three principles. First of all, it refers not only to the dominant model of Athens but also to other parts of Hellenism, whose political systems may be democracies, tyrannies or hereditary kingdoms. Secondly, it draws its examples from the Greek metropolis of the 5th and the 4th centuries B.C., but also from other places and periods, which cover an area from the Mediterranean to Asia and a period long before and after the classical era. Thirdly, it envisages the question of ancient Greek women not only from the angle of culture, meaning literature and drama, but more generally in all the senses contained in the ancient term paedeia (παιδεία), including education. To clarify the meaning of this last point I would say that I am trying to highlight that what ancient Greek women were, depended in many ways on what their paedeia consisted in and, more precisely, on how they were educated.

A New Handbook of Rhetoric: Inverting the Classical Vocabulary

A New Handbook of Rhetoric: Inverting the Classical Vocabulary

The Survival of an Ancient Term in Talishi

This is an attempt of tracing an ancient PIr. cultural lexeme in the language of the Talishis, an Iranian people inhabiting the south-western shores of the Caspian Sea, historically known as Talysh or Talyshistan. The term—a unique living remnant of the Old Iranian vocabulary in the whole Western New Iranian expanse (its only cognate in New Persian survived in Classical literature)—belongs to the sphere of syrup-making and denotes primarily date-plum syrup.

Modest Grief in the Office of the Dead: A Case Study of Emotion Terms in Translations of the Orthodox Funeral Vigil

The aim of this paper is to consider the specific features of rendering ancient emotion terms and words connected with emotions into contemporary languages. The specific texts under study are the Great Litany and the prayer “God of all spirits and of all flesh” from the Byzantine Office for the Dead (its part is the Funeral Vigil): the Church Slavonic and Greek texts serve as the originals, and the translations are into Ukrainian, Polish and English. In religious contexts, ancient emotion terms usually contain psychic reactions and Christian associations which may have disappeared in modern usage. Besides, the emotions used in the funerary texts are never pathetic, but the positive and negative emotions are perfectly balanced. Special attention goes to the emotion of anger which acts as an ethical concept and serves as a synonym for divine punishment in mediaeval Slavonic cultures. The search for equivalents of emotion terms should go within two lines of reception: that of biblical lexis and that of patristic interpretation. Although the change of the meanings from physical rest to spiritual rest, death and other deathly associations is heavily dependent on the fundamentals of Christian theology, the exploration of the conceptual matrices of emotion terms discloses that even such universal emotions as fear and joy contain some space for the national interpretation of believers’ psychic states and the very Divinity. Moreover, translators have to remember that the conceptual matrix of emotion terms altered drastically after the Enlightenment, and the search for successful equivalents makes them insightful and creative.

Democracy, philosophy and sport: animating the agonistic spirit

ABSTRACT The three social practices – democracy, philosophy and sport – are more similar than we might initially suspect. They can be described as ‘essentially agonistic social practices’, that is, they are manifestations of ‘agon’ (contest). The possibility to participate in agonistic social practices derives from the human condition, i.e. from the necessity to care for one’s existence, which requires ongoing attention and decision-making, and which sometimes means going against others. We call this character of human existence by the ancient Greek term ‘polemos’ (struggle), which can be manifested through various types of agon. If society cherishes agonistic social practices, it enables its citizens to compete to prove themselves and achieve goals (e.g. to push through a persuasive argument, or to win in sport) in a respectful, peaceful and productive way. Believed to have played a significant role in ancient Greece, agon presents itself in both intellectual and physical forms – in philosophy, democratic politics and sport – suggesting that the relationship between these practices is deep-rooted and significant. This paper explores the idea that developing our understanding of polemos and agon can enhance our experience of agonistic social practices and enable our existence to proceed in a more free, pro-social and enriching way.

Әлішер Науаидің «Мухәкәмәтул-луғәтәйн» шығармасының түркітану саласындағы маңызы

The works of Alisher Navoi take a special place in the literature of the Turkic peoples. The poet, who wrote a lot in his time, is distinguished by the fact that he first introduced the tradition of «Khamsa» among the Turkic peoples. His literary, historical, linguistic and memoir works had a great influence on the work of later poets. One of these works is «Muhakamatul-lugatain» («Opinion on two languages»). Having studied the grammatical features and poetic power of both languages, Navoi scientifically substantiated in this work that the Turkic literary language is in no way inferior to Persian. Using specific examples, he revealed the rich vocabulary of the Turkic literary language. In particular, he mentioned one hundred verbs that are not found in Persian and gave some examples in verses. Most of the ancient terms found in this work are widely used in the modern Kazakh language. In this article, the author reveals the significance of Navoi’s work «Mukhakamatul-lughatayn» in the field of Turkology. He also spoke briefly about the extant manuscripts of this work and focused on the specifics of these versions. The author also shared his thoughts on the first publications and subsequent studies of this work. The subject of the study is the Fatih manuscript, the specifics of the use of some Turkic words are given on specific examples. Some of the questions raised in this work of Navoi, written in the Middle Ages in parallel in two languages (zul-lisain), have not lost their relevance today. In the Middle Ages, Arabic, Persian and Turkic languages competed with each other, and in the era of globalization, the scope of application of English, Russian and Kazakh languages in Kazakh society is growing again. This indicates the relevance of studying the work of Navoi.

ṭupšarrūtu and the Historiography of Science

Over the course of many centuries, cuneiform scribe-scholars produced a textual culture of learning that organized knowledge of the phenomenal world as defined by their particular interests. The ancient term for this culture was ṭupšarrūtu “the art of the scribe.” That we grant this culture the designation scientific is not without problems from the perspectives both of modern philosophy of science and of conventional historiography of science. This essay reflects on the anachronisms entailed in transposing such ideas about science to the premodern cuneiform world and the consequences these ideas have on a historiography of science inclusive of cuneiform scientific texts.

Between Aisthēsis and Colere: Sensoria, Everyday Improvisation and Ethnographic Reality

The individual experience of everyday city life is essentially an everyday improvisation among other people. It is in urban settings where socially structured formations of daily life meet purely individual situated experience in myriads of spontaneously created and shaped assemblages of everyday life. The visual perception of space, sonic orientation in a given place and olfactory plus tactile experience of the environment are the basic aesthetic performances in cultivating a common urban reality. The author discusses specificities of anthropological knowledge derived from first-hand experience of the life of other people in the field. To cope with the complexity of everyday urban improvisation, the author employs two ancient Greek terms to define the space of human interaction: aisthēsis, i.e., sensory perception, and the complex meaning of the Latin verb colere, from which the term culture is derived. The triangulation of everyday improvisation through the sensorial essence of everyday life complements the employment of two other ancient Greek terms, praxis and poiesis. The basic empirical materials used to discuss everyday improvisation in an urban environment are collected narrations of sensory perception and individual lives from sensobiographic walks in Ljubljana, Turku and Brighton. Historically, in the West, the dominance of the senses has shifted from sound, touch and smell, orienting people in orally designed cultural domains, to sight. Smelling is specific embeddedness in place. Its paradoxical position of sensing outside air deeply inside, integrated in breathing, but not always sensing anything special. At the crossroads of distant and close, inner and outer, olfactory experience is simultaneously existentially idiosyncratic and collectively shaped. The paper’s main point is that there are no clear limits between the experienced past and the present. However, both are aesthetically and culturally inscribed in specific registers of individual, social, cultural and embodied memories. The same stands for an ethnographic practice. Everyday life is a continuum of living, weaved together from many discontinuous contingencies. It consists of incongruent, incomplete and chaotic shifts. Repetitive social activities bring order into this everyday mess: rituals and work. For this reason, repetitive music is inevitable for establishing a common ground of the everyday. If ethnography ever touches reality, it is a continuous improvisation in everyday life, shared, collective, and peculiar individual improvisation.

ETHNO-CULTURALAND SEMANTIC EXPRESSION OF FOLK UNITS OF MEASUREMENT

There can be seen from the article that the Kazakh national units of measurement are on the same level with the national measurements of other peoples in terms of origin, purpose, viability and success. However, for various historical reasons, our ancient terms with measurable meaning could not go beyond the borders of the nation and had no real meaning. Тhe peculiarity of measurement in the system of popular measurements, In the system of popular measurements is that from the point of view of the meaning and scope of the topic, it is applied not only to one area of measurement, but also to their various areas (quantitative, qualitative, periodic, almost complete, long, long-short, high-low, etc.) in the description of any concept in a generalized, projective and abstract form.Thus, we can identify a variety of phenomena in the natural environment and a variety of objects of our way of life, people and animals, size, scale, quantity, quality and phenomena related to social relations. We decided to systematize some linguistic units formed from a figurative description of the features of spatial cognition.

The phenomenon of bullying between past and present in the light of the Holy Quran

هدف البحث إلى إلقاء الضوء على التنمر الذي تعرض له الأنبياء عليهم السلام في أقسى صوره وأنواعه، وكيفية مقابلة الأنبياء للمتنمرين وصبرهم عليهم في سبيل دعواتهم، واستخدمت في بحثي المنهج التحليلي الاستقرائي، حيث قمت بشرح وتحليل ظاهرة التنمر من خلال الآيات القرآنية وبينت فيها كيفية تنمر الأقوام على أنبيائهم. وكان من أهم النتائج التي توصلت إليها أن للتنمر آثاراً سالبة وخطيرة على الضحية كالآثار العاطفية والاجتماعية وغيرها مما ينعكس على سائر البشر. لكن لم تتحقق هذه الآثار أو تنعكس على الأنبياء لأن الله تعالى اصطفاهم لمهام النبوة والرسالة، وميزهم على غيرهم بأعظم الصفات التي جعلت منهم أولى عزم؛ فكانوا أولي العزم لتحليهم بالعزم والجد، والقوة والصبر.

Modern and Classical Aspects on Infectious Diseases and their Management w.s.r. to Current Pandemic Situation: A Review

The ancient term Sankramaka Roga resembles communicable diseases as per modern science. These diseases mainly arise due to the influence of microbial invasion inside the body. The transmissions of such disease from one person to another take places via various means including Gatra Sansparsha, Prasnaga, sleeping and eating together; sharing objects and sexual contact, etc. The microbial toxin induces pathogenesis of infectious diseases after invasion of microorganism inside the body. Sankramaka Roga turned to Janapadodhwamsa if large numbers of people get affected, this condition can be correlated with resembles situation as per modern science. The modern science described uses of antibiotics and immune-therapy for the management of these diseases. Similarly Ayurveda rely on natural drugs, classical formulations, Panchakarma and Rasayana Chikitsa, etc. to treat Sankramaka Roga. Ayurveda concept of Ahara-Vihara, Dinacharya, Ratricharya, Ritucharya and Sadvritta improves immune system thus helps to prevent pathogenesis of Sankramaka Roga. Present article explores modern and classical aspects on infectious diseases and their management w.s.r. to current pandemic situation.

Calvino, Cerrone, and the Catacoustic: An “Echo-logical” Reading1

Catacoustics (an ancient term for the science of reflected sound, briefly championed by Lacoue-Labarthe) in fact tells us that the echo is never a partial and degraded repetition: while it is true that an echo repeats only a portion of the original signal, it does so in a way that also conveys a huge quantity of additional information that was not in the original signal—information that effectively describes the larger space in which the sound reverberates. In short, a catacoustic approach suggests that it is only in and with the echo that the sound is fully realized, and this realization or repletion of the origin happens in a way that demarcates and defines a space—something the mirror image does not gesture at. In this essay, I “listen by echo” in order to elaborate an “echo-logical” reading of Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and Christopher Cerrone’s opera of the novel, an opera that not only reflects on the question of reverberation and echo, but that also prolongs, amplifies and enriches Calvino’s original work, helping us to better discern both artists’ commitment to improving our political spaces and ecologies.

Mythological figures in art and genetics: Current perspectives on cyclopia and chimerism

Mythical figures have been part of human cultural tradition for centuries, worldwide. Some of them were totally imaginary, others were likely inspired by individuals with malformation syndromes, while others are composites of parts of different species. Various artists have created works of art based on these mythical or hybrid beings, such as cyclops and chimeras. The plethora of representations of artworks in ancient, but also contemporary art (statues, paintings, illustrations, photographs, installations) is proof that they still continue to be a source of inspiration, although their rendering and interpretation have changed over time. Contemporary medical genetic knowledge has revealed the underlying pathogenesis and causative molecular basis of malformation syndromes and delineates the corresponding phenotypes. Today, many figures once viewed as mythical are reflected in living humans with medical diagnoses. Ancient terms that arose in mythology-cyclopia, chimera/ism, and others-live on in the medical literature.

Genetic history of Calabrian Greeks reveals ancient events and long term isolation in the Aspromonte area of Southern Italy

Calabrian Greeks are an enigmatic population that have preserved and evolved a unique variety of language, Greco, survived in the isolated Aspromonte mountain area of Southern Italy. To understand their genetic ancestry and explore possible effects of geographic and cultural isolation, we genome-wide genotyped a large set of South Italian samples including both communities that still speak Greco nowadays and those that lost the use of this language earlier in time. Comparisons with modern and ancient populations highlighted ancient, long-lasting genetic links with Eastern Mediterranean and Caucasian/Near-Eastern groups as ancestral sources of Southern Italians. Our results suggest that the Aspromonte communities might be interpreted as genetically drifted remnants that departed from such ancient genetic background as a consequence of long-term isolation. Specific patterns of population structuring and higher levels of genetic drift were indeed observed in these populations, reflecting geographic isolation amplified by cultural differences in the groups that still conserve the Greco language. Isolation and drift also affected the current genetic differentiation at specific gene pathways, prompting for future genome-wide association studies aimed at exploring trait-related loci that have drifted up in frequency in these isolated groups.