Early Medieval Times Research Articles

Medieval and early modern management of the River Lymn and Wainfleet Haven (east Lincolnshire, England)

ABSTRACTThe post-Roman evolution of the landscape of coastal east Lincolnshire exhibits regional links from early medieval times in the case of major fen and sea banks, to which can be added local links and actions for bank-building, pasture reclamation, harbours, fisheries, and the impress of local government. In a landscape much defined by water, now largely insignificant watercourses were once the scene of considerable concern. In the case of the Lymn, the instrumental role played by local magnates is dominant, but the input of local communities in undertaking and often benefiting from the actual labour also diversifies the overall picture. The Supplementary Material facility is used to expand on a number of points germane, but not central, to the main narrative.

Archaeological and Archaeobotanical Research at an Early Medieval Site in Wildno, Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship

The paper presents the results of the archaeological excavation of the Early Medieval site at Wildno (site 10) and the initial results of ongoing archaeobotanical analysis of plant macro-remains from the same site. During rescue excavation many archaeological features were found. Among them a few probable huts, smokehouses and tar pits were discovered. Inside them, plant macro-remains were found. Analyses showed remains of cultivated plant and weed species, which provides evidence of farming practice during early medieval times. The cultivated plants were Linum usitatissimum, Panicum miliaceum and Triticum aestivum.

Sanskrit and Prakrit pāmara

Sanskrit pāmara and its Prakrit and Modern Indo-Aryan equivalents have a broad semantic field. The meaning of the word ranges from a very negative connotation “a low man”, “an outcast”, “a fool” to a positive term denoting a peasant who is a member of a rural community with full powers. The present paper explores the various shades of meaning of the word and their possible social background. The term first appeared in early mediaeval times and has remained productive in the various Modern Indo-Aryan languages spoken in India. The negative connotations of the word are typical of traditional Sanskrit lexicons, while the positive ones were used by poets and playwrights.

Почвообразование на территории Старой Ладоги в неолите и раннем средневековье

Почвообразование на территории Старой Ладоги в неолите и раннем средневековье

Lebendiges Letzeburgisch – sterbendes Elsässisch? Regionale Identitäten, NS-Besatzungszeit und Sprachpolitik nach 1945

While today nearly all autochtonous inhabitants of Luxembourg do speak Luxembourgish, a Westgerman dialect, nearby in Alsace only 43% of the population and 12% of those under 30 years are using the Alsatian idiom, another German dialect spoken there since early medieval times. For Alsace, it has been argued that this situation was above all a consequence of the brutal politics of Nazi occupation during the Second World War, leading to a deep alienation from everything that had to do with Germany after 1945. But in Luxembourg, Nazi occupation – including forced recruitement for the Grosdeutsche Wehrmacht – was no less cruel. This essay is looking for other explanations for the different linguistic developments of the two regions, one of them a small but souvereign state with historical connections to both Germany and France, the other one a weak province with little political skills in the high centralist French nation-state, who for decades after 1945 did all in a Jacobean tradition, especially in school policy, to let the Alsation native language of the population die and to replace it with the language of the “united and indivisible” French Republic.

Transylvanian Saxon Charms as Part of Old Germanic Folklore

Abstract The present article deals with archaic pieces of folklore, namely with Transylvanian Saxon (TS) charms recorded in the 19th century. The author, herself a speaker of the TS dialect, translated a number of those charms into English and added comments that were meant to indicate connections with similar pieces of the same genre recorded in Germany and England in early medieval times.

Stone, Gerald Slav Outposts in Central European History: The Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs (review)

SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 552 modern cinematic hero, Sergei Oushakine examines two films of two postSoviet decades, Govorukhin’s Voroshilov Sniper (1999) and Zviagintsev’s Elena (2011), and discusses the trend of aesthetic privatization and the self-validation of violence. Oushakine argues that the films testify to the ‘publicly executed punishment’ undertaken outside the law in the late 1990s such that Sniper turns into a ‘quiet murder’, a ‘crime without punishment’ (p. 177) a decade later. Further on, Peter Rollberg examines the career of the Russian born IsraeliAmerican Slava Tsukerman, while Eugénie Zvonkine explores compositional and architectonic forms in Kira Muratova’s films, positing that the latter is Muratova’s uncompromising constant. In the concluding chapter of the volume, Birgit Beumers considers the image of St Petersburg in Balabanov’s films, arguing that it presents ‘an empty, grey frame, the colourful canvas of which has been lost’ (p. 242). The volume is highly valuable, offering an assertive opening to the debate of new Russian fin de siècle culture. The book’s studies are primarily empirical, however some chapters contain a number of profound theoretical observations that would no doubt lay the foundations for the future paradigm (or set of paradigms) of a post-Soviet Russian traumatic cultural age. Department of European Languages & Cultures L. Ryazanova-Clarke University of Edinburgh Stone, Gerald. Slav Outposts in Central European History: The Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2016. ix + 398 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. £25.99 (paperback). Against the trend of transnational history, Gerald Stone has written a definitive master narrative of (or perhaps for) Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs. The western Slavic minorities, often neglected in scholarship, are given centre stage in this tour de force through nearly thirteen centuries. It may perhaps seem curious to read a history of minorities in this way, yet in reading this book it becomes apparent that this is a much-needed history to be told. Drawing on a formidable range of sources, Stone pieces together a comprehensive study of the westernmost Slavs. Often relying on sources from ‘outsiders’, the book presents snippets of evidence of the extent of the Wendish reach into Germany. These Slavs lived as far west as the Lüneburger Heide, though they were gradually pushed back to the north-east and south-east of Berlin. Much of what we learn, especially in the first half of the book which spans the period up to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, comes from sources documenting (or at the very least hinting at) the existence of Wends in Lusatia, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Brunswick and elsewhere. As Stone points out, the REVIEWS 553 earliest written Wendish source dates from the sixteenth century (p. 43). He suggests that the reformation led to a proliferation of Wendish vocabulary by the clergy (p 116), though, as with much of Wendish and Sorb history, the source base is sparse and ambiguous. The main body of evidence in western Slavic vernacular has only really been carefully compiled since the nineteenth century. Out of this emerges a fragmentary picture of various Slavic sub-groups that form the backbone of this story: Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs through the turmoil of history from early medieval times to the present. On this journey, we gain a number of fascinating insights. For instance, the word Kiez, a common expression for ‘neighbourhood’ in the cities of Berlin and Hamburg, is a legacy of the onetime Wendish presence in the area (pp. 58–60). But it is the diversity of the Slavic presence up to around the Elbe region that impresses most. Still, we have to wait until 1574 for the first published Wendish book to make an appearance (p. 99). Thereafter, the perspective shifts somewhat: away from outside onlookers towards ‘internal’ sources. The more frequently local vernacular sources feature, the more alive we are to the emergence of a common European history. From chapter six on (‘Awakening’), the story becomes a rather familiar one. The centre (Prussia) suppressed Wendish language education in elementary schools (p. 225) and in churches (p. 226), but this was followed by a growth in non-devotional Wendish literature towards the middle of the nineteenth century...

Vertical mobility around the high-alpine Schnidejoch Pass. Indications of Neolithic and Bronze Age pastoralism in the Swiss Alps from paleoecological and archaeological sources

Since 2003 a melting ice field on the Schnidejoch Pass (2756 m a.s.l.) has yielded several hundred objects from the Neolithic period, the Bronze and Iron Ages and from Roman and early medieval times. The oldest finds date from the beginning of the 5th millennium BC, whilst the most recent artefacts date from around AD 1000. Most of the objects belong to the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age and are of organic origin. A series of over 70 radiocarbon dates confirm that the Schnidejoch Pass, which linked the Bernese Oberland with the Rhône Valley, was frequented from no later than 4800–4500 BCE onwards. The pass was easily accessible when the glaciers descending from the nearby Wildhorn mountain range (summit at 3248 m a.s.l.) were in a retreating phase. On the other hand, the area was impassable during periods of glacial advances. A recent palaeoecological study of sediment cores from nearby Lake Iffigsee (2065 m a.s.l.) provides clear indications of early human impact in this Alpine area. Linking archaeological finds from the Schnidejoch Pass and the Rhône Valley with the palaeoecological data provides results that can be interpreted as early indications of Alpine pastoralism and transhumance. The combined archaeological and paleoecological research allows us to explain vertical mobility in the Swiss Alps.

Late Holocene lowland fluvial archives and geoarchaeology: Utrecht's case study of Rhine river abandonment under Roman and Medieval settlement

Fluvial lowlands have become attractive human settling areas all around the world over the last few millennia. Because rivers kept changing their course and networks due to avulsion, the sedimentary sequences in these areas are archives of both fluvial geomorphological and archaeological development. We integrated geological and archaeological datasets to demonstrate the concurrence of the gradual abandonment of a major Rhine channel (Utrecht, The Netherlands), the development of human habitation in the area, and the interactions between them.The Utrecht case study highlights the stage-wise abandonment of a natural river channel, due to avulsion, coincident with intensifying human occupation in Roman and Early Medieval times (1st millennium AD). The analyses make maximum use of very rich data sets available for the study area and the tight age control that the geo-archaeological dataset facilitates, offering extra means of time-control to document the pacing of the abandonment process. This allows us to quantify change in river dimensions and meander style and to provide discharge estimates for successive stages of the abandonment phase over a 1000-year period of abandonment succession, from mature river to eventual Late Medieval overbuilt canal when the Rhine branch had lost even more discharge.Continued geomorphic development during this period - which includes the 'Dark Ages' (450-1000 AD) - appears to have been crucial in the development of Utrecht from Roman army fortress to Medieval ecclesial centre. The settlement dynamics in and around the city of Utrecht changed during the various phases of abandonment. In the bifurcating network of river branches forming the Rhine-Meuse delta, the main Rhine branch hosted the Roman limes military border and transport route. The Rhine- Vecht bifurcation at Utrecht provided an excellent location to raise a Roman fort. Continued geomorphic activity during abandonment in Early Medieval times was characterised by enhanced overbank sedimentation and shifts in the position of bifurcations. River flooding became more incidental in this stage, and alluvial-ridge occupancy became sensitive to flooding events for several centuries. We conclude by demonstrating that similar human-river interactions during Roman times occurred in several other deltas within the former Roman empire, with differences depending on the position of a settlement within the delta, the overall hydrological situation, and the ability of societies to control the changing environment.

All the Roads to Patavium: Morphology, Genesis and Development of the Roman Road Network Around Padua

Abstract This paper deals with the analysis of the ancient road network around the city of Padua, attempts to reconstruct its morphology and to define its genesis and development between the second Iron Age and Late Antiquity (6th/5th cent. BC to 6th cent. AD). The study follows a methodological approach that today we define as „archaeomorphological“, first proposed by E. Vion in the late 1980s. By applying this methodology to the Paduan territory, it was possible to identify a series of routes of probable ancient origin radially converging toward the center of Roman Patavium, and linking it to other urban centers in the region and to the minor centers located within its ager. The presence of Iron Age settlements along the path of many of these routes suggests that the development of such a road network likely begins in pre-Roman times, which also highlights the ancient strategic importance of Padua and its territory as a fundamental junction between the center and the North-East of the Italian peninsula. On the other hand, the Roman road network somehow survived into the Late Antiqueand Early Medieval times, always influencing the distribution of settlements and the orientation of churches, until it was for the greater part restored by the Commune of Padua over the 13th century.

МІСТИЧНІ МОТИВИ В КИТАЙСЬКІЙ СЕРЕДНЬОВІЧНІЙ ПРОЗІ

The purpose of the article is to study Chinese medieval mystical novel’s genesis, the main mystic motives in Chinese early medieval short novel, including Taoism and Chinese Buddhism influence. The historical reason’s observation of medieval short novel`s genesis, including the analysis of intellectual world atmosphere in early dark medieval times is also proposed. This thesis systemized different genres of Chinese medieval mystical short novel, influences from sociо-historical process to mystical novel’s genesis. The key attention is focused on Gan Bao “Sao Shenji” and Buddhist short novel’s genesis and main characteristic.Using the methods of historical cross-culture studies and historiographic analysis of classical Chinese texts, such as Bao “Sao Shenji”, Lu Yiqing, Wang Yan and Hou Bo short medieval Buddhist novel (xiaoshuo) the author explores ер specificity of Chinese medieval prose. Chinese medieval prose is analyzed in the context of world history and in the context of Chinese literature genre paradigm history. It has also analyzed the main characteristic of a short mystical novel chronotope, which, according to the author of the article, usually reflects two mains levels of reality: absolute and relative. The article explores the main religious influences on the short medieval novel, especially the influence of the cult of Heaven, Tengranism, Chinese Buddhism and religious Taoism. Chinese medieval mystical novel was a new Chinese literature genre, which included detailed portrait characteristics of the main heroes, pseudohistorical motives and structured symbolic chronotope.It has combined Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist philosophy, high literary style, unpredictable plot and elements of folklore. Short medieval novel had a strong influence on the further development of Chinese literature.

Hip Dislocation and Dystocia in Early Medieval Times: Possible Evidence of Labor Maneuver.

In ancient times, maternal mortality would occur frequently, particularly during labor. Evidence of dystocia resulting in the death of a pregnant woman is very infrequent in paleopathologic literature, with only a few cases being demonstrated. In the early medieval site of Casserres, the skeleton of a young woman with a fetus in the pelvic region was found. Some abnormal findings of the maternal skeleton were evaluated, including a sacral anomaly, femoral head wound, the rare position of the lower left limb with the femoral head dislodged anteriorly and cephalad from the socket, and a fibular fracture. Examining the anomalies all together, a case of anterior hip dislocation related to a McRoberts-like maneuver performed during labor is a plausible explanation of the findings.

A deglaciation and Holocene biomarker-based reconstruction of climate and environmental variability in NW Iberian Peninsula: the Sanabria Lake sequence

The molecular biomarker composition of two sediment cores from Sanabria Lake (NW Iberian Peninsula) and a survey of modern plants in the watershed provide a reconstruction of past vegetation and landscape dynamics since deglaciation. During a proglacial stage in Lake Sanabria (prior to 14.7 cal ka BP), very low biomarker concentration and carbon preference index (CPI) values ~1 suggest that the n-alkanes could have derived from eroded ancient sediment sources or older organic matter with high degree of maturity. During the Late glacial (14.7–11.7 cal ka BP) and the Holocene (last 11.7 cal ka BP) intervals with higher biomarker and triterpenoid concentrations (high %nC29 , nC31 alkanes), higher CPI and average carbon length (ACL), and lower Paq (proportion of aquatic plants) are indicative of major contribution of vascular land plants from a more forested watershed (e.g. Mid Holocene period 7.0–4.0 cal ka BP). Lower biomarker concentrations (high %nC27 alkanes), CPI and ACL values responded to short phases with decreased allochthonous contribution into the lake that correspond to centennial-scale periods of regional forest decline (e.g. 4–3 ka BP, Roman deforestation after 2.0 ka, and some phases of the LIA, seventeenth–nineteenth centuries). Human activities in the watershed were significant during early medieval times (1.3–1.0 cal ka BP) and since 1960 CE, in both cases associated with relatively higher productivity stages in the lake (lower biomarker and triterpenoid concentrations, high %nC23 and %nC31 respectively, lower ACL and CPI values and higher Paq). The lipid composition of Sanabria Lake sediments indicates a major allochthonous (watershed-derived) contribution to the organic matter budget since deglaciation, and a dominant oligotrophic status during the lake history. The study constrains the climate and anthropogenic forcings and watershed versus lake sources in organic matter accumulation processes and helps to design conservation and management policies in mountain, oligotrophic lakes.

Overview of the origins and history of the five major cucurbit crops: issues for ancient DNA analysis of archaeological specimens

The gourd family, Cucurbitaceae, contains five vegetable crops of worldwide importance, the pumpkins and squash (Cucurbita spp.), watermelons (Citrullus lanatus), melons (Cucumis melo) and cucumbers (Cucumis sativus). Here is presented a synopsis of the origin and history of these cucurbit crops. Historical records of the use of cucurbits by people take the form of archaeobotanical finds, iconography and literature. The weight of the evidence indicates that Cucurbita spp. were first cultivated in the Americas at least 10,000 years ago, and that by 1492 ce a number of cultivar-groups of pumpkins and squash had been developed by indigenous American peoples. Watermelons were cultivated in northeastern Africa at least 4,000 years ago, first probably as a source of fresh water. Melons and cucumbers are native to Asia, probably initially cultivated for the use of the young fruits as vegetables. Melons spread to eastern Africa at an early date, but cucumbers are probably a more recent domesticate and spread westwards later, reaching Europe in early medieval times. Sequencing of cucurbit plant genomes and advances in ancient DNA research offer much promise for obtaining an improved assessment of cucurbit crop origins, specifically the genetic constitution and geographical home of ancestral source populations. Next-generation genomic sequencing, if applied to an appropriate array of archaeological cucurbit remains and modern germplasm, could contribute much to the understanding of the history and evolution under domestication of cucurbit crops.

The Medieval Quiet Period

For several centuries in early Medieval times the climate system was relatively unperturbed by natural forcing factors, resulting in a unique period of climate stability. We argue that this represents a reference state for the Common Era, well before anthropogenic forcing became the dominant driver of the climate system.

Landscape development and settlement history of the Vecht area (722–1122)

AbstractBased on historical evidence a description in broad outline is provided of landscape and settlement development in the Vecht area north of Utrecht for the period 722–1122 AD. Although the fluvial activity of the Vecht channel was reduced from about 2300 BP onwards, the river retained its economic importance as a shipping route in Early Medieval times according to the appearance of mintage and the spread of tollhouses. In the 8th century the Vecht still was seen as a river and as a branch of the Rhine. At that time the Vecht river discharged into a stretch of water that was named Almeer and was characterised as stagnant. The Almeer is regarded as the successor of Lake Flevo, mentioned by classical authors. Since this body of water is indicated asstagnum, it is unlikely that the water level in the southern part of the Almeer was affected by the Vlie tidal inlet in the north at that time. At the end of the 10th century the Almeer already had substantial dimensions. The building of dikes on the southern forelands of the Zuiderzee and the IJ-Lake started at least about 1200 AD. At the beginning of the timeline, settlement was limited to the natural levees of the river Vecht and its distributaries. The reclamation of the vast peatlands on both sides of the river started around the middle of the 11th century. The opening up of new areas for agriculture and settlement was accompanied by a transformation of the social fabric. In association with the pattern of land division historical information is used to indicate some of the changes that occurred in the Vecht area during that period. The drive to further intensify land use resulted in 1122 AD in the decision to build a dike on the northern bank of the Lower Rhine, since the Vecht is a blind arm of the river Rhine.

Development of modern forest zones in the Beskid Niski Mts. and adjacent area (Western Carpathians) in the late Holocene: A palaeobotanical perspective

The Beskid Niski Mts. and the foothill area of the Carpathians are under-represented in pollen data due to the unfavorable conditions for peat formation. This contribution is a review supplemented by new palaeobotanical data dedicated to the late Holocene history of local forests. Pollen, wood and other plant macrofossils as well as a new approach to isopollen mapping were used to reconstruct the migration of late-successional trees between ca. 3500 and 1900 BC. This time interval was define as a critical period in the development of the modern vegetation belts. We documented a quite late arrival of hornbeam, ca. 3500 BC, from the south and south east as well as optimal development of oak-lime-hornbeam forests forming the foothill belt between 2600 and 1600 BC. The migration of beech occurred ca. 3250–2750 BC and was followed by fir ca. 2800–2500 BC. Beech-fir forests already developed c. 2500 BC, and became common since ca. 1850 BC in the lower montane belt. On a regional scale, transformation of vegetation coincided with phases of climate moistening. The auxiliary role of the Corded Ware culture settlement, exploiting for the first time the upper landscape zone in the Carpathians, in the establishment of the new types of woodland, was indicated. Local differences in permanent deforestation of extensive areas were also analyzed. The beginning of this process in the lower landscape zone took place in the Roman Iron Age or in the Early Medieval time. In the upper landscape zone, it occurred in the Late Medieval or modern times, particularly as a result of the Wallachian colonization in the 15th and 16th century AD.

Genetic Heritage of the Balto-Slavic Speaking Populations: A Synthesis of Autosomal, Mitochondrial and Y-Chromosomal Data.

The Slavic branch of the Balto-Slavic sub-family of Indo-European languages underwent rapid divergence as a result of the spatial expansion of its speakers from Central-East Europe, in early medieval times. This expansion–mainly to East Europe and the northern Balkans–resulted in the incorporation of genetic components from numerous autochthonous populations into the Slavic gene pools. Here, we characterize genetic variation in all extant ethnic groups speaking Balto-Slavic languages by analyzing mitochondrial DNA (n = 6,876), Y-chromosomes (n = 6,079) and genome-wide SNP profiles (n = 296), within the context of other European populations. We also reassess the phylogeny of Slavic languages within the Balto-Slavic branch of Indo-European. We find that genetic distances among Balto-Slavic populations, based on autosomal and Y-chromosomal loci, show a high correlation (0.9) both with each other and with geography, but a slightly lower correlation (0.7) with mitochondrial DNA and linguistic affiliation. The data suggest that genetic diversity of the present-day Slavs was predominantly shaped in situ, and we detect two different substrata: ‘central-east European’ for West and East Slavs, and ‘south-east European’ for South Slavs. A pattern of distribution of segments identical by descent between groups of East-West and South Slavs suggests shared ancestry or a modest gene flow between those two groups, which might derive from the historic spread of Slavic people.

The environmental, archaeological and historical evidence for regional climatic changes and their societal impacts in the Eastern Mediterranean in Late Antiquity

This paper examines the evidence for climatic changes in the Eastern Mediterranean for the period 200–800 AD and offers hypotheses on the role of climatic fluctuations in the societal developments that occurred in this region at the end of Antiquity. The geographical focus of the paper includes Anatolia and the Levant, two major regions of the Eastern Roman Empire that are rich in environmental, historical and archaeological data. The paper starts with the review of current research on the economic, settlement and vegetation history of the Eastern Mediterranean in Late Antiquity, which provides the necessary framework for the study of potential climate impacts. The core of the article is devoted to the analysis of the palaeoclimatic evidence, which is divided in two groups. The first one encompasses the direct evidence, that is palaeoclimate proxies and the textual record of extreme weather events, while the second includes indirect information on climate, in particular multi-proxy studies that include pollen analysis, archaeological evidence, and the historical evidence of subsistence crises. We conclude that during our study period there occurred three periods of substantially different climatic conditions. A late Roman drought ∼350–470 AD was followed by a dramatic shift to much wetter climatic conditions. These in turn changed into increasing dryness after ∼730 AD in Anatolia and ∼670 AD in the Levant. The lack of chronological precision in the dating of the archaeological evidence and of some climatic records makes it impossible at present to make conclusive observations regarding the societal responses to these climatic fluctuations. Nonetheless in all probability, the extended and – in some areas - severe late Roman drought did not cause any major social upheaval or economic decline in Anatolia or the Levant, although it appears to have contributed to a change in patterns of water use in the cities. In contrast, the increased availability of moisture after ∼470 AD does appear to have contributed to the expansion of rural settlement and agriculture into environmentally marginal terrain, including semi-arid areas such as the Negev. In this way climate probably contributed to the general economic prosperity of the late Roman Empire in the east of the Mediterranean basin. The end of this late Roman world system came about finally in mid-7th c. and, at least in Anatolia, is not directly associated with any shift in climatic conditions. Aridity during early Medieval times may be one of the main factors behind the gradual long-term decline of settlement on the marginal lands in the Levant following Islamic conquest.

Beneath Sensationalized Conflict: Buddhist Conjugal Relation in Early Medieval China

It is often overlooked that women were highly regarded in Buddhist literature for their indispensable contribution to the family welfare. In the Śrgalavadasūtra, whose earliest translation into Chinese is traditionally attributed to the Parthian monk An Shigao (d. 168), fulfilling the husband-wife relationship was singled out as one of the ethical cornerstones of a blessed and prosperous family, and the wife is given due credit for familial prosperity. The scripture was translated at least nine other times in South China from the fourth to the fifth centuries, suggesting that Buddhist wisdom was sought to manage household life. The popularity of the Śrgalavadasūtra indicates that a wife of Buddhist faith and devotion was considered to be crucial to familial peace and prosperity. More importantly, the Buddhist advice given in the Śrgalavadasūtra is fully consistent with Confucian instructions on the husband-wife relation, demonstrating a seamless and uncompromised Buddho-Confucian integration that had been overshadowed by the sensationalized conflict between the two doctrines in early medieval times. This paper analyzes the various translations of the Śrgalavadasūtra, compares them to Confucian instructions on the husband-wife relationship, and contextualizes their popularity in early medieval Chinese society. It argues that the Buddhist notion of family articulated in the Śrgalavadasūtra and introduced in the midst of much conflict between Buddhism and Confucianism in medieval times, in fact contributed to the development of the ideal of family in imperial China.