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8.8 Hinduism as ‘a world religion’: a more recent understanding Traditionally, as we have seen, a Hindu was someone born to Hindu parents and into a caste with its appropriate dharma. The link between religious practice and a whole way of life bound the individual into a community from birth. Regional factors, parentage and caste affiliation largely determi
5.4 A dimensional model of religion Given the problems of devising a succinct definition of religion, some contemporary scholars have produced broader profiles of religion without claiming to identify one distinguishing characteristic. One example of this kind of approach is the seven-dimensional model of religion proposed by Ninian Smart, a specialist in the study of world religions. Smart argues that, if his model is adequate, ‘then we do not need to worry greatly about further definition of religion’ (Smart, 1989, p. 21)
Learning outcomes When you have completed this unit you should: be able to discuss some of the ways in which the concept of ‘religion’ has been and is used in the study of religion; have gained some practical experience in the study of religion through exploring examples of religious activity in Britain and India on ‘special days’; be able to identify and to evaluate critically the motives, concerns and methods that typically distinguish the academic study of
3.2 Plans for ‘resettlement’ of the Jews The occupation of western Poland after the brief campaign of 1939 gave the Nazis Lebensraum to colonise with ethnic Germans, some of whom were soon to be repatriated to the Reich (and thence, often reluctantly, to the newly annexed provinces of the Warthgau and Danzig) by new conquests. But the preparation of these provinces for the colonists necessitated the expulsion of a million Poles and Jews, who were driven east to the Nazi-controlled satellite of Poland known as the Ge
References 1.6 The social context of Babylonian mathematical activity The extant mathematical tablets from the Old Babylonian period fall broadly into two categories, table texts and problem texts. You have seen examples of both of these. The weighing-the-stone problem with which we started is from a problem text, while all the others—the table of squares, the reciprocal table and Plimpton 322—are table texts, tablets consisting solely of tables of numbers. Several hundred table texts have been found, and many types of calculations appear to h 1.2 A Babylonian mathematical problem Before seeing how our knowledge has been acquired, let us get into the spirit of things by ascertaining what a problem looks like once the modern cuneiform scholar has translated a tablet. The following example is taken from a tablet (see Figure 2), now at Yale University, translated by Otto Neugebauer and Abraham Sachs. Words in square brackets are their suggested reconstructions of what the tablet presumably says (where it is damaged), and words in parentheses are the translator's additions 1 Babylonian mathematics In Mesopotamia, the scribes of Babylon and the other big cities were impressing on clay tablets economic and administrative records, literary, religious and scientific works, word-lists, and mathematical problems and tables. Nearly all of the texts that give us our fullest understanding of Babylonian mathematics—indeed, of any mathematics before the Greeks—date from about 1800—1600 BC. During this period, King Hammurabi unified Mesopotamia out of a rabble of small city-states into an em 5.3 The Marseillaise During the Revolutionary Wars, as Robespierre insisted, ‘republican enthusiasm must be exalted by all means possible’. The Jacobins encouraged a revolutionary solidarity and patriotism, expressed in the slogan ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. The Marseillaise began as the ‘battle-hymn of the army of the Rhine’, composed by Rouget de Lisle in April 1792 immediately after France declared war on Francis of Austria. It acquired its name when a battalion of volunteers from Marse 5.1 Revolutionary calendar and metric system We considered earlier the universalist principles of 1789 deriving from the Enlightenment that inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the redivision of France into departments. As the dominant group in the Convention by 1793, the Jacobins regarded themselves as mandated to enact the ‘general will’ of the people in a sense inspired by Rousseau: not as the aggregate weight of the individual aspirations of 28 million Frenchmen, but as the expression of that which, as virtuous men 4.1 Intellectual, governmental and monarchical responses There was much sympathy among intellectuals abroad for the Revolution, which seemed to be putting so many Enlightenment ideals into practice. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant was among the first to hail the Revolution as a unique historical phenomenon, and these early reactions were shared by Fichte, Herder, Schiller and Goethe. Enthusiasts in Britain included the radical Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man (1791), Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights 3.4 Monarchy and the Revolution – the flight to Varennes, 1791 The task of the moderates was further complicated by the ambiguous attitude of the royal family. From the first there were royalists who refused to compromise with the Revolution, including Louis XVI's younger brothers, the comte de Provence (later Louis XVIII) and the comte d'Artois (later Charles X), who left France as émigrés and fomented counter-revolution from abroad. By 1791 half the noble officers in the French army had resigned their commissions. Weak, shifty and out of his depth, L 3.3 The divide over the Church, 1790 The revolutionaries of 1789 also aspired to reform the Catholic Church in France, though not to disestablish it, still less to de-Christianise the country. Many of the clergy themselves favoured reform. In August 1789 the Assembly deprived the Church of its income by abolishing the tithe. In November it decreed the sequestration (nationalisation) of church lands, roughly 10 per cent of all land in France, for public sale. The Assembly was prompted by the same need to raise revenue to pay off 3.2 Popular violence and the Revolution The deputies were concerned to protect property and maintain order (as the 1790 decree on the abolition of nobility suggests) in the face of a growing breakdown of public order; and their attitude to the masses – to what the demagogic journalist Jean-Paul Marat (1744–93) called le petit peuple (the little people), the millions of propertyless, distressed, violent and unpredictable ‘fellow citizens’ – was one of growing apprehension. The people traditionally rioted when bread 3.1 The moderate reformers 1789–92 was a period of relatively moderate reform in the spirit of the Enlightenment – moderate, that is, compared with what followed. It was certainly revolutionary in relation to what went before. The Constituent Assembly (August 1789–September 1791) and its successor, the Legislative Assembly (October 1791–August 1792), comprising educated members of the Third Estate joined by liberal-minded nobles and clergy, were satisfied with the transformation of absolute monarchy into 2.6 Enlightenment, revolution and reform – the departments Old Regime France was a confused welter of overlapping administrative, judicial and fiscal divisions and authorities (see Figure 2). 2.5.1 Imagery of the Declaration The decree on the abolition of nobility drew the line at damage to property, ownership of property having been proclaimed a natural right in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. (The decree is evidence that, as is known from other sources, the crowd was taking the law into its own hands by ransacking chateaux, destroying records of seigneurial dues, etc.) 2.5 Declaration of the Rights of Man On 26 August 1789, the Assembly passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen as the preamble to a constitution drawn up in 1791. (The Declaration also prefaced the later constitutions of 1793 and 1795.)
2.4 Enlightened reformism – dismantling the Old Regime The National Assembly, the self-proclaimed and now de facto supreme representative and legislative organ of state, set to work on the constitution which it had sworn to introduce. Calling itself the Constituent Assembly (to stress both its representative credentials and its constitutional mission), it consisted of 745 deputies elected for two years with virtually unlimited power to pass laws. The king, by interposing his veto, might delay but could not override laws passed by it
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