Traditional Kingdoms Research Articles

Ancient Seafarer and Maritime Early Civilization in Southeast Asia: Theoretical Debate & New Approach

Traditionally, seas and oceans have become sources of inspiration in seeking the truth from facts to dispel the worldview of those who tended to associate it with myths and superstitions. Seas and oceans are equally realms with their advantages in bridging nations, inculcating a sense of unity, mutual understanding, and cooperation as well as in generating wealth. They are considered priceless treasures, which can neither be exchanged nor modified. In the South East Asia or Nusantara historiography, the relationship between men known as seafarers is indisputable. It is not far-fetched to suggest that the change and development in present-day Southeast Asia, from traditional kingdoms to modern nation-states are intimately rooted in and shaped by the contributions of our seafaring ancestors. By taking into consideration past maritime historiography, namely the roles and contributions of these seafaring communities, and the presence of the surrounding seas and oceans, it can be deduced that they have contributed immensely to the development of various civilizations in this region.

DISPORA HOMO-SAPIENS BERBARISKAN MANUSIA PELAUT DI KEPULAUAN ASIA TENGGARA DAN LAHIRNYA TEORI MANUSIA KELUAR JAWA ( THEORY OUT OF JAVA-MAN) : SATU PEMIKIRAN DARI PERSPEKTIF KELAUTAN

Traditionally, seas and oceans have become sources of inspiration in seeking the truth from facts to dispell the worldview of those who tended to asscoiate it with myths and superstitions. In fact, it is not far-fetched to suggest that the change and development in present day Southeast Asia, from traditional kingdoms to modern nation-states are intimately rooted in and shaped by the contributions of our seafaring ancestors. History demonstrates how they risked as well as as sacrificed their lives crossing treacherous waters and encountering stormy weathers just to ensure their legacy and continuity of the future generations of seafarers, and turning this region into an epicentre of civilization that was second to none in the world of civilizations. Yet, their thousands of years of contributions and sacrifices appear trivial and paled to insignificance like ”shipwrecks laying at the bottom of the sea in their forgotten watery graves”. Based on several theories of the development of traditional civilizations in the Nusantara like the Out of Yunan and Out of Taiwan theories by western scholars, it appears that these theoretical paradigms have marginalized the realities of history, and therefore require to be ”straightened” via a Southeast Asia centric perspective. This writing is to revisit the salience of the ancient epoch and pre-historic man marked by the arrival of the homo-eractus and homo-sapiens from mainland Asia to this region in the early journey and development of the history of maritime civilization; to explain how the seafaring communities from the eras B.C. (Before Christ) to A.D. (Anno Domini) were able to utilise seas and oceans as a source of emancipation and development, and eventual rise as feared and respected searfarers of the ancient world.

African communication matrix: The influence of the secular on the church in Nigeria

African communication is an age-long dissemination system. Its continuous existence in the ever-growing Nigerian society is of interest to so many communication scholars. This study was conducted to ascertain what channels of the African communication system still exist and how these influence the religious setting in Africa using Nigeria as a case study. A survey method was adopted to investigate the problem in the two traditional kingdoms of Uzairue and Auchi, both in Edo state. A set of questionnaires were designed to elicit responses from the Christian respondents, and interviews were also conducted with chiefs of two selected traditional communities of Iyamho and Auchi. The secularization theory was used to explain the topic. The findings of this study reveal that African communication channels, particularly the talking drum, pot drum and wooden drum, are commonly used in rural settings and these have crept into the religious (Christian) settings where they are used as instruments of praise, worship and choir presentations. This study is aimed at providing useful information for the teaching of African communication systems in the departments of communication and media studies in Nigerian universities, in particular, and Africa in general. It will also help Africans appreciate the value of African communication instruments in the modern world as well as traditional African communication channels used in churches. This study recommends that further research should be conducted to ascertain why there is a decline in the use of African communication instruments.

Microbial predators form a new supergroup of eukaryotes.

Molecular phylogenetics of microbial eukaryotes has reshaped the tree of life by establishing broad taxonomic divisions, termed supergroups, that supersede the traditional kingdoms of animals, fungi and plants, and encompass a much greater breadth of eukaryotic diversity1. The vast majority of newly discovered species fall into a small number of known supergroups. Recently, however, a handful of species with no clear relationship to other supergroups have been described2-4, raising questions about the nature and degree of undiscovered diversity, and exposing the limitations of strictly molecular-based exploration. Here we report ten previously undescribed strains of microbial predators isolated through culture that collectively form a diverse new supergroup of eukaryotes, termed Provora. The Provora supergroup is genetically, morphologically and behaviourally distinct from other eukaryotes, and comprises two divergent clades of predators-Nebulidia and Nibbleridia-that are superficially similar to each other, but differ fundamentally in ultrastructure, behaviour and gene content. These predators are globally distributed in marine and freshwater environments, but are numerically rare and have consequently been overlooked by molecular-diversity surveys. In the age of high-throughput analyses, investigation of eukaryotic diversity through culture remains indispensable for the discovery of rare but ecologically and evolutionarily important eukaryotes.

Fashion, Thresholds, and Borders

Fashion, Thresholds, and Borders

Teachers without Wages: The Challenges of Tsangaya School Teachers in Kano State Nigeria

Tsangaya teachers are the people who devoted their time, energy and resources for the free and voluntary teaching of the Holy Qur’an to the offspring of their communities in northern Nigeria. Prior to the advent of the colonial administrators in Nigeria, the Qura’nic teachers were the most respected and literate people among the society, and earned reasonable financial remunerations from the traditional rulers and the general populace. But after the forceful conquering of the traditional kingdoms by the British colonialist, the Qura’nic knowledge and the teachers were relegated, and all financial benefits to the Qura’nic schools were cut off, which left them with no option, then to find their fate on the streets. The aim of this paper is to explore the difficult condition of the free services the Tsangaya teachers are rendering to the society. A qualitative method was used to conduct the research, where three schools were purposively selected, one from each of the three senatorial districts of Kano state. The population includes 11 participants which are; 3 Almajiri teachers, three Almajiri parents, three people living with Almajiris, and two government officials. Primary information was sourced through face-face interview strategy, and the result was analysed through the Nvivo10 software application. Findings discovered that the teachers do not get any salary from the government, and the parents usually send their children to the school, to live from elementary level until graduation without paying school fees, rather, the teachers survive through the daily house-house and street begging of money and food by their pupils.

LOI OU MORALE ? DEUX INTERPRÉTATIONS DE LA CORRUPTION POLITIQUE À L’ÉPOQUE PRÉ-IMPÉRIALE DE LA CHINE

By the middle of the third century BC, the Chinese world was on the verge of a radical change: the existence of traditional kingdoms was about to end and unification within an empire had become inevitable. Two political and social visions, Confucianism and Legalism, compete for preferential access to the proverbial ‘prince's ear’, and the values and their practices seem to be diametrically opposed. We discuss these two visions around several passages from Han Feizi, Lunyu, Lüshi Chunqiu and Shi ji in which the conviction of criminal acts is correlated with the efficiency and success of the state. By proposing the primacy of universal law or, on the contrary, that of family loyalty, the two schools of thought support opposite models of political action and define two distinct typologies of political relations. In the last part of the commentary, we assess the impact of legal or moral norms on political practice, especially in the context of a series of events that led to the formation of the Empire under the leadership of Qin Shi Huangdi

State and Society: Indigenous Practices in Ritual and Religious Activities of Bali Hinduism in Bali-Indonesia

Due to the increased tourism development in Bali, there have been significant changes in Balinese views in the practices of their ritual and religious lives. Previously populated almost exclusively by Hindu Balinese, Bali has evolved to be a multicultural society resulting from the increased migration of people, ethnicities and ideas. In the past, any ritual and religious activities in accordance with the humanistic religious management had been carried out in the traditional kingdoms. However, the downfall of those traditional kingdoms has affected the emergence of significant issues in relation to who will be in charge in the ritual and religious activities that demand much financial outlay. This has brought about important issues in relation to the decrease in the Balinese who adhere to Hinduism, since most of them have no time to arrange these kinds of activities as most work in the tourist sector that demands effectiveness and efficiency. There are many questions to be discussed in this paper, namely, Firstly: What is the role of the state and society in the management of the ritual and religious activities in Bali? Secondly: What kinds of alternative solutions can solve the problems? And, Thirdly: How can these issues faced by the Balinese, be managed, since the Balinese do not only consist of followers of the Hindu religion but also other religions such as Islam, Christianity (Protestant and Catholic), Buddhism and Confucianism as well as the local beliefs that have been recognized by the state in the Reform period since 1998? Through answering these questions, it is expected to have a better understanding of the role of the state and society in the context of indigenous practices in Ritual and Religious Activities of Bali Hinduism in Indonesia.

Progress towards the Tree of Eukaryotes.

Developing a detailed understanding of how all known forms of life are related to one another in the tree of life has been a major preoccupation of biology since the idea of tree-like evolution first took hold. Since most life is microbial, our intuitive use of morphological comparisons to infer relatedness only goes so far, and molecular sequence data, most recently from genomes and transcriptomes, has been the primary means to infer these relationships. For prokaryotes this presented new challenges, since the degree of horizontal gene transfer led some to question the tree-like depiction of evolution altogether. Most eukaryotes are also microbial, but in contrast to prokaryotic life, the application of large-scale molecular data to the tree of eukaryotes has largely been a constructive process, leading to a small number of very diverse lineages, or 'supergroups'. The tree is not completely resolved, and contentious problems remain, but many well-established supergroups now encompass much more diversity than the traditional kingdoms. Some of the most exciting recent developments come from the discovery of branches in the tree that we previously had no inkling even existed, many of which are of great ecological or evolutionary interest. These new branches highlight the need for more exploration, by high-throughput molecular surveys, but also more traditional means of observations and cultivation.

Rice Policy in Java from Traditional Kingdoms to Dutch Colonial Time

Rice is main food for Indonesian people nowadays. Rice is consumed by all people in Indonesian society and planted in several places in Indonesia. Based on the historical data, rice was dominantly planted in Java, Due to the importance of rice, any political rulerinIndonesiapaidattentiontoricetostabilizehisauthority.Thisarticlewillconduct historical analysis about the policy of rice from traditional ruler in Java Dutch Colonial. For analyzed it used historical method by using historical sources which searched fromNationalLibraryJakarta,NationalarchiveJakarta,andKITLcollectionfromLeiden University Library, and Mangkunegaran Palace Library. The research finding show that rice was the main food from Traditional Javanese kingdom to Dutch Colonial time. The Ruler take special policy to made rice availability for people prosperity.

Giacomo Macola. The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics.

With The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics, Giacomo Macola has made a major contribution to the history of Africa, and a small one to the history of technology. The book begins by criticizing the histories of guns in Africa written in the 1970s and 1980s for concentrating exclusively on the functional uses of guns for hunting and warfare. The social construction of technology that followed in the 1990s, which stressed the role of users in determining the function of guns, represented a partial advance. In this book, Macola claims to offer a further advance by presenting what he calls the “domestication” perspective (6), in which African guns are embedded in social relations and in personal identities and statuses, as well as in functional uses. The heart of his book, and by far the most significant contribution, is Macola’s description and analysis of the many diverse ethnic groups, from traditional kingdoms to small-scale stateless societies, that occupied south-central Africa—the region between the Great Lakes to the east, Angola to the west, the Congo to the north, and South Africa to the south—in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this savanna region where there were no clear borders, widely scattered populations moved in search of pastures for their cattle, elephants for ivory, and slaves.

Acytota – associated kingdom of neglected life

There is a huge variety of RNA- and DNA-containing entities that multiply within and propagate between cells across all kingdoms of life, having no cells of their own. Apart from cellular organisms, these entities (viroids, plasmids, mobile elements and viruses among others) are the only ones with distinct genetic identities but which are not included in any traditional tree of life. We suggest to introduce or, rather, revive the distinct category of acellular organisms, Acytota, as an additional, undeservedly ignored full-fledged kingdom of life. Acytota are indispensable players in cellular life and its evolution. The six traditional kingdoms (Cytota) and Acytota together complete the classification of the biological world (Biota), leaving nothing beyond.

National parks and social tensions – Case study Ugandan Rwenzori National Park

The current study focuses on conflicts about land resources. As a case in point, it discusses the ethno-demographic consequences of establishing the Rwenzori Mountains National Park (RMNP) in 1992 against the express wishes of the autochthonous population. Forced out of the mountain forests into the eastern Rwenzori foothills, the Konzo, Amba and Toro peoples have faced a strict ban on expanding settlements uphill or on using land above 2 200 m without permission. The resulting population pressure in the foothills has quickly led to tensions between the three autochthonous peoples and dozens of other ethnic groups who have joined them in recent decades. In contrast to life in the mountains, the foothills are characterized by fairly vigorous economic activity, including cement, cobalt, tea and cotton production, the main sources of employment. Ethno-social problems in western Uganda are compounded by a strengthening of the traditional kingdoms and notably by the establishment of a new Rwenzori Kingdom for the Bakonzo1, a sectioned-off enclave of the Toro Kingdom. The plethora of new kingdoms since 2009 has triggered widespread social unrest, and Bakonzo expectations of privileged access to the labour market in their newly-created kingdom are especially troubling.

CBOL Protist Working Group: Barcoding Eukaryotic Richness beyond the Animal, Plant, and Fungal Kingdoms

Animals, plants, and fungi—the three traditional kingdoms of multicellular eukaryotic life—make up almost all of the visible biosphere, and they account for the majority of catalogued species on Earth [1]. The remaining eukaryotes have been assembled for convenience into the protists, a group composed of many diverse lineages, single-celled for the most part, that diverged after Archaea and Bacteria evolved but before plants, animals, or fungi appeared on Earth. Given their single-celled nature, discovering and describing new species has been difficult, and many protistan lineages contain a relatively small number of formally described species (Figure 1A), despite the critical importance of several groups as pathogens, environmental quality indicators, and markers of past environmental changes. It would seem natural to apply molecular techniques such as DNA barcoding to the taxonomy of protists to compensate for the lack of diagnostic morphological features, but this has been hampered by the extreme diversity within the group. The genetic divergence observed between and within major protistan groups greatly exceeds that found in each of the three multicellular kingdoms. No single set of molecular markers has been identified that will work in all lineages, but an international working group is now close to a solution. A universal DNA barcode for protists coupled with group-specific barcodes will enable an explosion of taxonomic research that will catalyze diverse applications.

Waiting for a righteous ruler: The Karen royal imaginary in Thailand and Burma

Karen believe they are like orphans without a king and leader; royalty often appear in their myths, legends and prophecies. Buddhist Karen await the next Buddha, Ariya Metteya — preceded by a righteous Karen leader — who shall cleanse the world. This paper explores the Karen imaginary and notions of royalty as preconditions for a new era governed by Buddhist ethics that will bring peace and prosperity. This imaginary combines religion and politics in a millenarian model of the world as seen from the margins of traditional kingdoms and modern nation-states — what James Scott has termed ‘non-state spaces’. The Karen oscillate between defensive and offensive strategies, as shown in several examples. Is this imaginary a premodern phenomenon typical of marginalised minorities or perhaps also part of a modern, global imaginary of a better future? The concept of morally enchanted leadership is discussed in relation to states, nations and globalisation.

Gift Exchange and Interpretations of Captain Cook in the Traditional Kingdoms of the Hawaiian Islands

The relationship between the kanaka maoli people of the traditional kingdoms of the Hawaiian Islands and Captain James Cook and his crew is interpreted in the context of a theory of gift exchange. It is argued that interpretations of kanaka maoli behaviour based on an implicit assumption that social relations were structured primarily by property rights leads to error. Instead, sense can be made of kanaka maoli behaviour only if a logic based on rights of person is taken into account.

Some Comments on Style in the Meanings of the Past

AbstractLike the European written genre history, court literature from the traditional kingdoms of Southeast Asia often relates historical events and possible or probable genealogies. Yet, like the myths of tribal peoples, these accounts are characterized by mythical elements and a somewhat repetitious style, and were recited aloud rather than read in private silence. But if we regard them as mixtures of historical and mythical elements, our understanding of their inner structure and meaning is inevitably compromised, for the notion of a mixture already imposes assumptions about the shape of the past and criteria of reality which are implicit in a historical consciousness. The form in which thought is couched, after all, is the thought, not a representation of something behind or outside it. This paper therefore attempts a rhetorical analysis of a Classical Malay text of the type called hikayat, one which dates from about the seventeenth century. It begins with an analysis of grammar and sentence structure, then moves to certain stylistic features of hikayat, contrasting them with some stylistic features of historical writing. I then comment on the context of texts—the meaning of audience, of performance, of language, of author—and end with some speculation about the notion of the past as revealed in Classical Malay hikayat.

The Political Economy of Regional and Urban Revenue Policy in Indonesia

.he nomenclature of nationhood is misleading. Indonesia is not one country but many. By the historical accident of Dutch colonialism, some 3,000 islands and scores of traditional kingdoms have been assembled to constitute a single country. Not surprisingly, this regionalism persists to the present time and is strongly reflected in the multi-disciplinary literature of modern, post-independence Indonesia.' Our study of Indonesian regional finance therefore is part of a well-established tradition, but it comes at a period when, for the first time, national economic growth goals are beginning to compete with national political goals.