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Beckoning Fortune
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The Mongolic Languages
Once the rulers of the largest land empire that has ever existed on earth, the historical Mongols of Chinggis Khan left a linguistic heritage which today survives in the form of more than a dozen different languages, collectively termed Mongolic. For general linguistic theory, the Mongolic languages offer interesting insights to problems of areal typology and structural change. An understanding of the Mongolic language family is also a prerequisite for the study of Mongolian and Central Eurasian history and culture. This volume is the first comprehensive treatment of the Mongolic languages in English, written by an international team of specialists.
Animal and Shaman
"Animal and Shaman, a comparative study of the indigenous pre-Christian and pre-Muslim religions of Central Asia, describes a common inheritance among the beliefs of the various peoples who have lived in Central Asia or have migrated from there: Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Manchus, Finns and Hungarians." "Shamans - holy men and healers among the pagan faiths - relied heavily on animal sacrifices to create spiritual purity and to nourish the soul and, as a result, animals and spirituality were locked in a mutually dependent embrace. Julian Baldick demonstrates that in pagan times there were remarkable common features in the forms of worship and spiritual expression and that these similarities were largely based on the roles of animals in the different cultures of Central Asia. He shows that these have not only survived in the myths and legends of the region but have also found their way into the mythologies of the West." "This analysis will be of importance to historians as well as to cultural and social anthropologists."--Jacket.
Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire
In the thirteenth century the Mongols created a vast, transcontinental empire that intensified commercial and cultural contact throughout Eurasia. From the outset of their expansion, the Mongols identified and mobilized artisans of diverse backgrounds, frequently transporting them from one cultural zone to another. Prominent among those transported were Muslim textile workers, resettled in China, where they made clothes for the imperial court. In a meticulous and fascinating account, the author investigates the significance of cloth and colour in the political and cultural life of the Mongols. Situated within the broader context of the history of the Silk Road, the primary line in East-West cultural communication during the pre-Muslim era, the study promises to be of interest not only to historians of the Middle East and Asia, but also to art historians and textile specialists.
Faces of the Wolf
In his study of the human, non-human relationships in Mongolia, Bernard Charlier explores the role of the wolf in the ways nomadic herders relate to their natural environment and to themselves. The wolf, as the enemy of the herds and a prestigious prey, is at the core of two technical relationships, herding and hunting, endowed with particular cosmological ideas. The study of these relationships casts a new light on the ways herders perceive and relate to domestic and wild animals. It convincingly undermines any attempt to consider humans and non-humans as entities belonging a priori to autonomous spheres of existence, which would reify the nature-society boundary into a phenomenal order of things and so justify the identity of western epistemology.
Technology, Tradition and Survival
The contributors address the history, originality, variety and sophistication of traditional science, technology and material culture in the Middle East and Central Asia, their influence on the history of Europe and the West, and the threat posed by modern Western technologies.
Divination in Exile
In Divination in Exile, Alexander K. Smith offers the first comprehensive scholarly introduction to the performance of divination in Tibetan speaking communities, both past and present. While Smith surveys a variety of ritual practices, the volume focuses on divination and its associated rites in the contemporary Tibetan Bon tradition. Drawing from multi-site ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Himachal Pradesh and the translation of previously unpublished Tibetan language materials, Divination in Exile offers a valuable, social scientific contribution to our understanding of the perception and usage of ritual manuscripts in contemporary Tibetan cultural milieus.
Walther Heissig (1913-2005) Aus dem Nachlass des Mongolisten und Ethnologen - Nachlassübersicht - Briefwechsel mit Erich Haenisch, Lajos Ligeti, Käthe Uray-Köhalmi, John R. Krueger und Erik Haarh
Aus dem Nachlass des Mongolisten Walther Heissig (1913-2005) werden mehrere unveröffentlichte Texte vorgelegt, die für ein breiteres Publikum berechnet sind: eine von der Deutschen Welle gesendete Reihe mit Volkserzählungen aus verschiedenen Ländern, eine Darstellung der Nachforschungen nach Resten des Mongolischen, der Mogholi-Sprache, in Afghanistan, die Heissig 1969-1971 unternahm, sowie eine Novelle, die der Zweiundzwanzigjährige schrieb. Die aus dem Manuskript mitgeteilten Texte belegen das Geschick des Autors, gemeinverständlich und interessant zu schreiben. Der Band bringt weiterhin ein vorläufiges Findbuch zu einem Teil von Heissigs Nachlass in der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin sowie Briefwechsel mit Gelehrten - drei Mongolisten, einer Tungusologin und einem Tibetologen. Der Herausgeber Hartmut Walravens ist Wissenschaftshistoriker. Zu seinen früheren Publikationen gehören ein Gedenkband für Walther Heissig sowie die Edition des Briefwechsels zwischen Nikolaus Poppe (1897-1991) und Walther Heissig.
Mongolian Studies
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