Britannica encyclopedia of world religions 9781593394912, 1593394918

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Britannica

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

WORLD RELIGIONS

Cover photographs: (Left to Right by row) ©Insy Shah—Gulfimages/Getty; ©Robert Harding—Digital Vision/Getty; ©Richard Hamilton Smith/Corbis; ©Roger Wood/Corbis; ©John Block—Botanica/Getty; ©Tom Le Goff—Digital Vision/Getty; ©Murat Taner—zefa/Corbis; ©John William Banagan—Photodisc Green/Getty; ©Bryan Mullennix—Photodisc Red/Getty

Britannica

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

WORLD RELIGIONS

Jacob E. Safra, Chairman of the Board Jorge Aguilar-Cauz, President Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Chicago • London • New Delhi • Paris • Seoul • Sydney • Taipei • Tokyo

Britannica ENCYCLOPEDIA

WORLD RELIGIONS

OF

Encyclopædia Britannica First published in 1768, Encyclopædia Britannica has long been the standard by which all other reference works are judged. It represents a tradition of excellence that was built, over the centuries, on meticulous scholarship and unmatched attention to detail. Today, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., produces a range of fine products for reference, education, and learning in different media and in many different languages. Wherever you see the Britannica name—in print, on the Internet, CD-ROM, or DVD—it is your guarantee of quality, accuracy, and authority.

© 2006 BY ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, INC.

Copyright Under International Copyright Union All Rights Reserved Under International and Universal Copyright Conventions by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005935497 International Standard Book Number: 978-1-59339-491-2

The original edition of this book, created in conjunction with Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, was published in 1999 as Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions.

No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Encyclopædia Britannica and other fine products are available on the Internet at http://www.britannica.com. (Trademark Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.) Printed in Singapore.

ADVISORS AND AUTHORS Consulting Editor Wendy Doniger Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions University of Chicago Primary Contributors Buddhism Frank Reynolds Professor of the History of Religions University of Chicago Comparative Religion and Religious Studies Hans H. Penner Preston H. Kelsey Professor of Religion Dartmouth College

Christianity Jaroslav Pelikan Sterling Professor of History (Emeritus) Yale University Islam Juan E. Campo Professor of Religious Studies University of California at Santa Barbara Judaism Jacob Neusner Distinguished Research Professor of Religious Studies University of South Florida

Religions of East Asia Norman Girardot Professor of Religion Studies Lehigh University Religions of India John Stratton Hawley Professor of Religion Barnard College Columbia University Martha Ann Selby Southern Methodist University Religions of Indigenous Peoples Davíd L. Carrasco Professor of Religion Princeton University

Religions of Ancient Peoples Morten Warmind Adjunct Professor Copenhagen University

Additional Contributors African Religions Laura Grillo College of Wooster Buddhism Jeff Shirkey University of Chicago Christianity Michael Frassetto (“Jesus Christ”) Encyclopædia Britannica James O’Donnell (“St. Augustine”) University of Pennsylvania Gnosticism Karen King Harvard University Hinduism Paul Arney Columbia University Jeffery Kripal (“Uektism”) Westminster College James Locktefeld Carthage College Christian Novetzke Columbia University

Brian K. Smith New York University

Sara Mandell University of South Florida

Rupa Visnawath Columbia University

Steve Mason (“Flavius Josephus”) York University

Susan Wadley (“Qhole”) Syracuse University Islam Kevin Reinhart (“Eahera”) Dartmouth College Jainism John Cort Denison University Judaism Alan J. Avery-Peck College of the Holy Cross Philip R. Davies (“Dead Sea Scrolls”) University of Sheffield Ithamar Gruenwald (“Qabbalah and Jewish Mysticism”) Tel Aviv University Steven Katz (“The Holocaust”) Boston University

Jacob Staub Reconstructionist Rabbinical College James R. Strange University of South Florida Millennialism Richard Landes Boston University Native American Religions Christopher Jocks Dartmouth College Lawrence E. Sullivan Harvard University New Religious Movements Murray Rubinstein Baruch College Brian K. Smith New York University Sikhism Gurinder Singh-Mann Columbia University

v © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

CONTENTS

▲

v Advisors and Authors

Major Articles

viii Editor’s Preface ix Introduction by Wendy Doniger xi Explanatory Notes xiii Guide to Pronunciation xvii Pronunciation Symbols 1 Encyclopedia of World Religions from Aaron to Zwingli

16 African Religions

48 Anatolian Religions

250 Confucianism

316 Egyptian Religion

370 Germanic Religion

584 Judaism

714 Mesopotamian Religions

726 Millennialism

868 Pre-Columbian MesoAmerican Religions

876 Pre-Columbian South American Religions

920 Religious Experience

Color Plates: Sacred Places, following page 238 Sacred Rituals, following page 430 Sacred Images, following page 686 Sacred Costumes, following page 910 1168 Bibliography

vi © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

94 Australian Religion

146 Buddhism

202 Christianity

388 Greek Religion

432 Hinduism

514 Islam

762 Mystery Religions

770 Mythology

782 Native American Religions 798 New Religious Movements

932 Ritual

940 Roman Religion

996 Shintj

1030 Study of Religion

1042 Symbolism and

1060 Taoism

Iconography

548 Jainism

1006 Sikhism

vii © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

PREFACE eligion has been one of the great uplifting and unifying forces of human history. The word itself derives from an ancient Latin term meaning “to bind together,” and the religions of the world have often brought diverse groups together in pursuit of higher moral or spiritual goals. In this way religion has not only strengthened the bonds of community but also provided many of the basic moral principles on which societies have been built. The world’s art and literature have been greatly shaped by religion, and modern theater traces its origins to ancient and medieval religious rituals. Not least important, religion provides comfort and consolation and a guide for understanding life’s trials and triumphs, wonders and tragedies. Religion has also been one of the most divisive and destructive forces in history. The Crusades and the Muslim invasions of India are perhaps the best-known examples of this tendency, but there have been numerous other incidents of violence and social unrest inspired by religious hatred. In the modern world, religion has been used to justify the oppression of women, the destruction of monumental works of art, and the murder of countless thousands of innocent people. The fundamental importance of religion in human history and everyday life calls for a deeper understanding of the religions of the world, and it is the purpose of this volume to aid in this effort. Based on Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions, published in conjunction with Encyclopædia Britannica in 1999, the Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions is a handy, one-volume compendium covering the significant people, beliefs, and practices of the various religions of the world. Many of its articles have been revised and updated to reflect changes in scholarship or to document other changes in religious belief and practice. The focus of the volume remains truly global, however, reflecting the editors’ intention to provide for each of the world’s religions a comprehensive overview of its current state and a thorough survey of its historical development. The volume includes articles on the major religions of the world, discussions of their various subgroups, and introductions to new religious movements that have emerged in recent times. There are articles on the founders of the world’s religions; biographies of theologians, saints, and other inspirational figures; and discussions of sacraments, holy days, and dogmas. The already extensive coverage of the earlier edition has been complemented by new articles on a variety of subjects, including popes Benedict XVI and Urban II, the Taliban, fundamentalism, the Western Wall, and the Crusades. The roughly 3,500 entries in the volume were either written specifically for this encyclopedia or drawn from Encyclopædia Britannica; in both cases they reflect the high standards of scholarship with which Britannica has long been associated. The articles are drawn together by an intricate system of cross-references and are augmented by numerous photographs and illustrations, including 32 color plates organized by theme. There are several maps showing the geographic distribution of the world’s religions as well as missionary routes, holy sites, and other historical and cultural developments. The maps themselves have been revised and updated for this volume. Finally, the extensive scholarly bibliography of Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions has been substantially revised and updated to guide the interested reader to the latest and most definitive studies on a wide range of topics. The Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions will provide all readers, regardless of background, with a deeper appreciation of the religious experience of people throughout history and across the globe. We at Encyclopædia Britannica are confident that you will find this volume a valuable addition to your reference library. The Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions was prepared for publication by a team of dedicated Britannica staff members. In alphabetical order, they are: Marilyn Barton, Steven Bosco, Nancy Donohue Canfield, Gavin Chiu, Kimberly L. Cleary, Jeannine Deubel, Brian Duignan, Annie Feldmeier, Carol Gaines, Kim Gerber, Kurt Heintz, Steven Kapusta, Larry Kowalski, Lara Mondae, Lorraine Murray, Kathy Nakamura, Cate Nichols, Theodore Pappas, Dennis Skord, Sylvia Wallace, Bruce Walters, Mark Wiechec, and Megan Williams. MICHAEL FRASSETTO, EDITOR viii © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

INTRODUCTION he Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions seeks to respond in a systematic way to the growing importance of religion in the contemporary world. We have entered the new millennium in the middle of a conversation that has been building to a crisis throughout the 20th century between people who live religion and people who study it, sometimes to justify it, sometimes to challenge it, sometimes to satisfy their curiosity about it. Religious faith is an explicitly contested issue in politics— locally (prayer in school), nationally (the influence of Christian values upon legislative and judicial policy), and internationally (Islam being the most prominent but by no means the only religion in the headlines)—but many participants in these encounters are genuinely trying to understand one another’s positions. This book is intended not only for people who believe in religion but also for people who do not, in the hopes of establishing a sound body of knowledge about religion to be used in formulating a common ground for both types of people to stand on in their ongoing conversation. Religion has always been a matter of life and death, not only in terms of its own functions (baptism and burial) but also as a rallying point for deciding the life— more often the death—of large groups of people labeled infidels. Generally speaking, however, in the past it was deemed sufficient to know one’s own religion in order to go to war to defend it against infidels; now we have begun to understand that we need a broader—dare we say encyclopedic?—understanding of other peoples’ religions if we want not to go to war, and not to be infidels ourselves. The growing prominence of newspaper and television coverage of religious factors embedded in world-shaking events taking place around the globe has unfortunately not been matched by an equally deepening, or even broadening, understanding of those issues. The pressures on politicians and journalists to make judgments about religion quickly, often on the basis of ludicrously inadequate knowledge, has eroded rather than nurtured the public availability of reliable information. And the presence of an enormous and steadily growing body of misinformation on the Internet is surely part of the problem, not part of the solution. This is precisely the moment, therefore, to assemble a body of knowledge that is as objective and authoritative as possible, and the critical need for such knowledge explains why so many encyclopedias of religion have appeared in recent years. We need to know, for instance, not only how many Muslims there are in the world (in the United States they are more numerous than Episcopalians), but how many different ways there are to be a Muslim, and what the different groups among them believe and do. It might be argued, however, that religion is not a fitting subject for an encyclopedia, that religion—so formless, so subjective, such a moving target—cannot be pinned down within a genre that promises organized, comprehensive factual data. The very phrase “from A to Z”—or, to use the religious phrase, “alpha to omega”— promises a totality that we cannot deliver. The present volume answers that challenge, as the English-speaking world has long regarded the Encyclopædia Britannica as the ultimate source of dispassionate, authoritative knowledge. A parallel authority existed in the Middle Ages, when disputes were often settled by resorting to what was called the Sortes Virgilianes, or “Virgil’s Lottery.” Faced with an important decision, one would close one’s eyes, open a volume of Virgil at random, and place one’s finger upon the page, to a line which was then read out to give the advice that was sought. I grew up in a home where the dinner table was often hastily cleared, in mid-course, to make way for a volume of the Britannica to be thrown down, sometimes with considerable force, and opened to a passage which was then read forth to silence an opponent: “There, you see? I told you so.” But it behooves us to make a distinction between facts, objectivity, and authority. The scales have fallen from our postmodern eyes; we have become aware of our epistemological nakedness, and we have been told that there is no such thing as objective knowledge. But even the philosopher-historian R.G. Collingwood, a champion of this view, admitted that, though the story of Caesar’s assassination can be told in various ways, there are ways in which it cannot be told: it cannot be said that Caesar killed Brutus. In dismissing the argument that, because complete objectivity is impossible in these matters, one might as well let one’s sentiments run loose, the economist Robert Solow likened it to saying that, because a ix © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

INTRODUCTION perfectly aseptic environment is impossible, one might as well conduct surgery in a sewer. Within this sort of commonsense limit, there are facts, and an encyclopedia tries to gather them and to check them; the better the encyclopedia, the more likely the facts are to accord with other conventions of evidence. But the selectivity of that gathering and of those conventions is what is at stake in the game of objectivity, for the sort of objectivity needed for religion is different from that needed for science. Scholars of religion have made a self-conscious effort to be more objective than the chemist, plus royalistes que le roi—or, in Martin E. Marty’s formulation, “more holier than thou.” If one is going to teach a highly charged subject like religion, one must be more aware, not less aware, of the impossible goal of pure objectivity. It behooves scholars of religions to play by the rules of the game of scholarship—to learn languages, read commentaries, examine firsthand reports, and take into consideration the various biases of the many people in the chain of transmission that ends with us. Scholars of religions have long been fighting a war on two fronts over what is now recognized as the dead carcass of objectivity. The enemy are the covert truth claims of theological approaches to religion that masquerade as nontheological approaches, whether these be self-justifying at the expense of other peoples’ religions (bigotry) or self-denigrating at the expense of one’s own religion (mindless moral relativism). But the scholar of religions must also be on guard against the overt objections of super-rationalists, who oppose the study of religion in any form or who would allow it to be studied only within the sterile confines of an objectivity that is in any case impossible and is probably not even desirable. The super-rationalists feel that the same basic rules should apply to all subjects, including religion; the mental computer follows the same synapses, and we merely make the software softer. But such attempts to play the game of objectivity on the playing fields of the hard sciences often neglect the more subtle but equally genuine sort of objectivity that both scholars of religion and religious believers can bring to their conversations, a critical judgment that makes them aware of the claims of their own faith. This is the spirit in which the present volume has been prepared. For we cannot simply rely upon even good encyclopedias from the recent past. Time erodes old subjectivities and creates new criteria of objectivity. Every attempt to include religion within an encyclopedia, from Diderot to the Britannica, was inevitably tarred with the prejudices and skewed by the agendas of the age in which it was written; it is this shift in perspective, even more than the accumulation of new “factual” knowledge, that has necessitated constant updating. As our knowledge and attitudes change in time, we look back on each previous attempt as “subjective” and strive to do better; like the paradox of Archimedes, or Achilles and the tortoise, we never reach the ever-receding horizon of objectivity, but we get closer with each new attempt. Because we live in a postmodern age and have come to understand the limits of objectivity even in science, let alone in religion, the present volume’s dogged attempts to provide authoritative, if not objective, knowledge is particularly valuable. Neither facts nor objectivity, but authoritative writing is what an encyclopedia strives for, and to be not merely a fact-checking service but a learned and responsible guide over the shifting sands of factual evidence. The scholars whom we have assembled in this volume are leaders in their fields, whose opinions have the status of something like facts, who know enough about what they are writing about to select what is most likely to be true and most likely to be important, and who are challenged by the prestige of Britannica’s reputation for solid knowledge and by the hope of applying those standards to the ever-elusive field of religion. We have tried to extricate ourselves from the massive force-field of Western, Christian (mainly Protestant) ways of viewing the world and to include classes of people other than white, male elites. We have tried to be inclusive of various approaches as well as a broad variety of topics, to codify information in a way that makes it accessible to various interpretations, and to acknowledge the subjectivity of the selection of the facts that we have included even while making every effort to ascertain that they are, in fact, facts. WENDY DONIGER, CONSULTING EDITOR x © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

EXPLANATORY NOTES his book contains entries for historical and legendary figures, religious movements, divinities and supernatural characters, ritual implements, place-names, theological concepts, and other ideas connected in some way with religion. For the most part the presentation of information in these entries requires little explanation, but the following notes will assist the reader. Entry names In most cases, vernacular usage has governed spelling. For languages not written in the Roman alphabet, the following conventions have been adopted: Russian and other nonromanized languages have been transcribed using the systems followed in the Encyclopædia Britannica. The languages of modern and classical India are transcribed in accordance with accepted scholarly usage, though some terms that are widely used in English-speaking countries (such as SHIVA and KRISHNA) follow the conventional spelling. Chinese names are romanized under the Wade-Giles system, with the alternate Pinyin romanization also given. In Japanese and Korean names, with few exceptions, the distinction between family and personal names is observed. (In those languages normal name order places the family name first; hence in this work no comma usually appears between family and personal name as it does in an inverted English name—as, for example, Yamazaki Ansai. Entries on individuals from modern times, however, may appear with the family name followed by a comma—i.e., MOON, SUN MYUNG.) Alphabetization Alphabetization is letter-by-letter, not word-by-word. Thus ACTA SANCTORA falls between ACTAEON and ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. The order of entries is determined by ordinary rules of alphabetization applied to the entry names and by the following additional rules: Diacritical marks, marks of punctuation, hyphenation, and spaces within titles are ignored, as are Roman numerals. Names beginning with M’, Mac, or Mc are alphabetized according to their spelling. Cross-references Cross-references are indicated by SMALL CAPITALS. Cross-references have been used extensively in an attempt to demonstrate the interconnections between various ideas. Only the first occurrence of a word within a given article will be designated as a cross-reference. In some instances, the cross-reference is not exactly identical with the entry title, but the reference should be apparent to the reader. Personal names are not inverted in these cross-references in running text—MARTIN LUTHER directs the reader to the entry LUTHER, MARTIN. Dates in text In general, dates following the titles of works indicate the date of first publication. The date following mention of a foreign-language title is the year in which the book was first published in the original language. For ancient works, the “publication date” is problematic. Dates of composition are given in these cases. We have chosen to use the abbreviations BCE/CE (“Before the Common Era”/ “Common Era”), rather than the more traditional BC/AD, in recognition of the presuppositions which lie behind the latter terms. The article MILLENNIALISM, by contrast, does occasionally list dates AD, as such a designation is intrinsic to the material that article is discussing. Translations in text For non-English-language works, the date of publication is usually followed by a translation in roman type. Italicized titles within parentheses indicate that the work has been published in English. For example, in the MARTIN BUBER entry, an untranslated work is treated in this manner: Chassidischen Bücher (“Hasidic Books,” 1927). Another work that was translated into English is treated in this xi © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

EXPLANATORY NOTES manner: Ich und Du (1923; I and Thou). In this example, 1923 indicates the date of publication of the original German text and I and Thou is the title of the English translation. Of course, the English-language version will not always be a literal rendering of the original title. Etymologies Etymologies in this book are meant to provide historical and philological background for the study of religion. The book provides etymologies for some common nouns, but for most proper nouns, such as personal or geographical names, etymologies have not been given. Etymologies for the names of gods are given only where the etymology is reasonably certain. Ordinarily, etymologies are enclosed in parentheses and placed after the pronunciation and before the body of the entry. In some entries the origin of the word is discussed in the text, and there a parenthetical etymology will be lacking unless it provides additional data. Pronunciation This book provides pronunciation respellings for most entry words. The only entry words without respellings are familiar words and place-names, such as the first two words in SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, the last word in CH’ENG-CHU SCHOOL, and all the words in KINGS OF ROME. Connectives are replaced by ellipses in transcriptions: HARUT AND MARUT \ha-9r\ (IPA [´U]), where the initial element is a central mid vowel.

as in top, pat, later (IPA [t]). In some contexts, as when a vowel or \ r\ precedes and an unstressed vowel follows, the sound represented in English spelling by t or tt is pronounced in most American speech as a voiced flap produced by tapping the tongue tip against the teethridge (IPA [R]). In similar contexts the sound represented by d or dd has the same pronunciation. The symbol \ t\ is also used to transcribe a sound in names from India which appears in transliteration as e and which in the original language is pronounced as a retroflex sound (IPA [e, ˇ]).

\ |\ as in hawk, bawl, caught, ought, Utah (IPA [ç]). In some dialects of American English this sound is replaced by \ !\. The vowel \ |\ may be reduced to \ ‘\ in unstressed syllables.

as in sink, bass, lasso, city (IPA [s]).

\ sh\ as in shin, lash, pressure (IPA [S]).

\ th\ \ [\ as in French neuf ‘new’ and German Köpfe ‘heads’ (IPA [œ]). This vowel can be approximated by producing the vowel \ e \ while rounding the lips as if pronouncing the vowel \ k\. The sound \ œ\ may be anglicized as \ ‘r\ with a very light \ r\ sound.

\ {\ as in French deux ‘two’ and German Löhne ‘wages’ (IPA [O]). This vowel can be approximated by producing the vowel \ e\ while rounding the lips as if pronouncing the vowel \+\. The sound \ {\ may be anglicized as \ >r\ or \ ‘r\ with a very light \ r\ sound.

as in third, bath, Kathy (IPA [T]).

\ \\ as in this, other, bathe (IPA [D]).

\ \ as in wool, took, should, put (IPA [U]).

\ ]\ \ |i\

as in oyster, toy, foil (IPA [çI, çi]).

as in German Bünde ‘unions,’ füllen ‘to fill’ (IPA [Y]). This vowel can be approximated by producing the xv

© 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

GUIDE TO PRONUNCIATION 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

vowel \ i\ while rounding the lips as if pronouncing the vowel \ > \. The sound \ ] \ may be anglicized as \ y>\ or \ >\.

\ }\ as in German kühl ‘cool’ and French vue ‘view’ (IPA [y]). This vowel can be approximated by producing the vowel \ %\ while rounding the lips as if pronouncing the vowel \ ü\. The sound \ }\ may be anglicized as \ yü\ or \ ü\.

\ v\ as in veer, rove, ever (IPA [v]).

\ w\ as in well, awash (IPA [w]).

\ y\ as in youth, yet, lawyer (IPA [j]). In some languages the consonant \ y \ may occur after a vowel in the same syllable, as in French famille \ f#-9m%y\ ‘family.’ The pronunciation of \ y \ in these contexts is the same as at the beginning of a syllable in English.

\ ?\ is used to show palatalization of a preceding consonant, as in French campagne \ k!/-9p#n?\ ‘country’ and Russian perestroika \ p?i-r?i-9str|i-k‘\ ‘restructuring’ (IPA [J]). A palatalized consonant is produced with the body of the tongue raised as if in the position to pronounce \ y\. In anglicized pronunciations \ ?\ may be sounded as the consonantal \ y\ of English when it falls in the middle of a syllable or as \ -y‘\ at the end of French words. In anglicizations of Russian and other Slavic names it may be omitted entirely.

\ z\ as in zoo, haze, razor (IPA [z]).

\ zh\ as in pleasure, decision (IPA [Z]).

xvi © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

PRONUNCIATION SYMBOLS

‘

in anoint, collide, data

m

make, jam, hammer

9‘, 0‘

cut, conundrum

n

now, win, banner

~

biologist, matches

/

shows that a preceding vowel is nasalized, as in French en \ !/\

‘i

Welsh lleuad, eira

=

ring, singer, gong

9‘r, ‘r

further, merger, bird

+

oak, boat, toe, go

a

rap, cat, sand, lamb

|

hawk, bawl, caught, ought, Utah

@

way, paid, late, eight

[

French neuf, German Köpfe

!

opt, cod, mach

{

French deux, German Löhne

#

French chat, table

|i

oyster, toy, foil

ar

air, care, laird

|r

core, born, oar

a>

out, loud, tout, cow

p

pet, tip, upper

b

bat, able, rib

r

rut, tar, error, cart

$

Spanish hablar, Avila

s

sink, bass, lasso, city

ch

chair, reach, catcher

sh

shin, lash, pressure

d

day, red, ladder

t

top, pat, later

e

egg, bed, bet

th

third, bath, Kathy

9%, 0%

eat, reed, fleet, pea

\

this, other, bathe

%

penny, genie




wool, took, should, put

g

gate, rag, eagle

]

German Bünde, füllen

^

Spanish lago

}

German kühl, French vue

h

hot, ahoy

v

veer, rove, ever

hl

Welsh llaw, Icelandic hlaup

w

well, awash

hr

Welsh rhad, Icelandic hraun

y

youth, yet, lawyer

hw

wheat, when

?

shows palatalization of a preceding consonant, as in French campagne \ k!/-9p#n?\

i

ill, hip, bid

z

zoo, haze, razor

&

aisle, fry, white, wide

zh

pleasure, decision

ir

hear, inferior, mirror, pierce

\ \

reversed virgules used to mark the beginning and end of a phonetic respelling

j

jump, fudge, budget

9

mark preceding a syllable with primary stress: boa \ 9b+-‘\

k

kick, baker, scam, ask

0

mark preceding a syllable with secondary stress: beeline \ 9b%-0l&n\

_

loch, Bach, German Buch, ich

-

mark indicating syllable divisions

l

lap, pal, alley

For more information see Guide to Pronunciation. xvii © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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AARON

A ARON \ 9ar-‘n, 9er- \ (fl. c. 14th century )), the founder and head of the Jewish PRIESTHOOD, who, with his brother MOSES and sister Miriam, led the Israelites out of Egypt. The figure of Aaron as found in the PENTATEUCH is built up from several different sources of religious tradition. He has appeared in varying roles in the thought and traditions of Christianity. Aaron is described in the OLD TESTAMENT book of EXODUS as a son of Amram and Jochebed (Exodus 6:20; Numbers 26:59) of the tribe of Levi (Exodus 4:14), three years older than his brother Moses. He acted together with his brother in the desperate situation of the Israelites in Egypt (Exodus 5; 6:26; 7–12) and took an active part in the Exodus (Exodus 16; 17:10; 19:24). Although Moses was the actual leader, Aaron acted as his “mouth” (Exodus 4:16). The two brothers went to the pharaoh together, and it was Aaron who told him to let the people of Israel go, using his magic rod in order to show the might of YAHWEH. When the pharaoh finally decided to release the people, Yahweh gave the important ordinance of the PASSOVER, the annual remembrance of the Exodus, to Aaron and Moses (Exodus 12). But Moses alone went up on MOUNT SINAI (Exodus 19:20), and he alone was allowed to come near to Yahweh. Moses later was ordered to “bring near” Aaron and his sons, and they were anointed and consecrated to be priests by a perpetual statute (Exodus 27:21). Aaron’s sons were to take over the priestly garments after him. Aaron is not represented as an entirely holy and blameless person, however. It was he who, when Moses was delayed on Mount Sinai, made the GOLDEN CALF that was idolatrously worshiped by the people (Exodus 32). Once a year, on YOM KIPPUR (the Day of Atonement), Aaron was allowed to come into the HOLY OF HOLIES, the most sacred part of the TABERNACLE , or SANCTUARY, in which the Hebrew tribes worshiped, bringing his offering (Leviticus 16). Together with his sister Miriam, Aaron spoke against Moses because he had married a foreigner (a Cushite woman, Numbers 12:1); but, in the rebellion of Korah the LEVITE, Aaron stood firmly at the side of Moses (Numbers 16). According to Numbers 20, Aaron died on the top of Mount Hor at the age of 123; in Deuteronomy 10, which represents another tradition, he is said to have died in Moserah and was buried there. Aaron in Jewish and Christian thought. Aaron is a central figure in the traditions about the Exodus, though his role varies in importance. At the beginning he seems to be coequal with Moses, but after the march out of Egypt he is only a shadow at Moses’ side. Moses is obviously the leading figure in the tradition, but it is also clear that he is pictured as delegating his authority in all priestly and cultic matters to Aaron and “his sons.” Aaron continued to live as a symbol in Jewish religion and traditions. In the QUMREN sect, a Jewish community that flourished just before and contemporary with the birth of CHRISTIANITY, Aaron was a symbol for a strong priesthood. 2 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

At the end of time, men of the community should be set apart, as a select group in the service of Aaron. Only the sons of Aaron should “administer judgment and wealth,” and, according to the MANUAL OF DISCIPLINE, two MESSIAHS were expected, a priestly one of Aaron, and one of Israel. According to a fragment found near Qumren, the priest would have the first seat in the banquets in the last days and bless the bread before the messiah of Israel; here “the sons of Aaron” have the highest position. In the TALMUD and MIDRASH (Jewish commentative writings), Aaron is seen less as a symbol than as the leading personality at the side of Moses. The relationship between the two brothers is painted as prototypical in the Haggadah (the nonlegal parts of the Talmud and Midrash; see HALAKHAH AND HAGGADAH ). In the Mishnaic treatise Avot (Avot 1:12) Rabbi HILLEL praised Aaron as a man of goodwill who wanted to teach his fellowmen the Law. Many attempts have been made to explain Aaron’s participation in the episode of the golden calf (SIFRA to Deuteronomy 307). According to some exegetes, Aaron had to make the calf in order to avoid being killed. In the 11th century, the French commentator RASHI contended that the calf was a symbol of the leader, Moses, who was at that time on the mountain. The relationship between Moses and Aaron is also discussed in the Talmud. Some traditionists have wondered why Aaron, and not Moses, was appointed HIGH PRIEST. The answer has been found in an indication that Moses was rejected because of his original unwillingness when he was called by Yahweh. It also seems to have been hard for some traditionists to accept that Aaron was described as older than Moses. The first Christian communities accepted Aaron, “the sons of Aaron,” or “the order of Aaron” as symbols of the highest priesthood. But in the Letter to the Hebrews, Christ is described as a high priest according to the order of MELCHIZEDEK , which was set against “the order of Aaron” (Hebrews 5:2–5; 7:11–12). Of the CHURCH FATHERS, Cyril of Alexandria says that Aaron was divinely called to a priesthood and that he was a type of Christ. Gregory the Great translates the name Aaron as “mountain of strength” and sees in him a redeemer who mediated between God and man.

AARONIC PRIESTHOOD \a-9r!-nik, e- \, in JUDAISM, hereditary priesthood descended from AARON. See KOHEN. A ARONIC PRIESTHOOD , Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (MORMON) priests whose primary concern is church finances and administration. ABBESS, the superior of certain communities of nuns. The first historical record of the title is on a Roman inscription dated c. 514. Current CANON LAW stipulates that to be elected, an abbess must be at least 40 years old and a professed nun for at

!ABDUH, MUHAMMAD then spent seven years in isolation, studying mystic expressions of divine experiences. His written works include discourses on SUFISM, travel accounts, poetr y, eulogies, cor respondence, PROPHECY, and dream interpretation. A key element in his Sufi writing is the concept of wagdat al-wujjd (“divine existential unity” of God and the universe and, hence, of man). His travel accounts are considered by many to be the most important of his writings; the descriptions of his journeys in Syria, Egypt, and the Hijaz in Arabia, provide vital information on the customs, beliefs, and practices of the peoples and places he visited.

!A BD A LLEH IBN AL -!A BBES \ 0!bd>l-9l!-0i-b‘n-‘l-0!b-9bas \, also called Ibn

!Abbes (b. c. 619—d. 687/688, ae-Ee#if, Arabia), a Companion of the Prophet MUHAMMAD, one of the greatest Islamic scholars and the first exegete of the QUR#AN. Ibn !Abbas is renowned for his knowledge of both sacred and profane tradition and for his critical interpretations of the Qur#an. From his youth he gathered information concerning the words and deeds of Muhammad from other Companions and gave classes on the interpretation of the Qur#an. His commentaries on the Qur#an were later collected into a book (TAFSJR) and incorporated into the commentaries of AL-BUKHERJ and AL-TABARJ.

Aaron’s rod (in the form of a serpent) swallows up the serpents of Pharoah’s sages and sorcerers, Nuremberg Bible (1483) By courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

least 10 years. She is solemnly blessed by the diocesan bishop in a rite similar to that of the blessing of ABBOTS. Her blessing gives her the right to certain pontifical insignia: the ring and sometimes the CROSIER. In medieval times abbesses occasionally ruled double monasteries of monks and nuns and enjoyed various privileges and honors. ABBOT, Late Latin and Greek abbas, the superior of a monastic community of certain orders—e.g., BENEDICTINES, CISTERCIANS, and TRAPPISTS. The word derives from the Aramaic ab (“father”), or aba (“my father”), which in the SEPTUAGINT (the Greek translation of the OLD TESTAMENT) and in NEW TESTAMENT Greek was written abbas. Early Christian Egyptian monks renowned for age and sanctity were called abbas by their disciples, but, when MONASTICISM became more organized, superiors were called proestos (“he who rules”) or hugoumenos in the East and the Latin equivalent, praepositus, in the West. ST. BENEDICT OF NURSIA (c. 480–c. 547) restored the word abbas in his rule, and to this early concept of spiritual fatherhood through teaching he added authority over temporal matters as well. An abbot is elected by the chapter of the monastery by secret ballot. He must be at least 30 years old, professed at least 10 years, and an ordained priest. He is elected for life except in the English congregation, where he is elected for a term of 8–12 years. The election must be confirmed by the Holy See or by some other designated authority. The bishop of the DIOCESE in which the monastery is situated confers the abbatial blessing, assisted by two abbots. Chief among the privileges of an abbot are the rights to celebrate the liturgy, to give many blessings normally reserved to a bishop, and to use the pontifical insignia. In Eastern monasticism, self-governing monasteries are ruled by several elder monks, whose leader is called abbot.

!ABD AL-GHANJ \9!b-d>l-^#-9n% \, in full !Abd al-Ghanj ibn Isme!jl al-Nebulusj (b. March 19, 1641, Damascus—d. March 5, 1731), Syrian mystic writer. Orphaned at an early age, !Abd al-Ghanj joined the Islamic mystical orders of the QEDIRJYA and the NAQSHBANDJYA. He

!ABD AL-QEDIR AL-JJLENJ \0!b-d>l-9k!-dir-‘l-j%-9l!-n% \ (b. 1077/78, Nif, Persia—d. 1166, Baghdad), traditional founder of the QEDIRJYA order of SUFISM, a mystical branch of ISLAM. Al-Jjlenj studied Islamic law in Baghdad and first appeared as a preacher in 1127. His reputation as a teacher attracted numerous disciples, and he is said to have converted many Jews and Christians. He reconciled the mystical nature of the Sufi calling with the sober demands of Islamic law. His concept of Sufism was as of a JIHAD waged against egotism and worldliness in order to submit to God’s will. He retains a popular following from Senegal to India and Indonesia among those who consider him a divine mediator and miracle worker. His tomb in Baghdad is visited by Muslims from many lands. !ABDUH, MUHAMMAD \9!b-0d \ (b. 1849, Egypt—d. July 11, 1905, near Alexandria), religious scholar, jurist, and liberal reformer who led the late 19th-century movement in Egypt and other Muslim countries to revitalize Islamic teachings and institutions. !Abduh attended the mosque school in Eanee and subsequently AL-AZHAR UNIVERSITY in Cairo, receiving the degree of !elim (scholar) in 1877. In 1872 he fell under the influence of Jamel ad-Djn al-Afghenj, the revolutionary panIslamic Persian preacher, who stimulated !Abduh’s interest in theology, philosophy, and politics. Afghenj was expelled for political reasons from Egypt in 1879 and !Abduh was exiled to his village, but the next year he became editor of the government’s official gazette, which he used to preach resistance to Anglo-French political encroachment and the need for social and religious reform. He was implicated in !Urebj Pasha’s rebellion against foreign control in 1882 and 3

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ABEL was again exiled. Rejoining Afghenj in Paris for several months in 1884, !Abduh helped publish the revolutionary journal Al-!Urwa al-wuthqe (“The Firmest Bond”). He then taught for three years in an Islamic college in Beirut. In 1888 !Abduh was permitted to return to Egypt, where he was appointed a judge in the National Courts of First Instance; in 1891 he became a judge at the Court of Appeal. In 1899, with British help, he became MUFTI of Egypt. He effected reforms in the administration of Islamic law (see SHARJ!A) and of religious endowments and issued advisory opinions on such controversial matters as the permissibility of eating meat slaughtered by Christian and Jewish butchers and of accepting interest paid on loans. !Abduh also lectured at al-Azhar and, against conservative opposition, induced reforms in the administration and curriculum there. He established a benevolent society that operated schools for poor children. On the Legislative Council he supported political cooperation with Britain and legal and educational reform in Egypt; these views earned him the approval of the British, but the hostility of the khedive (ruling prince) !Abbes Gilmj and of the nationalist leader Muzeafe Kemil. In addition to his articles in the official gazette and Al!Urwa al-wuthqe, !Abduh’s most important writings included Riselat al-tawgjd (“Treatise on the Oneness of God”); a polemic on the superiority of Islam to Christianity in Islam’s greater receptivity to science and civilization; and a commentary on the Qur#an, completed after his death by a disciple. In theology !Abduh sought to establish the harmony of reason and revelation, the freedom of the will, and the primacy of the ethical implications of religious faith over ritual and dogma. He asserted that a return to the pristine faith of the earliest age of Islam would both restore the Muslims’ spiritual vitality and provide an enlightened criterion for the assimilation of modern scientific culture. In matters of Islamic law regarding family relationships, ritual duties, and personal conduct, !Abduh promoted considerations of equity, welfare, and common sense, even when this meant disregarding the literal texts of the Qur#an. !Abduh has been widely revered as the chief architect of the modern reformation of Islam.

ABEL \9@-b‘l \, second son of ADAM AND EVE, who was slain by his older brother, CAIN (GENESIS 4:1–16). Abel, a shepherd, offered the Lord the firstborn of his flock. God respected Abel’s sacrifice but did not respect that offered by Cain. In a rage, Cain murdered Abel, then became a fugitive because of the curse placed upon the ground (a curse of infertility) onto which Abel’s blood had spilled. Genesis makes the point that divine authority backs selfcontrol and brotherhood but punishes jealousy and violence. In the NEW TESTAMENT the blood of Abel is cited as an example of the vengeance of violated innocence (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51).

A BELARD , P ETER \#-b@-9l#r, Angl 9a-b‘-0l!rd \ (b. 1079, Le Pallet, Brittany [now in France]—d. April 21, 1142, Priory of Saint-Marcel, Burgundy [now in France]), French theologian and philosopher. The outline of Abelard’s career is described in his famous Historia calamitatum (“History of My Troubles”). He was born the son of a knight and sacrificed his inheritance in order to study philosophy in France. Abelard provoked quarrels with two of his masters, Roscelin of Compiègne and Guillaume de Champeaux. Roscelin was a nominalist who asserted that universals (terms such as “red,” or 4 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

“beauty,” by which objects can be grouped) are nothing more than mere words; Guillaume upheld a form of Platonic Realism according to which universals exist independently of the objects they describe. Abelard brilliantly elaborated a philosophy of language that, while showing how words could be used significantly, stressed that language itself is not able to demonstrate the truth of things (RES) that lie in the domain of physics. Abelard traveled as one of the exponents of Aristotelian logic who were called the Peripatetics. While teaching in Paris he was tutoring the young Héloïse, niece of Canon Fulbert. Abelard and Héloïse began having an affair and had a son whom they called Astrolabe. They then married secretly. To escape her uncle’s wrath Héloïse withdrew into the convent of Argenteuil outside Paris. Abelard suffered castration at Fulbert’s instigation. He then embraced the monastic life at the royal abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris and forced the unwilling Héloïse to become a nun at a convent in Argenteuil. At Saint-Denis Abelard extended his reading in theology. His reading of the BIBLE and of the writings of the CHURCH FATHERS led him to make a collection of quotations that seemed to represent inconsistencies of teaching by the church. He arranged his findings in a compilation entitled Sic et non (“Yes and No”); and in it he formulated basic rules with which students might reconcile apparent contradictions of meaning and distinguish the various senses in which words had been used over the course of centuries. He also wrote the first version of his book called Theologia, which was formally condemned as heretical and burned by a council held at Soissons in 1121. Abelard’s dialectical analysis of the mystery of God and the TRINITY was held to be erroneous, and he was placed in the abbey of Saint-Médard under house arrest. He returned to Saint-Denis but a dispute with that community caused Abelard to

Peter Abelard (right) and Héloïse; from Letters of Abbess Héloïse, c. 1500 © The British Library/Heritage-Images

ABHINAVAGUPTA flee. In 1125 he accepted election as ABBOT of the remote Breton monastery of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys. There, too, his relations with the community deteriorated, and, after attempts had been made upon his life, he returned to France. About 1135 Abelard went to the Mont-Sainte-Geneviève outside Paris to teach and write. He produced further drafts of his Theologia in which he analyzed the sources of belief in the Trinity. He also wrote a book called Ethica, or Scito te ipsum (“Know Thyself”), a short masterpiece in which he analyzed the notion of SIN and reached the drastic conclusion that human actions are in themselves neither good nor bad. What counts with God is a man’s intention; sin is not something done; it is uniquely the consent of a human mind to what it knows to be wrong. He also wrote Dialogus inter philosophum, Judaeum et Christianum (“Dialogue Between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian”) and a commentary on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, the Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos, in which he outlined an explanation of the purpose of Christ’s life and death, which was to inspire men to love him by example alone. On the Mont-Sainte-Geneviève Abelard drew crowds of pupils; he also, however, aroused deep hostility and was resoundingly condemned at a council held at Sens in 1140, a judgment confirmed by Pope Innocent II. He withdrew to the great monastery of Cluny in Burgundy. There, under the skillful mediation of the abbot, Peter the Venerable, he made peace with his opponents and retired from teaching.

A BHIDHAMMA P IEAKA \ 9‘-b%-9d‘-m‘-9pi-t‘-k‘ \ (Peli: “Basket of Special Doctrine,” or “Further Doctrine”), Sanskrit Abhidharma Pieaka \9‘-b%-9d‘r-m‘, -9d!r- \, the third— and historically the latest—of the three “baskets,” or collections of texts, that together comprise the Peli canon of THERAV E DA Buddhism. The other two collections are the SUTTA PIEAKA and the VINAYA PIEAKA. Unlike those, however, the seven Abhidhamma works are not generally claimed to represent the words of the BUDDHA GOTAMA; nevertheless, they are highly venerated. This work of doctrinal material represents a development in a rationalistic direction of summaries or numerical lists that had come to be used as a basis for meditation— lists that, among the more mystically inclined, contributed to the PRAJÑEPERAMITE literature of MAHEYENA Buddhism. The Abhidhamma corpus has had a checkered history. It was not accepted as canonical by the MAHESAEGHIKA school, the forerunners of Maheyena. Various Maheyena texts have been classified as Abhidhamma, including the Prajñeperamite-sjtras in Tibet and, in China, the Diamond Sutra (see DIAMOND CUTTER SUTRA). The Peli Abhidhamma Pieaka encompasses the following texts, or pakaradas: (1) Dhammasaegadi (“Summary of Dharma”), a psychologically oriented manual of ethics; (2) Vibhaega (“Division,” or “Classification”), a kind of supplement to the Dhammasaegadi; (3) Dhetukathe (“Discussion of Elements”), another supplementary work; (4) Puggalapaññatti (“Designation of Person”), largely a collection of excerpts from the Sutta Pieaka, classifying human characteristics in relation to stages on the Buddhist path; (5) Kathevatthu (“Points of Controversy”), attributed to Moggaliputta, president of the third Buddhist Council (3rd century )), the only work in the Peli canon assigned to a particular author; historically one of the most important of the seven, the Kathevatthu is a series of questions from a non-Theraveda point of view, with their implications refuted in the answers; (6) Yamaka (“Pairs”), a series of questions on psychological phenomena, each dealt with in two

opposite ways; (7) Paeehena (“Activations,” or “Causes”), a complex and voluminous treatment of causality.

ABHIDHAMMATTHA-SAEGAHA \9‘-b%-d‘-9m‘t-t‘-9s‘=-g‘h‘ \ (Peli: “Summary of the Meaning of Abhidhamma”), one of the most important THERAVEDA Buddhist manuals of psychology and ethics. A digest of the Abhidhamma corpus of the Theraveda tradition, it was composed in India or in Burma (Myanmar), the chief center for Abhidhamma studies. Written in Peli by the monk Anuruddha, it dates from no earlier than the 8th century ( and probably from the 11th or 12th. A handbook rather than an expository work, it deals in less than 50 pages with the entire seven texts of the ABHIDHAMMA PIEAKA and has been the subject of an extensive exegetical literature in the centuries since its composition. The subject matter of the Abhidhammattha-saegaha includes enumerations of the classes of consciousness, the qualities of matter, the varieties of rebirth, and a number of meditation exercises. Its purpose is to elicit a realization of the impermanence of all things, leading to enlightenment.

A BHIDHARMAKOUA \ 9‘-b%-0d‘r-m‘-9k+-sh‘, -0d!r- \, also called Abhidharmakoua-Uestra \-9sh!s-tr‘ \ (Sanskrit: “Treasury of Higher Law”), Chinese A-P’i-Ta-Mo Chü-She Lun, Japanese Abidatsuma-Kusha-Ron, an introduction to the seven Abhidharma (Peli: Abhidhamma) treatises in the SARVE STIVE DA canon and a systematic digest of their contents, dealing with a wide range of philosophical, cosmological, ethical, and salvational doctrine. Its author, VASUBANDHU, who lived in the 4th or 5th century ( in the northwestern part of India, wrote the work while he was still a monk of the Sarvestiveda order, before he embraced MAH E Y E NA , on whose texts he was later to write a number of commentaries. As a Sarvestiveda work the Abhidharmakoua is one of few surviving treatments of scholasticism not written in Peli and not produced by Theravedins. The product of both great erudition and considerable independence of thought, the Abhidharmakoua authoritatively completed the systematization of Sarvestiveda doctrine and at the same time incorporated Maheye nist tendencies. It provides much information on doctrinal differences between ancient Buddhist schools. Translated into Chinese within a century or two after it was written, the Abhidharmakoua has been used in China, Japan, and Tibet as an authoritative reference on matters of doctrine. In China it provided the basis for the Abhidharma (Chinese Chü-She; Japanese Kusha) sect. ABHINAVAGUPTA \0‘-bi-n‘-v‘-9g>p-t‘ \ (c. 10th–11th century, Kashmir, India), philosopher, ascetic, and outstanding representative of the “recognition” (pratyabhijñe) school of Kashmir Uaivite (see U AIVISM ) monism. This school conceived of the god SHIVA (who is ultimate reality), the individual self, and the universe as essentially one. Abhinavagupta was a prolific writer on philosophy and aesthetics. Among Abhinavagupta’s most notable philosophic works are the Juvara-pratyabhijñe-vimaruinj and the more detailed Juvara-pratyabhijñe-vivsti-vimaruinj, both commentaries on works by an earlier philosopher, Utpala. He is also well known for his Tantreloka (“Light on the Tantras”). His enduring contributions to Hindu thought include his conception of Shiva as self-veiling and simultaneously self-manifesting, a process of play that creates the possibility for the religious practitioner to recognize Shiva through heightened self-consciousness. Through his inter5

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ABLUTION findings to biblical materials so as to arrive at a probable judgment as to the background of events in his life. According to the biblical account, Abram (“The Father [or God] Is Exalted”), who is later named Abraham (“The Father of Many Nations”), a native of Ur in Mesopotamia, ABLUTION , a prescribed washing of the body or items is called by God (YAHWEH) to leave his own country and peosuch as clothing or ceremonial objects, with the intent of ple and journey to an undesignated land, where he will bepurification or dedication. Water, sometimes mixed with come the founder of a new nation. He obeys the call and (at salt or other ingredients, is most commonly used, but washing with blood is not uncommon, and cow urine has 75 years of age) proceeds with his barren wife, Sarai, later named SARAH (“Princess”), his nephew Lot, and other combeen used in India. panions to Canaan (locatThe follower of SHINTJ rinses hands and mouth ed between Syria and Egypt). with water before approaching a shrine. There he receives Monks of the THERAVEDA promises and a COVEBuddhist tradition wash NANT from God that his themselves in the mon“seed” will inherit the astery pool before mediland and become a nutation. The upper-caste merous nation. He has a Hindu bathes in water son, Ishmael, by his before performing mornwife’s maidservant HAGAR ing worship (pjje) in the and a legitimate son by home. Jewish law reSarah, ISAAC, who is to be quires washing of the the heir of the promise. hands after rising in the Yet Abraham is ready to morning and before obey God’s command to meals that include sacrifice Isaac as a test of bread—as well as ritual his faith, which he is not immersion of the entire required to consummate body for new converts to in the end because God JUDAISM, for women prior substitutes a ram for to marriage and after Isaac. each menses, and for Geographically, the men at the beginning of saga of Abraham unfolds the Sabbath. (See also between two landmarks, TOHORAH and MIKVEH.) Ro“Ur of the Chaldeans” man Catholic and some (Ur Kasdim) of the famiEastern Orthodox priests ly, or clan, of Terah and prepare themselves for the cave of Machpelah. the EUCHARIST by ritual For the most part, scholwashing of the hands. ars agree that Ur Kasdim Among some Brethren was the Sumerian city of sects in the United Ur, today Tall al-MuqayStates, ceremonial foot yar (or Mughair), about washing is performed on 200 miles southeast of certain occasions. MusBaghdad. lim piety requires that At Sarah’s death, Genethe devout wash their sis relates that Abraham hands, feet, and face bepurchased the cave of fore each of the five daily Machpelah near Hebron, Abraham Guarding His Sacrifice, painting by James Tissot prayers; the use of sand is together with the adjoinBy courtesy of the Jewish Museum, New York City; photograph, Joseph Parnell permitted where water is ing ground, as a family unavailable. (See also burial place. It is the first TAHARA.) clear ownership of a piece of the promised land by AbraAblution may carry a wide range of meanings. The stain ham and his posterity. Toward the end of his life, he sees to of ritual uncleanness may be felt to be physically real; the it that his son Isaac marries a girl from his own people back act of cleansing may be only symbolic of desired purity of in Mesopotamia rather than a Canaanite woman. In the soul; or the two attitudes may be combined. story of Genesis, Abraham dies at the age of 175 and is buried next to Sarah in the cave of Machpelah. A BRAHAM \ 9@-br‘-0ham \, Arabic Ibrahim \ i-br!-9h%m \ (fl. Abraham is pictured in Genesis with various characterisearly 2nd millennium )), first of the Hebrew PATRIARCHS tics: a righteous man, with wholehearted commitment to and a figure revered by JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, and ISLAM. AcGod; a man of peace (in settling a boundary dispute with cording to the book of GENESIS , God called Abraham to his nephew Lot), compassionate (he argues and bargains found a new nation in CANAAN. with God to spare the people of SODOM AND GOMORRAH), and The most that can be done to compile a biography of hospitable (he welcomes three visiting ANGELS); a quick-acting warrior (he rescues Lot and his family from a raiding Abraham is to apply the interpretation of modern historical pretation of RASA (aesthetic sentiment), Abhinavagupta was a key figure in elaborating resonances between aesthetics and the theory of religious experience.

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ABSALOM party); and an unscrupulous liar (to save himself he passes off Sarah as his sister and lets her be picked by the Egyptian pharaoh for his harem). He appears as both a man of great spiritual depth and strength and a person with common human weaknesses and needs. Still, it was Abraham who received messages from God—not in dreams or visions, but in ordinary speech. In Judaism, Abraham is taken as the model of virtue for his having observed all the commandments though they had not yet been revealed by God. Abraham was the first to acknowledge the one true God; this he did by process of reason, as portrayed by Rabbi Isaac in connection with the Genesis verse 12:1, “Now the Lord said to Abraham, ‘Go [from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you’].” In GENESIS RABBAH (c. 450 () Rabbi Isaac compared Abraham to the case of someone who was traveling from one place to another when he saw a great house on fire. He said, “Is it possible to say that such a great house has no one in charge? The owner of the house then looked out and said to him, ‘I am the one in charge of the house.’ Thus, since Abraham our father [took the initiative and] said, ‘Is it possible for the world to endure without someone in charge?’ the Holy One, blessed be He, [responded and] looked out and said to him, ‘I am the one in charge of the house, the Lord of all the world.’” Therefore, within Judaism, not only is Abraham the first man to recognize the true God, on some level his very righteousness causes God to begin the process of revelation. It was also from Abraham that ISRAEL received the divine power to communicate with God. It is he who is credited with founding the morning prayer (the daily service involving recitation of the SHEMA and the Eighteen Benedictions; see AMIDAH) and originating the commandments involving show-fringes on garments and phylacteries. Abraham is also the founder of the rite of CIRCUMCISION for the Jews— “entry into the covenant of Abraham our father” refers to circumcision. See also AKEDAH. For Christianity, Abraham has always stood as the father of all believers (Romans 4:11). His faith, his willingness to trust in God, has been the model of all the saints of subsequent periods (Hebrews 11), and “it was reckoned to him for righteousness” (Romans 4:3) as the ground of his justification before God, whether by faith without works (Romans 3) or by faith and works (James 2). The obedience expressed in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac made Abraham, in the words of SØREN KIERKEGAARD, “the knight of infinite resignation,” and was read as the typological prophecy of “He [God] who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). “Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22) was, for the Gospels as it had already been for Judaism, a name for eternal life in heaven, and the declaration attributed to Jesus, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), is one of the strongest affirmations anywhere in the NEW TESTAMENT of his eternal identity with the God of Israel as the great “I AM WHO I AM” (EXODUS 3:14). The figure of Abraham in Islam was formulated from biblical and rabbinic narratives current in Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt during the 7th to 8th centuries (. The QUR#AN, which mentions the name of Abraham more than 60 times (compared to around 130 times for MOSES, some 20 times for JESUS CHRIST, and less than 10 times for MUHAMMAD), depicts him as the prototypical prophet—the intimate of God, who endured opposition from his own people to promote true religion (e.g., Qur#an 3:65–68, 4:125, 6:74–83). The Qur#an also credits him with building God’s “house” in MECCA (the KA!BA) with the assistance of his son Ishmael (Isme!jl), and

instituting the HAJJ (Qur#an 2:125–28). Indeed, Islamic tradition generally ascribes the foundation of the hajj rites to Abraham and his family, including the stoning of the three pillars at Mina and the celebration of the sacrificial feast that marks the end of the hajj. Islamic hagiographies included Abraham in the lineages of Muhammad and other major prophets. He was also one of the extraordinary beings encountered by Muhammad during his ascension (MI!REJ). Sufis later saw in Abraham a model for generosity because of his willingness to sacrifice his own son; and for perseverance because of his enduring the fires of affliction out of love for God.

ABRAHAMS, ISRAEL \9@-br‘-0hamz \ (b. Nov. 26, 1858, London, Eng.—d. Oct. 6, 1925, Cambridge), one of the most distinguished Jewish scholars of his time, the author of Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (1896). In 1902, after teaching at Jews’ College, London, Abrahams was appointed reader in Talmudics (rabbinic literature) at the University of Cambridge. From 1888 to 1908 he was editor, jointly with Claude G. Montefiore, of the Jewish Quarterly Review. Although of strict Orthodox upbringing, Abrahams was among the founders of the Liberal movement, an Anglo-Jewish group that stressed the universality of Jewish ethics, minimized ritual and custom, and originally eschewed ZIONISM. In Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, Abrahams concluded that Christian medievalism had a lasting effect on the Jews, particularly in deepening the process of Jewish isolation from the rest of society. Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, 2 vol. (1917–24), includes a series of essays based on an examination of the NEW TESTAMENT treatment of JUDAISM. Abraham’s work Chapters on Jewish Literature (1899) surveyed the period from the fall of Jerusalem in 70 ( to the death of the Jewish philosopher MOSES MENDELSSOHN in 1786. ABRAXAS \‘-9brak-s‘s \, also spelled abrasax \9a-br‘-0saks \, sequence of Greek letters considered as a word and inscribed on charms, AMULETS , and gems in the belief that it possessed magical qualities. Secondcentury GNOSTICISM , and other dualistic sects, as well, personified Abraxas and initiated a cult sometimes related to worship of the sun god. BASILIDES of Egypt, an early 2nd-century Gnostic teacher, viewed Abraxas as the supreme deity and the source of divine emanations, the ruler of all the 365 heavens, or circles of creation—one for each Abraxas stone day of the solar year, 365 By courtesy of the trustees of the being the numerical value British Museum of the Greek letters in “abraxas.”

ABSALOM \9ab-s‘-l‘m \ (fl. c. 1020 ), Palestine), third and favorite son of DAVID, king of ISRAEL and JUDAH. In 2 Samuel 13–19 Absalom was attractive, insolent, lawless, and doomed to a tragic fate. He is first mentioned as murdering his half brother Amnon, David’s eldest son, in revenge for the rape of his sister Tamar. For this he was 7

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ABSOLUTION banished for a time. Later Absalom organized a revolt against David, and enjoyed initial success. When David fled with a few of his followers to Jordan, the usurper pursued them with his forces but was completely defeated in “the forest of Ephraim” (apparently west of Jordan). JOAB, Absalom’s cousin, found Absalom entangled by the hair in an oak tree, and killed him. To David, the loss of his son, worthless and treacherous as he was, brought grief that outweighed his own safety and restoration. ABSOLUTION , in CHRISTIANITY, the pronouncement of remission (forgiveness) of SINS to the penitent. In ROMAN CATHOLICISM and EASTERN ORTHODOXY, penance is a SACRAMENT and the power to absolve lies with the priest, who can grant release from the guilt of sin. In the NEW TESTAMENT the GRACE of forgiveness is seen as originating in JESUS CHRIST and being subsequently extended to sinners by members of the Christian PRIESTHOOD. In the early Christian church, the priest publicly absolved repentant sinners after they had confessed and performed their penance in public. During the Middle Ages, however, private CONFESSION became the usual procedure, and thus absolution followed in private. The priest absolved the penitent sinner using the formula, “I absolve thee from thy sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the HOLY SPIRIT.” The Eastern Orthodox churches generally employ a formula such as “May God, through me, a sinner, forgive thee . . .” In Protestant churches, absolution is usually a public rather than a private declaration. In general, Protestant churches have tended to confine absolution to prayers for forgiveness and the announcement of God’s willingness to forgive all those who truly repent of their sins. In these denominations, absolution is neither a judicial act nor a means by which the forgiveness of sins is conferred but is, instead, a statement of divine judgment and divine forgiveness. Nevertheless, a formula for the public confession of sins and the public pronouncement of forgiveness is included in most Christian liturgies.

EBU, MOUNT \9!-b< \, city, southwestern Rejasthen state, northwestern India, situated on the slopes of a mountain of the Erevalj Range for which it is named. It is an important PILGRIMAGE site in JAINISM and is regarded as one of the several tjrtha-kzetras (“crossing grounds”), where liberated ARHATS (saints who are not considered to be tjrthackaras) are said to have reached MOKZA, or final emancipation. The medieval Jain temples at nearby Dilwara, built of white marble, are known for their exceptional beauty, especially the Tejpal temple, built about 1200 (, which is known for the delicacy and richness of its carving. A BJ G ANJFA \ ‘-0bd-d‘, -0b-d‘ \, among some discontinued the lineage of living Gurjs and substituted for sects of MAHEYENA BUDDHISM, the first, or self-existing, Budit the teaching authority of the Edi Granth. Sikhs therefore dha, from whom are said to have evolved the five DHYENIcustomarily call the Edi Granth the Urj Gurj Granth Sehib BUDDHAS. Though the concept of an Edi-Buddha was never (“Honorable Gurj in book form”). Since Gurj Gobind generally popular, a few groups, particularly in Nepal, Ti- Singh’s time, the Edi Granth has played the commanding bet, and Java, elevated VAIROCANA to the position of Edirole in Sikh devotional and ceremonial life. It is the Gurj Buddha or named a new deity, such as Vajradhara or Vajrato which reference is made when Sikh places of worship are sattva, as the supreme lord. The Edi-Buddha is represented called GURDWEREs (“houses of the Gurj”), occupying the central place both in the physical space itself and in every in painting and sculpture as a crowned Buddha, dressed in liturgy celebrated there. With few exceptions, Sikh homes princely garments and wearing the traditional ornaments contain the complete text of the Edi Granth or a smaller of a BODHISATTVA. version of it (gueke). The printed edition of the Edi Granth, EDI GRANTH \9!-d%-9gr‘nt, -9gr‘n-t‘ \ (Punjabi: “Original in its standard pagination, contains 1,430 pages. Book”), the primary scripture of SIKHISM. The core of the A DITI \ 9‘-di-t%, 9!- \ (Sanskrit: “the Boundless”), in the Edi Granth consists of hymns composed by NENAK (1469– 1539), a Sikh GURJ and the founder of the tradition. By the Vedic phase of Hindu mythology, the personification of the infinite. She is referred to as the mother of many gods, eslate 17th century, when the text reached its canonical form, the Edi Granth included over 6,000 hymns and popecially her sons, the Edityas, who are a class of celestial deities. She supports the sky, sustains all existence, and ems, of which over 4,500 were written by six Sikh Gurjs. nourishes the earth and thus is often represented as a cow. The rest are attributed to bards associated with the 16thThe Edityas vary in number from 6 to 12. VARUDA is their century Sikh court and 15 non-Sikh saint-poets known in chief, and they are called like him “upholders of sta (‘divine Sikh tradition as Bhagats (“devotees”). The language of these hymns might be called “sant bheze,” the lingua order’).” In post-Vedic texts they include VISHNU in his AVATAR as the dwarf Vemana and Vivasvat as the sun. franca of medieval poets of northern India.

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ADVENTIST

A DMETUS \ ad-9m%-t‘s \, in Greek legend, son of Pheres, king of Pherae. Desiring the hand of Alcestis, the daughter of PELIAS, king of Iolcos, Admetus was required to harness a lion and a boar to a chariot. APOLLO yoked them, and Admetus obtained Alcestis. Finding that Admetus was soon to die, Apollo persuaded the Fates to prolong his life, on the condition that someone could be found to die in his place. Alcestis consented, but she was rescued by HERACLES, who successfully wrestled with Death at the grave. ADONIS \‘-9d!-nis, -9d+- \, in Greek mythology, a youth of remarkable beauty, the favorite of the goddess APHRODITE. Traditionally, he was the product of an incestuous union between Smyrna/Myrrha and her father, the Syrian king Theias. Charmed by his beauty, Aphrodite put the newborn infant Adonis in a box and handed him over to the care of PERSEPHONE, the queen of the Underworld, who afterward refused to give him up. An appeal was made to ZEUS, who decided that Adonis should spend a third of the year with Persephone and a third with Aphrodite, the remaining third being at his own disposal. Adonis became an enthusiastic hunter and was killed by a wild boar. Aphrodite pleaded for his life with Zeus, who allowed Adonis to spend half of each year with her and half in the underworld. Annual festivals called Adonia were held at Byblos and elsewhere in honor of Adonis. The name Adonis is believed to be of Phoenician origin (from #adjn, “lord”).

A DOPTIONISM \‘-9d!p-sh‘-0ni-z‘m \, either of two Christian heresies: one, developed in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, is also known as Dynamic MONARCHIANISM and came to be called Adoptionism only in modern times; the other began in the 8th century in Spain and was concerned with the teaching of Elipandus, archbishop of Toledo. Wishing to distinguish in JESUS CHRIST the operations of each of his natures, human and divine, Elipandus referred to Christ in his humanity as “adopted son” in contradistinction to Christ in his divinity, who is the Son of God by nature. The son of MARY, assumed by the Word, thus was not the Son of God by nature but only by adoption. In 798 Pope Leo III held a council in Rome that condemned the Adoptionism of Felix, bishop of Urgel (whose support Elipandus had gained), and anathematized him. Felix was forced to recant in 799 and was placed under surveillance. Elipandus remained unrepentant, however, and continued as archbishop of Toledo, but the Adoptionist view was almost universally abandoned after his death. A version of Adoptionism was temporarily revived in the 12th century in the teachings of PETER ABELARD. A DRET , S OLOMON BEN A BRAHAM \ !-9dret \, Hebrew Rabbi Shlomo Ben Abraham Adret, acronym Rashba \r!sh9b! \ (b. 1235, Barcelona, Spain—d. 1310, Barcelona), spiritual leader of the Spanish Jewish community (known as El Rab de España [“the Rabbi of Spain”]); he is remembered partly for his controversial decree of 1305 threatening to excommunicate all Jews less than 25 years old (except medical students) who studied philosophy or science. As a leading scholar of the TALMUD, Adret received inquiries on Jewish law from all over Europe, and his replies (more than 3,000 of which remain) strongly influenced the later development of codes of Jewish law. Adret’s other writings include commentaries on the Talmud and polemics defending it against attacks by non-Jews. Late in life, Adret became embroiled in a quarrel between the followers of the medieval Jewish philosopher MAI -

and the members of a conservative, antirationalist movement led by ASTRUC OF LUNEL, who believed that the followers of Maimonides were undermining the Jewish faith through their use of allegory in interpreting the BIBLE. Although Adret’s ban against the study of philosophy and science did not bring about an end to such studies, it precipitated a bitter controversy among Jews in Spain and southern France that continued during his last years. MONIDES

A DVAITA \‘d-9v&-t‘ \ (Sanskrit: “Nondualism”), most influential of the schools of VEDENTA, a central philosophy of India. It has its historical beginning with the 7th-century thinker Gauqapeda, author of the Medqjkya-kerike, a commentary in verse form on the Medqjkya Upanizad. Gauqapeda, responding to the MAHEYENA Buddhist philosophy of ujnyaveda (“emptiness”), argued that there is no duality; the mind, awake or dreaming, moves through MEYE (illusion); and only nonduality (advaita) is the final truth. This truth is concealed by the ignorance of illusion. There is no becoming, either of a thing by itself or of a thing out of some other thing. There is ultimately no individual self or soul (JJVA), only ETMAN (the ultimate self). The philosopher Uaekara (c. 700–750) built further on Gauqapeda’s foundation, principally in his commentary on the Vedenta Sjtras, the Uerjraka-mjmeuse-bhezya (“Commentary on the Study of the Embodied Self”). Uaekara argued that the Upanizads teach the nature of BRAHMAN (the absolute). Fundamental for Uaekara is the tenet that only the nondual Brahman is ultimately real. The experience of selfhood is our primary means of access to this truth: self is not different from Brahman. To perceive this identity is to be released from the illusory thrall (meye) of reality at its penultimate levels, filled with distinctions and dualities. Uaekara points to scriptural texts, either stating identity (“You are that”) or denying difference (“There is no duality here”), as declaring the true meaning of a Brahman without qualities (NIRGUDA). Other texts that ascribe qualities (SAGUNA) to Brahman refer not to the ultimate nature of Brahman but to its personality as God (JUVARA). Human perception of Brahman as differentiated and plural stems from a certain beginningless ignorance (ajñena, avidye) that follows almost necessarily from the conditions of existence. Yet the empirical world is not totally unreal, for it is a misapprehension of the real Brahman. Uaekara had many followers who continued and elaborated his work, notably the 9th-century philosopher Vecaspati Miura. The Advaita literature is extremely extensive, playing a major role in Hindu thought. ADVENT (from Latin: adventus, “coming”), the Christian church’s period of preparation for the celebration of the birth of JESUS CHRIST at CHRISTMAS and also of preparation for the SECOND COMING of Christ. It begins on the Sunday nearest to November 30 (St. Andrew’s Day) and is the beginning of the church year. It is uncertain when the season was first observed; the Council of Tours (567) mentioned an Advent season. Although a penitential season, Advent is no longer kept with the strictness of LENT, and fasts are no longer required. In many countries it is marked by a variety of popular observances, such as the lighting of Advent candles. ADVENTIST \‘d-9ven-tist, ad-; 9ad-0ven- \, member of any of a group of Protestant Christian churches arising in the United States in the 19th century and distinguished by 13

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AEACUS their doctrinal belief that the SECOND COMING of JESUS CHRIST is close at hand. Adventism is rooted in Hebrew and Christian prophetism, messianism, and millennial expectations recorded in the BIBLE (see MILLENNIUM; MILLENNIALISM). Adventists believe that at Christ’s Second Coming he will separate the saints from the wicked and inaugurate his millennial (1,000-year) kingdom. History. It was in an atmosphere of millennialist revival in the United States that WILLIAM MILLER (1782–1849) began to preach. After a period of skepticism, he had a religious conversion and began to study the books of Daniel and REVELATION TO JOHN and to preach as a BAPTIST. He concluded that Christ would come, in conjunction with a fiery conflagration, sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844, and was encouraged in his views by a number of clergymen and numerous followers. When Christ did not return on the first appointed date, Miller and his followers set a second date, Oct. 22, 1844. The quiet passing of this day led to what is called the “Great Disappointment” among Adventists and the convening of a Mutual Conference of Adventists in 1845. Those who met, however, found it difficult to shape a confession and form a permanent organization. Among those who persisted after the failure of Miller’s PROPHECY were Joseph Bates, James White, and his wife, Ellen Harmon White. These Adventists, called Millerites in the press, believed that Miller had set the right date, but that they had interpreted what had happened incorrectly. Reading Daniel, chapters 8 and 9, they concluded that God had begun the “cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary”—i.e., an investigative judgment that would be followed by the pronouncing and then the execution of the sentence of judgment. What actually began in 1844, then, in their view, was an examination of all of the names in the Book of Life. Only after this was completed would Christ appear and begin his millennial reign. Although they did not set a new date, they insisted that Christ’s Advent was imminent. They also believed that observance of the seventh day, Saturday, rather than Sunday, would help to bring about the Second Coming. These Millerites founded an official denomination, the SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS, in 1863. Other Adventist bodies emerged in the 19th century as a direct or indirect result of the prophecy of William Miller. These included the Evangelical Adventists (1845), Life and Advent Union (1862), Church of God (Seventh Day; 1866), Church of God General Conference (Abrahamic Faith; 1888), and the Advent Christian Church. These Advent Christians rejected the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventists about SABBATH observance and dietary laws. They were congregational in polity and coordinated work in the United States and throughout the world through the Advent Christian General Conference of America. In 1964 the Advent Christian Church united with the Life and Advent Union. Beliefs and practices. Seventh-day Adventists accept the authority of both the OLD TESTAMENT and the NEW TESTAMENT. In their interpretation of Christ’s ATONEMENT they follow a doctrine of ARMINIANISM, which emphasizes human choice and God’s election rather than God’s sovereignty, as in CALVINISM. They also argue that Christ’s death was “provisionally and potentially for all men,” yet efficacious only for those who avail themselves of its benefits. In addition to the emphasis upon the Second Advent of Christ, two other matters set them apart from other Christians. First, they observe Saturday, rather than Sunday, as the Sabbath. This day, according to the Bible, was institut-

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ed by God since the Creation, and the commandment concerning Sabbath rest is a part of God’s eternal law. Second, they avoid eating meat and taking narcotics and stimulants, which they consider to be harmful. Although they appeal to the Bible for the justification of these dietary practices, they maintain that these are based upon the broad theological consideration that the body is the temple of the HOLY SPIRIT and should be protected. Institutions. Adventists stress tithing and therefore have a high annual giving per capita that allows them to carry on worldwide missionary and welfare programs. Sending out its first missionary, John Nevins Andrews, in 1874, Seventh-day Adventism expanded into a worldwide movement, with churches in nearly every country by the late 20th century. In the early 21st century the church had more than 12,000,000 members. The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, the church’s main governing body, has its headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., and meets every five years. Local conferences provide pastoral oversight for the local congregations, which are governed by elected lay elders and deacons. The General Conference supervises evangelism in more than 500 languages, a large parochial school system, and a number of hospitals. Publishing houses are operated in many countries, and Adventist literature is distributed door-todoor by volunteers.

A EACUS \ 9%-‘-k‘s \, in Greek mythology, son of ZEUS and Aegina, the daughter of the river god Asopus. Aeacus was celebrated for justice and in Attic tradition became a judge of the dead. His successful prayer to Zeus for rain during a drought was commemorated by a temple at Aegina, where a festival, the Aiakeia, was held in his honor. AEDON \@-9%-d!n \, in Greek mythology, a daughter of Pandareus of Ephesus. She was the wife of the king of Thebes. Envious of her sister-in-law, NIOBE, who had many children, she planned to murder Niobe’s son, but by mistake killed her own son, Itylus. Turned by ZEUS into a nightingale, her song is a lament for her dead son. AEGIS , also spelled egis, plural aegises, or egises, in ancient Greece, supernatural item, possibly a leather cloak or breastplate, generally associated with ZEUS, the king of the gods. Zeus’s daughter ATHENA was most prominently associated with it, but occasionally another god used it—e.g., APOLLO in the Iliad. As early as Homer the aegis was decorated with golden tassels.

AENEAS \%-9n%-‘s, i- \, mythical hero of Troy and Rome, son of the goddess APHRODITE and ANCHISES. Aeneas was a member of the royal line at Troy and cousin of HECTOR. Homer implies that Aeneas did not like his position of subordinate to Hector, and from that suggestion arose a later tradition that Aeneas helped to betray Troy to the Greeks. The more common version, however, made Aeneas the leader of the Trojan survivors after Troy was taken by the Greeks. In any case, Aeneas survived the war. As Rome expanded over Italy and the Mediterranean, its patriotic writers began to construct a mythical tradition that would at once dignify their land with antiquity and satisfy a latent dislike of Greek cultural superiority. The fact that Aeneas, as a Trojan, represented an enemy of the Greeks and that tradition left him free after the war made him peculiarly fit for the part assigned him, i.e., the founding of Roman greatness.

AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH It was Virgil who gave the various strands of legend related to Aeneas the form they have possessed ever since. The family of Julius Caesar, and consequently of Virgil’s patron Augustus, claimed descent from Aeneas, whose son ASCANIUS was also called Iulus. Virgil created his masterpiece, the Aeneid (written c. 29–19 )), portraying the journeying of Aeneas from Troy westward to Sicily, Carthage, and finally to the mouth of the Tiber in Italy. When Troy fell, Virgil recounts, Aeneas was commanded by Hector in a vision to flee and to found a great city overseas. Aeneas gathered his family and followers and took the household gods (small images) of Troy, but, in the confusion of leaving the burning city, his wife disappeared. Her ghost informed him that he was to go to a western land where the Tiber River flowed. He then embarked upon his long voyage, touching at Thrace, Crete, and Sicily and meeting with numerous adventures that culminated in shipwreck on the coast of Africa near Carthage. There he was received by DIDO, the widowed queen. They fell in love, and he lingered there until he was sharply reminded by MERCURY that Rome was his goal. Guilty and wretched, he immediately abandoned Dido, who committed suicide, and Aeneas sailed on until he finally reached the mouth of the Tiber. There he was well received by LATINUS, the king of the region, but other Italians, notably Latinus’ wife and TURNUS, leader of the Rutuli, resented the arrival of the Trojans and the projected marriage alliance between Aeneas and Lavinia, Latinus’ daughter. War broke out, but the Trojans were successful and Turnus was killed. Aeneas then married Lavinia and founded Lavinium.

A EOLUS \9%-‘-l‘s \, in Greek mythology, controller of the winds and ruler of the floating island of Aeolia. In the Odyssey he gave ODYSSEUS a favorable wind and a bag in which the unfavorable winds were confined. Odysseus’ companions opened the bag; the winds escaped and drove them back to the island. AEON \9%-‘n, 9%-0!n \, also spelled eon (Greek: “age,” or “lifetime”), in GNOSTICISM and MANICHAEISM, one of the orders of spirits, or spheres of being, that emanated from the Godhead and were attributes of the nature of the absolute. The first aeon emanated directly from the unmanifest divinity and was charged with a divine force. As successive emanations of aeons became more remote from divinity they increased in number while they were charged with successively diminished force. At a certain level of remoteness, the possibility of error invaded the activity of aeons; in most systems, such error was responsible for the creation of the material universe. For many, JESUS CHRIST was the most perfect aeon who redeemed the error embodied in the material universe; the HOLY SPIRIT was usually a subordinate aeon. In certain systems, aeons were regarded positively as embodiments of the divine; in others, they were viewed negatively as vast media of time, space, and experience through which the human soul must painfully pass to reach its divine origin. Aeon is also an important and frequently used term in the canonical books of the NEW TESTAMENT, where, with cognates, it occurs more than 100 times. In this usage, its original meaning was “age,” it is, however, also translated in certain instances as “world.” A ESIR \ 9@-zir, 9a-, -sir \, Old Norse Æsir, singular Áss, in GERMANIC RELIGIONS, one of two main groups of VANIR. Four of the Aesir were

other was called

deities. The common to

the Germanic nations: ODIN, god of war and poetry, magician, and chief of the Aesir; FRIGG or Frea, Odin’s wife; TYR, god of war; and THOR, whose name was the Germanic word for thunder. Some of the other important Aesir were BALDER, Bragi, and possibly HEIMDALL.

A ETHRA \9%th-r‘ \, in Greek mythology, daughter of King Pittheus of Troezen and wife of Aegeus, king of Athens. She became mother of THESEUS by either Aegeus or POSEIDON. Later she guarded HELEN after she had been stolen from Sparta by Theseus; in retribution Aethra was made Helen’s slave and followed her to Troy. Freed after the war, Aethra killed herself in grief for her son.

A FRICAN G REEK O RTHODOX C HURCH , religious movement in East Africa that represents a prolonged search for a more African-oriented form of CHRISTIANITY. It began when an Anglican in Uganda, Reuben Spartas, heard of the independent, all-black African Orthodox Church in the United States and founded his own African Orthodox Church in 1929. In 1932 he secured ORDINATION by the U.S. church’s archbishop from South Africa, whose episcopal orders traced to the ancient Syrian Jacobite ( MONOPHYSITE) Church of India. However, after concluding that the U.S. body was heterodox, the African Church added the term Greek and from 1933 developed an affiliation with the Alexandrian patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox church (see EASTERN ORTHODOXY). In 1966 tensions arising from missionary paternalism, inadequate material assistance, and young Greek-trained priests who were not particularly African-oriented led Spartas and his followers into secession. The churches belonging to this new group, the African Orthodox Autonomous Church South of the Sahara, have asserted their African autonomy and accommodated to African customs (including polygamy and CLITORIDECTOMY [ritual circumcision of females]). At the same time, their vernacular versions of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and use of vestments and ICONS represent a search for the connection with the primitive church.

AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, AfricanAmerican Methodist denomination in the United States, formally organized in 1816. It developed from a congregation formed of African-Americans who withdrew in 1787 from St. George’s Methodist Episcopal church in Philadelphia because of racial discrimination. They built Bethel African Methodist Church in Philadelphia, and in 1799 Richard Allen was ordained its minister by Bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1816 Allen convoked African-American leaders of Methodist churches from several Middle Atlantic states to consider the future form of church organization among American Methodists of African origin. The outcome was the creation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the selection and consecration of Allen as its first bishop. The new denomination soon established itself in other states, chiefly in the North, and then after the American Civil War also in the South. It also assumed a mandate to spread the gospel to the African continent, as well as to communities with African roots such as Haiti, where its first missionary was sent in 1827. As part of its mission, the African Methodist Episcopal Church founded colleges and seminaries, the best known of which is Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio (1856). Its more than 8,000 churches have a total membership of some 3,500,000. 15

© 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

© 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

AFRICAN RELIGIONS

A

n y a tt e m p t to generalize about the nature of “African religions” risks implying that there is homogeneity among all African cultures. In fact, Africa is a vast continent encompassing both geographic variation and tremendous cultural diversity. Each of the more than 50 modern nations that occupy the continent has its own particular history and each in turn comprises numerous ethnic groups with different languages and unique customs and beliefs. African religions are as diverse as the continent is varied. Nevertheless, long cultural contact, in degrees ranging from trade to conquest, has forged some fundamental commonalities among religions within subregions, allowing for some generalizations to be made about the distinguishing features of indigenous religions. (Religions such as ISLAM or CHRISTIANITY that were introduced to Africa are not covered in this article.) Although they often have been described as fixed and unchanging, in fact African indigenous traditions, like all religions, exhibit both continuity with the past and innovation. In the face of recent social, economic, and political upheavals, African religions have adapted to the changing needs of their communities.

WORLDVIEW

AND DIVINITY

No single body of orthodox RELIGIOUS BELIEFS and practices can properly be identified as African. However, it is possible to identify similarities in worldviews and ritual processes across geographic and ethnic boundaries. Generally speaking, African religions hold that there is one creator God, maker of a dynamic universe. Myths commonly relate that after setting the world in motion, the Supreme Being withdrew and remains remote from the concerns of human life. The Dinka of The Sudan recount a myth, reiterated in many traditions across the continent, that explains that when the first woman lifted her pestle to pound millet, she struck the sky, causing God to withdraw. The story explains that although this withdrawal introduced toil, sickness, and death, it also freed humans from the constraints of God’s immediate control. In fact, cults to the “high God” are notably absent from many African religions. Instead, prayers of petition or sacrificial offerings are directed toward secondary divinities, who are messengers and intermediaries between the human and sacred realms.

Traditional Dogon ceremony associated with the end of the harvest, Tirelli, Mali Patrick Syder—Lonely Planet Images/Getty Images

17 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

AFRICAN RELIGIONS In West Africa, among the Ashanti of Ghana, elders regularly pour LIBATIONS and offer prayers to Nyame, the Creator, giving thanks and seeking blessing. But it is the veneration of matrilineal ancestors that is most significant in Ashanti ritual life, since they are considered the guardians of the moral order. According to the mythology of the Dogon of Mali, the Creator, Amma, brought the world into existence by mixing the primordial elements with the vibration of his spoken word. However, the principal cult is not to Amma but to the Nommo, primordial beings and first ancestors. In Nigeria the Yoruba hold that the Almighty Creator, Olorun, oversees a pantheon of secondary divinities, the orisha. Devotion to the orisha is active and widespread, but Olorun has neither priests nor cult group. Similarly, in the great lakes region of East Africa, the Supreme Being, Mulungu, is thought to be omnipresent but is sought in prayer of last resort; clan divinities are appealed to for intervention in most human affairs.

RITUAL

AND RELIGIOUS SPECIALISTS

African religiousness is not a matter of adherence to a doctrine. Its focus is pragmatic, concerned with supporting fecundity and sustaining the community. African religions therefore emphasize maintaining a harmonious relationship with the divine powers within the cosmos, and their rituals attempt to harness cosmic powers and channel them for the good. Ritual is the means by which a person negotiates a responsible relationship within the community and with the ancestors, the spiritual forces within nature, and the gods. The cults of the divinities are visible in the many shrines and altars consecrated in their honor. Shrines and altars are generally not imposing or even permanent structures. They can be as insubstantial as a small marker in a private courtyard. Right relations with the divinities are maintained through prayers, offerings, and sacrifices. The shedding of blood in ritual sacrifice releases the vital force that sustains life, and it precedes most ceremonies in which the ancestors or divinities are called upon for blessing. Blood sacrifice expresses the reciprocal bond between divinity and devotee. Ancestors also serve as mediators by providing access to spiritual guidance and power. Death is not a sufficient condition for becoming an ancestor. Only those who lived a full measure of life, cultivated moral values, and achieved social distinction may attain this status. Ancestors are thought to reprimand those who neglect or breach the moral order by troubling the errant descendants with sickness or misfortune until restitution is made. When serious illness strikes, then, it is assumed that the cause is to be traced to interpersonal and social conflict. It is a moral dilemma as much as a biological crisis. Ritual often marks a transition between physiological stages of life (such as puberty or death) coupled with a change in social status (as from child to adult). Such RITES OF PASSAGE are natural occasions for initiation, a process of socialization and education that enables the novice to assume the new social role. Initiation also involves the gradual cultivation of knowledge about the nature and use of sacred power. The Sande secret society of the Mande-speaking peoples is an important example, because its religious vision and political power extend across Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea. Sande initiates girls by teaching them domestic skills and sexual etiquette, as well as the religious significance of womanhood and female power. The society’s sacred mask of the spirit Sowo reveals in iconographic form the association of women with water spirits and attests to the creative power of both. Among the mask’s most striking features are the coils of flesh at the neck, representing concentric rings of water from which women, initially water spirits themselves, first emerged. The neck coils function like the HALO in Western art, signifying the wearer as human in form but divine in essence. CIRCUMCISION and CLITORIDECTOMY are common and widespread rites of initiation. Although the surgical removal of the clitoris and parts of the labia minora is more radical and more dangerous than male circumcision, both forms of genital mutilation are understood to be important means by which gender is culturally defined. Within some cultures there exists the belief that genital surgery removes 18 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

AFRICAN RELIGIONS all vestiges of ANDROGYNY, as the anatomical parts correlating with the opposite sex are cut away. Cosmogonic myths justify the surgery as reiterating primordial acts that promoted fecundity. In this way religions define the sacred status of sex and fertility. Possession trance is the most dramatic and intimate contact that occurs between devotee and divinity. In most cases possession is actively sought, induced through the ritual preparation of the participant. Techniques that facilitate this altered state of consciousness range from inhaling vapors of medicinal preparations to rhythmic chanting, drumming, and dancing. Although this practice may in some cases be reserved for religious specialists or priests, among the devotees of the vodun (“divinities”) in Benin, any initiate may become a receptacle of the gods. The possessed are referred to as “horsemen,” because they are “mounted” by the spirits and submit to their control. Once embodied, the presiding god engages the congregation in dialogue and delivers messages. Contact with the divinities is not always so direct; mediators between the human and divine realms are often necessary. Specialists range from simple officiants at family altars to prophets, sacred kings, and diviners. Certain priests are invested with powers that identify them more fully with the gods. Thus, for the Dogon the hogon is not just a simple officiant but a sacred persona. His saliva is the source of the life-giving humidity, and his foot must not touch the earth directly or the ground would dry up. Such persons must submit to a number of ritual interdictions, because their ritual purity guarantees the sustained order of the world. The power of a king is often derived from the association of kingship with the forces of nature. In Swaziland the king is both a political and a ritual leader; the ritual renewal of his office is performed in conjunction with the summer solstice, when the celestial bodies are at their most powerful. The king is purified and washed, and the water running off his body is thought to bring the first rains of the new season. Among the Yoruba a succession of kings became deified, and

The faces of Arusha boys from Tanzania are painted in preparation for the coming of age circumcision ceremony George Holton—Photo Researchers

19 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

AFRICAN RELIGIONS their histories were infused with myths about a royal pantheon of secondary divinities. Such is the case of Shango, once the king of Oyo, who now is an orisha associated with thunder. Diviners are ritual specialists who have mastered a learned technique for reading signs that communicate the will of the divinities. Typically, diviners possess a gift of clairvoyance and are therefore considered to share in the power of insight that is usually reserved to the spirits. Divinatory ritual is the centerpiece of African religions, because it opens to all a channel of mediation with the gods. According to the Yoruba, 401 orisha “line the road to heaven.” Diviners identify the personal orisha to which an individual should appeal for guidance, protection, and blessing. Witches are also humans with intermediating power; however, theirs is ambiguous and therefore dangerous and must be controlled. The Gelede ritual masquerades of the Yoruba are lavish spectacles designed to represent and honor the “Great Mothers,” elderly women considered to possess the secret knowledge of life itself, and the power of transformation. While considered “witches,” the Great Mothers are not, however, the personification of evil. They can be beneficent, bringing wealth and fertility, or they can invoke disaster in the form of disease, famine, or barrenness. Because their power to intercede surpasses that of the ancestors or the divinities, they are called the “owners of the world.” Gelede is therefore executed to appease the witches, in order to marshal their secret powers for the benefit of society. However, throughout Africa much misfortune is ultimately explained as the work of WITCHCRAFT, and diviners are sought to provide protective medicines and AMULETS.

MYTHOLOGY In African oral cultures it is myths that embody philosophical reflections, express ultimate values, and identify moral standards. Unlike Western mythology, African myths are not recounted as a single narrative story, nor is there any established corpus of myth. Instead, myths are embedded and transmitted in ritual practice. African mythology commonly depicts the cosmos anthropomorphically (see ANTHROPOMORPHISM).The human body is a microcosm and incorporates the same primordial elements and essential forces that make up the universe. Because the human body is conceived as the twin of the cosmic body, twinship is a predominant theme in much West African myth and ritual. According to COSMOGONY shared by the Dogon, Bambara, and Malinke peoples of Mali, the primordial beings were twins. Twins therefore represent the ideal. Every individual shares in the structure of twinship, in that the placenta is believed to be the locus of one’s destiny and the soul’s twin. Following a birth, the placenta is buried in the family compound and watered for the first week of the child’s life. Among the Ashanti of Ghana, twins are permanently assigned a special status akin to that of living shrines, because as a sign of abundant fertility they are repositories of sacredness. For the Ndembu of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by contrast, twins represent an excess of fertility more characteristic of the animal world than the human, and rituals are undertaken to protect the community from this anomalous condition. The trickster is a prevalent type of mythic character in African mythology. Tricksters overturn convention and are notorious for pursuing their insatiable appetites and shameless lusts, even at the price of disaster. Yet even as the trickster introduces disorder and confusion into the divine plan, he paves the way for a new, more dynamic order. To the Fon of Benin, Legba is such a trickster. He is a troublemaker who disrupts harmony and sows turmoil. However, Legba is not viewed as evil but rather as a revered transformer. Like other such trickster figures, Legba presides over DIVINATION. Called the “linguist,” he translates for humans the otherwise cryptic messages of Mawu, the Supreme Being. Through divination, he also allows for new possibility. Tricksters thus communicate an important paradox: The cosmos, although grounded in a divinely ordained order, is characterized by constant change. 20 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

AFRICAN RELIGIONS

NEW RELIGIONS, INDEPENDENT CHURCHES, AND PROPHETIC MOVEMENTS New religious movements have proliferated in sub-Saharan Africa in the wake of European colonialism as one response of Africans to the loss of cultural, economic, and political control. Independent, or indigenous, churches have arisen largely in reaction against European Christian MISSIONS . The independent churches established in the 20th century have played a significant role in the postcolonial struggle for national independence. Religious vision and fervor, combined with the will for political self-determination, have inspired new movements throughout Africa. Today, independent churches constitute more than 15% of the total Christian population in sub-Saharan Africa. The Harrist church was one of the first to receive the sanction and support of the state. Its founder, William Wadé Harris, was a prophet-healer who claimed that the angel GABRIEL visited him while he was in prison for participating in a political revolt in his native Liberia. After his release Harris moved to neighboring Côte d’Ivoire (where the European Christian missions had not been very successful) in order to lead his own vigorous evangelical campaign. (See HARRIS MOVEMENT.) In contrast with indigenous religious systems, which are generated and sustained by the community, Christian prophetic movements are organized around an individual. However, these movements are like indigenous religions in that they are preoccupied with healing. Prophets are considered charged by God with the task of purifying the people and struggling against witchcraft. Public CONFESSIONS, EXORCISMS, and purifying BAPTISMS are dominant features. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo Simon Kimbangu inaugurated a healing revival in 1921 that drew thousands of converts to Christianity. Kimbangu’s powerful ministry was viewed as a threat by Belgian colonial authorities, who arrested him. His imprisonment only stirred the nationalist fervor of his followers. The KIMBANGUIST CHURCH survived and was eventually recognized by the state. In 1969 the church, which now has more than 4 million adherents, was admitted to the WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES. In contrast, neotraditional movements retain elements of indigenous African belief and ritual within the context of Christian liturgy. These syncretic cults incorporate important aspects of African religious expression, such as the practice of secrecy characteristic of the Sande societies in West Africa, and fundamental beliefs, such as the reliance upon the intervention of ancestral spirits. An example is the Bwiti cult originating with the Fang of Gabon, which fused traditional ancestral cults with Christian symbolism and theology and messianic prophetic leadership. Such new African churches have tried to sustain a sense of community and continuity, even amidst rapid and dramatic social change. Some scholars regard the new African religions as manifestations of social or religious protest—by-products of the struggle for political self-determination and the establishment of independent nation-states. However, the persistence and proliferation of indigenous religions suggest that they possess the necessary openness to experimentation and renewal to enable Africans to accommodate the changing character and needs of their communities.

Yoruba staff from southwestern Nigeria carried in ceremonial dances by devotees of the orisha Shango Werner Forman Archive— Art Resource

21 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

AFRICAN RELIGIONS, ART OF

A FRICAN RELIGIONS , AR T OF , artistic expression that alludes to RELIGIOUS BELIEFS and supports rituals of indigenous African faiths. Both African religion and African art have been subject to problematic interpretations based on evolutionary theories that were borrowed from biology and inappropriately applied to the social sciences and humanities. As a result, they have been characterized as “primitive.” Additionally, in being perceived as “traditional” expressions, they have been deemed static and timeless. Assuming African art to be produced by anonymous, untrained artisans, Western museums have typically treated it as “artifact,” housing it in museums of natural history rather than fine arts. In fact, although both African religion and African art do draw on indigenous legacies, they also allow for innovation and for the imaginative appropriation of new forms. Generalizations about African aesthetics, without specific reference to peoples or their compositions, are perilous. However, one consistent aesthetic criterion is the achievement of balance between total abstraction and naturalistic representation. Realistic portraiture is avoided; instead, through stylized representation the African artist aims at achieving vividness and equilibrium. African sculptures successfully convey spiritual power precisely because they are not bound by resemblance. Much African art aims at actualizing spiritual forces, not merely representing them. Moreover, objects do not embody power in their own right. They must be activated by an act of consecration or through repeated ritual. Statuettes called “FETISHES” give substance to invisible spiritual intermediaries. The Lobi of Burkina Faso carve such figures, which they call bateba. Once activated, the bateba can be invoked for aid but will die if neglected. Masks and masquerading bring the plastic arts of sculpture and textiles into dynamic conjunction with the performing arts of music and dance. Whereas Westerners associate masks with disguise and pretense and tend to assume that masks represent spirits of the dead, this interpretation does not do justice to the complexity of masking traditions. In fact, the majority of figures depicted are not “spirits” but ancestors, CULTURE HEROES, and gods; significant events in which these mythic beings figure are sometimes reenacted in performances. Some masks are not anthropomorphic figures at all but complex superstructures representing cosmic dynamics or the cosmic order. Their forms are predicated on cosmological ideas as much as on for mal, aesthetic qualities. Another important intersection of art and religion is the sculptural representation of deities. In Nigeria, Shango, the Yoruba thunder god, is known for his unpredictable anger, likened to thunderbolts. His two-headed ax expresses his vital force and the ambiguity of power. Priests of Shango (both male and female) who experience possession trance carry staffs representing their dramatic access to Shango’s power. The staff depicts a woman kneeling in supplication, while the symbolic two-headed ax extends from her head. The dark color of the staff represents the trance itself, the hidden quality of spiritual knowledge. Nonfigurative art objects also mediate spiritual power. The stools of the Ashanti of Ghana provide earthly homes for departed kings and other ancestors. Made of wood from trees believed to be the abode of spirits, the stools are ceremonially blackened with a mixture of kitchen soot, spiders’ webs, and eggs. The elements respectively represent wisdom, subjugation of enemies, and peace, honoring the function of the immortal guardians of social order. 22 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Thus, African art objects belong to a broader realm of ritual experience and lose meaning when displayed as emblems of aesthetic judgment alone. On the other hand, preoccupation with context to the detriment of appreciation of style fails to do justice to the power of the form through which meaning is expressed. EGAMA \ 9!-g‘-m‘ \ (Sanskrit: “tradition, received teachings”), post-Vedic SCRIPTURES conveying ritual knowledge that are considered to have been revealed by a personal divinity. Uaivite scriptures, dating probably to the 8th century, are particularly so designated, in contrast to the Vaizdava Sauhites and Uekta TANTRAS (see U AIVISM , VAI ZD AVISM , and UEKTISM). The texts are grouped according to the sects that follow a particular egamic tradition—e.g., the Uaivasiddhenta or, on the Vaizdava side, PEÑCARETRA. The egamas provide vital information on the earliest codes of temple building, image making, and religious procedure.

A GAMEMNON \ 0a-g‘-9mem-0n!n \, in Greek legend, king of Mycenae in Argos. He was the son (or grandson) of ATREUS and the brother of MENELAUS . After the murder of Atreus by a nephew, Aegisthus, Agamemnon and Menelaus took refuge with Tyndareus, king of Sparta, whose daughters, Clytemnestra and HELEN, they respectively married. By Clytemnestra, Agamemnon had a son, ORESTES , and three daughters, IPHIGENEIA (Iphianassa), ELECTRA (Laodice), and Chrysothemis. Menelaus succeeded Tyndareus, while Agamemnon recovered his father’s kingdom. After PARIS (Alexandros) carried off Helen, Agamemnon called on the chieftains of Greece to unite in war against the Trojans. He himself furnished 100 ships and was chosen commander of the combined forces. The fleet assembled at the port of Aulis in Boeotia but was prevented from sailing by calms or contrary winds that were sent by the goddess ARTEMIS because Agamemnon had in some way offended her. To appease the wrath of Artemis, Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter Iphigeneia—although, in some versions of the myth an animal was substituted and Iphigeneia survived. After the capture of Troy, Agamemnon returned with CASSANDRA, the daughter of PRIAM, as his war-prize, but upon arrival he was murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. When his son Orestes had grown to manhood he returned and avenged his father by killing Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. AGAPE \ ‘-9g!-p@, !-, -p%; 9!-g‘-0p@, chiefly Brit 9a-g‘-p% \ , Greek agapu, in the NEW TESTAMENT, the fatherly love of God for mankind, and mankind’s reciprocal love for God. The term necessarily extends to the love of one’s fellow man. The CHURCH FATHERS used agape to designate both a rite (using bread and wine) and a meal of fellowship to which the poor were invited. The historical relationship between the agape, the Lord’s Supper, and the EUCHARIST is uncertain. Some scholars believe the agape was a form of the Lord’s Supper and the Eucharist the sacramental aspect of that celebration. Others interpret agape as a fellowship meal held in imitation of gatherings attended by Jesus and his disciples; the Eucharist is believed to have been joined to this meal later but eventually to have become totally separated from it. The possibility that Jesus may have given a new significance to Jewish ritual gatherings of his day has complicated the problem of interpretation.

AGDISTIS: see GREAT MOTHER OF THE GODS.

AHAB

AGGADAH \0!-g!-9d!, ‘-9g!-d‘ \ : see H A L A KHAH AND HAGGADAH.

A GLAUROS \ ‘-9gl|r‘s \, in Greek mythology, eldest daughter of the Athenian king CECROPS . Aglauros died with her sisters by leaping from the Acropolis after seeing the infant Erechthonius, a human with a serpent’s tail. Aglauros had a SANCTUARY on the Acropolis in which young men of military age swore an OATH to her as well as to ZEUS and to other deities. The honor, however, may have stemmed from another legend—that Aglauros had sacrificed herself for the city during a protracted war.

A GNI \ 9‘g-n% \ (Sanskrit: “Fire”), in HIN DUISM , a fire god second only to INDRA in the VEDIC mythology of ancient India. He is equally the fire of the sun, of lightning, and of the hearth—hence, of all three levels in Agni with characteristic symbol the Vedic COSMOLOGY. of the ram; in the Guimet As the fire of sacrifice, Museum, Paris he is the mouth of the Giraudon—Art Resource gods, the carrier of the oblation, and the messenger between human and divine. Agni is ruddy-hued and has two faces—one beneficent and one malignant. In the SG VEDA he is sometimes identified with RUDRA, the forerunner of the later god SHIVA. Though Agni has no independent sect in modern Hinduism, he is invoked in many ceremonies, and where Vedic rites persist, as in weddings, his presence is central. AGNOSTICISM (from Greek: agnjstos, “unknowable”), the doctrine that humans cannot know the existence of anything beyond the phenomena of their experience. The term has come to be equated in popular parlance with skepticism about religious questions. Agnosticism both as a term and as a philosophical position gained currency through its espousal by Thomas Huxley (1825–95), who is thought to have coined the word agnostic (as opposed to “gnostic”) in 1869 to designate one who repudiated traditional Judeo-Christian THEISM and yet disclaimed doctrinaire ATHEISM, in order to leave such questions as the existence of God in abeyance. There are thus two related but nevertheless distinct viewpoints suggested by the term. It may mean no more

than the suspension of judgment on religious questions about God’s existence for lack of critical evidence. But Huxley’s own elaboration on the term makes clear that the suspension of judgment on questions about God’s existence was thought to invalidate Christian beliefs about “things hoped for” and “things not seen.” Huxley’s role in the struggle over the teachings of Charles Darwin helped to establish this connotation as the primary one in the definition of agnosticism. When such prominent defenders of the Darwinian hypothesis as Clarence Darrow likewise labeled themselves as agnostics, the writers of popular apologetic pamphlets found it easy to equate agnosticism with hostility to conventional Christian tenets.

A GNUS D EI \ 9!g-0nr-0b>d“self-born” buddhas who have existed eternally (see DHYENI-BUDDHA). According to this concept Amitebha manid‘-9dy!-n‘-9sr- \, Greek annual religious festival. At Athens it took place in the month of Pyanopsion (October–November) and lasted three days, on which occasion the various phratries (clans) of Attica met to discuss their affairs. The name probably means the festival of “common relationship.” The most important day was probably the third, Koureotis, when children born since the last festival were presented by their fathers or guardians; after an OATH had been taken as to their legitimacy, their names were inscribed in the register. A PAUSHA \ ‘-9pa>-sh‘ \, in ancient Iranian religion, a demonic star who in an important myth does battle with TISHTRYA over rainfall. APHRAATES \a-9fr@-‘-0t%z \, Syriac Afrahat \!-9fr!-!t \ (fl. 4th century), Syrian ascetic and the earliest known Christian writer of the Syriac church in Persia. Aphraates became a convert to CHRISTIANITY during the reign of the anti-Christian Persian king Shepjr II (309–379), after which he led a monastic life, possibly at the Monastery of St. Matthew near Mosul, Iraq. Termed “the Persian Sage,” Aphraates between the years 336 and 345 composed Syriac biblical commentaries, 23 of which have been preserved. They survey the Christian faith and are at times marked by a sharp polemical nature. Nine treatises against Jews, who were numerous in Mesopotamia and had established outstanding schools, are particularly acrimonious; they treat subjects such as EASTER, CIRCUMCISION, dietary laws, the supplanting of ISRAEL by GENTILES as the new chosen people, and Jesus’ divine sonship. Aphraates’ writings are distinguished by their primitive biblical-theological tradition, unaffected by doctrinal controversies and linguistic complexity. Insulated from the intellectual currents of the Greco-Roman ecclesiastical world, Aphraates “Homilies,” as they are known, manifest a teaching indigenous to early Syrian Christianity. APHRODITE \0a-fr‘-9d&-t% \, in GREEK RELIGION, the goddess of sexual love and beauty. Because the Greek word aphros means “foam,” the legend arose that Aphrodite was born from the white foam produced by the severed genitals of OURANUS, after his son CRONUS threw them into the sea, and Aphrodite was, in fact, widely worshiped as a goddess of the sea and of seafaring. She was also honored as a goddess of war, especially at Sparta, Thebes, Cyprus, and other places. Aphrodite was, however, primarily a goddess of love and fertility and even occasionally presided over marriage. Although prostitutes considered Aphrodite their patron, her public cult was generally solemn and even austere. Aphrodite’s worship came to Greece from the East, and many of her characteristics must be considered Semitic. Although Homer called her “Cyprian” after the island chiefly famed for her worship, she was already Hellenized by this time, and in Homeric mythology she was the daughter of

APOCRYPHA ZEUS and DIONE. In the Odyssey, Aphrodite was married to HEPHAESTUS, the lame smith god, though she played the field with the god of war, ARES (by whom she became the mother of HARMONIA).

Of Aphrodite’s mortal lovers, the most important were the Trojan shepherd ANCHISES, by whom she became the mother of AENEAS, and the handsome youth ADONIS (in origin a Semitic deity and the consort of Ishtar-Astarte), who was killed by a boar while hunting and was lamented by women at the festival of Adonia. The cult of Adonis had Underworld features, and Aphrodite was also connected with the dead at DELPHI. Aphrodite’s main centers of worship were at Paphos and Amathus on Cyprus and on the island of Cythera, a Minoan colony, where her cult probably originated in prehistoric times. On the Greek mainland Corinth was the chief center of her worship. Her close association with EROS, the GRACES (Charites), and the Seasons (Horae) emphasized her role as a promoter of fertility. She was honored as Genetrix, the creative element in the world. Of her epithets, OURANIA (Heavenly Dweller) was honorific and applied to certain Oriental deities, and Pandemos (Of All the People) referred to her standing within the city-state. Among her symbols were the dove, pomegranate, swan, and myrtle.

mankind. The term also refers to the literature containing prophecies about that time. (See also MILLENNIALISM.)

APOCALYPSE, FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE, in CHRISTIANITY, the figures who, according to the book of REVELATION TO JOHN (6:1–8), appear with the opening of the seven seals that bring forth the cataclysm of the APOCALYPSE. The first horse-

man rides a white horse, which scholars sometimes interpret to symbolize Christ; the second horseman rides a red horse and symbolizes war and bloodshed; the third rides a black horse and symbolizes famine; and the fourth horseman rides a pale horse and represents pestilence and death.

APOCALYPTICISM \‘-0p!-k‘-9lip-t‘-0si-z‘m \, eschatological views and movements that focus on revelations about a sudden and cataclysmic intervention of God in history; universal judgment; the salvation of the faithful ELECT; and the eventual rule of the elect with God in a renewed heaven and earth. Arising in ZOROASTRIANISM, Apocalypticism was developed more fully in the ESCHATOLOGY of JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, and ISLAM.

A POCRYPHA , in biblical literature, works outside an accepted canon of SCRIPTURE. The history of the term’s usage indicates that it referred to a body of esoteric writings that APIS \9@-pis \ (Greek), Egyptian Hap, Hep, were at first prized, later tolerated, and fior Hapi, in ancient EGYPTIAN RELIGION, nally excluded. In its broadest sense apocrypha has come to mean any sacred bull deity worshiped at Memphis. The cult of Apis origiwritings of dubious authority. In modern usage the Apocrynated at least as early as the 1st dynasty (c. 2925–c. 2775 )). pha is the term for ancient Jewish books that are called deuAs Apis-Atum he was associated with the solar cult and terocanonical works in ROMAN CATHOLICISM —i.e., those that was often represented with are canonical for Catholics but the sun-disk between his horns. are not a part of the Hebrew BIBLE. (These works are also reApis was black and white garded as canonical within and distinguished by special EASTER N ORTHODOXY.) When markings. Some sources said the Protestant churches rethat he was begotten by a ray turned to the Jewish canon of light from heaven, and oth(Hebrew OLD TESTAMENT) durers that he was sired by an Apis ing the REFOR MATION period bull. When a sacred bull died, (16th century), the Catholic the calf that was to be his sucdeuterocanonical works becessor was sought and installed came for the Protestants “apocin the Apieion at Memphis. His ryphal”—i.e., noncanonical. In priests drew OMENS from his behavior, and his oracle had a wide 19th-century biblical scholarreputation. When an Apis bull ship a new term was coined for died, it was buried with great those ancient Jewish works that pomp at Zaqqerah, in underwere not accepted as canonical ground galleries known as the SAby either the Catholic or ProtesRAPEUM. It was probably in Memtant churches; such books are now phis that the worship of SARAPIS commonly called PSEUDEPIGRAPHA (after the Greek form Osorapis, a (“Falsely Inscribed”)—i.e., books combination of OSIRIS and Apis in that were wrongly ascribed to a bibthe image of an eastern Greek god) lical author. Apis, painted on the bottom of a wooden arose under Ptolemy I Soter (305– At the time when Greek was the coffin, c. 700 ); in the Römer and Pel282 )). From Alexandria, it spread common spoken language in the izaeus Museum, Hildesheim, Ger. to become one of the most wideMediterranean region, the Old TesBavaria Verlag spread oriental cults in the Roman tament—the Hebrew Bible—was inEmpire. comprehensible to most of the population. For this reason, Jewish scholars produced the APOCALYPSE, in many religious traditions of the West, the SEPTUAGINT, a translation of the Old Testament books from period of catastrophic upheaval that is to precede the end- various Hebrew texts, along with fragments in Aramaic, ing of time and the coming of God to sit in judgment upon into Greek. That version incorporated a number of works 65

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APOLLO that later, non-Hellenistic Jewish scholarship at the Council of Jamnia (90 () identified as being outside the authentic Hebrew canon. The TALMUD separates these works as Sefarim Hizonim (Extraneous Books). The Septuagint was an important basis for JEROME’S translation of the Old Testament into Latin for the VULGATE Bible; and, although he had doubts about the authenticity of some of the works that it contained —he was the first to employ the Greek word apokryphos, “hidden,” “secret,” in the sense “noncanonical”—he was overruled, and most of them were included in the Vulgate. On April 8, 1546, the COUNCIL OF TRENT declared the canonicity of nearly the entire Vulgate, excluding only the Third and Fourth Books of Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and the First and Second Books of Esdras. Eastern Christendom, meanwhile, had accepted the Old Testament apocrypha as deuterocanonical—Tobit; Judith; the Wisdom of Solomon; and Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach); Third Book of Esdras; First, Second, and Third Books of Maccabees; the Book of Baruch; and the Letter of Jeremiah. Old Testament pseudepigrapha are extremely numerous and are attributed to various biblical personages from Adam to Zechariah. Some of the most significant of these works are the Ascension of Isaiah, the Assumption of Moses, the Life of Adam and Eve, the First and Second Books of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the Letter of Aristeas, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. All the NEW TESTAMENT apocrypha are pseudepigraphal, and most of them are acts, gospels, and epistles, though there are a number of apocalypses and some can be characterized as wisdom books. Some works relate encounters and events in mystical language and describe arcane Apollo Belvedere, Roman copy of the Greek original attributed to rituals. Most of these works arose from sects Leochares, 4th century ); in the Vatican Museum, Rome that had been or would be declared heretical, Alinari—Art Resource such as, importantly, the Gnostics (see GNOSTICISM). In the early decades of CHRISTIANITY no orthodoxy had been established, and various parties or factions were vying for ascendancy and regularity in over religious law and the constitutions of cities, and comthe young church. In this setting virtually all works that municated through prophets and oracles his knowledge of were advocating beliefs that later became heretical were the future and the will of his father, ZEUS. Even the gods feared him, and only his father and his mother, LETO, could destined to denunciation and destruction. In addition to apocryphal works per se, the New Testa- endure his presence. Distance, death, terror, and awe were summed up in his symbolic bow; his other attribute, the ment includes a number of works and fragments that are described by a second meaning of the term deuterocanoni- lyre, proclaimed the joy of communion with Olympus through music, poetry, and dance. He was also a god of cal: “added later.” The Letter to the Hebrews attributed to Paul, who died before it was written, is one of these; others crops and herds, primarily as a divine bulwark against wild animals and disease, as his epithet Alexikakos (Averter of are the letters of James, Peter (2), John (2 and 3), and Jude, Evil) indicates. His forename Phoebus means “bright” or and the REVELATION TO JOHN. Fragments include Mark 16:9– 20, Luke 22:43–44, and John 7:53 and 8:1–11. All are in- “pure,” and the view became current that he was concluded in the Roman canon and are accepted by the Eastern nected with the sun. Church and most Protestant churches. Among Apollo’s epithets was Nomios (Herdsman), and he is said to have served King ADMETUS of Pherae in the caAPOLLO \‘-9p!-l+ \, byname Phoebus, in GREEK RELIGION, the pacities of groom and herdsman as penance for slaying most widely revered and influential of all the gods. Though Zeus’s armorers, the Cyclopes. He was also called Lyceius, his original nature is obscure, from the time of Homer he presumably because he protected the flocks from wolves was the god who sent or threatened from afar, made hu(lykoi); because herdsmen and shepherds passed the time mans aware of their guilt and purified them of it, presided with music, this may have been Apollo’s original role.

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APOLOGIST Apollo apparently was of foreign origin, coming either from somewhere north of Greece or from Asia. Traditionally, he and his twin, ARTEMIS, were born on the isle of Delos. From there, according to the myths, Apollo went to Pytho (DELPHI), where he slew PYTHON, the serpent that guarded the area. He established his oracle by taking on the guise of a dolphin, leaping aboard a Cretan ship, and forcing the crew to serve him. Thus Pytho was renamed Delphi after the dolphin (delphis), and, by legend, the cult of Apollo Delphinius superseded that previously established there by GAEA. During the Archaic period (8th–6th century )), the fame of the Delphic oracle achieved pan-Hellenic status. The god’s medium was the Pythia, a local woman over 50 years old, who, under his inspiration, delivered oracles in the main temple of Apollo. Other oracles of Apollo existed on the Greek mainland, Delos, and in Anatolia, but none rivaled Delphi in importance. Although Apollo had many love affairs, they were mostly unfortunate: DAPHNE , in her efforts to escape him, was changed into a laurel, his sacred tree; Coronis (mother of ASCLEPIUS) was shot by Apollo’s twin, Artemis, when Coronis proved unfaithful; and CASSANDRA (daughter of King PRIAM of Troy) rejected his advances and was punished by being made to utter true prophecies that no one believed. APOLOGETICS , in CHRISTIANITY, intellectual defense of the truth of the Christian religion, usually considered a branch of theology. In Protestant usage, apologetics can be distinguished from polemics, in which the beliefs of a particular Christian sect are defended. In ROMAN CATHOLICISM, however, the term is used to mean the defense of Catholic teaching in its entirety. Apologetics has traditionally been positive in its direct argument for Christianity and negative in its criticism of opposing beliefs. Its function is both to fortify the believer against his personal doubts and to remove the intellectual stumbling blocks that inhibit the conversion of unbelievers. Apologetics has steered a difficult course between dogmatism, which fails to take seriously the objections of nonChristians, and the temptation to undermine the strength of defense by granting too much to the skeptic. Apologetics has rarely been taken as providing a conclusive proof of Christianity and some theologians have been skeptical about the value of apologetics to a religion based on faith. In the NEW TESTAMENT, the thrust of apologetics was defense of Christianity as the culmination of the Jewish religion and its prophecies concerning a MESSIAH. In the early church, the APOLOGISTS, such as JUSTIN MARTYR and TERTULLIAN, defended the moral superiority of Christianity over pre-Christian religions and pointed out Christianity’s fulfillment of OLD TESTAMENT prophecies. In the later Middle Ages, apologists focused on Christianity’s superiority over the rival religions of JUDAISM and ISLAM. In the 13th century, however, THOMAS AQUINAS developed a still-influential defense of belief in God based on Aristotelian theories of a first cause of the universe. During the Protestant REFORMATION apologetics was substantially replaced by polemics, in which many sects sought to defend their particular beliefs rather than Christianity as a whole. The “NATURAL THEOLOGY” of both JOHN CALVIN and PHILIPP MELANCHTHON, however, does represent a strain of genuine Reformation apologetics. (Natural theology is generally characterized as the project of establishing religious truths by rational argument and without reliance upon revelations, its two traditional topics being the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.)

In the 18th century, Joseph Butler, an English bishop, met the rising challenge of DEISM in the wake of advancing science by arguing that a supernatural Christianity was at least as reasonable and probable as any scientific doctrine could be. A later Englishman, William Paley, argued that a universe exhibiting design must have a designer, much as a watch implies a watchmaker. In the 19th century the historical reliability of the Gospels came under attack, and apologists stressed the difficulty of accounting for the RESURRECTION of JESUS CHRIST and the rapid spread of Christianity if SUPERNATURALISM were denied. Moral arguments for Christianity based on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant also gained prominence as attacks on historical and metaphysical apologetics increased. Further objections to Christianity based on the theory of evolution, the views of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Marxism, and psychoanalysis have been met by apologists either by attempts to refute the fundamentals on which they are based, or by turning aspects of the criticisms into new arguments favorable to Christianity. In the 20th century such Protestant theologians as the Germans RUDOLF BULTMANN and PAUL TILLICH abandoned the attempt to preserve the literal historical truth of the Gospels and focused on presenting Christianity as the best answer to the existential needs and questions of man. Other Protestants stress the need to make the ancient stories and symbols of Christianity meaningful to modern man in a “post-Christian” era dominated by materialistic ideologies. The German scholar KARL BARTH, however, expressed skepticism about the whole task of the apologetical system, insisting that Christianity must be rooted exclusively in faith. The Roman Catholic apologetical system of Thomas Aquinas and his intellectual successors has been profoundly influenced in the 20th century by the SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL . Contemporary apologetics in the Roman communion focuses principally on the community of believers, whose faith is under constant challenge by numerous competing views and value systems.

APOLOGIST, any of the Christian writers, primarily in the 2nd century, who attempted to provide a defense of CHRISTIANITY and criticisms of Greco-Roman culture. Many of their writings were addressed to Roman emperors, and it is probable that the writings were actually sent to government secretaries who were empowered to accept or reject them. Thus, some of the apologies assumed the form of briefs written to defend Christian practices and beliefs. The Apologists usually tried to prove the antiquity of their religion by emphasizing it as the fulfillment of the prophecy of the OLD TESTAMENT; they argued that their opponents were really godless because they worshiped the false gods of mythology; and they insisted on the philosophical nature of their own faith as well as its high ethical teaching, claiming to follow in the best tradition of classical philosophers, especially of Socrates. Their works did not present a complete picture of Christianity because they were arguing primarily in response to charges proffered by their opponents. The few manuscripts of the early Apologists that have survived owe their existence primarily to Byzantine scholars. In 914 Arethas, bishop of Caesarea Cappadociae, had a collection of early apologies copied for his library. Many of the later manuscripts were copied in the 16th century, when the COUNCIL OF TRENT was discussing the nature of tradition. The genuine writings of the Apologists were virtually unknown, however, until the 16th century. 67

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APOPIS

APOPIS \‘-9p+-pis \, also called Apep, Apepi, or Rerek, ancient Egyptian DEMON of chaos, who had the form of a serpent and was the foe of the sun god, RE. Each night Apopis encountered Re at a particular hour in the sun god’s ritual journey through the Underworld in his divine bark. SETH, who rode as guardian, attacked him with a spear and slew him, but the next night Apopis, who could not be finally killed, was there again to attack Re. The Egyptians believed that they could help maintain the order of the world and assist Re by performing rituals against Apopis. APOSTASY (from Greek apostasia, “defection,” “revolt”), the total rejection of CHRISTIANITY by a baptized person who, having at one time professed the faith, publicly rejects it. It is distinguished from HERESY, which is limited to the rejection of one or more Christian doctrines by one who maintains an overall adherence to JESUS CHRIST. A celebrated controversy in the early church concerned sanctions against those who had committed apostasy during persecution and had then returned to the church when Christians were no longer being persecuted. Some early Christian emperors added civil sanctions to ecclesiastical laws regarding apostates. In the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Code of CANON LAW still imposed the sanction of EXCOMMUNICATION for those whose rejection of the faith fitted the technical definition of apostasy. But the absence of civil sanctions and an increasing tolerance of divergent viewpoints have tended to mitigate the reaction of believers to those who reject Christianity. The term apostasy has also been used to refer to those who have abandoned the monastic and clerical states without permission. Additionally, apostasy may also refer to the rejection or renunciation of any faith; ISLAM and JUDAISM are non-Christian faiths in which the term is used.

A POSTLE (from Greek apostolos, “person sent”), any of the 12 disciples chosen by JESUS CHRIST; the term is also applied to others, especially PAUL , who was converted to CHRISTIANITY a few years after Jesus’ death. In Luke 6:13 it is stated that Jesus chose 12 from his disciples “whom he named apostles,” and in Mark 6:30 the Twelve are called Apostles. The full list of the Twelve is given with some variation in Mark 3, Matthew 10, and Luke 6 as: PETER ; JAMES and JOHN, the sons of Zebedee; ANDREW; Philip; Bartholomew; MATTHEW; THOMAS; James, the son of Alphaeus; Thaddaeus, or Judas, the son of James; Simon the Cananaean, or the Zealot; and JUDAS ISCARIOT. The privileges of the Twelve were to be in continual attendance on their master and to be the recipients of his special teaching and training. Three of them, Peter, James, and John, formed an inner circle who alone were permitted to witness such events as the raising of Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:37; Luke 8:51), the TRANSFIGURATION (Mark 9; Matthew 17; Luke 9), and the agony of Jesus in the Garden of GETHSEMANE (Mark 14:33; Matthew 26:37). Special importance seems to have been attached to the number 12, which some scholars interpret as a reference to the 12 tribes of Israel. When a gap was left by the defection and death of the traitor Judas Iscariot, immediate steps were taken to fill it by the election of Matthias (Acts 1). Paul himself received the title of Apostle, apparently on the ground that he had seen the Lord and received a commission directly from him. This appears to be in agreement with the condition in Acts that a newly appointed Apostle should be capable of giving eyewitness testimony to the RESURRECTION. According to some early Christian writers, 68 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

however, some were called apostles after the period covered by the NEW TESTAMENT. The word also has been used to designate a high administrative or ecclesiastical officer.

A POSTLES ’ C REED , also called Apostolicum, a statement of faith used in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and many Protestant churches. It is not officially recognized in the Eastern Orthodox churches. According to tradition, it was composed by the Twelve Apostles, but it actually developed from early interrogations of CATECHUMENS (persons receiving instructions in order to be baptized) by the bishop. An example of such interrogations used in Rome about 200 has been preserved in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus. The bishop would ask, “Dost thou believe in God the Father almighty?” and so forth through the major Christian beliefs. Stated affirmatively, these statements became a creed; such creeds were known as baptismal creeds. The present text of the Apostles’ Creed is similar to the baptismal creed used in the church in Rome in the 3rd and 4th centuries. It reached its final form in southwestern France in the late 6th or early 7th century. Gradually it replaced other baptismal creeds and was acknowledged as the official statement of faith of the entire Catholic church in the West by the time of Pope INNOCENT III (1198–1216). A modern English version of this creed (as used in the Roman Catholic church) is the following: ◆ I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. ◆

A POSTOLIC C ONSTITUTIONS , formally Ordinances of the Holy Apostles Through Clement, largest collection of ecclesiastical law that has survived from early CHRISTIANITY. The full title suggests that these regulations were drawn up by the Apostles and transmitted to the church by CLEMENT of Rome at the end of the 1st century. In modern times it is generally accepted that the constitutions were actually written in Syria about 380 ( and that they were the work of one compiler, probably an Arian (one who believes that Christ, the Son of God, is not fully divine but rather a created being). The work consists of eight books. The first six are an adaptation of the Didascalia Apostolorum, written in Syria about 250 (. They deal with Christian ethics, the duties of the clergy, the eucharistic liturgy, and various church problems and rituals. Book 7 contains a paraphrase and enlargement of the DIDACHU (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) and a Jewish collection of prayers and liturgical material. In book 8, the first two chapters seem to be based on a lost work of

AQHAT EPIC may cross the dividing line between divine and human. Ancient GREEK RELIGION was especially disposed to belief in heroes and DEMI G O D S . Wo r s h i p a f t e r death of historical persons or worship of the living as true deities occurred sporadically even before the conquests of Alexander the Great brought Greek life into contact with Oriental traditions. Ancient monarchies often enlisted the suppor t of divine or semidivine individuals. The corresponding Latin term is consecratio. The Romans, up to the end of the republic, had accepted only one A POSTOLIC S UCCESSION , in official apotheosis, the god CHRISTIANITY, the doctrine that QUIRINUS having been identified bishops represent an uninter- Faience bowl decoration with an Egyptian apotrowith Romulus. The emperor rupted line of descent from the paic eye, from Lachish, 15th–13th century ); in Augustus, however, broke with APOSTLES of JESUS CHRIST. Accordthis tradition and had Julius the Israel Museum, Jerusalem ing to this doctrine, bishops pos- Erich Lessing—Art Resource Caesar recognized as a god; Jusess special powers handed lius Caesar thus became the down to them from the Aposfirst representative of a new tles; these consist primarily of the right to ordain priests, to class of deities proper. The practice was steadily followed consecrate other bishops, and to rule over the clergy and and was extended to some women of the imperial family church members in their DIOCESE. In ROMAN CATHOLICISM and even to imperial favorites. The public practice of worbishops also have the right to confirm church members. shiping an emperor during his lifetime, except as the worThe origins of the doctrine are obscure, and the NEW TESship of his GENIUS, was in general confined to the provinces. TAMENT records are variously interpreted. Those who accept The most significant part of the ceremonies attendant on apostolic succession as necessary for a valid ministry argue an imperial apotheosis was the liberation of an eagle, that it was necessary for Christ to establish a ministry to which was supposed to bear the emperor’s soul to heaven. carry out his work and that he commissioned his Apostles to do this (Matthew 28:19–20). The Apostles in turn conse- APOTROPAIC EYE \0a-p‘-tr+-9p@-ik \, a painting of an eye or eyes used as a symbol to ward off evil. It is seen in many crated others to assist them and to carry on the work. Supcultures, for instance, the symbol commonly appears on porters of the doctrine also argue that evidence indicates that the doctrine was accepted in the very early church. Greek black-figured drinking vessels called kylikes (“eye cups”), from the 6th century ). The exaggeratedly large About 95 ( CLEMENT, bishop of Rome, in his letter to the church in Corinth (FIRST LETTER OF CLEMENT), expressed the eye on these cups may have been thought to prevent danview that bishops succeeded the Apostles. gerous spirits from entering the mouth with the wine. The A number of Protestant Christian churches believe that apotropaic eye is also seen in Turkish and Egyptian art. the apostolic succession and church government based on AQHAT EPIC \9!k-0h!t \, ancient West Semitic legend probbishops are unnecessary for a valid ministry. They argue that the New Testament gives no clear direction concern- ably concerned with the cause of the annual summer ing the ministry, that various types of ministers existed in drought. The Aqhat Epic is known only in fragmentary form from three tablets in Ugaritic dating to c. 14th centuthe early church, that the apostolic succession cannot be established historically, and that true succession is spiritu- ry ) that were excavated from the tell of Ras Shamra in northern Syria. The epic records that Danel, a sage and king al and doctrinal rather than ritualistic or juridical. of the Haranamites, had no son until the god EL finally Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Old Catholic, and granted him a child, whom Danel named Aqhat. Some time some other Christian churches accept the doctrine and believe that the only valid ministry is based on bishops later Danel offered hospitality to the divine craftsman whose office has descended from the Apostles. This does KOTHAR, who in return gave Aqhat one of his marvelous bows. That bow, however, had been intended for the godnot mean, however, that each of these groups necessarily dess ANATH, who became outraged that it had been given to accepts the ministries of the other groups as valid. a mortal. Anath made Aqhat a variety of tempting offers, APOTHEOSIS \‘-0p!-th%-9+-sis, 0a-p‘-9th%-‘-sis \, elevation to including herself, in exchange for the bow, but Aqhat rethe status of a god. The term (from Greek apotheoun, “to jected all of them. Anath then lured Aqhat to a hunting parmake a god,” “to deify”) recognizes that some individuals ty where she, disguised as a falcon, carried her henchman,

Hippolytus of Rome, Concerning Spiritual Gifts. Chapters 3–22 apparently are based on Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition and contain an elaborate description of the Antiochene liturgy, including the socalled Clementine liturgy. This is a valuable source for the history of the MASS . Chapters 28–46 of book 8 contain a series of canons, and chapter 47 comprises the so-called Apostolic Canons, a collection of 85 canons derived in part from the preceding constitutions and in part from the canons of the councils of Antioch (341) and Laodicaea (c. 360).

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AQSA MOSQUE, ALYatpan, in a sack and dropped him on Aqhat. Yatpan killed Aqhat and snatched the bow, which he later carelessly dropped into the sea. Because of the blood shed in violence, a famine came over the land, leading Aqhat’s sister and father to discover the crime and to set about avenging it. The conclusion is not known, however, because the text breaks off at that point.

AQSA MOSQUE, AL- \#l-9#k-s# \, mosque regarded by most Muslims since the 12th century as the third holiest (after those of MECCA and MEDINA), located on the edge of the Old City in Jerusalem. It is part of “the noble SANCTUARY” (al-haram al-sharif), which covers the site where the TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM once stood (the area is also known as the Temple Mount). Its name was derived from a passage in the QUR#AN (17:1) that speaks of MUHAMMAD’s miraculous Night Journey (ISRE#) from the Sacred Mosque (in Mecca) to the blessed “most distant Mosque” (al-masjid al aqsa), which became identified as the mosque in Jerusalem. According to some Islamic traditions Muhammad led other prophets in prayer there prior to his ascension (MI!REJ). The al-Aqsa Mosque was built by the Umayyad ruler alWalid (d. 715), who also built the great mosque at Damascus. The plans of al-Aqsa Mosque can be reconstructed with a fair degree of certainty despite subsequent alterations and repairs. The mosque consisted of an undetermined number of naves (possibly as many as 15) parallel to each other in a north-south direction. It has a large internal space with a multiplicity of internal supports and an axial nave (a wider aisle on the axis of the building), which served both as a formal axis for compositional purposes and as a ceremonial one for the prince’s retinue. The building was heavily decorated with marble, mosaics, and woodwork. There was no courtyard because the esplanade of the former Jewish temple served as the open space in front of the building. In the 20th century al-Aqsa Mosque, together with the DOME OF THE ROCK, served as the symbolic focal point for the Palestinian nationalist movement. Palestinian leaders are interred nearby. After Israel gained control of east Jerusalem in June 1967, in accordance with the Israel Law for the Protection of the Holy Places, administration of the GARAM area remained in the hands of the Muslim authorities. The site is still maintained by the Jordanian ministry for religious endowments. ARABIAN RELIGIONS, the religions practiced by the Arab tribes before the time of the Prophet MUHAMMAD and the embracing of ISLAM (7th century (). These religions were polytheistic, and while some deities were held in common among various tribes and even with non-Arab peoples, and certain religious practices were likewise shared, there was also much local particularity. Knowledge of these religions remains incomplete. The principal sources are incised rock drawings (the oldest of which, dating back several millennia, suggest cults of the bull and of the ostrich), rock inscriptions in several Arabic dialects, monuments, and lesser archaeological remains, including written documents. Contemporary Jewish, Greek, and other writers make mention of Arabic gods and practices, and the QUR#AN and other Islamic writings and practices also preserve elements of the pre-Islamic religions. Most of the gods of the Arab tribes were sky gods, often associated with heavenly bodies (chiefly the Sun and the Moon), and to them were ascribed powers of fecundity, protection, or revenge against enemies. At the head of the 70 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

South Arabian pantheon was !Athtar, associated with VENUS and corresponding to the Mesopotamian ISHTAR. !Athtar had superseded the ancient supreme Semitic god Il or EL , whose name survives nearly exclusively in theophoric names (names derived from or compounded with the name of a god; for example, Herodotos, meaning “given by Hera”). !Athtar was a god of the thunderstorm, dispensing natural irrigation in the form of rain. When qualified as Sharjqen, “the Eastern One” (possibly a reference to Venus as the Morning Star), he was invoked as an avenger against enemies. Next to !Athtar, who was worshiped throughout South Arabia, each kingdom had its own national god, of whom the nation called itself the “progeny” (wld). In Saba# the national god was Almaqah (or Ilmuqah), a protector of artificial irrigation, lord of the temple of the Sabaean federation of tribes. The symbols of the bull’s head and the vine motif that are associated with him are indicative of a sun god, a male consort of the sun goddess. In Ma!jn the national god Wadd (“Love”) originated from North Arabia and probably was a moon god: the magic formula Wd#b, “Wadd is [my?] father,” written on AMULETS and buildings, is often accompanied by a crescent moon with the small disk of Venus. In Gaqramawt the national god Syn was also a sun god. The sun goddess Shams was the national deity of the kingdom of Gimyar. Other aspects of Shams are certainly concealed in some of the many and still obscure South Arabian female divine epithets. As to the various lesser or local deities, the nature and even the gender of many remain unknown. In Qataben, Anbay and Gawkam are invoked together as (the gods) “of command and decision[?].” The name Anbay is related to that of the Babylonian god NABU, while Gawkam derives from the root meaning “to be wise.” They probably represent twin aspects of Babylonian Nabu-Mercury, the god of fate and science and the spokesman of the gods. In Gaqramawt, Gawl was probably a moon god. In Ma!jn, Nikrag was a healer patron; his shrine, located on a hillock in the middle of a large enclave marked by pillars, was an asylum for dying people and women in childbirth. North Arabian gods are named for the first time in the annals of the 7th-century ) Assyrian king Esarhaddon, in which he reports having returned to the oasis of Adumatu (Djmat al-Jandal) the idols previously confiscated as war booty by his father, Sennacherib. Among the gods named by Esarhaddon are !Atarsamein, !Atarqurume, Nukhay, and Ruldayu. Herodotus wrote that the Arabs worshiped as sole deities Alilat, whom he identifies with both OURANIA and APHRODITE, and Orotalt, identified with DIONYSUS. Ruldayu and Orotalt are phonetic transcriptions of the same name, Ruqe, a sun god. In the Nabataean kingdom the counterpart of Dionysus was the great god nicknamed dj-Share (Dusares), “the one of Share” from the name of the mountain overlooking Petra. He was a rival to Shay! al-Qawm, “the Shepherd of the People,” he “who drinks no wine, who builds no home,” the patron of the nomads and also worshiped by the Ligyenites. Nukhay, perhaps a solar god, was worshiped by the Thamjdaeans and Zafaites. Al-Ilet, or Allet (“the Goddess”), was known to all pantheons. She is a daughter or a consort, depending on the region, of al-Leh or ALLEH (“the God”), Lord of the KA!BA in MECCA . Al-Ilet formed a trio with the goddesses al-!Uzze (“the Powerful”) and Manet (or Manawat, “Destiny”). Among the Nabataeans al-!Uzze was assimilated to Venus and Aphrodite and was the consort of Kutbe# or al-Aktab (“the Scribe”; MERCURY); among the Thamudaeans, howev-

ERADYAKAS er, she was assimilated to !Attarsamay (or !Attarsam). Manet was depicted as NEMESIS in the Nabataean ICONOGRAPHY. The three goddesses were called the “Daughters of Alleh” in pre-Islamic Mecca, and they are mentioned in the Qur#an (53:19–22). The sanctuaries, sometimes carved in the rock on high places, consisted of a GARAM, a sacred open-air enclosure, accessible only to unarmed and ritually clean people in ritual clothes. There the baetyl, a “raised stone,” or a statue of the god, was worshiped. The Nabataeans originally represented their gods as baetyls on a podium, but later they gave them a human appearance. The stone-built temples of the Nabataeans and South Arabians were more elaborate structures, consisting of a rectangular walled enclosure, near one end of which was a stone canopy or a closed cella or both, which contained the altar for sacrifices or the idol of the god. The Ka!ba in Mecca, which became the sacred shrine of the Muslims, has a similar structure: it is a closed cella (which was full of idols in pre-Islamic times) in a walled enclosure, with a well. A baetyl, the Black Stone, is inserted in the wall of the Ka!ba; it is veiled by a cloth cover (the kiswah). To the gods were offered, on appropriate altars, sacrifices of slaughtered animals, LIBATIONS and fumigations of aromatics, votive objects, or persons dedicated to serve in the temple. A ritual slaughter of enemies in gratitude for a military victory is mentioned at the rock SANCTUARY of the sun goddess of Gimyar. In addition to the northwestern Arabian Kehin, “soothsayer,” several kinds of priests and temple officials appear in Ligyenite, Nabataean, and South Arabian inscriptions, but their respective functions are not clear. North Arabian queens and ancient Qatabenian rulers bore priestly titles. In Saba#, some priests (rshw) of !Athtar, recruited on a hereditary basis from three clans, took office in turn for seven years as kabir (Semitic for “Great,” or “Mighty”), in charge of the collection of the tithe and of the rites aimed at obtaining rain. The priests interpreted the oracles, which, throughout Arabia, were mostly obtained by cleromancy (istiqsem): the answer (positive, negative, expectative, and so on) to a question asked of the god was obtained by drawing lots from a batch of marked arrows or sticks. Among the many other forms of DIVINATION known from pre-Islamic Arabia, only oneiromancy, or divination by means of dreams (possibly after incubation in the temple), is well attested in Sabaean texts. Throughout pre-Islamic Arabia, “truces of God” allowed people to attend in security the yearly PILGRIMAGES to important shrines. The rites included purification and the wearing of ritual clothing, sexual abstinence, abstention from shedding blood, and circuits performed (eawef, dawer) around the sacred object; they were concluded by the slaughter of animals, which were eaten in collective feasts. Today such practices still form the core of the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. The sovereigns of Saba# performed a rite called “hunting the game of !Athtar and the game of Kurjm.” This rite was aimed at obtaining rain, and that is also the aim of a formal tribal ibex hunt still performed today in Gaqramawt (an ancient South Arabian kingdom that occupied what are now southern and southeastern Yemen and the present-day Sultanate of Oman [Muscat and Oman]). Istisqe#, a collective rogation for rain with magical rites, in times of acute drought, is mentioned by the Muslim tradition and in two Sabaean texts. The rite is still part of the Islamic ritual.

South Arabian texts confessing offenses against ritual cleanliness, along with data from classical sources and the Muslim tradition on pre-Islamic customs, contribute to outline an ancient Arabian code of ritual cleanliness similar to that of the Leviticus and of Muslim jurisprudence.

ARACHNE \‘-9rak-n% \ (Greek: “Spider”), in Greek mythology, the daughter of Idmon of Colophon in Lydia. Arachne was a skillful weaver who challenged ATHENA. The goddess wove a tapestry depicting the gods in majesty, while that of Arachne showed their amorous adventures. Enraged at the perfection of her rival’s work, Athena tore it to pieces, and in despair Arachne hanged herself. But the goddess out of pity loosened the rope, which became a cobweb; Arachne herself was changed into a spider. ARAHANT \9‘-r‘-0h‘nt \ (Peli), Sanskrit arhat \9‘r-0h‘t, 9!r- \ (“one who is worthy”), in BUDDHISM, a perfected person, one who has gained insight into the true nature of existence and has achieved NIRVANA (spiritual enlightenment). The arahant, having freed himself from the bonds of desire, will not be reborn again. The state of an arahant is considered in the THERAVEDA tradition to be the proper goal of a Buddhist. Four stages of attainment are described in Peli texts: (1) the state of the “stream-enterer”—i.e., a convert (sotepanna)—achieved by overcoming false beliefs; (2) the “once-returner” (sakadegemin), who will be reborn only once again, a state attained by diminishing lust, hatred, and illusion; (3) the “never-returner” (anegemin), who, after death, will be reborn in a higher heaven, where he will become an arahant, a state attained by overcoming sensuous desire and ill will, in addition to the attainments of the first two stages; and (4) the arahant. Except under extraordinary circumstances, a man or woman can become an arahant only while living in a monastery. Those who become arahants serve as especially efficacious “fields of merit” for those who have not yet attained the final goal. MAHE YE NA Buddhists criticize the arahant ideal on the grounds that the BODHISATTVA is a higher goal of perfection, for the bodhisattva vows to remain within the cycle of rebirths in order to work for the good of others. This divergence of opinion is one of the fundamental differences between the Theraveda and Maheyena traditions. In China, as well as in Korea, Japan, and Tibet, arahants (Chinese: lohan; Japanese: rakan) were often depicted on the walls of temples in groups of 16. They represent 16 close disciples of the BUDDHA GOTAMA who were entrusted by him to remain in the world in order to provide people with objects of worship.

ERADYAKAS \!-9r‘n-y‘-k‘z \ (Sanskrit: “Books of the Forest”), a later development of the BREHMADAS, or expositions of the VEDAS, which were composed in India in about 700 ). The Eradyakas are attached only to the SG VEDA and the Yajur Veda. Traditionally the Eradyakas have been distinguished from the Brehmadas through the characterization that they contain information on secret rites to be carried out only by certain persons, especially those who had withdrawn into the forest at the onset of the third stage of life recognized in the classical Hindu system of ASHRAMS. While it is true that the Eradyakas are given over to explanations of the symbolic and allegorical meanings of Vedic ritual, this does not markedly separate them either from the earlier Brehmadas or from the UPANISHADS, many of which were composed later. 71

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ARA PACIS

Ara Pacis, Rome Alinari—Arts Resource

A RA P ACIS \ 9@-r‘-9p@-sis; 9!-r‘-9p!-chis, -kis \, also called Ara Pacis Augustae (Latin: “Altar of the Augustan Peace”), shrine consisting of an altar in a walled enclosure erected in Rome by the emperor Augustus and dedicated on Jan. 30, 9 ). The sculptures on the walls and the altar representing the shrine’s dedication ceremonies, scenes from Roman legend, and floral motifs are among the finest examples of Roman art. ERATJ \9!r-!-t% \: see PJJE. ARBA! KANFOT \!r-9b!-k!n-9f+t \, also spelled arba! kanfoth (Hebrew: “four corners”), also called eallit qaean \t!-9l%t-k!9t!n \, or tallith katan (“small shawl”), Jewish religious garment that apparently came into use during times of persecution as a substitute for the larger and more conspicuous prayer shawl (EALLIT). Both garments have fringes (tzitzit) on the four corners. The eallit, however, generally falls across the head, neck, and shoulders, while the arba! kanfot has an opening for the head so that it can be worn beneath the upper garments. Orthodox male Jews, including children, wear the arba! kanfot during the day to fulfill the requirement of wearing fringes (Numbers 15:37–41) as reminders of God’s commandments. ARCHANGEL, any of several rulers or princes of ANGELS in the hierarchy of angels of the major Western religions, especially JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, and ISLAM, and of certain syn-

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cretic religions, such as GNOSTICISM. They include GABRIEL, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel in Judeo-Christian tradition. ARCHBISHOP , in the Christian church, a bishop who, in addition to his ordinary episcopal authority in his own DIOCESE, usually has jurisdiction (but no superiority of order) over the other bishops of a province. It seems to have been introduced in the Eastern church in the 4th century as an honorary title of certain bishops. In the Western church it was little known before the 7th century, and it did not become common until the Carolingian emperors revived the right of METROPOLITANS (bishops presiding over a number of dioceses) to summon provincial SYNODS. The metropolitans then commonly assumed the title of archbishop to mark their preeminence over the other bishops. The COUNCIL OF TRENT (1545–63) reduced the powers of the archbishop, which had been quite extensive in the Middle Ages. In the Orthodox and other churches of the East, the title of archbishop is far more common than in the West, and it is less consistently associated with metropolitan functions. In EASTERN ORTHODOXY there are also autocephalous archbishops who rank between bishops and metropolitans. In the Protestant churches of continental Europe, the title of archbishop is rarely used. It has been retained by the LUTHERAN bishop of UPPSALA, who is metropolitan of Sweden, and by the Lutheran bishop of Turku in Finland. In the Church of England (see ANGLICAN COMMUNION) the ecclesiastical government is divided between two archbishops: the archbishop of Canterbury, who is called the “primate of all England” and metropolitan of the province of Canterbury, and the archbishop of York, who is called the “primate of England” and metropolitan of York.

ARGONAUT ARCHITECTURE AND RELIGION : see TURE.

SACRED ARCHITEC -

A RCHON \ 9!r-0k!n, -k‘n \ (Greek: “Ruler,” “Leader”), in GNOSTICISM ,

any of a number of world-governing powers that were created with the material world by a subordinate deity called the DEMIURGE (Creator). Because the Gnostics regarded the material world as evil or as the product of error, Archons were viewed as maleficent forces. They numbered 7 or 12 and were identified with the seven planets of antiquity or with the signs of the zodiac. Sometimes the Demiurge and the Archons were identified with the God, the ANGELS, and the law of the OLD TESTAMENT and hence received Hebrew names. The recurring image of Archons is that of jailers imprisoning the divine spark in human souls held captive in material creation. The gnosis sent from the realms of divine light beyond the universe through the divine emanation (AEON) JESUS enabled Gnostic initiates to pass through the spheres of the Archons into the realms of light.

ARDHANERJUVARA \0!r-d‘-n!-9r%sh-v‘-r‘ \ (Sanskrit: “Lord Who Is Half Woman”), composite male-female figure of the Hindu god SHIVA, together with his consort PERVATJ. The right (male) half of the figure is adorned with the traditional ornaments of Shiva. Half of the hair is piled in matted locks, half of a third eye is visible on the forehead, a tiger skin covers the loins, and serpents are used as ornaments. The left (female) half shows hair well combed and knotted, half of a TILAK (a round dot) on the forehead, one breast, a silk garment caught with girdles, and the foot tinted red with henna. According to most authorities the figure signifies that the male and female principles are inseparable. A popular explanation, as given in the Uiva Pureda, is that BRAHME created male beings and instructed them to create others, but they were unable to do so. Brahme realized his omission and created females. Another legend states that the sage (szi) Bhsegi had vowed to worship only one deity and so failed to circumambulate and to prostrate himself before Pervatj. Pervatj tried to force him to do so by asking to be united with her lord, but the sage assumed the form of a beetle and continued to circle only the male half, whereupon Pervatj became reconciled and blessed Bhsegi. ARES \9@-r%z, 9ar-%z \, in GREEK RELIGION, god of war or, more properly, the spirit of battle. Unlike his Roman counterpart, MARS, his worship was not extensive. From at least the time of Homer, who established him as the son of ZEUS and HERA, Ares was one of the Olympian deities; his fellow gods and even his parents, however, were not fond of him (Iliad v, 889 ff.). Nonetheless, he was accompanied in battle by his sister ERIS (Strife) and his sons (by APHRODITE) Phobos and Deimos (Panic and Rout). Also associated with him were two lesser war deities: Enyalius, who is virtually identical with Ares himself, and Enyo, a female counterpart. Ares’ worship was largely in the northern areas of Greece, and his cult had many interesting local features. At Sparta a nocturnal offering of dogs—an unusual sacrificial victim, which might indicate a CHTHONIC (Underworld) deity—was made to him as Enyalius. During his festival at Geronthrae in Laconia, no women were allowed in the sacred grove, but at Tegea he was honored in a special sacrifice by only women as Gynaikothoinas (“Entertainer of Women”). At Athens he had a temple at the foot of the Areopagus (“Ares’ Hill”).

The mythology surrounding the figure of Ares is not extensive. He was associated with Aphrodite from earliest times; in fact, Aphrodite was known locally (e.g., at Sparta) as a war goddess, apparently an early facet of her character. Occasionally, Aphrodite was Ares’ legitimate wife, and by her he fathered Deimos, Phobos, and HARMONIA. By AGLAUROS, the daughter of CECROPS, he was the father of Alcippe. He was the father of at least two of HERACLES’ adversaries: Cycnus and Diomedes of Thrace.

A RETHUSA \ 0ar-i-9th-n‘, 9-!r \, one of the five Pedqava brothers, heroes of the Indian epic, the MAHEBHERATA. Arjuna’s hesitation before a massive battle that would cause him to kill The hermitage by the Gaege, detail of a granite relief, possibly showing the penance of Arjuna, from Mahebalipuram, Tamil Nadu, early 7th century ( Photograph, P. Chandra

ARIYA-PUGGALA \9‘-r%-‘-9p>g-g‘-l‘ \ (Peli: “noble being”), Sanskrit arya-pudgala \9‘-r%-‘-9p>d-g‘-l‘ \, in THERAVEDA BUDDHISM, a person who has attained one of the four levels of holiness. A first type of holy person, called a sotapannapuggala (“stream-enterer”), is one who will attain NIRVANA after no more than seven rebirths. Another type of holy person is termed a sakadagamin (“once-returner”), or one who is destined to be reborn in the human world only once more before reaching nirvana. A third type of ariya-puggala is the anagamin (“never-returner”), or one who will not be reborn in the human realm and will enter the realm of the gods at the time of death. The never-returner, however, is still not considered to have reached nirvana. According to Theraveda Buddhism the highest level of holiness is reached by the ARAHANT, one who has reached final and absolute emancipation from all rebirths in any human or superhuman realm. The arahant—a model person for Theraveda Buddhists—is to be distinguished from the personal ideal of the MAHEYENA schools, the BODHISATTVA. The latter is a holy person who has reached enlightenment but refuses to enter nirvana, choosing rather to teach his insights until all creatures have similarly been liberated.

ARJAN \9‘r-j‘n, 9!r- \ (b. 1563, Goindwel, Punjab, India—d. May 30, 1606, Lahore, Punjab, Mughal Empire [now in Pa75 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

ARK his kinsmen and would also cause unthinkable destruction on the race, became the occasion for his friend and charioteer, the god KRISHNA, to deliver a discourse on duty, or the right course of human action. These verses are collectively known as the BHAGAVAD GJTE, one of the most celebrated religious texts of India. Arjuna’s stature as an exemplar of skill, duty, and compassion, as well as a seeker of true knowledge, makes him a central figure in Hindu myth and theology. ARK, also called Ark of the Law, Hebrew Aron, or Aron haQodesh (“Holy Ark”), in Jewish SYNAGOGUES, an ornate cabinet that enshrines the sacred TORAH scrolls used for public worship. Because it symbolizes the HOLY OF HOLIES of the ancient TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM, it is the holiest place in the synagogue and the focal point of prayer. The ark is reached by steps and is commonly placed so that the worshiper facing it also faces Jerusalem. When the scrolls are removed for religious services, the congregation stands, and a solemn ceremony accompanies the opening and closing of the ark doors. ASHKENAZI (German-rite) Jews cover the doors of the ark with a richly embroidered cloth (parocheth), while SEPHARDIC (Spanish-rite) Jews place the cloth inside. Before or near the cabinet hangs the eternal light (ner tamid), and generally an inscription of the TEN COMMANDMENTS (often in abbreviated form) or some other relevant sacred text is placed above the doors.

ARK OF THE COVENANT, Hebrew Aron Ha-Berit, in JU-

side the TABERNACLE of the ancient TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM and was seen only by the HIGH PRIEST of the Israelites on YOM KIPPUR, the Day of Atonement (Exodus 30:10; Leviticus 16). The LEVITES carried the Ark with them during the Hebrews’ wanderings in the wilderness (Numbers 10:33). Following the conquest of CANAAN, the Ark resided at SHILOH (1 Samuel 3–6), but from time to time it was carried into battle by the Israelites (Numbers 10:35–36; 1 Samuel 4:3–9). Taken to Jerusalem by King DAVID (2 Samuel 6), it was eventually placed in the Temple by King SOLOMON (1 Kings 8:6). The final fate of the Ark is unknown.

ARKONA \!r-9k+-n‘ \, West Slavic citadel-temple of the god

dating from the 9th–10th century ( and destroyed in 1168/69 by Christian Danes when they stormed the island of Rügen in the southwestern Baltic. Saxo Grammaticus, the 12th-century Danish historian, wrote that the Arkona was a log-built temple topped by a red roof and surrounded by a wooden fence, splendidly carved and bearing various painted symbols; the inner temple chamber had partitions of heavy tapestry. In this inner sanctum loomed the statue of Svantovit, which had four heads and throats joined together facing in opposite directions. Saxo mentions that not only the Wends but also Scandinavian neighbors paid tribute to Svantovit. When the statue was cut and removed, the Danes carried away seven boxes of treasures (gifts to the god). Excavations in 1921 proved the actual existence of the temple. Repeated excavations in 1969–70 revealed an earlier layer of the SANCTUARY dated to the 10th and possibly 9th century (. See also SLAVIC RELIGION. SVANTOVIT ,

DAISM and CHRISTIANITY, the chest that in biblical times housed the two tablets of the Mosaic Law (EXODUS 25:16; 40:20; 1 Kings 8:9). The ARK rested in the HOLY OF HOLIES in-

A RMAGEDDON \ 0!r-m‘-9ge-d‘n \, in the NEW TESTAMENT, place where the kings of the earth under demonic leadership will wage war on the forces of God at the end of world history. The word ArThe triumph of the Ark of the Covenant over paganism, mural mageddon occurs in the BIBLE painting from the synagogue at Dura-Europus, Syria, 3rd century ( only once, in the REVELATION By courtesy of the Bollingen Foundation, photograph, Fred Anderegg TO JOHN (16:16: “the place which is called in Hebrew Armageddon”). No such Hebrew word is known, however, and the name has been variously interpreted, perhaps most plausibly as “Mountain of Megiddo.” The Palestinian city of Megiddo was probably used as a symbol for such a battle because of its strategic importance. Megiddo was the scene of many battles, and Revelation seems to imply that the “hill” on which the city fortress stood, or the “mountain” heights behind it, had become a symbol of the final battlefield where God’s heavenly armies will defeat the demon-led forces of evil. Other biblical references suggest Jerusalem as the site of this battle. A RMENIAN RITE , the system of liturgical practices and discipline observed by both 76

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ART AND RELIGION the Armenian Apostolic (Eastern Orthodox) Church and the Armenian Catholics. The Armenians were converted to CHRISTIANITY by St. Gregory the Illuminator about 300 (. The liturgy used by churches of the Armenian rite—the Liturgy of St. Gregory Illuminator—is usually divided into five parts: (1) the prayers of preparation in the sacristy, (2) the prayers of preparation in the SANCTUARY, (3) the preparation and consecration of the gifts, (4) the liturgy of the CATECHUMENS, and (5) the liturgy of the faithful, culminating in Communion. Churches of the Armenian rite, unlike Byzantine churches, are generally devoid of ICONS and, in place of an ICONOSTASIS (screen), have a curtain that conceals the priest and the altar during parts of the liturgy. The Communion itself is given in two species (bread and wine), as in other Orthodox churches. For its worship services the Armenian rite is dependent upon such books as the Donatzuitz, the order of service; the Badarakamaduitz, the book containing all the prayers used by the priest; the Giashotz, the book of midday, containing the Epistle and Gospel readings for each day; and the Z’amagirq, the book of hours, containing the prayers and psalms of the seven daily offices, primarily matins, prime, and vespers.

A RMILUS \ 9!r-m‘-l‘s \, in Jewish mythology, an enemy who will conquer Jerusalem and persecute Jews until his final defeat at the hands of God or the true MESSIAH. His destruction symbolizes the ultimate victory of good over evil in the messianic era. Some sources depict Armilus as partially deaf and partially maimed, the frightful offspring of SATAN or evil creatures. Parallel legends exist in the figures of the ANTICHRIST and of AHRIMAN, the Persian god of evil. A RMINIANISM \!r-9mi-n%-‘-0ni-z‘m \, a theological movement in CHRISTIANITY that represents a reaction to the Calvinist doctrine of PREDESTINATION (see also CALVINISM). The movement, named for JACOBUS ARMINIUS, who became involved in a highly publicized debate with his colleague Franciscus Gomarus, a rigid Calvinist, began early in the 17th century and asserted that God’s sovereignty and man’s FREE WILL are compatible. For Arminius, God’s will as unceasing love was the determinative initiator and arbiter of human destiny. The movement that became known as Arminianism, however, tended to be more liberal than was Arminius himself. Dutch Arminianism was originally articulated in the Remonstrance (1610), a theological statement signed by 45 ministers and submitted to the Dutch states general. The SYNOD OF DORT (1618–19) was called by the states general to pass upon the Remonstrance. The five points of the Remonstrance asserted that: (1) election (and condemnation on the day of judgment) was conditioned by the rational faith or nonfaith of man, (2) the ATONEMENT, while qualitatively adequate for all men, was efficacious only for the man of faith, (3) unaided by the HOLY SPIRIT, no person is able to respond to God’s will, (4) GRACE is not irresistible, and (5) believers are able to resist SIN but are not beyond the possibility of falling from grace. The crux of REMONSTRANT Arminianism lay in the assertion that human dignity requires an unimpaired freedom of the will. The Dutch Remonstrants were condemned by the Synod of Dort and suffered political persecution for a time, but by 1630 they were legally tolerated. They have continued to exert liberalizing tendencies in Dutch Protestant theology. In the 18th century, JOHN WESLEY was influenced by Arminianism. Arminianism was an important influence in

METHODISM ,

which developed out of the Wesleyan movement. A still more liberal version of Arminianism went into the making of American UNITARIANISM.

A RMINIUS , J ACOBUS \ !r-9mi-n%-‘s \ (b. Oct. 10, 1560, Oudewater, Neth.—d. Oct. 19, 1609, Leiden), theologian and minister of the Dutch REFORMED CHURCH who opposed the strict Calvinist teaching on PREDESTINATION and who developed a system of belief known later as ARMINIANISM. Arminius attended school at Utrecht and continued his education at the universities of Leiden (1576–82), Basel, and Geneva (1582–86). After brief stays at the University of Padua, in Rome, and in Geneva, he returned to Amsterdam. He was ordained there in 1588. In 1603 Arminius was called to a theological professorship at Leiden, which he held until his death. These last six years of his life were dominated by theological controversy, in particular by his disputes with his colleague Franciscus Gomarus. Arminius was forced into controversy against his own choice. He had earlier affirmed the Calvinist view of predestination, which held that those elected for salvation were chosen prior to Adam’s fall, but gradually predestination came to seem too harsh a position because it did not allow human decision a role in the achieving of salvation. Hence Arminius came to assert a conditional election, according to which God elects to life those who will respond in faith to the divine offer of salvation. In so doing, he meant to place greater emphasis on God’s mercy. After his death some of his followers gave support to his views by signing the Remonstrance, a theological dictum that was debated in 1618–19 at the SYNOD OF DORT, at which all the delegates were supporters of Gomarus. REMONSTRANT Arminianism was condemned by the synod, the Arminians present were expelled, and many others suffered persecution. In 1629, however, the works of Arminius (Opera theologica) were published for the first time in Leiden, and by 1630 the Remonstrant Brotherhood had achieved legal toleration. It was finally recognized officially in the Netherlands in 1795. In its emphasis on the GRACE of God, Arminianism influenced the development of METHODISM in England and the United States. ART AND RELIGION , one of the best tools with which to examine and discover the similarities and differences of WORLD RELIGIONS. By making concrete some of the cognitive dimensions of a religion, art also allows for the study of the tradition’s structure. But the significance of religious art is not merely tied to the religious ideas contained in such art—the extent of artistic representations in a specific tradition also allows for the understanding of the significance of political, economic, and craft constraints on a religion in a particular historical period. Art obviously expresses, “rationalizes,” the central conceptions of a religion. It encompasses the structure of a religion from its cosmological myths to representations of doctrine and ritual practice. But religious art does not always act in concert with theology. It must be remembered that cathedrals, Hindu temples, and the Taj Mahal were not built in a day and presuppose a vast network of interrelated political, economic, and social relations that must all be taken into account in any understanding of a particular artistic tradition. Scholars have often focused on a specific symbol or element in religious art, reading the work as if it were a code in which a particular representation always and invariably has the same specific meaning, regardless of the period or

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ARTEMIS context. It is often stated, for example, that a Hindu temple always faces East, and the direction East is then interpreted as a reference to the rising sun and the powers of nature. This focus, however, usually distorts the meaning of both the work of art and the religious tradition in which it was executed; the meaning of the symbol as well as of the work itself is constituted by a web of relations between various symbols, i.e., the symbol’s meaning is constituted by its position with respect to other symbols in the same cultural system. Symbols in themselves lack meaning. In the above example, the geographic representation East bears cosmological significance in that it is the abode of the gods in HINDUISM. Its opposite is the West, the domain of the anti-gods and darkness. Moreover, East/West is opposite North/ South, which is the domain of human beings and the ancestors. The Hindu temple facing East is thus a complex microcosm framed by the four huge temple gates found in most South Indian temples. For a general discussion of principles of artistic representation, see ICONOGRAPHY; SYMBOL. For surveys of traditional categories of art, see SACRED ARCHITECTURE and MUSIC AND RELIGION. The art of particular religious traditions is treated in the following articles: AFRICAN RELIGIONS, ART OF; JUDAISM, ART OF; CHRISTIANITY, ART OF; BUDDHISM, ART OF.

A RTEMIS \ 9!r-t‘-mis \, in GREEK RELIGION, the goddess of wild animals, the hunt, vegetation, and of chastity and childbirth. Artemis was the daughter of ZEUS and LETO and the twin sister of APOLLO. Her character and function varied greatly from place to place, but, apparently, behind all forms lay the goddess of wild nature, who danced, usually accompanied by NYMPHS, in mountains, forests, and marshes. Besides killing game she also was believed to protect it, especially the young; hence her title Mistress of Animals. Artemis may originally have developed out of ISHTAR (INANNA) in the East. Many of her local cults, such as that of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, preserved traces of other deities, often with Greek names. While the mythological roles of other prominent Olympians evolved in the works of the poets, the lore of Artemis developed primarily from cult. Dances of maidens representing tree nymphs (dryads) were especially common in Artemis’ worship as goddess of vegetation, a role especially popular in the Peloponnese. Throughout the Peloponnese, bearing such epithets as Limnaea and Limnatis (Lady of the Lake), Artemis supervised waters and lush wild growth, attended by nymphs of wells and springs (NAIADS). In parts of the peninsula her dances were wild and lascivious. Outside the Peloponnese, Artemis’ most familiar form was as Mistress of Animals. Poets and artists usually pictured her with the stag or hunting dog, but the cults showed considerable variety. For instance, the Tauropolia festival at Halae Araphenides in Attica honored Artemis Tauropolos (Bull Goddess), who received a few drops of blood drawn by sword from a man’s neck. The frequent stories of the love affairs of Artemis’ nymphs may have originally been told of the goddess herself. The poets after Homer, however, stressed Artemis’ chastity. The wrath of Artemis was proverbial. Yet Greek sculpture avoided Artemis’ unpitying anger as a motif; in fact, the goddess herself did not become popular as a sculptural subject until the 4th century ). ARTHA \9!r-t‘ \ (Sanskrit: “purpose,” “meaning,” “wealth,” or “property”), in HINDUISM, the pursuit of material advantage, one of the four traditional aims in life. The sanction

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for artha rests on the assumption that—setting aside the exceptional few who can proceed directly to the final aim of MOKZA—material well-being is a basic necessity and is an appropriate pursuit for a householder (the second of the four life stages). Furthermore, artha is closely tied to the activities of statecraft, which maintains the general social order and prevents anarchy. Still, artha must always be regulated by the superior aim of DHARMA, or righteousness.

A RVAL B ROTHERS \ 9!r-v‘l \, Latin Fratres Arvales \9fr@tr%z-!r-9v@-l%z \ , in ancient Rome, college or PRIESTHOOD whose chief original duty was to offer annual public sacrifice for the fertility of the fields. The brotherhood was almost forgotten in republican times but was revived by Augustus and probably lasted until the time of Theodosius I (reigned 379–395). It consisted of 12 members, elected for life from the highest ranks, including the emperor during the principate. Literary allusions to them are scarce, but 96

Artemis as a huntress; in the Louvre, Paris Alinari—Art Resource

ESANA of the acta, or minutes, of their proceedings, inscribed on stone, were found in the grove of the Dea Dia near Rome.

A RYAN \9ar-%-‘n, 9er-, 9!r- \ (from Sanskrit: erya, “noble”), prehistoric people who, scholars once assumed, invaded and settled in Iran and northern India. It was postulated that from their language, also called Aryan, the Indo-European languages of South Asia descended. In the 19th century the term was used as a synonym for “Indo-European” and also, more restrictively, to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages. In the 20th century, however, the entire notion that there was an “Aryan invasion” of the Indian subcontinent has been disputed by Hindu nationalists and by a large number of scholars as a fallacy of colonial Orientalism. While the idea that there was an Aryan invasion enjoys less popularity than it once did, the exact status of Indo-Aryan languages in relation to other ancient language groups in the Indian subcontinent has remained a subject of continuing debate, as has the closely related question of cultural diffusion and interaction. Such questions gain special significance from the fact that the VEDAS and their attached literature belong to the Indo-Aryan language family. At issue is their intrinsic relation to India and the fact that in Vedic literature the term erya is used to distinguish privileged members of society from others. During the 19th century there arose a notion—propagated most assiduously by the Comte de Gobineau and later by his disciple Houston Stewart Chamberlain—of an “Aryan race,” those who spoke Indo-European languages, who were considered to be responsible for all human progress, and who were also morally superior to “Semites,” “yellows,” and “blacks.” The Nordic, or Germanic, peoples came to be regarded as the purest “Aryans.” This notion, which had been repudiated by anthropologists by the second quarter of the 20th century, was seized upon by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and made the basis of the German government policy of exterminating Jews, Gypsies, and other “non-Aryans.” ARYA-PUDGALA: see ARIYA-PUGGALA.

ARYA SAMAJ \9!r-y‘-s‘-9m!j \, Sanskrit Erya Sameja (“Society of Noble Ones”), vigorous reform sect of modern HINDUISM, founded in 1875 by DAYANANDA SARASVATI, whose aim was to reestablish a regard for the VEDAS as revealed truth. He rejected all later accretions to the Vedas as degenerate but, in his own interpretation, included much post-Vedic thought, such as the doctrines of KARMA and of rebirth. The Arya Samaj has always had its largest following in West and North India. It is organized in local samejas (“societies”) that send representatives to provincial samejas and to an all-India sameja. Each local sameja elects its own officers in a democratic manner. The Arya Samaj opposes IDOLATRY, animal sacrifice, ANCESTOR WORSHIP, a CASTE system based on birth rather than on merit, untouchability, child marriage, PILGRIMAGES , priestly craft, and temple offerings. It upholds the infallibility of the Vedas, the doctrines of karma and rebirth, the SANCTITY OF THE COW, the importance of the individual SACRAMENTS (SAUSKERAS), the efficacy of Vedic oblations to the fire, and programs of social reform. It has worked to further the education of girls and women and to encourage intercaste marriages; has built missions, orphanages, and homes for widows; and has undertaken famine relief and medical work. It has also established a network of schools and colleges. From its beginning it was an important factor in the

growth of nationalism. It has been criticized, however, as overly dogmatic and militant and as having exhibited hostility toward both CHRISTIANITY and ISLAM.

A SAHARA , S HOKO \ !-s!-9h!-r!-9sh+-0k| \, original name Chizuo Matsumoto (b. March 2, 1955, Kumamoto prefecture, Japan), founder of AUM SHINRIKYO (“Supreme Truth”), a radically millenarian new religious movement in Japan (see MILLENNIALISM; NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS). Asahara was born with severely impaired vision and was sent to a school for the blind. After graduating in 1975 and failing to gain admission to medical school, he studied acupuncture and pharmacology. He opened his own pharmacy in Chiba, specializing in Chinese medicaments. In 1982 he was arrested for selling fake remedies; after his conviction for fraud his business went bankrupt. During this period Asahara became a member of a small new religion, Agonshu, a movement with strong Hindu and Buddhist elements. In 1984, after a period of spiritual soulsearching, he established his own new religion, Aum Shinsen-no-kai, later known as Aum Shinrikyo. Asahara began preaching on street corners, teaching YOGA, and healing through the use of herbal medicines. By 1989, when the Tokyo metropolitan government granted Aum Shinrikyo legal status as a religious organization, Asahara had begun calling himself the “Holy Pope,” “Savior of the Country,” and “Tokyo’s Christ.” The sect claimed to have 30,000 followers in Japan and abroad. In 1990 Asahara fielded a list of 25 candidates for the lower house of the Diet (the Japanese parliament) with the idea that their victory would give him the prime ministership. All of them, however, were defeated. This failure led to a shift in Aum theology and strategies. Aum’s belief system was based on the millenarian conviction that the modern period is a prelude to the end of humanity and the beginning of a cosmic cycle. Asahara predicted a series of disasters that would foreshadow the end of the world. Accordingly, Aum members began gathering arms and supplies of the nerve gas sarin. In 1995 they released the gas in the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 people and injuring 5,000. Asahara and members of his sect were arrested. Investigations revealed that the movement had been developing biological weapons and had acquired more than one billion dollars (U.S.) in assets, which it used to influence the government, various segments of the economic establishment, and criminal organizations. In 2004 Asahara was found guilty of masterminding the subway attack and sentenced to death.

ASALLUHE \9!-s!l-9l-9l@-p%-‘s, 0%s- \, Greco-Roman god of mediwestern United States. On important occasions, such as fu- cine, son of APOLLO and the NYMPH Coronis. CHIRON the CENTAUR taught him the art of healing. At length ZEUS, afraid nerals and war, TABOOS involving abstinence from certain food and cohabitation were imposed. For the priests and that Asclepius might render all men immortal, slew him chiefs these taboos were much stricter. with a thunderbolt. Homer, in the Iliad, mentions him In India, in the late Vedic period (c. 1500 )–c. 200 )), only as a skillful physician; in later times, however, he was the ascetic use of TAPAS (“heat,” or austerity) became asso- honored as a hero and eventually worshiped as a god. Beciated with meditation and YOGA, inspired by the idea that cause it was supposed that Asclepius effected cures of the tapas brings enlightenment. This view of tapas gained in sick in dreams, the practice of sleeping in his temples beimportance among the Yogas and the Jainas. According to came common. JAINISM, liberation becomes possible only when all passions Asclepius’ usual attribute was a staff with a serpent have been exterminated. In Jainism and Buddhism a mo- coiled around it. A similar but unrelated emblem, the CAnastic system evolved, with monks and nuns devoted to DUCEUS, with its winged staff and intertwined serpents, is rigorous asceticism in the quest of perfection and in the frequently used as a medical emblem but represents the staff of HERMES. pursuit of chastity and truthfulness. Complete detachment from all possessions and connections in Jainism made paramount the MENDICANT life of meditation and spiritual exer- ASERET YEME TESHUVA \!-9ser-et-ye-9m@-t‘-shr-‘ \, Mus-

lim holy day observed on the 10th of Mugarram, the ASHRAM \9!sh-r‘m, -0r!m \, first month of the Islamic also spelled ashrama, Sanyear (Gregorian date variskrit eurama (“ascetic’s able). !Eshjre# was origidwelling,” “place or mode nally designated in 622 by of life associated with reliMUHAMMAD, soon after the HIJRA, as a day of fasting from gious exertion”), in HINDUsunset to sunset, probably patISM, any of the four stages of terned after the Jewish Day of life through which the “twiceAtonement, YOM KIPPUR. When relaborn” Hindu ideally will pass. tions between Jews and Muslims The stages are those of (1) the stu- Asherah, detail from an ivory box from became strained, however, Muhamdent (brahmacerj), who is devoted Minat al-Bayqe# near Ras Shamra, Syria, mad made RAMAQEN the Muslim and obedient to the teacher; (2) the c. 1300 ); in the Louvre, Paris month of fasting, leaving the !Eshouseholder (gshastha), who works Giraudon—Art Resource hjre# fast a voluntary observance, to sustain the family and to help as it has remained among the Sunsupport priests, while also fulfillnites (see SUNNI). ing duties toward gods and ancesAmong the SHI!ITES, !Eshjre# is a major festival, the tazia tors; (3) the HERMIT (vanaprastha), who withdraws from concern with material things and pursues ascetic and yogic (ta!ziyah), commemorating the martyrdom of GUSAYN, son practices; and (4) the homeless MENDICANT (SANNYESJ), who of !ALJ and grandson of Muhammad, on the 10th of Mugarrenounces all possessions to wander and beg for food, con- ram, & 61 (Oct. 10, 680), in KARBALE# (present-day Iraq). It is cerned only with the eternal. In the classical system, the a period of expressions of grief and of PILGRIMAGE to Karbale#; passion plays are also presented, commemorating the death vigorous pursuit of MOKZA (spiritual liberation) is reserved for those persons who are in the last two stages of life. In of Gusayn, in Iran. Shi!ites in the Middle East, South Asia, practice, however, many sannyasjs have never married, a and even the Americas observe this holiday with procesfact which shows that even as an ideal the four-ashram syssions and assemblies, inspired by the slogan, “Every day is tem has been questioned. !Eshjre#, every place is Karbale#.” Such observances played It developed as a theological construct in the 1st millena pivotal role in toppling the regime of Muhammad-Rexe nium (—an upper-caste, male ideal only rarely achieved Sheh during the Iranian Revolution (1978–79). in personal or social reality. ASH WEDNESDAY, in the Western Christian church, the In a second meaning, the term eurama, familiarly spelled first day of LENT, occurring 6½ weeks before EASTER—beashram in English, denotes a place of refuge, especially one tween February 4 and March 11, depending on the date of removed from urban life, where spiritual and/or yogic disciEaster. In the early church, the length of the Lenten celeplines are pursued. Often these ashrams are associated with the presence of a central teaching figure, a GURU, who is the bration varied. In the 7th century, 4 days were added before object of common adoration on the part of other ashram the first Sunday in Lent in order to establish 40 fasting residents. The guru may or may not belong to a formally days, in imitation of JESUS’ fast in the desert. In Rome penitents began their period of public penance constituted order or spiritual community. on the first day of Lent. They were sprinkled with ashes, A SHUR \ 9!-0sh>r \, in MESOPOTAMIAN RELIGION, city god of dressed in sackcloth, and obliged to remain apart until they Ashur and national god of Assyria. In the beginning he was were reconciled with the Christian community on MAUNDY perhaps only a local deity of the city that shared his name. THURSDAY, the Thursday before Easter. When these practices fell into disuse (8th–10th century), they were symbolized From about 1800 ), however, he was identified with the by placing ashes on the heads of the entire congregation. Sumerian ENLIL (Akkadian: BEL), while under the Assyrian king Sargon II (reigned 721–705 )), he was brought into This practice continues in ROMAN CATHOLICISM, using ashes association with Anshar, the father of An (Akkadian: ANU) obtained by burning the palms used on the previous PALM in the CREATION MYTH. Under Sargon’s successor Sennach- SUNDAY. Worship services are also held on Ash Wednesday erib, attempts were made to transfer to Ashur the primeval in the churches of the ANGLICAN COMMUNION, in LUTHERAN-

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ASIA MINOR, RELIGIONS OF ISM, and in some other Protestant churches. In EASTERN ORTHODOXY, churches begin Lent on a Monday and therefore

do not observe Ash Wednesday.

ASIA MINOR, RELIGIONS OF: see ANATOLIAN RELIGIONS. ASKR AND EMBLA \9!s-k‘r . . . 9em-bl! \, in Norse mythology, the first man and first woman, respectively, parents of the human race. They were created from tree trunks found on the seashore by three gods—ODIN, Hoenir, and Lodur. Odin gave them breath, or life, Hoenir gave them understanding, and Lodur gave them their senses and outward appearance. Whereas Odin is a well-known god, almost nothing is known of his companions. ASMODEUS \0az-m‘-9d%-‘s, 0as- \, Hebrew Ashmedai \0!shm‘-9d& \, in Jewish mythology, the king of DEMONS. According to the apocryphal book of Tobit, Asmodeus, smitten for Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, killed her seven successive husbands on their wedding nights. Following instructions given to him by the ANGEL Raphael, Tobias overcame Asmodeus and married Sarah. The TALMUD (Pesahim 110a; Gittin 68a–b) relates that SOLOMON captured the demon and pressed him into slave labor during the construction of the First TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM. Other haggadic (see HALAKAH AND HAGGADAH) legends (e.g., Numbers Rabbah 11:3) depict Asmodeus as a more beneficent figure.

AUOKA \‘-9sh+-k‘, -9s+- \, also spelled Ashoka (d. 238? ), India), last major emperor in the Mauryan dynasty of India. His vigorous patronage of BUDDHISM during his reign (c. 265– 238 )) furthered the expansion of that religion throughout India. Following his successful but bloody conquest of the Kaliega country on the east coast, Auoka renounced armed conquest and adopted a policy that he called “conquest by DHARMA (principles of right life).” In order to gain wide publicity for his teachings and his work, Auoka made them known by means of oral announcements and also engraved them on rocks and pillars at suitable sites. These inscriptions—the ROCK EDICTS and Pillar Edicts (e.g., the lion capital of the pillar found at Sarnath, which has become India’s national emblem)—provide information on his life and acts. Auoka visited Buddhist holy sites, commended particular Buddhist teachings, and sought to ensure proper order in the Buddhist monastic community. He sent “dharma ministers” and Buddhist emissaries to various areas within his realm and beyond. In the centuries following Auoka’s death, the Buddhist community generated many legends about him that played an important role in their understanding and evaluation of political authority. His support for Buddhism was vividly dramatized, for example, in the legendary accounts that describe his construction of 84,000 STUPAS (funerary monuments) throughout his realm and the festival of the great gift, at which he gave all of his wealth to the Buddhist SANGHA. In some contexts, particularly in the THERAVE DA tradition of Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia, Auoka has been depicted as an ideal king who could serve as a positive model for Buddhist rulers. In other Buddhist contexts he became a figure whose role as an ideal was modified by a recognition of the ambiguities inherent in the exercise of secular power. But throughout Buddhist history all across Asia he has been remembered as an embodiment of Buddhist secular virtues and an example of a ruler who supported and guided the Buddhist community. 84 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

ESRAVA \9!s-r‘-v‘, 9!sh- \, in Buddhist philosophy, the illusion stemming from the mind and the senses. See KILESA.

A SSEMBLIES OF G OD, Pentecostal denomination of the Protestant church, considered the largest such denomination in the United States. It was formed by a union of several small Pentecostal groups at Hot Springs, Ark., in 1914. The council of some 120 clergy who effected this union adopted a polity blending Congregational (see CONGREGATIONALISM) and PRESBYTERIAN elements. The council elected an Executive Presbytery to serve as the central administrative group. Except for pronouncing that “the Holy inspired SCRIPTURES are the all-sufficient rule for faith and practice . . . and we shall not add to or take from them,” that first General Council postponed action on the matter of a definitive doctrinal statement. Subsequently, however, a Statement of Fundamental Truths was adopted. The document demonstrated that the Assemblies of God are Trinitarian (believing in God as Father, Son, and HOLY SPIRIT) and Arminian (accepting the doctrines of both GRACE and FREE WILL; see ARMINIANISM). They also subscribed to two ordinances (BAPTISM by total immersion in water and the Lord’s Supper), held a view of sanctification (becoming holy) that may be described as “progressive,” or gradual, rather than “instantaneous” in regard to moral purity, and, finally, were strongly premillennial (believing in the doctrine of Christ’s Second Advent before the 1,000-year reign of Christ and his saints). In addition to extensive foreign missions, the denomination conducts home missions among foreign-language groups in America’s urban centers, on Native American reservations, in prisons, and among the deaf and the blind. They also operate the Gospel Publishing House at the church headquarters in Springfield, Mo., two colleges of arts and science—Southern California College (Costa Mesa) and Evangel College (Springfield, Mo.)—and regional Bible institutes. ASSUMPTION (Late Latin: assumptio, “act of taking up”), in the theology of ROMAN CATHOLICISM and EASTERN ORTHODOXY, doctrine that MARY, the mother of JESUS CHRIST, was taken (assumed) into heaven, body and soul, following the end of her life on earth. There is no explicit mention of the Assumption in the NEW TESTAMENT. The development of this doctrine is closely related to a feast that passed from a general celebration in Mary’s honor to one celebrated on August 15 commemorating her dormition, or falling asleep. The feast, which originated in the Byzantine Empire, was brought to the West, where the term Assumption replaced Dormition to reflect increased emphasis on the glorification of Mary’s body as well as her soul. Although the Dormition had been a frequent iconographic theme in the East, there was an initial unwillingness to accept apocryphal accounts of the Assumption. By the end of the Middle Ages, however, there was a general acceptance in both the East and the West. The doctrine was declared dogma for Roman Catholics by Pope PIUS XII in the Munificentissimus Deus on Nov. 1, 1950. The Assumption is not considered a revealed doctrine among the Eastern Orthodox and is considered an obstacle to ecumenical dialogue by many Protestants. The Assumption as a theme in Christian art originated in western Europe during the late Middle Ages, and since the 13th century the Assumption has been widely represented in church decoration. Characteristic representations of the

ASTROLOGY Assumption show the Virgin, in an attitude of prayer and supported by ANGELS , ascending above her open tomb, around which the Apostles stand in amazement. Through the 15th century she was shown surrounded by an almondshaped aureole; in the 16th century this was replaced by a cluster of clouds.

AZEACHEP \0‘sh-t!-9ch!p \ (Hindi: “Eight Seals”), group of 16th-century Hindi poets, four of whom are claimed to have been disciples of VALLABHA, and four of his son and successor, Vieehalneth. The greatest of the group was SJRDES, who is remembered as a blind singer and whose descriptions of the exploits of the child-god KRISHNA are particularly well known. Other members of the Azeachep group were Paramenanddes, Nanddes, Kszdades, Govindsvemj, Kumbhandes, Chjtasvemj, and Caturbhujdes. Unlike Sjrdes, whose association with the Vallabhite community may well have been invented by Vallabhites after the fact, many of the other Azeachep poets do betray a clear sectarian affiliation. Poems written by the Azeachep form the core group of hymns sung to Krishna in Vallabhite temples. ASTARTE \‘-9st!r-t% \, also spelled Ashtart \9ash-0t!rt \, great goddess of the ancient Near East, chief deity of Tyre, Sidon, and Elath. She was worshiped as Astarte in Egypt and UGARIT and among the Hittites, as well as in CANAAN. Her Akkadian counterpart was ISHTAR. Later she became assimilated with the Egyptian deities ISIS and HATHOR, and in the Greco-Roman world with APHRODITE, ARTEMIS, and JUNO. Astarte, goddess of love and war, shared so many qualities with her sister, ANATH, that they may originally have been seen as a single deity. Hebrew scholars now feel that the goddess Ashtoreth mentioned so often in the BIBLE is a deliberate compilation of the Greek name Astarte and the Hebrew word boshet, “shame,” indicating contempt for her cult. Ashtaroth, the plural form of the goddess’s name in Hebrew, became a term denoting goddesses and paganism. SOLOMON , married to foreign wives, “went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians” (1 Kings 11:5). Later the cult places dedicated to Ashtoreth were destroyed by JOSIAH. Astarte/Ashtoreth is the Queen of Heaven to whom the Canaanites had burned incense and poured LIBATIONS (Jeremiah 44). ESTIKA \9!s-ti-k‘ \, in Indian philosophy, any orthodox school of thought, defined as one that accepts the authority of the VEDAS. The six orthodox philosophic systems are those of Seukhya and YOGA, NYEYA and Vaiuezika, and Mjmeuse and VEDENTA. The term estika comes from the Sanskrit asti, which means “there is.” Contrasted to the estika systems are the nestika (Sanskrit: from na asti, “there is not”), the individuals and schools that do not accept the reality (that is, the “there is-ness”) of an underlying ground of being such as the BRAHMAN concept in HINDUISM. Included among the nestika schools are the Buddhists, Jains, the ascetic Ejjvikas, and the materialistic Cervekas. ASTROLOGY, type of DIVINATION that consists in interpreting the influence of planets and stars on earthly affairs in order to predict or affect the destinies of individuals, groups, or nations. Astrology originated in Mesopotamia, perhaps in the 3rd millennium ), but attained its full development in the Western world much later, within the orbit of Greek civilization of the Hellenistic period. It spread to India in its old-

The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac and the Sun, Ermengol de Beziers, Breviare d’Amour, Provencal codex (13th century); in the Biblioteca Real, El Escorial, Madrid, Spain Giraudon—Art Resource

er Mesopotamian form. Islamic culture absorbed it as part of the Greek heritage, and passed it on to European culture in the Middle Ages, when western Europe was strongly affected by Islamic science. The Egyptians also contributed, though less directly, to the rise of astrology. In order that the starry sky might serve them as a clock, the Egyptians selected a succession of 36 bright stars whose risings were separated from each other by intervals of 10 days. Each of these stars, called decans by Latin writers, was conceived of as a spirit with power over the period of time for which it served; they later entered the zodiac as subdivisions of its 12 signs. Once established in the classical world, the astrological conception of causation invaded all the sciences, particularly medicine and its allied disciplines. The Stoics, espousing the doctrine of a universal “sympathy” linking the human microcosm with the macrocosm of nature, found in astrology a virtual map of such a universe. Throughout classical antiquity the words astronomy and astrology were synonymous. In the first Christian centuries the modern distinction between astronomy, the science of stars, and astrology, the art of divination by the stars, began to appear. As against the omnipotence of the stars, CHRISTIANITY taught the omnipotence of their Creator. To the determinism of astrology Christianity opposed the freedom of the will. But within these limits the astrological worldview was accepted. To reject it would have been to reject the whole heritage of classical culture, which had assumed an

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ASTRUC OF LUNEL astrological complexion. Even at the center of Christian history, Persian MAGI were reported to have followed a celestial OMEN to the scene of the Nativity. Although various Christian councils condemned astrology, the belief in the worldview it implies was not seriously shaken. In the late Middle Ages, a number of universities, among them Paris, Padua, Bologna, and Florence, had chairs of astrology. The revival of ancient studies by the humanists only encouraged this interest, which persisted into the Renaissance and even into the REFORMATION. In pre-Imperial China, the belief in an intelligible cosmic order had found expression in charts that juxtaposed natural phenomena with human activities and fate. When Western astronomy and astrology became known in China through Arabic influences in Mongol times, their data were integrated into the Chinese astrological corpus. In the later centuries of Imperial China it was standard practice to have a HOROSCOPE cast for each newborn child and at all decisive junctures in life. In the West, it was the Copernican revolution of the 16th century that dealt the geocentric worldview of astrology its shattering blow. As a popular pastime, however, astrology has continued into modern times.

ASTRUC OF LUNEL \#s-9tr}k . . . l}-9nel \, original name Abba Mari ben Moses ben Joseph, also called Don Astruc, or ha-Yareag (“The Moon”) (b. 1250?, Lunel, near Montpellier, France—d. after 1306), anti-rationalist Jewish zealot who incited Rabbi SOLOMON BEN ABRAHAM ADRET of Barcelona, the most powerful rabbi of his time, to restrict the study of science and philosophy, thereby nearly creating a schism in the Jewish community of Europe. Although Astruc revered MAIMONIDES, who had attempted to reconcile Aristotle’s philosophy with JUDAISM , he deplored what he considered the excesses of Maimonides’ followers, who, he believed, undermined the Jewish faith by interpreting the BIBLE via ALLEGORY. In a series of letters, Astruc persuaded Rabbi Adret to issue a ban in 1305 forbidding, on pain of EXCOMMUNICATION, the study or teaching of science and philosophy by those under the age of 25. This ban provoked a counterban by other Jewish leaders against those who followed Adret’s proscription. A threatened schism among the Jewish communities of France and Spain was averted only in 1306, when Philip IV expelled the Jews from France. Astruc then settled in Perpignan, the mainland capital of the kingdom of Majorca, and vanished from view. But he published his correspondence with Rabbi Adret, which primarily concerned the restrictions on studies. Mingat qenaot (“Meal Offering of Jealousy”), as the collected correspondence is entitled, reveals much of the religious and philosophical conflicts of Judaism in that era. The epithet ha-Yareag is derived from his polemical work Sefer ha-yareag (“The Book of the Moon”), the title of which refers to the town of Lunel (French lune, meaning “moon”). A STYANAX \‘-9st&-‘-0naks \, in Greek myth, son of HECTOR and ANDROMACHE; he was also known as Scamandrius, after the River Scamander. After the fall of Troy he was hurled from the battlements of the city by NEOPTOLEMUS. According to medieval legend, however, he survived the war and founded the line that led to Charlemagne. ASURA \9‘-s>-r‘ \, Avestan ahura (Sanskrit: “lord”), in Hindu mythology, class of beings defined by their opposition to the DEVAS, or suras (gods). In its oldest Vedic usage,

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asura refers to a human or divine leader. Increasingly its plural form predominated, designating a class of beings opposed either to the Vedic gods or to those who opposed them. Later these asuras came to be understood as DEMONS. This pattern was reversed in Iran, where ahura came to mean the supreme god and the daevas became demons. In Hindu mythology, when the asuras and the devas together were CHURNING THE MILK-OCEAN in order to extract from it the amsta (elixir of immortality), strife arose over the possession of the amsta. This conflict is never ending.

AUVAGHOZA \0!sh-v‘-9g+-sh‘, -s‘ \, also spelled Ashvaghosa (b. 80? (, Ayodhye, India—d. 150?, Peshewar), philosopher and poet who is considered India’s greatest poet, before Kelidesa, and the father of Sanskrit drama. Auvaghoza was born a BRAHMIN. It is known that he was an outspoken opponent of BUDDHISM until, after a heated debate with a noted Buddhist scholar on the relative merits of the Hindu religion and Buddhism, he accepted Buddhism and became a disciple of his erstwhile opponent. A brilliant orator, Auvaghoza is said to have spoken at length on MAHEYENA Buddhist doctrine at the fourth Buddhist council, which he reportedly helped organize. His fame lay largely in his ability to explain the intricate concepts of Maheyena Buddhism. Among the works attributed to him are the BUDDHACARITA (“The Life of Buddha”) in verse, the Mahelaekara (“Book of Glory”), and—though his authorship of this text is far less likely—the Maheyenauraddhotpeda-uestra (“The Awakening of Faith in the Maheyena”). AUVAMEDHA \0!sh-v‘-9m@-d‘, 0!sh-w‘- \, also spelled ashvamedha, or ashwamedha (Sanskrit: “horse sacrifice”), grandest of the Vedic religious rites of ancient India, performed by a king to celebrate his preeminence. The ceremony is described in detail in various Vedic writings, particularly the Uatapatha Brehmada. A hand-picked stallion was allowed to roam freely for a year under the protection of a royal guard. If the horse entered a foreign country, its ruler had either to fight or to submit. If the horse was not captured during the year, it was brought back to the capital accompanied by the rulers of the lands it entered, and then sacrificed at a great public ceremony. The wandering horse was said to symbolize the sun in its journey over the world and, consequently, the power of the king over the whole earth. On successfully carrying out a horse sacrifice, the king could assume the title of cakravartin (“universal monarch”). The rite ensured the prosperity and fertility of the entire kingdom. In historical times the practice was condemned by the Buddha and seems to have suffered a decline, but it was revived by Puzyamitra Uuega (reigned 187–151 )). Samudra Gupta (c. 330–c. 380 () issued coins in commemoration of his successful completion of an auvamedha. It may have continued as late as the 11th century, when it is said to have taken place in the Cjta Empire.

A TALANTA \ 0a-t‘-9lan-t‘ \ , in Greek mythology, a renowned and swift-footed huntress, probably a parallel and less important form of the goddess ARTEMIS. Traditionally, she was the daughter of Schoeneus of Boeotia or of Iasus and Clymene of Arcadia. She was left to die at birth but was suckled by a she-bear; later she took part in the Calydonian boar hunt and, more famously, offered to marry anyone who could outrun her—but those whom she overtook she speared.

ATHEISM In one race Hippomenes (or Milanion) was given three of the golden apples of the HESPERIDES by APHRODITE; when he dropped them, Atalanta stopped to pick them up and so lost the race. Their son was Parthenopaeus, who later fought as one of the SEVEN AGAINST THEBES after the death of King OEDIPUS. Atalanta and her husband, proving ungrateful to Aphrodite, copulated in a shrine of the goddess Cybele (or of ZEUS), for which they were turned into lions.

nally settled at Phthiotis in Thessaly.

ATHANASIAN CREED

\ 0a-th‘-9n@-zh‘n, -sh‘n \ , also called Quicumque Vult \ kw&-9k‘m-kw%-9v‘lt \ (from the opening words in Latin), a Christian profession of A TAR GATIS \ ‘-9t!r-g‘-tis \ , great goddess of faith in about 40 verses. It is northern Syria; her chief SANCTUARY was at Hierregarded as authoritative apolis (modern Manbij), northeast of Aleppo, in ROMAN CATHOLICISM and in some Protestant where she was worshiped with her consort, churches. It has two secHADAD. Her ancient temple there was rebuilt about 300 ) by Queen Strations, one dealing with the tonice, and her cult spread to variTRINITY and the other with the INCARNATION , and it begins and ous parts of the Greek world, where ends with war nings that unthe goddess was swerving adherence to such generally regardtruths is indispensable to salvaed as a form of tion. The virulence of these damnaAPHRODITE. tory clauses has led some critics, especially in In nature the Anglican churches, to secure restriction or she resemabandonment of the use of the creed. bled her A Latin document composed in the WestPhoenician ern church, the creed was unknown to the counterpart, ASTARTE; she Eastern church until the 12th century. Since also showed some kinship with the Anatolian Cybele. the 17th century, scholars have generally agreed Primarily she was a goddess of fertility, but as the that it was not written by ATHANASIUS (died 373) but was probably composed in southern France baalat (“mistress”) of her city and people, she was during the 5th century. In 1940 the lost Excerpta also responsible for their protection and well-being. of Vincent of Lérins (flourished 440) was discovered Hence she was commonly portrayed wearing the to contain much of the language of the creed. Thus, mural crown and holding a sheaf of grain, while either Vincent or an admirer of his has been conthe lions who supported her throne suggest her sidered the possible author. The earliest strength and power over nature. known copy of the creed was included as a A TE \ 9@-t%, 9!- \, Greek semidivine figure prefix to a collection of homilies by Caewho induced ruinous actions. She made sarius of Arles (died 542). ZEUS take a hasty OATH that resulted in the Atalanta, Greek marble A THANASIUS , S AINT \0a-th‘-9n@-zh‘s, hero HERACLES becoming subject to Eurys- statue; in the Louvre, Paris theus, ruler of Mycenae. Zeus then cast Ate sh‘s \ (b. c. 293 (, Alexandria—d. May 2, Giraudon—Art Resource 373, Alexandria; feast day May 2), theoloout of Olympus; she remained on earth, gian, ecclesiastical statesman, and Egypworking evil and mischief. She was followed by the Litai (“Prayers”—personifications of the sup- tian national leader; he was the chief defender of Christian plications offered up to the gods), the old and crippled orthodoxy in the 4th-century battle against ARIANISM, which promulgated that the Son of God was a creature of like, but daughters of Zeus, who repaired the harm done by her. not of the same, substance as God the Father. A THALIAH \ 0a-th‘-9l&-‘ \, also spelled Athalia, in the OLD ATHARVA VEDA \‘-0t!r-v‘-9v@-d‘ \, collection of hymns TESTAMENT, the daughter of AHAB and JEZEBEL and wife of Jeham, king of JUDAH. After the death of Ahaziah, her son, and incantations that forms the fourth and final collection Athaliah usurped the throne and reigned for seven years. (Sauhite) of Vedic utterances. She massacred all the members of the royal house of Judah (2 Kings 11:1–3), except Joash. A successful revolution was ATHEISM , the critique and denial of belief in God. As such, it is the opposite of THEISM, which affirms the reality organized in favor of Joash, and she was killed. of God and seeks to demonstrate His existence. Atheism is A THAMAS \9a-th‘-m‘s \, in Greek mythology, king of the to be distinguished from AGNOSTICISM, which leaves open prehistoric Minyans in the ancient Boeotian city of Or- the question whether there is a God or not; for the atheist, chomenus. His first wife was the goddess Nephele. But latthe nonexistence of God is a certainty. er Athamas became enamored of Ino, the daughter of CADAtheism has emerged recurrently in Western thought. MUS , and neglected Nephele, who disappeared in anger. Plato argued against it in the Laws, while Democritus and Athamas and Ino incurred the wrath of the goddess HERA Epicurus argued for it in the context of their materialism. because Ino had nursed DIONYSUS. Athamas went mad and Niccolò Machiavelli in the 16th century contributed to slew one of his sons, Learchus; Ino, to escape, threw herself atheism in the political sphere by affirming the indepeninto the sea with her other son, Melicertes. Both were after- dence of politics from morals and religion. The 18th centuward worshiped as marine divinities—Ino as LEUCOTHEA, ry witnessed the emergence of atheism among the French Melicertes as Palaemon. Athamas fled from Boeotia and fi- Encyclopedists, who combined British EMPIRICISM with René 87 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

ATHENA handicraft, and practical reason. She was probably a preDescartes’s mechanistic conception of the universe. David Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Hellenic goddess taken over by the Greeks. In the myths Athena was the daughter of ZEUS and Metis, (1779), argued against the traditional proofs for the existence of God, as did Immanuel Kant. Neither Hume nor whom Zeus had swallowed while she was pregnant so that Kant were atheists, but their restriction of human reason to Athena would be born from the father only. Athena sprang sense experience undercut NATURAL THEOLOGY and left the in full battle armor from Zeus’ forehead, in some versions existence of God a matter of pure faith. In the 19th century, after HEPHAESTUS had split open Zeus’ head with an ax. She was thought to have had neither husband nor offspring. She atheism was couched in the materialism of Karl Marx and may not have been described as a others and pitted against the metaphysical position of SPIRITUvirgin originally, but virginity ALISM . Moder n atheism takes was attributed to her very early many different forms other than and was the basis for the interthat of materialism. In short, pretation of her epithets Pallas atheism has been rooted in a vast and Parthenos. array of philosophical systems. Athena was the goddess of One of the most important crafts and skilled pursuits in gen19th-century atheists was LUD eral, especially known as the paWIG FEUERBACH (1804–72), who troness of spinning and weaving. put forward the argument that That she ultimately became alleGod is a projection of man’s idegorized to personify wisdom and als. Feuerbach associated his derighteousness was a natural denial of God with the affirmation velopment of her patronage of of man’s freedom: the disclosure skill. In Homer’s Iliad, Athena that God is mere projection libwas presented in particular as erates man for self-realization. the goddess of martial skill, and Marx drew on Feuerbach’s thesis in numerous scenes she inspired that the religious can be resolved and fought alongside the Greek into the human, though he also heroes. Athena’s moral and miliheld that religion reflects sociotary superiority to the other wareconomic order and alienates like divinity of Greece, ARES, derived in part from the fact that man from his labor product and, she represented the intellectual hence, from his true self. Charles and civilized side of war and the Darwin (1809–82) developed a virtues of justice and skill, scientific theory of natural histowhereas Ares largely representry that challenged the Judeoed mere blood lust. In the Iliad, Christian concept of God. Later, SIGMUND FREUD (1856–1939) drew Athena was the divine form of on Darwinian themes when he the heroic, martial ideal: she perdiscussed the historical developsonified excellence in close comment of the religious mindset. bat, victory, and glory, and wore According to Freud, belief in God upon her shield the AEGIS of Zeus which inspired irresistible fear in represents a childlike psychologher opponents. Athena appears ical state in which the image of a in the Odyssey as the tutelary father-figure is projected upon deity of ODYSSEUS , and myths the forces of nature. from later sources portray her A third strain in modern athesimilarly as helper of PERSEUS and ism is the existentialist. HERACLES (Hercules). As the Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) guardian of the welfare of kings, proclaimed the “death of God” Athena equally represented the and the consequent loss of all qualities of good counsel, prutraditional values. The only tendent restraint, and practical inable human response, he argued, sight. is that of nihilism—without In post-Mycenaean times the God, there is no answer to the Roman marble copy (c. 130 () of the statue of city, especially its citadel, requestion of purpose and meaning Athena Parthenos by Phidias (438 )); in the placed the palace as Athena’s doin life. In Nietzsche’s view, the National Archaeological Museum, Athens main. She was widely worshiped death of God freed humanity to Alinari—Art Resource but had special importance at fulfill itself and find its own esAthens, to which she gave her sence. In the 20th century Jeanname. Her emergence there as city goddess, Athena Polias Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others continued the (“Athena of the City”), accompanied the ancient citytheme. Human freedom, according to Sartre, entails the denial of God, for God’s existence would threaten our free- state’s transition from monarchy to democracy. She was associated with birds, particularly the owl, and with the dom to create our own values through free ethical choice. snake. Her birth and her contest with POSEIDON, the sea god, ATHENA \‘-9th%-n‘ \, also spelled Athene \‘-9th%-n% \, in an- for the suzerainty of the city were depicted on the pedicient GREEK RELIGION, protectress of Athens, goddess of war, ments of the PARTHENON. Athena’s birthday festival, the

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ATON PANATHENAEA , concerned the growth of vegetation. The similarly purposed Procharisteria celebrated the goddess’s rising from the ground with the coming of spring. Two Athenians, the sculptor Phidias and the playwright Aeschylus, contributed significantly to the cultural dissemination of Athena’s image. She inspired three of Phidias’ sculptural masterpieces, including the colossal gold and ivory statue of Athena Parthenos which was housed in the Parthenon until the 5th century (. Copies of this statue are still extant.

ATJUA \‘-9t%-sh‘ \, also called Djpaekara \d%-9p‘=-k‘-r‘ \ (b. 982—d. 1054, Nyethang, Tibet [now Nyetang, China]), Indian Buddhist reformer whose teachings formed the basis of the Tibetan Bka’-gdams-pa (“Those Bound by Command”) sect, founded by his disciple ’Brom-ston. Atjua left India for Tibet around 1040. He established monasteries there and wrote treatises emphasizing the three schools of BUDDHISM: the THERAVEDA, the MAHEYENA, and the VAJRAYENA. He taught that the three schools follow in this succession and must be practiced in this order. ATLANTIS \‘t-9lan-tis \, also spelled Atalantis \0a-t‘-9lan-tis \, or Atlantica \‘t-9lan-ti-k‘ \, legendary island of unknown location. The principal sources for the legend are two of Plato’s dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. Plato described Atlantis as an island larger than Asia Minor and Libya combined, situated just beyond the Pillars of HERACLES (the Straits of Gibraltar). It was the home of an advanced civilization, but the island was eventually swallowed up by the sea as a result of earthquakes. Atlantis is probably merely a legend, invented by Plato to make a point, but the idea has seized the imagination of innumerable authors since then, who have variously located it in the Black Sea or the waters off of South America. ATLAS \9at-l‘s \, in Greek mythology, son of the TITAN Iapetus and the NYMPH Clymene (or Asia) and brother of PROMETHEUS (creator of mankind). Atlas was said to support the weight of the heavens on his shoulders. Later the name of Atlas was transferred to a range of mountains in northwestern Africa, and Atlas was subsequently represented as the king of that district, turned into a rocky mountain by the hero PERSEUS, who showed him the GORGON’s head. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Atlas was one of the Titans who took part in their war against ZEUS, for which he was condemned to his heavenly burden. ETMAN \9!t-m‘n \ (Sanskrit: “breath, self”), one of the basic concepts in Hindu philosophy, describing that eternal core of the personality that survives death and transmigrates to a new life or is released from the bonds of existence. Although in the early Vedic texts it occurred mostly as a reflexive pronoun (oneself), in the later UPANISHADS it develops into a philosophic topic: etman is that which makes the other organs and faculties function and for which they function; etman underlies all the activities of a person, as BRAHMAN (the absolute) underlies the workings of the universe. So fundamental is the sense of unchanging identity signified by etman that it is familiarly identified with Brahman itself, especially by adherents of ADVAITA VEDENTA.

ETMEREMJJ \0!t-m!-9r!m-j% \ (b. 1837, Lahera, Punjab—d. 1896, Gujranwala, Punjab), important Jain reformer and revivalist monk. He was born a Hindu but as a child came under the influence of Sthenakavesj Jain monks and was

initiated as a Sthenakavesj monk in 1854. He was renowned for his prodigious memory and intellectual skills. He pursued an independent study of Jain texts, in particular the Sanskrit commentaries on the Jain canon, commentaries which at that time Sthenakavesj monks were discouraged from studying. As a result of his studies he became convinced that the Mjrtipjjak position on the worship of images of the Jinas (also called TJRTHAEKARAS, considered in JAINISM to be godlike saviors who have succeeded in crossing over life’s stream of rebirths and have made a path for others to follow) was correct, and the iconoclastic position taken by the Sthenakavesj was wrong. In 1876, along with 18 monk followers, he was reinitiated as a Mjrtipjjak monk in the Tape Gacch in Ahmedabad, the major city of Gujarat, and given the new name Muni Enandavijay. He was made ecerya (monastic leader) in a public ceremony in 1887 in Palitana—a center of Mjrtipjjak PILGRIMAGE in Gujarat—and he was given the name Ecerya Vijayenandasjri. Etmeremjj came into contact with European scholars of Jainism, and as a result he was invited to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago—an invitation he declined, as any mode of travel besides walking barefooted would have violated monastic rules. Etmeremjj was a prolific author and tireless reformer. He defended the Mjrtipjjak position on image-worship against the Sthenakavesjs; defended the position of fullfledged sauvegj monks against the house-holding monks known as yatis who owned monasteries, traveled in vehicles, handled money, and followed many other practices perceived as lax by orthoprax Jains; and he argued in favor of the Tape Gacch against other Mjrtipjjak gacchs (lineages) on a variety of details of monastic practices. The movement he helped spearhead led to a predominance of the Mjrtipjjak Tape Gacch among Gujarati Jains. Monks in his direct disciplic lineage now number well over 500.

A TON \9!-t‘n, 9a- \, also spelled Aten, also called Yati, in ancient EGYPTIAN RELIGION, a sun god, depicted as the solar disk emitting rays terminating in human hands, whose worship briefly was the state religion. The pharaoh Akhenaton (reigned 1353–36 )) introduced the radical innovation that Aton was the only god. In opposition to the Amon-Re PRIESTHOOD of Thebes, Akhenaton built the city Akhetaton (now Tell el-Amarna) as the center for Aton’s worship. The most important surviving document of the new religion is the Aton Hymn, which focuses on the world of nature and the god’s beneficent provision for it. The hymn opens with the rising of the sun: “Men had slept like the dead; now they lift their arms in praise, birds fly, fish leap, plants bloom, and work begins. Aton creates the son in the mother’s womb, the seed in men, and has generated all life. He has distinguished the races, their natures, tongues, and skins, and fulfills the needs of all. Aton made the Nile in Egypt and rain, like a heavenly Nile, in foreign countries. He has a million forms according to the time of day and from where he is seen; yet he is always the same.” The only person who knows and comprehends the god fully is said to be Akhenaton, together with his wife, Nefertiti. The hymn to the Aton has been compared in imagery to Psalm 104 (“Bless the Lord, O my soul”). The religion of the Aton is not completely understood. Akhenaton and Nefertiti worshiped only this sun god. For them he was “the sole god.” Akhenaton had dropped his older name Amenhotep, and the name “Amon” was also hacked out of the inscriptions throughout Egypt. The fu89

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ATONEMENT nerary religion dropped Osiris, and Akhenaton became the source of blessings for the people after death. The figure of Nefertiti replaced the figures of protecting goddesses at the corners of a stone sarcophagus. But the new religion was rejected by the Egyptian elite after Akhenaton’s death, and the populace had probably never adopted it in the first place. After Akhenaton’s death, the old gods were reestablished and the new city abandoned.

Later, AGAMEMNON and MENELAUS —sons of Atreus and Aërope—found Thyestes and imprisoned him at Mycenae. Aegisthus was sent to murder Thyestes, but each recognized the other because of the sword that Pelopia had taken from her father and given to her son. Father and son slew Atreus, seized the throne, and drove Agamemnon and Menelaus out of the country.

ATONEMENT , process by which a person removes obstacles to his reconciliation with God. It is a recurring theme in religion and theology. Rituals of expiation and satisfaction appear in most religions as the means by which the religious person reestablishes or strengthens his or her relation to the holy or divine. Atonement is often attached to sacrifice, and both often connect ritual cleanness with moral purity and religious acceptability. The term atonement developed in the English language in the 16th century from the phrase “at onement,” meaning “being set at one,” or “reconciliation.” It was used in the various English translations of the BIBLE, including the KING JAMES VERSION (1611), to convey the idea of reconciliation and expiation, and it has been a favorite way for Christians to speak about the saving significance of the death of JESUS CHRIST. Various theories of the Atonement of Christ have arisen: satisfaction for the SINS of the world; redemption from the Devil or from the wrath of God; a saving example of true, suffering love; the prime illustration of divine mercy; a divine victory over the forces of evil. In Christian orthodoxy there is no remission of sin without “the shedding of [Christ’s] blood” (Hebrews 9:26). In JUDAISM vicarious atonement has little importance. For a traditional Jew, atonement is expiation for one’s own sin in order to attain God’s forgiveness. This may be achieved in various ways, including repentance, payment for a wrong action, good works, suffering, and prayer. Repentance and changed conduct are usually stressed as the most important aspects of atonement. The 10 “days of awe,” culminating in the Day of Atonement (YOM KIPPUR), are centered on repentance.

GREAT MOTHER OF THE GODS (classical CYBELE, or Agdistis); he was worshiped in Phrygia, Asia Minor, and later throughout the Roman Empire, where he was made a SOLAR DEITY in the 2nd century (. The worship of Attis and the Great Mother included the annual celebration of mysteries on the return of the spring season. Attis, like the Great Mother, was probably indigenous to Asia Minor, adopted by the invading Phrygians and blended by them with a mythical character of their own. According to the Phrygian tale, Attis was a beautiful youth born of Nana, the daughter of the river Sangarius, and the hermaphroditic Agdistis. Having become enamored of Attis, Agdistis struck him with frenzy as he was about to be married, with the result that Attis castrated himself and died. Agdistis in repentance prevailed upon ZEUS to grant that the body of the youth should never decay or waste. Attis has often been interpreted as a vegetation god, his myth expressing the rhythm of the seasons. See also ANATOLIAN RELIGIONS.

A TREUS \9@-0trm-sh%n-9r%- \, (”Supreme Truth”), radical religious movement founded by SHOKO ASAHARA, combining elements of HINDUISM and folk BUDDHISM. It was founded in the millenarian expectation of a series of disasters that would bring an end to this world and inaugurate a new cosmic cycle. See also MILLENNIALISM; NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS. Asahara had been a member of Agonshu, a small new religion that drew from Hinduism and Buddhism, but after a financial and spiritual crisis he founded his own new religion, Aum Shinsen-no-kai (later known as Aum Shinrikyo), which he incorporated in 1984. Asahara spent the next few years building his movement through preaching, teaching YOGA, and publishing books that predicted the coming of ARMAGEDDON as early as 1997. The sect’s recruiting methods aroused suspicion, and it allegedly used sleep deprivation, isolation, and mind-altering drugs as a means of enforcing obedience among its followers. The movement was also accused of committing kidnappings, beatings, and even murder to stifle opponents and prevent government investigation. By 1989, however, Aum was recognized as an official religion; it claimed 10,000 followers in Japan and 20,000 abroad, mostly in Russia, and maintained regional offices in the U.S., Germany, and Sri Lanka. In 1990 Asahara, hoping to become prime minister, fielded candidates for the lower house of the Diet (the Japanese parliament), all of whom were defeated. This failure channeled the movement’s energies in a new direction. Many folk Buddhist millenarian sects saw the modern period as a prelude to the end of humanity and the beginning of a cosmic cycle; Asaraha added Hindu elements to this belief. Presenting himself as an agent of the divine will, he predicted a series of disasters, such as war between Japan and the United States, that would foreshadow the final battle, Armageddon, and the end of the world in this corrupt age. In anticipation, Aum members gathered weapons and supplies of the nerve gas sarin, which they released into the Tokyo subway system in 1995, resulting in the deaths of 12 people. Asahara and members of his sect were arrested. In 1999 the group changed its name to Aleph, apologized for its crimes, and set up a compensation fund for victims. By 2004, Asahara and ten followers were found guilty of the subway attack in separate trials and sentenced to death. AUNG SAN SUU KYI \ 9a>=-9s!n-9sr-g‘l-0mir \: see YMIR. AUROBINDO, URJ \0|r-‘-9bin-d+ \, original name Aurobindo Ghose, Aurobindo also spelled Aravinda (b. Aug. 15, 1872, Calcutta, India—d. Dec. 5, 1950, Pondicherry), seer, poet, and Indian nationalist who originated the philosophy of cosmic salvation through spiritual evolution. Aurobindo attended a Christian convent school in Darjeeling; while still a boy, he was sent to England for further schooling. At the University of Cambridge he became proficient in two classical and three modern-European languages. After returning to India in 1892 he took various administrative and professorial posts in Baroda and Calcutta and then turned to the study of YOGA and Indian languages, including classical Sanskrit. In 1902 Aurobindo embarked on a course of action to free India from British rule. As a result of his revolutionary political activities, he was imprisoned in 1908. Two years later he fled to the French colony of Pondichéry (modern Pondicherry) in southeastern India, where he devoted the rest of his life solely to the development of his philosophy. In Pondichéry he founded an ASHRAM (retreat) as an international cultural center for spiritual development. According to Aurobindo’s theory of cosmic salvation, the paths to union with BRAHMAN are two-way streets, or channels: Enlightenment comes from above (thesis), while the spiritual mind (supermind) strives through yogic illumination to reach upward from below (antithesis). When these two forces blend, a gnostic individual is created (synthesis). This yogic illumination transcends both reason and intuition and eventually leads to the freeing of the individual from the bonds of individuality; by extension, all humankind will eventually achieve MOK Z A (liberation). Aurobindo’s complex and sometimes chaotic literary output includes philosophy, poetry, and drama. Among his works are The Life Divine (1940), The Human Cycle (1949), On the Veda (1956), Collected Poems and Plays (1942), and Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol (1950). AUSEKLIS \9a>-se-klis \ (Latvian), Lithuanian Aušrinw \a>9shr?i-n?@ \, in BALTIC RELIGION, the morning star and deity of the dawn. The Latvian Auseklis was a male god, the Lithuanian Aušrinw a female. Related in name to the Vedic Uzas and the Greek EOS, goddesses of dawn, Auseklis is associated in Latvian mythology with MUNESS (Moon) and SAULE (Sun), being subordinate to the former and along with him a suitor of Saule’s daughter, Saules meita. According to Lithuanian traditions Aušrinw had an adulterous relationship with the moon god, Mwnuo, for which Mwnuo was punished by the god Perkjnas (Latvian: PURKONS).

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AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL RELIGION

T

he beliefs and ritual practices of the indigenous population of Australia, who are known as Aboriginals, show a unique contrast between the complexity of their social organization and religious life and the relative simplicity of their material technologies. HISTORICAL

AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

Aboriginals came originally from somewhere in Asia and have been in Australia for at least 40,000 years. The first settlement occurred during an era of lowered sea levels, when there was an almost continuous land bridge between Asia and Australia. By 30,000 years ago most of the continent was sparsely occupied. By the time of European settlement in 1788, population densities ranged from about 1 to 8 square miles per person in fertile riverine and coastal areas to more than 35 square miles per person in the vast interior deserts. More than 200 different languages were spoken, and most Aboriginals were bilingual or multilingual. The largest entities recognized by the people were grouped around speakers of the same language, sometimes referred to by Europeans as “tribes.” There may have been as many as 500 such groups. There was no consciousness of a shared national identity. However, the Aboriginal worldview tended to be expansive, with a perception of “society” as a community of common understandings and behaviors shared well beyond the confines of the local group. The Aboriginals were hunter-gatherers who grew no crops and did not domesticate animals (apart from the dingo, a type of wild dog). The need to balance population with resources meant that most of the time people were dispersed into small food-gathering groups. But when food resources permitted, large gatherings would be organized, and much of the social and religious business of the society would be transacted over a two- to three-week period of intense activity.

RITUAL

AND PRACTICE

The dreaming and totemic beliefs. The Aboriginal worldview centered on the “DREAMING,” or “Dreamtime,” a complex and comprehensive concept embodying the past, present, and future, as well as virtually every aspect of life. It includes the creative era at the dawn of time, when mythic beings shaped the land and

Aboriginal smoking ceremony to protect the baby’s health, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia Paul Chesley—Stone/Getty Images

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AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL RELIGION Ancient Aboriginal paintings at Nourlangie Rock in Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia Spectrum Colour Library/HeritageImages

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populated it with flora, fauna, and human beings and left behind the rules for social life. After their physical death and transformation into heavenly or earthly bodies, the creative beings withdrew into the spiritual realm. The Aboriginals saw their way of life as ordained by the creative acts of the Dreaming beings; everything that existed was fixed for all time in the mythic past, and all that humans were asked to do was obey the law of the Dreaming and perform correctly the rituals upon which life depended. Aboriginals were constantly surrounded by the signs of existence and power of spiritual forces, as features of the landscape provided tangible proofs of the reality and powers of the Dreaming beings. Through dreams and other states of altered consciousness, the living could come into contact with the spiritual realm and gain strength from it, and a rich complex of myths, dances, and rituals bound the human, spiritual, and physical realms tightly together into a single cosmic order. Spirit beings acted as messengers to communicate with the living and to introduce new knowledge into human society. Through Aboriginal systems of totemic belief, individuals and groups were linked to both the things of nature and the beings of the spiritual realm. TOTEMISM is a symbol system that connects individuals and groups to particular places and events and provides them with a unique account of their coming into being. It thus underpins individual identity while at the same time linking a person to many others who share similar associations. Many of the mythic beings in Australia were “totemic” in the sense of exemplifying in their own persons, in their outward form, the common life-force pervading particular species. Others, originating in human or near-human form, entered some physiographic feature or were metamorphosed as hills or rocks or turned into various creatures or plants. Initiation. A child’s spirit was held to come from the Dreaming in order to animate a fetus. In some cases, this was believed to occur through an action of a mythic being who might or might not be reincarnated in the child. Even when Aboriginals acknowledged a physical bond between parents and child, the most important issue for them was the spiritual heritage. In general, puberty among girls was not ritually celebrated. In those areas in which it was celebrated, however, it was usually marked by either total or partial seclusion and by food TABOOS. Ritual defloration and hymen cutting were also practiced in a few areas. For a boy, his formal instruction as a potential adult began with the rite of initiation. All boys were initiated, the age at the first rite varying from 6 to 16, depending on the locale. Generally, once he had reached puberty and facial hair had begun to show, he was ready for the initial rituals. Initiation was a symbolic reenactment of death and rebirth in order to achieve new life as an adult. The symbolism of death appeared as the novice left his camp, the women would wail and other noises would be made, symbolizing the voice of a mythic being who was said to swallow the novice and later vomit him forth into a new life. Initiation in Aboriginal Australia was a prelude to the religious activity in which all men participated. It meant, also, learning a wide range of things directly concerned with the practical aspects of social living, and the rites included songs and rituals having an educational purpose.

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL RELIGION CIRCUMCISION was an important rite over the greater part of Australia. Subincision (the slitting of the underside of the penis) was especially significant in its association with secret-sacred ritual. Other rites included piercing of the nasal septum, tooth pulling, and the blood rite, the blood being used for anointing or sipping (red ochre was sometimes used as a substitute for blood). Hair removal, scarring, and playing with fire were also fairly widespread practices.

SACRED

ART

Each cultural area had its own distinctive style of art. TJURUNGA (sacred object) art, consisting of incised patterns on flat stones or wooden boards, though, was fairly common throughout Australia. In central Australia, body decoration and elaborate headdresses on ritual occasions, using feather down, blood, and ochres, were especially striking. Everywhere, sacred ritual provided the incentive for making a large variety of objects, and the act of making them was itself one of the appropriate rites. Shaped and decorated receptacles for bones were common in eastern Arnhem Land. Also common were carved wooden figures of mythic beings and of contemporary persons for ritual use or as memorial posts for the dead. Paintings in ochre on sheets of bark were used mostly for the instruction of novices. In western Arnhem Land, naturalistic patterns showing figures against an open background were the norm; there was also a unique kind of “X-ray” art that depicted the internal organs. Also widespread were cave and rock paintings or engravings, and SAND PAINTINGS associated with desert rituals.

Geographic distribution of Aboriginals

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AUTOCEPHALOUS CHURCH

AVALOKITEUVARA \0‘-v‘-0l+-ki-9t@sh-v‘-r‘ \ (Sanskrit: avalokita, “looking on”; juvara, “lord”), Chinese Kuan-yin \9gw!n-9yin, 9kw!n- \, Japanese Kannon \9k!n-9n|n \, the BODHISATTVA of infinite compassion and mercy, possibly the most popular of all Buddhist deities, beloved throughout many areas of the Buddhist world. He supremely exemplifies the bodhisattva’s resolve to postpone his own buddhahood until he has helped every being on earth achieve emancipation. His name has been variously interpreted as “the lord who looks in every direction” and “the lord of what we see” (that is, the actual, created world). Avalokiteuvara is the earthly manifestation of the self-born, eternal Buddha, AMITEBHA, whose figure is represented in his headdress, and he guards the world in the interval between the departure of the historical BUDDHA, Gotama, and the appearance of the future Buddha, MAITREYA. Avalokiteuvara protects against shipwreck, fire, assassins, robbers, and wild beasts. He is the creator of the fourth world, the universe in which we live. According to legend, his head once split with grief at realizing the number of wicked beings in the world yet to be saved. Amitebha Buddha caused each of the pieces to become a whole head and placed them on his son in 3 tiers of 3, then the 10th, and topped them all with his own image. Sometimes the 11-headed Avalokiteuvara is represented with thousands of arms, which rise like the AUTOLYCUS \|-9t!-l‘-k‘s \, in Greek mythology, the father of Anticleia, who was the mothoutspread tail of a peacock around him. In er of the hero ODYSSEUS. Later ancient authors painting he is usually shown white in made Autolycus the son of the god HERMES. He color (in Nepal, red). His female conwas believed to live at the foot of Mount Parsort is the goddess TERE. His tradinassus and was famous as a thief and swindler. tional residence is the mountain One version of the story states that SISYPHUS , Potala, and his images are freduring a visit to Autolycus, recognized his stolen quently placed on hilltops. cattle; on that occasion Sisyphus seduced AuThe height of the veneration of tolycus’ daughter Anticleia and hence Odysseus Avalokiteuvara in northern India was really the son of Sisyphus, not of Laertes, occurred in the 3rd–7th century. whom Anticleia afterward married. The stoIn China (where he became ry sought to establish a close connection beknown as KUAN-YIN) he was recognized as early as the 1st century tween Hermes, the god of theft and of cunning, and three persons—i.e., ( and had become very popular by the 6th century. RepresentaSisyphus, Odysseus, and Autolycus—who were seen as the intions of the bodhisattva in China prior to the Sung dycar nate representations of that practice and quality. nasty (960–1126) are unmistakably masculine in appearance. Later images display attributes AVADENA \0‘-v‘-9d!-n‘ \, legendary material centering on of both genders. One interprethe BUDDHA’s explanations tation of this development of events by a person’s worcontends that the bodhisatthy deeds in a previous life. tva is neither male nor feAvalokiteuvara, bronze figure from In the THERAVEDA tradition male but has transcended Kurkiher, Biher, 9th century the Peli cognate (Apadena) is the sexual distinctions, as he has all By courtesy of Patna Museum, Patna (Biher); photograph, Royal title of a “canonical” collection other dualities in the sphere of Academy of Arts, London of such stories. Avadenas inSAUSERA (the temporal world). According to this opinion, the clude the Divyevadena (“Divine flowing drapery and soft conAvadena”), consisting of 38 legtours of the body seen in statues and paintings have been ends, including some about the great Buddhist emperor intentionally combined with a visible moustache to emAUOKA, and the Avadena Uataka, which contains 100 phasize the absence of sexual identity. Furthermore, the LOAvadena stories. AUTOCEPHALOUS CHURCH \0|-t+-9se-f‘-l‘s \, in the modern usage of the CANON LAW of EASTERN ORTHODOXY, a church that enjoys total canonical and administrative independence and elects its own PRIMATES and bishops. The term was used in medieval Byzantine law in its literal sense of “self-headed” (Greek: autokephalos), or independent, and was applied to individual DIOCESES that did not depend upon the authority of a provincial METROPOLITAN. Today the Orthodox archbishopric of Mount Sinai, with the historic monastery of St. Catherine, still enjoys this privilege. Most modern Orthodox autocephalies are national churches, but some are limited only geographically and include the territories of several states. The autocephalous churches maintain canonical relations with each other and enjoy communion in faith and SACRA MENTS. There is between them a traditional order of precedence, with the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) enjoying the first place. The heads of individual autocephalous churches bear different titles: PATRIARCH (in Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Moscow, Georgia, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria), ARCHBISHOP (in Athens and Cyprus), or metropolitan (in Poland and America).

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AVIGNON PAPACY TUS SUTRA relates that Avalokiteuvara has the ability of assuming whatever form is required to relieve suffering and also has the power to grant children. Another point of view, while accepting the validity of this philosophical doctrine, holds that from at least the 12th century the popular devotional cult of Kuan-yin has superimposed onto the bodhisattva qualities of an indigenous Chinese goddess. Among the followers of the PURE LAND sect, who look to rebirth in the Western Paradise of the Buddha Amitebha, Kuan-yin forms part of a ruling triad, along with Amitebha and the bodhisattva Mahasthemaprepta. Images of the three are often placed together in temples, and Kuan-yin is shown in paintings welcoming the dead to the Western Paradise. This cult of Kuan-yin is based on SCRIPTURES of the Pure Land school that were translated into Chinese between the 3rd and 5th centuries. The bodhisattva was introduced into Tibet—where he is called Spyan-ras gzigs (“With a Pitying Look”)—in the 7th century, where he quickly became the most popular figure in the pantheon. Ultimately many Tibetans came to believe that he was, and still is, successively reincarnated in each DALAI LAMA. He is credited with introducing the prayer formula om madi padmehju! (frequently translated “the jewel is in the lotus”) to the people of Tibet. The cult of Avalokiteuvara/Kuan-yin probably reached Japan (where he is called KANNON) by way of Korea soon after BUDDHISM was first introduced into the country; the earliest known images at the Hjryj-ji (ji, “temple”) in Nara date from the mid-7th century. The worship of the bodhisattva was never confined to any one sect and continues to be widespread throughout Japan. As in China, some ambivalence exists about Kannon’s gender. In Japan Kannon’s ability to assume innumerable forms has led to seven major representations: (1) Shj Kannon, the simplest form, usually shown as a seated or standing figure with two hands; (2) Jj-ichi-men Kannon, a two-or four-handed figure with 11 heads; (3) Senju Kannon, the bodhisattva with 1,000 arms; (4) Jun-tei Kannon, one of the least common forms, represented as a seated figure with 18 arms, sometimes related to the Indian goddess Cuntj (mother of 700,000 buddhas); (5) Fukj-kenjaku Kannon, a form popular with the Tendai (T’IEN-T’AI) sect, whose special emblem is the lasso; (6) Ba-tj Kannon, shown with a fierce face and a horse’s head in the headdress, probably related to the Tibetan protector of horses, Hayagrjva; (7) Nyo-i-rin Kannon, shown seated, with six arms, holding the wish-fulfilling jewel. The virtues and miracles of Avalokiteuvara are accounted in many Buddhist sjtras. The Avalokiteuvara Sjtra was incorporated into the widely popular Lotus Sutra in the 3rd century (, though it continues to circulate as an independent work in China and is the main scripture of his cult worship there.

AVATAUSAKA SJTRA \0‘-v‘-9t‘m-s‘-k‘-9sl-9l! \, also spelled Bah)# All)h \b‘-

9h!-al-9l! \ (Arabic: “Splendor of God”), original name (Per-

sian) Mjrze Goseyn !Alj Njrj, (b. Nov. 12, 1817, Tehran, Iran—d. May 29, 1892, Acre, Palestine [now !Akko, Israel]), founder of the BAHE#J FAITH; he claimed to be the manifestation of the unknowable God. Mjrze Goseyn was a member of the SHI!ITE branch of ISLAM. He subsequently allied himself with Mjrze !Alj Mu-

hammad of Shjrez, who was known as the B E B (Arabic: “Gateway”) and was the head of the Bebjs, a Muslim sect professing a privileged access to final truth. After the Beb’s execution by the Iranian government for treason (1850), Mjrze Goseyn joined Mjrze Yagye (also called Zobg-e Azal), his own half brother and the Beb’s spiritual heir, in directing the Bebj movement. Mjrze Yagye later was discredited, and Mjrze Goseyn was exiled by orthodox SUNNI Muslims successively to Baghdad, Kurdistan, and Constantinople (Istanbul). There, in 1867, he publicly declared himself to be the divinely chosen imem MAHDJ (“rightly guided leader”), whom the Beb had foretold. The resulting factional violence caused the Ottoman government to banish Mjrze Goseyn to Acre. At Acre, Bahe# Ulleh, as he was by then called, developed the formerly provincial Bahe#j doctrine into a comprehensive teaching that advocated the unity of all religions and the universal brotherhood of man. Emphasizing social ethics, he eschewed ritual worship and devoted himself to the abolition of racial, class, and religious prejudices. His place of confinement in Acre became a center of pilgrimage for Bahe#j believers from Iran and the United States.

BAHINEBEJ, BAHINI \b‘-9hi-n!-9b!-% \ (b. 1628 (, Devago, in the Indian state of Maharashtra—d. 1700, Bahinebej), poet-saint (sant), remembered as a composer of devotional songs (abhangas) in Marathi to the Hindu deity Vieehal. Her work is preserved through oral performance (KJRTAN), old handwritten manuscripts, and modern printed collections. Bahinebej, in her autobiographical songs, describes herself as a devotee of another Marathi saint, TUK E R E M (1608–1649 (), whom she met when her maternal family and her husband, a Brahmin astrologer, lived near Tukerem’s village of Dehu. Bahinebej (whose given name means “sister”) records that her husband violently opposed her association with Tukerem because of Tukerem’s low caste (UJDRA). Her songs from this period describe her feeling of abandonment by her God and her struggle to perpetuate her faith; she also criticizes Brahmins who have lost their faith and, in a series of songs, defines a “Brahmin” as a person of good works and sincere devotion, regardless of caste. Though Bahinebej’s husband partially relented later, her contact with Tukerem occurred only in dreams, visions, and brief observances of his religious performances. Bahinebej’s verses both attack and defend a wife’s duties (strjdharma) in her community, exploring the struggle between those duties and her desire to follow Tukerem’s spiritual example. Bahinebej’s songs suggest that she was very familiar with the BHAGAVAD GJTE and UPANISHADS, as well as VED E NTA and SA U KHY E schools of thought, though she was most likely unable to read or to write. The transcription of her verses into old handwritten manuscripts is said to have begun with her son, Viehobe, who wrote them down from memory after her death.

B AHYA BEN J OSEPH IBN P AKUDA \9b#-y!-ben-9j+-s‘f-0ib‘n-p#-9kr \ (b. 1670, Pjnch, India—d. June 1716, Delhi), in SIKHISM, first military leader to wage an offensive war against the Mughal rulers of India, thereby temporarily extending Sikh territory. Information about Bande Singh’s early life is scant. In his early life, he became a Vaizdava ascetic. In 1708, GURJ GOBIND SINGH met him in Nended, a town on the banks of the Godevarj River in southern India, baptized him as a KH E LS E Sikh, and named him Bande Singh. The Gurj sent Bande Singh to the Punjab with the specific directive that he organize the Sikhs. It was under his command that they captured Sirhind, the most powerful Mughal garrison between Delhi and Lahore, in 1710. Bande Singh established his capital in nearby Mukhlispur (“city of the purified”), created an official seal, and struck new coins. The inscriptions on the seal and the coins indicate that Bande Singh regarded ultimate authority as being vested with God and the Gurjs. Some years later Mughal forces ousted Bande Singh from the Sirhind area, chased his army into the Shivelik hills, and eventually captured him in the Gurdespur area. Along with several hundred men, Bande Singh was taken to Delhi, where he was executed.

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BANNE#, GASAN ALHis militar y achievements earned him the epithet Bahedur (“brave”), and emblazoned on the Sikh imagination that it was the prerogative of the Khelse Sikh to rule the Punjab.

B ANNE #, G ASAN AL - \ 9h#s#n-#l-b#-9na \ (b. 1906, Magmudjya, Egypt—d. February 1949, Cairo), Egyptian political and religious leader who established a new religious society, the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD , and played a central role in Egyptian political and social affairs. After attending the teaching school at Damanhjr, Gasan alBanne# enrolled at the Der al!Uljm, a teacher-training school in Cairo, which also maintained a traditional religious and social outlook. He completed his training and in 1927 was assigned to teach Arabic in a primary school in the city of Ismailia (Al-Isme!jljya), Baptism in the Cathedral of Oaxaca, Mexico near the Suez Canal, which was Kathy Sloane—Photo Researchers a focal point for the foreign economic and military occupation of Egypt. In March 1928, with few drops may be sprinkled or placed on the head. six workers from a British camp labor force, he created the Ritual immersion has traditionally played an important Society of Muslim Brothers (Arabic: al-Ikhwen al-Muspart in JUDAISM, as a symbol of purification (in the MIKVAH, a limjn), which aimed at a rejuvenation of ISLAM, the moral reform of Egyptian society, and the expulsion of the British RITUAL BATH) or as a symbol of consecration (in rituals of from Egypt. By the advent of World War II the Muslim conversion, accompanied by special prayers). It was particularly significant in the rites of the ESSENES. According to Brotherhood had become a potent element on the Egyptian scene, attracting significant numbers of students, civil ser- the Gospels, ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST baptized Jesus Christ. Although there is no actual account of the institution of bapvants, and urban laborers. Many of the members came to view the Egyptian govern- tism by Jesus, the Gospel According to Matthew portrays ment as having betrayed the interests of Egyptian nationalthe risen Christ issuing the “Great Commission” to his folism. Gasan al-Banne# tried to maintain a tactical alliance lowers: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, with the government, but in the turmoil of the postwar baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son years many elements of the society passed beyond his au- and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I thority, and members were implicated in a number of as- have commanded you.” Elsewhere in the NEW TESTAMENT, however, this formula is not used. Some scholars thus sugsassinations, notably that of Prime Minister an-Nuqreshj in December 1948. With the connivance of the govern- gest that the quotation in Matthew reflects a tradition formed by a merging of the idea of spiritual baptism (as in ment, Gasan al-Banne# himself was assassinated in the folActs 1:5), early baptismal rites (as in Acts 8:16), and reports lowing year. of PENTECOSTALISM after such rites (as in Acts 19:5–6). BAPTISM , in CHRISTIANITY, the SACRAMENT of regeneration Baptism occupied a place of great importance in the and initiation into the Christian church; the word derives Christian community of the 1st century, but scholars disfrom the Greek verb baptj, “I dip, immerse.” According to agree over whether it was to be regarded as essential to the a theme of ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE, probably influenced by Jewnew birth and to membership in the KINGDOM OF GOD or ish belief in the CIRCUMCISION of adult proselytes, baptism is only as an external sign or symbol of inner regeneration. By death to a former life and the emergence of a new person, the 2nd century, the irreducible minimum for a valid bapsignified by the conferring of a new name; it is the total an- tism appears to have been the use of water and the invocation of the TRINITY. Usually the candidate was immersed nulment of the SINS of one’s past, from which one emerges a totally innocent person. At baptism, one becomes a memthree times, but there are references to pouring as well. ber of the church and is incorporated into the body of JESUS Most of those baptized in the early church were converts CHRIST. The forms and rituals of the various churches vary, from Greco-Roman religions and therefore were adults. but baptism almost invariably involves the use of water In Catholicism, baptism is normally conferred by a and the Trinitarian invocation, “I baptize you: In the name priest, but the church accepts the baptism conferred by of the Father, and of the Son, and of the HOLY SPIRIT.” The anyone having the use of reason “with the intention of docandidate may be wholly or partly immersed in water, the ing what the church does.” As the sacrament of rebirth it water may be poured over the head of the one baptized, or a cannot be repeated. (In ROMAN CATHOLICISM, baptism is con-

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BAPTIST ducted conditionally in case of doubt of the fact of baptism or the use of the proper rite.) Two points of controversy still exist in modern times. One is baptism by pouring rather than immersion, even though immersion was probably the biblical and early Christian rite. The second is the baptism of infants. There is no certain evidence of this earlier than the 3rd century, and the ancient baptismal liturgies are all intended for adults. The liturgy and the instructions clearly assume an adult who accepts the rite; without this decision the sacrament cannot be received. The Roman Catholic church accepts this principle by introducing adults ( GODPARENTS ), who make the decision for the infant at the commission of the parents. It is expected that the children will accept the decision made for them and will thus supply the adult decision that was presumed. During the REFORMATION the Lutherans, Reformed, and Anglicans accepted the Catholic attitude toward infant baptism. Baptism was, however, one of the most dramatic points differentiating radical reformers (such as the ANABAPTISTS ) from the rest of PROTESTANTISM . Michael Sattler (c. 1500–27), MENNO SIMONS, and Balthasar Hubmaier (1485– 1528) led the opposition to infant baptism. In modern times the largest Christian groups that practice adult rather than infant baptism are the BAPTISTS and the Christian Church (DISCIPLES OF CHRIST).

BAPTIST, member of a group of Protestant Christians who share most of the basic beliefs of PROTESTANTISM but who hold as an article of faith that only believers should be baptized and that it must be done by immersion. The Baptists do not constitute a single church or denominational structure, but most of them adhere to a congregational form of church government. Two groups of Baptists emerged in England during the PURITAN reform movement of the 17th century. While sharing the view that only believers should be baptized, the two groups differed with respect to the nature of the ATONEMENT of JESUS. Those who regarded the atonement as general (i.e., for all persons) came to be called General Baptists. Those who interpreted it as applying only to the particular body of the ELECT acquired the name Particular Baptists. The General Baptists trace their beginnings to the Baptist church founded in London c. 1611 by THOMAS HELWYS and his followers. They had returned from Amsterdam, where they had gone because of religious persecution. While in Amsterdam, they adopted the beliefs of their original leader JOHN SMYTH, who, by studying the NEW TESTAMENT, decided that only believers should be baptized. Through the work of the original London congregation, other General Baptist congregations were formed and the movement spread. In doctrine they followed ARMINIANISM. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, the General Baptists declined in numbers and influence. Churches closed and many members gravitated toward UNITARIANISM. The General Baptists were continued by a new group organized in 1770, the New Connection General Baptists, who had been influenced by the Methodist revival led by JOHN WESLEY (see METHODISM). Particular Baptists originated with a Baptist church established in 1638 by two groups who left an Independent church (i.e., churches not in communion with the Church of England) in London. Members of the new church believed that only believers (not infants) should be baptized. Doctrinally, they followed CALVINISM, which holds to the doctrine of a particular atonement, i.e., that Christ died only for the elect (see PREDESTINATION).

The Particular Baptists grew more rapidly than the General Baptists, but growth subsequently slowed as the Particular Baptists emphasized their doctrine of salvation only for the elect and did not work to gain new members. After 1750, however, they were influenced by the Methodist movement, and new interests in evangelism and MISSIONS brought about renewed growth. Through the leadership of William Carey, the English Baptist Missionary Society was organized in 1792, and Carey went to India as the society’s first missionary. Baptists were influential in the religious and political life of Great Britain in the 19th century, but membership and influence declined after World War I. Baptist origins in the United States can be traced to ROGER WILLIAMS, who established a Baptist church in Providence in 1639 after being banished by the Puritans from Massachusetts Bay. Williams soon left and leadership passed to John Clarke. Though Rhode Island remained a Baptist stronghold, the center of Baptist life in colonial America was Philadelphia. Baptist growth was spurred by the GREAT AWAKENING of the mid-18th century. Increases were especially dramatic in the Southern colonies, where Shubael Stearns established a church at Sandy Creek, N.C., in 1755. From this center revivalistic preachers fanned out across the southern frontier, establishing a Baptist dominance in the region that persists to the present. The membership of revivalistic Baptists continued to grow rapidly in the 19th century, assisted by lay preachers and a congregational church government well adapted to frontier settings. Baptists in the United States were not united in a national body until 1814, when an increasing interest in foreign missions necessitated a more centralized organization. The General Convention was soon torn apart, however, by dissension over slavery. A formal split occurred in 1845 when the Southern Baptist Convention was organized in Augusta, Ga., and was confirmed when the Northern Baptist Convention was organized in 1907. Southern Baptists and Northern Baptists (later American Baptists) developed distinct regional characteristics following the Civil War and still exhibit different tendencies in theology, ecumenical involvement, missionary activity, and worship. African Baptist churches, now grouped primarily in two large conventions, constitute another major segment of Baptists in the United States. Organized by freed slaves after the Civil War, these churches have often served as the social and spiritual center of the African-American community. African-American Baptist churches and ministers, led by MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., played a significant role in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. These churches and ministers continued as vital elements of organization through the 1980s, as was evident in the presidential candidacies (1984, 1988) of JESSE JACKSON. Baptists maintain that authority in matters of faith and practice rests, under Christ, with the local congregation of baptized believers. These local congregations are linked voluntarily into state, regional, and national organizations for cooperative endeavors such as missions, education, and philanthropy. The larger organizations, however, have no control over the local churches. The separation of CHURCH AND STATE has historically been a major tenet of Baptist doctrine. Baptist worship is centered around the exposition of the SCRIPTURES in a sermon. Extemporaneous prayer and hymn-singing are also characteristic. Baptists in the 20th century have provided leadership for diverse theological movements, notably WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH in the SOCIAL GOSPEL movement, Harry Emerson Fos-

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BARAITA dick and Shailer Mathews in American MODERNISM, and LY GRAHAM in contemporary Evangelicalism.

BIL-

BARAITA \b‘-9r&-t‘ \ (Hebrew: “Outside Teaching”), plural Baraitot \b‘-0r&-9t+t \, any of the ancient ORAL TRADITIONS of Jewish religious law that were not included in the MISHNAH attributed to Tannaite authorities. The Baraitot, dispersed singly throughout the YERUSHALMI (Palestinian) and BAVLI (Babylonian) talmuds, are often recognizable by such introductory words as “it was taught” or “the RABBI taught.” Since the Mishnah was selective and concisely phrased, Baraitot preserved oral traditions of Jewish law that might otherwise have been lost. BARCLAY, ROBERT \9b!r-kl%, -kl@ \ (b. Dec. 23, 1648, Gordonstoun, Moray, Scot.—d. Oct. 3, 1690, Ury, Aberdeen), leader of the SOCIETY OF FRIENDS (Quakers) whose Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1678) became a standard statement of Quaker doctrines. After returning to Scotland from his education in Paris, Barclay joined the Society of Friends in 1666. For a public debate at Aberdeen in 1675, he published Theses Theologicae, a set of 15 propositions of the Quaker faith. To amplify them further, he published the Apology three years later. This early and enduring exposition of Quaker beliefs defined Quakerism as a religion of the “inner light”—that light being the HOLY SPIRIT within the believer. In 1677 Barclay and other Quaker leaders, including William Penn (1644–1718), visited Holland and northern Germany to promote the Quaker movement. Repeatedly imprisoned and persecuted at home, Barclay and Penn found a friend in James II, then duke of York. Their influence with him helped secure a patent for themselves and 10 other society members to settle in that area of present-day New Jersey, then called East Jersey. The group emigrated to America in 1682. After serving from 1682 to 1688 as nominal governor of East Jersey, Barclay returned to Scotland and died at his estate at Ury.

B ARDESANES \ 0b!r-d‘-9s@-n%z \, also called Bardaisan, or Bar Daizen \0b!r-d&-9s!n \ (b. July 11, 154, Edessa, Syria [now Urfa, Turkey]—d. c. 222, Edessa), a leading representative of Syrian GNOSTICISM. Bardesanes was a Christian missionary in Syria after his conversion in 179. His chief writing, The Dialogue of Destiny, or The Book of the Laws of the Countries, recorded by a disciple, Philip, is the oldest known original composition in Syriac literature. Bardesanes attacked the fatalism of the Greek philosophers after Aristotle (4th century )), particularly regarding the influence of the stars on human destiny. Mingling Christian influence with Gnostic teaching, he denied the creation of the world, of SATAN, and of evil by the supreme God, attributing them to a hierarchy of deities. Aided by his son Harmonius, Bardesanes wrote many of the first Syriac hymns to popularize his teachings. Their literary value earned for him renown in the history of Syriac poetry and music. BAR KOKHBA \0b!r-9k|_-b! \, original name Simeon bar Kosba, Kosba also spelled Koseba, Kosiba, or Kochba (d. 135 (), Jewish leader who led an unsuccessful revolt (132–135 () against Roman dominion in Palestine. In 131 the Roman emperor Hadrian decided upon a policy of Hellenization to integrate the Jews into the empire. CIRCUMCISION was proscribed, a Roman colony (Aelia) was founded in Jerusalem, and a temple to JUPITER Capitolinus 112 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

was erected over the ruins of the TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM. The Jews rebelled in 132, Simeon bar Kosba at their head. He was reputedly of Davidic descent, and a 4th-century story alleges that he was hailed as the MESSIAH by the greatest RABBI of the time, AKIBA BEN JOSEPH, who gave him the title Bar Kokhba (“Son of the Star”), a messianic allusion. Bar Kokhba took the title nasi (“prince”) and struck his own coins, with the legend “Year 1 of the liberty of Jerusalem.” The Jews took Aelia by storm and badly mauled the Romans’ Egyptian Legion, XXII Deiotariana. In the summer of 134 Hadrian himself visited the battlefield and summoned the governor of Britain, Gaius Julius Severus, to his aid with 35,000 men of the Xth Legion. Jerusalem was retaken, and Severus gradually wore down and constricted the rebels’ area of operation, until in 135 Bar Kokhba was himself killed at Betar, his stronghold in southwest Jerusalem. The remnant of the Jewish army was soon crushed; Jewish war casualties are recorded as numbering 580,000, not including those who died of hunger and disease. Judaea was desolated, the remnant of the Jewish population annihilated or exiled, and Jerusalem barred to Jews thereafter. In 1952 and 1960–61 a number of Bar Kokhba’s letters to his lieutenants were discovered in the Judaean desert.

B ARMEN , S YNOD OF \ 9b!r-m‘n \ , meeting of German Protestant leaders at Barmen in the Ruhr, in May 1934, to organize Protestant resistance to National Socialism (Nazism). The SYNOD was of decisive importance in the development of the German CONFESSING CHURCH. Representatives came from Lutheran, Reformed, and United churches, although some of the church governments had already been captured by men loyal to Adolf Hitler, and others had decided to limit their activities to passive resistance. The Pastors’ Emergency League, headed by Martin Niemöller, was the backbone of the active resistance. At Barmen the representatives adopted six articles, called the Theological Declaration of Barmen, or the Barmen Declaration, that defined the Christian opposition to National Socialist ideology and practice. The major theological influence was that of KARL BARTH. The declaration was cast in the classical form of the great confessions of faith, affirming major biblical teachings and condemning the important heresies of those who were attempting to accommodate CHRISTIANITY to National Socialism. BAR MITZVAH \b!r-9mits-v‘, 0b!r-m%ts-9v! \ (Hebrew: “One who is subject to the commandment”), plural Bar Mitzvot \0b!r-m%ts-9v+t \, Jewish religious ritual and family celebration commemorating a boy’s 13th birthday—this being the age that bestows on a Jewish male responsibility to keep the commandments and allows entry into the community of JUDAISM. The boy may henceforth don PHYLACTERIES (religious symbols worn on the forehead and left arm) during the weekday-morning prayers and may be counted an adult whenever 10 male adults are needed to form a quorum (minyan) for public prayers. In a public act of acknowledging religious majority, the boy is called up during the religious service to read from the TORAH. This event may take place on any occasion following the 13th birthday at which the Torah is read but generally occurs on the SABBATH. Most elements of the Bar Mitzvah celebration did not appear until the Middle Ages. REFORM JUDAISM replaced Bar Mitzvah, after 1810, with the confirmation of boys and girls together, generally on the feast of SHAVUOT. In the 20th century, however, many Reform congregations restored the

BARTH, KARL

Bar Mitzvah ceremony at the Temple of Kehilath Jeshurun, New York City Van Bucher—Photo Researchers

Bar Mitzvah rite. A separate ceremony has been instituted within Reform and CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM, and especially in RECONSTRUCIONIST synagogues, to mark the adulthood of girls, called Bat Mitzvah. BARROW: see BURIAL MOUND.

BARTH, K ARL \9b!rt \ (b. May 10, 1886, Basel, Switz.—d. Dec. 9/10, 1968, Basel), Swiss theologian, among the most influential of the 20th century, who initiated a radical change in Protestant thought, stressing the “wholly otherness of God” over the anthropocentrism of 19th-century liberal theology. Barth was born in Basel, the son of Fritz Barth, a professor of NEW TESTAMENT and early church history at Bern. He studied at the universities of Bern, Berlin, Tübingen, and Marburg. After serving as a pastor in Geneva from 1909 to 1911, he was appointed to the working-class PARISH of Safenwil, in Aargau canton. The 10 years Barth spent as a minister were the formative period of his life. Deeply shocked by the disaster that had overtaken Europe in World War I and disillusioned by the collapse of the ethic of religious idealism, he questioned the liberal theology of his German teachers and its roots in the rationalist, historicist, and dualist thought aris-

ing from the Enlightenment. Through study of the teaching of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, he struggled to clarify the relation between JUSTIFICATION and social righteousness, which governed all he had to say in later life about the relation of the Gospel to the power of the state and the oppression of the poor. His first major work, Der Römerbrief (1919; The Epistle to the Romans), established his position as a notable theologian with a new message about the sheer Godness of God and the unlimited range of his GRACE. The critical and explosive nature of his theology came to be known as “dialectical theology,” or “the theology of crisis”; it initiated a trend toward neoorthodoxy in Protestant theology. On the basis of this publication, Barth in 1921 was appointed professor of theology at the University of Göttingen; he was later appointed to chairs at Münster (1925) and Bonn (1930). In 1934 he published Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner (Eng. trans., “No!” in Natural Theology [1946]), a response to Brunner’s essay “Nature and Grace.” In his response, Barth traced the adoption of Germanic pre-Christian elements and ANTI-SEMITISM by the German Christian movement and its perversion of historic CHRISTIANITY. With the accession of Adolf Hitler to power in 1933, Barth became deeply involved in the church struggle. He was one of the founders of the so-called CONFESSING CHURCH, which reacted vigorously against Nazi nationalist ideology and the attempt to set up a German Christian church. The famous Barmen Declaration of 1934, largely based on a draft that Barth had prepared, expressed his conviction that the only way to offer effective resistance to the secularizing and paganizing of the church in Nazi Germany was to hold fast to true Christian doctrine. Barth’s refusal to take the oath of unconditional allegiance to the Führer cost him his chair in Bonn in 1935. He was quickly offered the chair of theology in his native Basel, however. From that date until the end of the war, he continued to champion the cause of the Confessing Church, of the Jews, and of oppressed people generally. After the war and the collapse of the Third Reich, Barth was much concerned about the future of Germany, declaring that, although responsible for the disasters to themselves and to the world, the Germans now needed friends to help them become a free people. Barth was concerned to establish the truth that God can be known only in accordance with his nature and to reject the 19th-century view that saw an identity between the Spirit of God and religious self-consciousness. Drawing on the CHURCH FATHERS and the Reformers, Barth deKarl Barth, 1965 manded a retur n to the Horst Tappe prophetic teaching of the BIBLE (in Jeremiah and the writings of ST . PAUL THE APOSTLE ), of which he believed the Reformers were authentic exponents. The essence of the Christian message for Barth was the overwhelming love of the absolutely supreme, transcendent God, who comes in infinite condescension to give himself to mankind in unconditional freedom and grace. After the war Barth continued to interest himself

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BARZAKH, ALkeenly in current theological discussion, participating in controversies regarding BAPTISM, HERMENEUTICS, “demythologizing,” and others. His authority and prestige made a profound impression when he spoke at the opening meeting of the Conference of the WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES in Amsterdam in 1948. Another notable event in his later years was a visit to Rome following the SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL (1962–65), of which he wrote in Ad limina apostolorum. BARZAKH , AL - \#l-9b!r-z!_ \, in Islamic belief, the period between the burial of the dead and their final judgment. It is a widespread Muslim belief that when someone dies the ANGEL of Death (malek al-mawt) arrives, sits at the head of the deceased, and addresses the soul according to its known status. According to the Kiteb al-rjh—(“Book of the Soul”) written in the 14th century by the Hanbali theologian Muhammad ibn Abi-Bakr ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyah— wicked souls are instructed “to depart to the wrath of God.” Fearing what awaits them, they seek refuge throughout the body and have to be extracted by the angels, who then place the soul in a hair cloth. A full record is made, and the soul is then returned to the body in the grave. “Good and contented souls” are instructed “to depart to the mercy of God.” They leave the body, are wrapped by angels in a perfumed shroud, and are taken to the “seventh heaven,” where the record is kept. These souls, too, are then returned to their bodies. Two angels colored blue and black, known as Munkar and Nakjr, then question the deceased about basic doctrinal tenets. In a sense this trial at the grave (fitnat al-qabr) is a show trial, the verdict having already been decided. Believers hear it proclaimed by a herald, and in anticipation of the comforts of al-janna (the Garden, or “paradise”) their graves expand “as far as the eye can reach.” Unbelievers fail the test. The herald proclaims that they are to be tormented in the grave; a door opens in their tomb to let in heat and smoke from jihannam (“hell”), and the tomb itself contracts. The period between burial and the final judgment is known as al-barzakh. At the final judgment (yaum al-giseb), unbelievers and the god-fearing are alike resurrected. Both are endowed with physical bodies, with which to suffer or enjoy whatever lies in store for them.

B ASAVA \ 9b‘-s‘-0v!, 9b‘s-v! \, also spelled Basavanna (fl. mid-12th century, Karnataka region, South India), Hindu religious reformer, teacher, theologian, and administrator of the royal treasury of the Celukya king. Basava is the subject of the Basava Pureda, one of the sacred texts of the Hindu Vjrauaiva (LIEGEYAT) sect. According to tradition, he was the founder of the Vjrauaivas, but study of Celukya inscriptions indicates that he in fact revived an existing sect. Basava helped to spread the Vjrauaiva sect by teaching and by dispersing funds to Vjrauaiva guilds. His uncle, a prime minister, arranged his appointment as chief of the treasury, and for several years he and his faction enjoyed a great deal of popularity. But other factions at court were apparently resentful of his power and the flourishing of Vjrauaiva MENDICANTS under his patronage. As a result of their accusations, he fled the kingdom, dying soon thereafter. His poetry to SHIVA as “Lord of the meeting rivers” has earned him a place at the front rank of Kannada literature and the literature of Hindu devotion (BHAKTI) generally. BASILICA \ b‘-9si-li-k‘, -9zi- \ , in ROMAN CATHOLICISM and EASTER N ORTHODOXY , canonical title of honor given to church buildings that are distinguished either by their an-

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tiquity or by their role as international centers of worship because of their association with a major saint, an important historical event, or, in the Orthodox Church, a national PATRIARCH. The title gives the church certain privileges, principally the right to reserve its high altar for the POPE, a CARDINAL, or a patriarch. In architecture, “basilica” in its earliest usage designated any number of large, roofed public buildings in ancient Rome and pre-Christian Italy. Gradually, however, the word became limited to buildings with rectangular walled structures and an open hall extending from end to end, usually flanked by side aisles set off by colonnades (in large buildings often running entirely around the central area), and with a raised platform at one or both ends. One type of smaller secular basilica had side aisles extending the length of the sides only and an apse at one end. It was this type that the early Christians adopted for their churches. A later feature, the transept, a lateral aisle crossing the nave just before the apse, created the cross-shaped plan that became standard for churches in western Europe throughout the Middle Ages. In the typical Early Christian basilica the nave rose considerably higher than the side aisles, the wall that supported the nave roof stood above the level of the side aisle roofs and could thus be pierced at the top with windows to light the center of the church. This high nave wall is called the clerestory. The apse opened from the nave by a great arch known as the triumphal arch. After the 10th century a round or square campanile, or bell tower, was added. The exterior of such a building was simple and was rarely decorated. The simplicity of the interior, however, provided surfaces suitable for elaborate ornamentation. The basilica plan, with its nave, aisles, and apse, remained the basis for church building in the Western church. It gradually passed out of use in the Eastern church, however, eclipsed by the radial plan on which the EMPEROR JUSTINIAN I constructed the domed cathedral of HAGIA SOPHIA at Constantinople (now Istanbul).

BASILIDES \0ba-s‘-9l&-d%z, -z‘- \ (fl. 2nd century (, Alexandria), scholar and teacher, who founded a school of GNOSTICISM known as the Basilidians. He probably was a pupil of Menander in Antioch, and he was teaching in Alexandria at the time of the emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. In the 3rd century CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA wrote that Basilides claimed to have received a secret tradition—on which he apparently based his gnosis, or esoteric knowledge—from Glaucias, an interpreter of the ST . PETER THE APOSTLE . In addition to psalms and odes, Basilides wrote commentaries on the GOSPELS and also compiled a “gospel” for his own sect; only fragments of these writings have been preserved. Contradictory accounts of Basilides’ theology have been provided by Clement, as well as by the theologians Hippolytus of Rome and SAINT IRENAEUS, though his system of belief appears to have included elements of NEOPLATONISM, the NEW TESTAMENT, and other Gnostic systems. Basilides was succeeded by his son, Isidore, and the Basilidian school still existed in Egypt in the 4th century. Its followers were the first to keep the day of the BAPTISM of JESUS on January 6 or 10, celebrating it with an all-night vigil. BASIL THE GREAT, SAINT \9b@-z‘l, 9ba-, -s‘l \, Latin Basilius \b‘-9si-l%-‘s, -9zi- \ (b. c. 329 (, Caesarea Mazaca, Cappadocia—d. Jan. 1, 379, Caesarea; Western feast day January 2; Eastern feast day January 1), early CHURCH FATHER who defended Christian orthodoxy against ARIANISM.

BEEINJYA Basil was born of a distinguished Christian family of Caesarea. He studied at Caesarea and Constantinople and (c. 351–356) at Athens, where he formed a friendship with Gregory of Nazianzus. On returning home he began a secular career, but the influence of his pious sister Macrina, later a NUN and ABBESS, confirmed his earlier inclination to the ascetic life. With a group of friends, he established a monastic settlement on the family estate at Annesi in Pontus. In 357 he made an extensive tour of the monasteries of Egypt, and in 360 he assisted the Cappadocian bishops at a SYNOD at Constantinople. He had been distressed by the general acceptance of the Arian Creed of the Council of Ariminum the previous year and especially by the fact that his own bishop, Dianius of Caesarea, had supported it. Shortly before the death of Dianius (362), Basil was reconciled to him and later was ordained PRESBYTER (priest) to assist Dianius’ successor, the new convert EUSEBIUS. Tensions between the men led Basil to withdraw to Annesi. In 365 Basil was called back to Caesarea, when the church was threatened by the Arian emperor Valens. His theological and ecclesiastical policy thereafter aimed to unite against Arianism the former semi-Arians and the supporters of Nicaea under the formula “three persons (hypostases) in one substance (ousia),” thus preserving both unity and the necessary distinctions in the theological concept of the godhead. On Eusebius’ death in 370, Basil became his successor, although he was opposed by some of the other bishops in the province. As bishop of Caesarea, Basil was METROPOLITAN (ecclesiastical PRIMATE of a province) of Cappadocia. He founded charitable institutions to aid the poor, the ill, and travelers. When Valens passed through Caesarea in 371, Basil defied his demand for submission. In 372 Valens divided the province, and Basil considered this a personal attack, since Anthimus of Tyana thus became metropolitan for the cities of western Cappadocia. Basil countered by installing supporters in some of the border towns— GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS at Sasima and his own brother GREGORY OF NYSSA. This tactic was only partially successful, but Basil escaped the attacks that Valens launched on orthodox bishops elsewhere. Basil’s numerous and influential writings stemmed from his practical concerns as monk, pastor, and church leader. The Longer Rules and Shorter Rules (for monasteries) and other ascetic writings distill the experience that began at Annesi: they were to exert strong influence on the monastic life of Eastern Christianity (see EASTERN ORTHODOXY). Basil’s preserved sermons deal mainly with ethical and social problems. The “Address to Young Men,” defends the study of classical literature by Christians (Basil himself made considerable critical use of Greek philosophical thought). “Against Eunomius” defends the deity of the Son against an extreme Arian thinker, and “On the Holy Spirit” expounds the deity of the spirit implied in the church’s tradition, though not previously formally defined. Basil is most characteristically revealed in his letters, of which more than 300 are preserved. Many deal with daily activities; others are, in effect, short treatises on theology or ethics; several of his Canonical Epistles, decisions on points of discipline, have become part of the CANON LAW of the Eastern Orthodox church. The extent of

Basil’s actual contribution to the magnificent series of eucharistic prayers known as the Liturgy of St. Basil is uncertain. But at least the central prayer of consecration (setting apart the bread and wine) reflects his spirit and was probably in use at Caesarea in his own lifetime. Basil’s health was poor. He died soon after Valens’ death in the Battle of Adrianople had opened the way for the victory of Basil’s cause. BASMALAH \9b#s-m#-l# \, also called tasmiya, in ISLAM, the formula-prayer: bi#sm Alleh al-ragmen al-ragjm, “in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.” This invocation, which was first introduced by the QUR#AN, appears at the beginning of every Qur#anic SJRA (chapter) except the ninth and is frequently recited by Muslims to elicit God’s blessings on their actions. The basmalah also introduces all formal documents and transactions and must always preface actions that are legally required or recommended. An abbreviated version precedes certain daily rituals, such as meals. Magicians often use the basmalah in AMULETS, claiming that the prayer was inscribed in ADAM’s side, GABRIEL’S wing, SOLOMON’S seal, and JESUS CHRIST’S tongue.

B ASTET \ 9b!s-0tet, 9bas- \, also called Bast, or Ubasti, in EGYPTIAN RELIGION, goddess worshiped in the form of a lioness, and later a cat. Bastet’s nature changed after the domestication of the cat around 1500 ). She was native to Bubastis in the Nile River delta but also had an important cult at Memphis. In the Late and Ptolemaic periods large cemeteries of mummified cats were created at both sites, and thousands of bronze statuettes of the goddess were deposited as votive offerings. Small figures of cats were also worn as AMULETS; this too was probably related to the cult of Bastet. Bastet is represented as a lioness or as a woman with a cat’s head: she carries an ancient percussion instrument, the sistrum, in her right hand; a breastplate (in Bastet’s case, surmounted with the head of a lioness), in her left hand; and a small bag over her left arm. She wears an elaborately ornamented dress. Her cult was carried to Italy by the Romans, and traces have been found in Rome, Ostia, Nemi, and Pompeii.

BATHSHEBA \bath-9sh%-b‘ \, in the OLD TES(2 Samuel 11, 12; 1 Kings 1, 2), the beautiful daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite. She was seduced by DAVID and became pregnant. David then had Uriah killed and married her. Their first child died, but Bathsheba later gave birth to SOLOMON. When David was dying, Bathsheba successfully conspired with the prophet Nathan to block Adonijah’s succession to the throne and to win it for Solomon, after which she occupied an influential position as the queen mother. TAMENT

B EEINJYA \0b!-t%-9n%-‘ \, in ISLAM, sects—the

ISME ! JLJS, in particular—that interpreted religious texts exclusively on the basis of their

Statuette of Bastet, Late Period to Ptolemaic period, c. 664–30 ) The British Museum/Heritage-Images

115 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

BAU hidden, or inner, meanings (Arabic: beein). This type of interpretation gained currency about the 8th century among certain esoteric SHI!ITE sects, especially the schismatic Isme!jljs, who believed that beneath every obvious or literal meaning of a sacred text lay a secret, hidden meaning, which could be arrived at through ta#wjl (interpretations by ALLEGORY). They further stated that MUHAMMAD was only the transmitter of the literal word of God, the QUR#AN, but it was the IMAM (divinely inspired leader) who was empowered to interpret, through ta#wjl, its true, hidden meaning. Speculative philosophy and theology eventually influenced the Beeinjya, though they remained always on the side of esoteric knowledge; some Sufis were also placed among the Beeinjya for their insistence on an esoteric body of doctrine known only to the initiate (see SUFISM ). Although the Isme!jljs had always acknowledged the validity of both beein and xehir, about the 12th century the Nusairis (Nuzayrjya) and the DRUZE came to accept only the hidden meanings and exalted the imam to extraordinary heights. SUNNI Muslim scholars condemned the Beeinjya for interpretations that rejected the literal meaning and accused them of producing confusion and controversy through a multiplicity of readings, thereby allowing ignorant or mischievous persons to claim possession of religious truths. The Beeinjya were further labeled as enemies of Islam, bent upon destroying the Sunnis’ conception of the faith.

B AU \9ba> \ (Sumerian), also called Nininsina, Akkadian Gula, or Ninkarrak, in MESOPOTAMIAN RELIGIONS, city goddess of Urukug in the Lagash region and, as Nininsina, the Queen of Isin, city goddess of Isin, south of Nippur. Bau seems originally to have been goddess of the dog; as Nininsina she was long represented with a dog’s head, and the dog was her emblem, though later she became a goddess of healing. She was a daughter of An, king of the gods, and the wife of Pabilsag, a rain god who was also called NINURTA, or Ningirsu. BEUL \9b!->l \ (Bengali: “Madman”), member of an order of religious singers of Bengal known for their unconventional behavior and for the spontaneity of their mystical verse. There is little detailed information about the development of the order, as their songs began to be collected and written down only in the 20th century, but it is known to have existed since the 17th century and probably has deeper roots. The membership consists of both Hindus and Muslims, and the tenor of worship is syncretic (see SYNCRETISM, RELIGIOUS). According to Beul doctrine, the Supreme is manifest in active form in menstrual blood and in passive form in semen. To unite these two aspects of divinity and reverse the process of creation leading to death and rebirth, Beuls practice a sexual and yogic regimen. Their songs frequently speak of this discipline, but do so in symbolic language intended to obscure aspects of its meaning from the uninitiated. A major theme is the love between the human personality and the indwelling, personal divinity. Many Bengali authors have acknowledged an indebtedness of inspiration to Beul verse. B AVLI \9b!v-l% \, also called Talmud Bavli, or the Babylonian Talmud, or the Talmud, second and more authoritative of the two TALMUDS (the other Talmud being the YERUSHALMI) produced by RABBINIC JUDAISM. Completed about 600 (, the Bavli served as the constitution and bylaws of Rabbinic JUDAISM. 116 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Several attributes of the Bavli distinguish it from the Talmud Yerushalmi (Palestinian Talmud) and must be considered in accounting for its great intellectual influence. First, the Bavli shows how practical reason can work to make diverse issues and actions conform to a single principle. Second, it shows how applied logic discerns the regular and the orderly in the confusion and disorder of everyday conflict. The Bavli in its 37 tractates is entirely uniform, stylistic preferences exhibited on any given page characterize every other page of the document, and diverse topics produce only slight differentiation in modes of analysis. The task of interpretation in the Talmudic writing was to uncover the integrity of the truth that God manifested in the one and unique revelation, the TORAH (both oral and written). By integrity was meant a truth that was unified and beyond all division. The message of the first document of the oral Torah, the MISHNAH, was the hierarchical unity of all being in the One on high. Since the Bavli’s authorship undertook precisely the same inquiry, the way that the Mishnah and the Bavli deal with the problem of showing the integrity of truth illuminates for the reader how the two dominant documents of Judaism set matters forth. The Mishnah’s version of the integrity of truth focuses upon the unity of all being within a hierarchy. The Mishnah’s overriding proposition is that all classes of things stand in a hierarchical relationship to one another, and, in that encompassing hierarchy, there is place for everything. The theological proposition that is implicit but never spelled out, of course, is that one God occupies the pinnacle of the hierarchy of all being—to that one God all things turn upward, from complexity to simplicity; from that one God all things flow downward, from singularity to multiplicity. To state with emphasis the one large argument— the metaproposition—that the Mishnah’s authorship sets forth in countless small ways: the very artifacts that appear multiple in fact form classes of things, and, moreover, these classes themselves are subject to a reasoned ordering by appeal to this-worldly characteristics signified by properties and indicative traits. The Bavli’s version of the integrity of truth matches the Mishnah’s theme of the hierarchical unity of all being with the Bavli’s principle that many principles express a single one—many laws embody one governing law, which is the law behind the laws. However, the difference in the documents may be seen, in how, for instance, the Mishnah establishes a world in stasis: lists of like things, subject to like rules. In contrast, the Bavli portrays a world in motion: lists of like things form series, but series also conform to rules. The Bavli’s paramount intellectual trait is its quest through abstraction for the unity of the law and the integrity of truth. That same quest insists on the fair and balanced representation of conflicting principles behind discrete laws—not to serve the cause of academic harmony but to set forth how, at their foundations, the complicated and diverse laws may be explained by appeal to simple and few principles. The conflict of principles then is less consequential than the demonstration that diverse cases may be reduced to only a few principles. Both Talmuds, the Yerushalmi and the Bavli, treat the same issues of the Mishnah, yet the second Talmud radically differs from the first, and the two Talmuds rarely intersect other than at a given Mishnah paragraph or TOSEFTA selection. This is not so surprising, for, despite the fact that the Yerushalmi is 200 years older than the Bavli, scholars do not believe the framers of the Bavli to have had access to the Yerushalmi during the Bavli’s redaction. (Though some

BECKET, SAINT THOMAS sayings known to the editors of the Yerushalmi also circulated among those of the Bavli.) Therefore, each Talmud pursues its own interests when reading a passage shared with the other. No substantial, shared exegetical protocol or tradition, whether in fully spelled-out statements in so many words, or in the gist of ideas, or in topical conventions, or in intellectual characteristics, governed the two Talmuds’ reading of the same Mishnah paragraph. The Bavli presents an utterly autonomous statement, speaking in its own behalf and in its own way about its own interests. If we compare the way in which the two Talmuds read the same Mishnah, we discern consistent differences between them. The principal difference between the Talmuds is the same difference that distinguishes jurisprudence from philosophy. The Yerushalmi talks in details, the Bavli in large truths; the Yerushalmi tells us what the Mishnah says, the Bavli, what it means. How do the two Talmuds compare? 1. The Yerushalmi analyzes evidence, the Bavli investigates premises; 2. The Yerushalmi remains wholly within the limits of its case, the Bavli vastly transcends the bounds of the case altogether; 3. The Yerushalmi wants to know the rule, the Bavli asks about the principle and its implications for other cases. The Yerushalmi provides an EXEGESIS and amplification of the Mishnah; the Bavli, a theoretical study of the law in all its magnificent abstraction, transforming the Mishnah into testimony to a deeper reality altogether: to the law behind the laws.

B AYON , THE \ 9b!-0y+n \ , Cambodian Buddhist

PYRAMID

temple constructed c. 1200 at the behest of Jayavarman VII (1181–c. 1220), who had broken with Khmer tradition and adopted MAHEYENA Buddhism. In order to conform with traditional MYTHOLOGY, the Khmer kings built themselves a series of artificial mounThe Bayon at the Angkor Thom complex, Angkor, Cambodia Dennie Cody—Taxi/Getty Images

tains on the Cambodian plain at the royal city of Angkor, each crowned by shrines containing images of gods and of themselves, their families, and their ancestors. Most of the temple mountains are oriented east to west, the main gates facing east. Originally the Bayon was designed to serve as the primary locus of the royal cult and to serve as Jayavarman’s personal mausoleum; it stood at the center of Angkor Thom, the new capital that Jayavarman built. The foursided central tower is carved with faces, some of which seem to represent Jayavarman in the guise of AVALOKITEUVARA, the great BODHISATTVA. Each side of the tower is oriented to a cardinal direction. The central tower is surrounded by an additional 12 towers; each side of these towers has a carved face of Avalokiteuvara as well. In total, there are 54 towers at the Bayon site, all with carved bas-relief visages. The bas-reliefs depict Jayavarman’s military victories as well as scenes of ordinary life, providing a picture of 13th-century Cambodians at work, rest, and play. BEATIFICATION , in ROMAN the process of CANONIZATION.

CATHOLICISM,

second stage in

B EATITUDE , any of the blessings said by JESUS CHRIST in the SERMON ON THE MOUNT as told in the NEW TESTAMENT in MATTHEW 5:3–12 and in the Sermon on the Plain in LUKE 6:20–23. They are named from the initial words (beati sunt, “blessed are”) of those sayings in the Latin VULGATE Bible. Beatitudes are found in other places in the New Testament (e.g., Matthew 11:6, Luke 7:23, and John 20:29) and appear to be adapted from similar opening words contained in some of the Psalms (e.g., Psalms 32:1). In the Revised Standard Version, the nine Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3–12 read as follows: ◆

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you. ◆

BECKET, SAINT THOMAS \9be-kit \, also called Thomas à Becket, or Thomas of London (b. c. 1118, Cheapside, London—d. Dec. 29, 1170, Canterbury, Kent, Eng.; canonized 1173; feast day December 29), chancellor of England (1155– 62) and archbishop of Canterbury (1162–70) during the reign of King Henry II. Thomas was born to Norman parents of the merchant class. He was educated first at Merton priory, then in a City 117 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

BEDE THE VENERABLE, SAINT with Louis VII of France. Pope Alexander III received Beckof London school, and finally at Paris. He was introduced et with honor but hesitated to act decisively in his favor in by his father to Archbishop Theobald, a former ABBOT of Bec. Thomas won Theobald’s confidence, acted as his fear that he might throw Henry into the arms of the Holy agent, and was sent by him to study civil and CANON LAW. Roman emperor Frederick I and his ANTIPOPE, Paschal III. In 1154 Theobald, as a reward of his services, appointed Thomas’ exile lasted for six years (Nov. 2, 1164–Dec. 2, Thomas archdeacon of Canterbury, an important and lucra1170). Henry meanwhile had seized the properties of the tive post, and less than three months later recommended archbishop and his supporters and had exiled all Thomas’ him to Henry as chancellor. Here Thomas showed to the close relatives. Several abortive attempts were made at recfull his brilliant abilities, razing castles, repairing the Towonciliation, but new acts of hostility by the king and declaer of London, conducting embassies, and raising and lead- rations of excommunication hurled by Thomas at his oppoing troops in war. He was trusted completely by the king. nents embittered the struggles. The movement known as the GREGORIAN REFORM had Finally, in 1170, Henry had his eldest son crowned as cospread from Italy and had begun to influence English king by the archbishop of York, Becket’s old rival. This was churchmen. Leading points in its program were free eleca flagrant breach of papal prohibition and of the immemoritions to clerical posts, inviolability of church property, freeal right of Canterbury to crown the king. Thomas, followed dom of appeal to Rome, and clerical immunity from lay triby the pope, excommunicated all responsible. Henry, fearbunals. Under Henry I and Stephen, the archbishops had ing an interdict for England, met Thomas at Fréteval (July stood out for these reforms, sometimes with partial suc- 22), and it was agreed that Thomas should return to Cancess. Henry II, however, undoubtedly aimed for strict con- terbury and receive back all the possessions of his see. Neitrol over the church, and Becket had aided him. With the ther party withdrew from his position regarding the Constideath of Theobald in 1161, Henry hoped to appoint Becket tutions of Clarendon, which on this occasion were not as archbishop and thus complete mentioned. Thomas returned to his program. Canterbury (December 2) and was For almost a year after the death received with enthusiasm, but furof Theobald the see of Canterbury ther excommunications of the hoswas vacant. Thomas was aware of tile royal servants, as well as his the king’s intention and tried to ready acceptance of tumultuous dissuade him by warnings of what acclaim by the crowds, infuriated would happen. Henry persisted and Henry in Normandy. Thomas was elected. Once conseSome violent words of Henry crated, Thomas changed both his were taken literally by four leading outlook and his way of life. He beknights of the court, who proceedcame devout and austere and emed swiftly to Canterbury (Decembraced the PAPACY and its canon ber 29), forced themselves into the law. Greatly to Henry’s displeaarchbishop’s presence, and folsure, he took up the matter of lowed him into the cathedral. “criminous clerks.” In western EuThere, at twilight, after further alrope, accused clerics for long had tercation, they cut him down with enjoyed the privilege of standing their swords. His last words were trial before the bishop rather than an acceptance of death in defense secular courts and usually received of the church of Christ. milder punishments than lay Within a few days after Thomas’ courts would assess. The position death, his tomb became a goal of PILGRIMAGE, and he was canonized of Thomas, that a guilty cleric by Alexander III in 1173. In 1174 could be degraded and punished by Henry did penance at Canterbury the bishop but should not be punand was absolved. ished again by lay authority—“not twice for the same fault”—was caB EDE THE VENERABLE , S AINT nonically a plausible argument which ultimately prevailed. The \ 9b%d \ (b. 672/673, traditionally Monkton in Jarrow, Northumcrisis came at Clarendon (Wilt- Murder of Thomas Becket; illustration from an English psalter, c. 1200 bria—d. May 25, 735, Jarrow; canshire, January 1164), when the onized 1899; feast day May 25), king demanded in the Constitu- © The British Library/Heritage-Images Anglo-Saxon theologian, historitions of Clarendon his right to an, and chronologist, best known punish criminal clerics, forbade EXCOMMUNICATION of royal officials and appeals to Rome, and today for his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (“Ecgave to the Crown the revenues of vacant sees and the powclesiastical History of the English People”), a source vital er to influence episcopal elections. Thomas, after verbally to the history of the conversion to Christianity of the Angaccepting the constitutions, revoked his assent and ap- lo-Saxon tribes. During his lifetime and throughout the pealed to the pope. Middle Ages Bede's reputation was based mainly on his Good relations between Thomas and Henry were now at scriptural commentaries, copies of which found their way an end; the archbishop was summoned to trial by the king to many of the monastic libraries of western Europe. His on a point of feudal obligation. At the Council of method of dating events from the time of the incarnation, Northampton (Oct. 6–13, 1164), it was clear that Henry inor JESUS CHRIST'S birth—i.e., # and !—came into general use through the popularity of the Historia ecclesiastica and tended to ruin and imprison or to force the resignation of two works on chronology. the archbishop. Thomas fled in disguise and took refuge

118 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

BEHEMOTH Reared from the age of seven by Abbot St. Benedict Biscop, Bede was ordained deacon when 19 years old and priest when 30. Bede’s works fall into three groups: grammatical and “scientific,” scriptural commentary, and historical and biographical. His earliest works include treatises on spelling, HYMNS, figures of speech, verse, and epigrams. His first treatise on chronology, De temporibus (“On Times”), with a brief chronicle attached, was written in 703. In 725 he completed a greatly amplified version, De temporum ratione (“On the Reckoning of Time”), with a much longer chronicle. Both these books were mainly concerned with the reckoning of EASTER. Bede’s method of dating events from the time of Christ’s birth came into general use via these works. In 731/732 Bede completed his Historia ecclesiastica. Divided into five books, it recorded events in Britain from the raids by Julius Caesar (55–54 )) to the arrival in Kent (597 () of St. Augustine. For his sources he claimed the authority of ancient letters, the “traditions of our forefathers,” and his own knowledge of contemporary events. Although overloaded with the miraculous, it is the work of a scholar anxious to assess the accuracy of his sources and to record only what he regarded as trustworthy evidence. It remains an indispensable source for some of the facts and much of the feel of early Anglo-Saxon history.

B EECHER, H ENRY WARD \ 9b%-ch‘r \ (b. June 24, 1813, Litchfield, Conn., U.S.—d. March 8, 1887, Brooklyn, N.Y.), U.S. Congregational minister (see CONGREGATIONALISM ) whose oratorical skill and social concern made him one of the most influential Protestant spokesmen of his time. The son of a minister, Beecher spent three postgraduate years in Cincinnati, Ohio, at Lane Theological Seminary, of which his father became president in 1832. In 1837 Beecher became minister to a small PRESBYTERIAN congregation at Lawrenceburg, Ind. He gradually became a highly successful preacher and lecturer. Beecher furthered his reputation through Seven Lectures to Young Men (1844), vivid exhortations on the vices and dangers in a frontier community. In 1847 he accepted a call to Plymouth Church (Congregational), Brooklyn, N.Y., where he drew weekly crowds of 2,500 by the early 1850s. He gradually became more emphatic in opposing slavery, and his lectures of 1863 in England won over audiences initially hostile to him and to the Northern point of view. Increasingly outspoken after the Civil War, he supported a moderate Reconstruction policy for the South and advocated women’s suffrage, evolutionary theory, and scientific BIBLICAL CRITICISM. His outlets for these issues, in addition to Plymouth Church, were the Independent, a Congregational journal he edited in the early 1860s, and the nondenominational Christian Union (later Outlook), which he founded in 1870. BEECHER, LYMAN (b. Oct. 12, 1775, New Haven, Conn. [U.S.]—d. Jan. 10, 1863, Brooklyn, N.Y.), U.S. PRESBYTERIAN clergyman in the revivalist tradition. A graduate of Yale in 1797, he held pastorates at Litchfield, Connecticut, and at Boston, Massachusetts. After turning his attention to evangelizing the West, he became president of the newly founded Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio (1832–50), and also assumed a new pastorate there (1832–42). His CALVINISM, however, considered strict by Bostonian standards, proved so mild for western Presbyterians that Beecher was tried for HERESY, but his SYNOD acquitted him.

Beecher was called by a contemporary “the father of more brains than any other man in America.” Among the 13 children of his three marriages, HENRY WARD BEECHER and Harriet Beecher Stowe achieved fame. Five others well known in their day were Catharine (1800–78), a leader in the women’s education movement; Edward (1803–95), a minister, college president, and anti-slavery writer; Charles (1815–1900), Florida’s superintendent of public instruction; Isabella (1822–1907), a champion of legal rights for women; and Thomas (1824–1900), an early advocate of adapting church life to modern urban conditions.

B EELZEBUB \ b%-9el-zi-0b‘b, 9b%l-, 9bel- \ , in the

BIBLE , the prince of the DEVILS. In the OLD TESTAMENT (in the form Baalzebub), it is the name given to the god of the Philistine city of Ekron (2 Kings 1:1–18). Neither name is found elsewhere in the Old Testament, and there is only one reference to it in other Jewish literature. Reference to Beelzebub is made in the NEW TESTAMENT (Matthew 10:25; 12:27). See also SATAN; LUCIFER.

BEGUINES \9be-0g%n, b@-9g%n \, women in the cities of northern Europe who, from the Middle Ages, led lives of religious devotion without joining an established religious order. So-called “holy women” first appeared in Liège toward the end of the 12th century. The use of the Old French word beguine to designate such women was established by the 1230s. Its etymology is uncertain; it seems to have originated as a pejorative term. The movement began among upper-class women and spread to the middle class. In addition to addressing the spiritual needs of its adherents, it responded to problems caused by a surplus of unattached women in urban areas. Most Beguines lived together in communities called beguinages. In Germany groups of up to 60 or 70 women lived together in houses; in the Low Countries they usually lived in individual houses within walled enclosures. Most supported themselves, often by nursing or cloth- or lace-making, and they spent time in religious contemplation. Beguines promised to preserve chastity while they remained in the community, but they were free to leave it and marry. Some communities and individuals cultivated intense forms of MYSTICISM. These circumstances led many people to suspect them of heretical tendencies. Throughout the 13th century they were the object of prejudice and of restrictive legislation. Official policy varied until the 15th century, when a consistent policy of toleration was established. Meanwhile, however, the beguinal movement had declined; many of its members joined formal religious orders. Some communities still exist, mainly in Belgium; most operate charitable institutions. One of the most remarkable Beguines was Marguerite Porete, who was burned for HERESY in Paris in 1310. Her mystical work Miroir des simples âmes (c. 1300; The Mirror of Simple Souls) is thought to be the greatest religious tract written in Old French. The male counterparts of Beguines were known as Beghards. They never achieved the same prominence, and the few communities that survived in Belgium were suppressed during the French Revolution. BEHEMOTH \bi-9h%-m‘th \, in the OLD TESTAMENT, a powerful, grass-eating animal whose “bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron” (Job 40:18). Jewish mythology relates that the righteous will witness a spectacular battle 119

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BEKTASHJ between Behemoth and Leviathan in the messianic era and later feast upon their flesh. Some sources identify Behemoth, who dwells in the marsh and is not frightened by the turbulent river Jordan, as a hippopotamus and Leviathan as a crocodile, whale, or snake.

BEKTASHJ \bek-9t!-sh% \ Turkish BektaÅi \0bek-t#-9sh% \, in ISLAM, any member of an order of mystics traditionally founded by Gejjj Bektesh Walj of Khoresen, Iran. The order acquired definitive form in the 16th century in Anatolia and spread to the Ottoman Balkans, particularly Albania. Originally one of many Sufi orders (see SUFISM) within orthodox SUNNI Islam, the Bektashi order in the 16th century adopted tenets of the SHI!ITES, including a veneration of !ALJ, the fourth successor of the prophet MUHAMMAD, as a member of a trinity with ALLEH and the Prophet himself. The Bektashis were lax in observing daily Muslim laws and allowed women to take part in ritual wine drinking and dancing during devotional ceremonies. The Bektashis in the Balkans adapted such Christian practices as the ritual sharing of bread and the CONFESSION of sins. Their mystical writings made a rich contribution to Sufi poetry. After 1925, when all Sufi orders were dissolved in Turkey, the Bektashj leadership shifted to Albania. With the banning of religion in Albania in 1967, Bektashj devotions were carried on by communities in Turkey, Albanian regions of the Balkans, and the United States.

BEL \9bel \, the Akkadian counterpart of the Sumerian deity ENLIL. Bel is derived from the Semitic word BAAL, or “lord.” Bel had all the attributes of Enlil, and his status and cult were much the same. Bel, however, gradually came to be thought of as the god of order and destiny. In Greek writings references to Bel indicate this Babylonian deity and not the Syrian god of Palmyra of the same name.

BELENUS \9be-l‘-n‘s \ (Gaulish: possibly, “Bright One”), an ancient and widely worshiped deity in CELTIC RELIGION; he was associated with healing. The festival of BELTANE (or Beltine) held on May 1 in Gaelic-speaking lands was possibly originally connected with his cult. On that day the cattle were purified and protected by fire before being put out to the open pastures for the summer. There is evidence of the cult of Belenus in northern Italy, Noricum in the eastern Alps, and southern Gaul. Belenus is often identified with APOLLO and probably also combined solar and curative elements. BELIEF, RELIGIOUS, belief in the objects and assertions of a religion. While such a definition may initially seem clear, it is inherently problematic: if “religion” is thought of as a set of beliefs and practices, then the definition is circular. The problem of defining what makes a belief distinctively “religious” can therefore be difficult to solve. A religious belief can be said to be something that the believer holds to be deeply true; but again the question of what relation “religious truth” has to other types of truth, such as scientific truth, must first be answered before a definition is to be based on this premise. Most modern authors, rather than defining religious belief per se, instead attempt to delineate its general characteristics. So, for instance, religious beliefs can often be distinguished from other beliefs in a cultural system by stressing the importance that superhuman beings hold within religious beliefs. The great gods and goddesses of religions are usually thought of as such beings, but the great

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personages of religion—be it the prophets or founders such as MOSES, JESUS, MUHAMMAD, and the BUDDHA GOTAMA—are also good examples. Religious beliefs almost always involve such beings, all within a complex web of other beliefs and attitudes such as hopes, fears, and desires. Belief in superhuman beings is not to be confused, however, with the notion of the supernatural or a transcendental realm, since there are many religions in which such concepts are either lacking or denied. Religious beliefs also tend to function as explanations regarding the world and events in the world, including the human experience of suffering, the existence of evil, and similar existential issues. It is this function of religious beliefs that has caused the most controversy in the STUDY OF RELIGION, particularly with regard to the debate on the relation between SCIENCE AND RELIGION. There are three general positions on the question of how religious truth-claims are to be evaluated in light of modern science. The first position asserts that all religious beliefs are false: they attempt to explain perceived phenomena in a way that is often contrary to scientific principles, and in any case religious beliefs cannot be empirically verified. Most scholars who take this position are quick to point out that holding a false belief does not entail irrationality, no more than it was irrational for people to hold that certain diseases were caused by “bad air” prior to the discoveries of pathogens such as bacteria. The second position states that religious beliefs are neither true nor false, since their meaning does not depend on truth conditions. Rather, these scholars hold, religious beliefs refer to emotional states or systems of morality, and thus are different in kind from the sort of claims which science makes. From this vantage point, religion and science talk about entirely different things. The third position holds that the truth conditions of religious beliefs are simply beyond verification, since they refer to those things that are not, and perhaps cannot, be known: the beginning of all things, the meaning of life, and what happens after death. The scholars who hold this view also tend to hold a theory of “two truths,” one scientific and one symbolic (or religious). The debate is not settled.

BELIT \9b@-lit \ (Akkadian), Sumerian Ninlil, in

MESOPOTAthe consort of the god BEL (Sumerdestiny. She was worshiped especially at Nippur and Shuruppak and was the mother of the moon god, SIN (Sumerian: Nanna). In Assyrian documents Belit is sometimes identified with ISHTAR (Sumerian: Inanna) of Nineveh and is sometimes the wife of either ASHUR, the national god of Assyria, or of Enlil, god of the atmosphere. The Sumerian Ninlil was a grain goddess, known as the Varicolored Ear (of barley). She was the daughter of Haia, god of the stores, and Ninshebargunu (or Nidaba). One myth recounted the rape of Ninlil by her consort, Enlil. He saw Ninlil bathing in a canal and raped and impregnated her. For his crime he was banished to the Underworld, but Ninlil followed. In the course of their journey Enlil assumed three different guises, each one ravishing and impregnating Ninlil. The myth seems to represent the process of wind-pollination, ripening, and the eventual withering of the crops and their subsequent return to the earth (corresponding to Ninlil’s sojourn in the Underworld). MIAN RELIGION, a goddess, ian: ENLIL) and a deity of

BELLEROPHON \b‘-9ler-‘-0f!n \, also called Bellerophontes \b‘-0ler-‘-9f!n-0t%z \, hero in Greek legend. In the Iliad he was

BENEDICT OF NURSIA, SAINT the son of GLAUCUS, who was the son of SISYPHUS. Anteia (or Stheneboea), wife of Proetus, the king of Argos, made sexual overtures to Bellerophon, which were rejected; she therefore falsely accused him to her husband. Proetus then sent Bellerophon to the king of Lycia with a message that he was to be killed. The king, repeatedly unsuccessful in his assassination attempts, finally recognized Bellerophon as more than human and married him to his daughter. Bellerophon lived in prosperity until he fell out of favor with the gods, lost two of his children, and wandered griefstricken over the Aleian Plain. Later authors added that, while still at Corinth, Bellerophon tamed the winged horse PEGASUS with a bridle given to him by ATHENA and that he used Pegasus to fight the CHIMERA and afterward to punish Anteia. He supposedly earned the wrath of the gods by trying to fly up to Olympus and was thrown from Pegasus and crippled.

B ELLONA \ b‘-9l+-n‘ \, original name Duellona, in ROMAN RELIGION, goddess of war, identified with the Greek Enyo. She is sometimes known as the sister or wife of MARS. Her temple at Rome stood in the Campus Martius, outside the city’s gates. There the Senate met to discuss generals’ claims to triumphs and to receive foreign ambassadors. In front of it was the columna bellica, where the ceremony of declaring war by the fetiales (a group of priests) took place.

B ENEDICT XVI original name Joseph Alois Ratzinger (b. April 16, 1927, Marktl am Inn, Ger.), pope from 2005. In his early years Ratzinger was forced to join the Hitler Youth, and during World War II he was drafted into the German military. After the war he continued his education. He was ordained in 1951 and received a doctorate in theology at the University of Munich in 1953. A highly regarded theologian and teacher, he served as an expert adviser and an advocate of refor m during the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). In 1977 he was appointed archbishop of Munich; three months later he was made a cardinal. As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005, he enforced doctrinal uniformity in the church and served as a close adviser of Pope JOHN PAUL II . He faced numerous challenges as pope, including a decline in vocations and church attendance, divisions over the direction of the church, and the effects of the sexual-abuse scandal involving priests. BENEDICT OF NURSIA, S AINT \ 9be-n‘-0dikt . . . 9n‘r-

sh%-‘, -sh‘; 9n>r-s%-‘ \ (b. c. 480, Nursia, Kingdom of the Lombards [now in Italy]—d. c. 547; feast day July 11, formerly March 21), founder of the B E N E D I C T I N E monaster y at Monte Cassino and the father of Western monasticism; the rule that he established became the norm for monastic living throughout Europe. The authority for the facts of Benedict’s life is Book 2 of Bellerophon with Pegasus, stone bas-relief; in the BELTANE \9bel-0t@n, -tin \, also Palazzo Spada, Rome the Dialogues of ST. GREGORY spelled Beltine, Irish Beltaine THE GREAT , who said that he Alinari—Art Resource had obtained his infor maor Belltaine, also known as tion from Benedict’s disciCétsamain, CELTIC RELIGION, a festival held on the first day of May, celebrating the begin- ples. Benedict’s life spanned the decades in which the dening of summer and open pasturing. Beltane is first men- cayed imperial city became the Rome of the medieval PAPACY. tioned in a glossary attributed to Cormac, bishop of Cashel As a young man Benedict retreated from Rome to the and king of Munster, who was killed in 908. Cormac decountry and lived alone for three years, furnished with food scribes how cattle were driven between two bonfires on Beltane as a magical means of protecting them from disease and monastic garb by a monk of one of the monasteries nearby. He was persuaded to become ABBOT of one of these before they were led into summer pastures—a custom still monasteries. His reforming zeal was resisted, however, and observed in Ireland in the 19th century. an attempt was made to poison him. He returned to his Cormac derives the word Beltaine from the name of a cave retreat; but again disciples flocked to him, and he god Bel, or Bil, and the Old Irish word tene, “fire.” Despite founded 12 monasteries, each with 12 monks, with himself linguistic difficulties, some contemporary scholars have maintained modified versions of this etymology, linking in control of all. Later, he left the area, while the 12 monasteries continued in existence. A few disciples followed him the first element of the word with the Gaulish god BELENUS. south, where he settled near Cassino. The district was still B ENDIS \ ben-dis \ , Thracian goddess of the moon; the largely non-Christian, but the people were converted by his Greeks usually identified her with the goddess ARTEMIS. She preaching. His sister Scholastica, who came to live nearby is often represented holding two spears. as the head of a nunnery, died shortly before her brother. 121

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BENEDICTINE Benedict had begun his monastic life as a HERMIT, but he had come to see the difficulties and spiritual dangers of a solitary life. As a layman, his Rule is concerned with a life spent wholly in a community of laymen, and among his contributions to the practices of the monastic life none is more important than his establishment of a full year’s probation, followed by a solemn vow of obedience to the Rule as mediated by the abbot of the monastery to which the monk vowed a lifelong residence. On the constitutional level, Benedict’s supreme achievement was to provide a succinct and complete directory for the government and the spiritual and material well-being of a monastery. The abbot, elected for life by his monks, is bound only by the law of God and the Rule, but he is continually advised that he must answer for his monks, as well as for himself, at the judgement seat of God. He appoints his own officials—prior, cellarer (steward), and the rest—and controls all the activities of individuals and the organizations of the common life. Ownership, even of the smallest thing, is forbidden. The ordering of the offices for the canonical hours (daily services) is laid down with precision. The working day is divided into three roughly equal portions: five to six hours of liturgical and other prayer; five hours of manual work, whether domestic work, craft work, garden work, or field work; and four hours reading of the SCRIPTURES and spiritual writings. This balance of prayer, work, and study is another of Benedict’s legacies. All work was directed to making the monastery selfsufficient and selfcontained. Until 1938 the Rule had been considered as a personal achievement of St. Benedict. In that year, however, it was suggested that an anonymous document, the “Rule of the Master” (Regula magistri)—previously assumed to have plagiarized part of the Rule—was in St. Benedict of Nursia, detail of a fact one of the polyptych by Segna di sources drawn on Buonaventura, early 14th century by St. Benedict. By courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, Gift of Reinhardt and Co., 1924 Though absolute certainty has not yet been reached, most competent scholars favor the earlier composition of the “Rule of the Master.” If this is accepted, about onethird of Benedict’s Rule is derived from the Master—this includes the writings on humility, obedience, and the abbot, which are among the most familiar and admired sections of the Rule. Even so, the Rule that imposed itself all over Europe was the Rule of St. Benedict, derived from disparate sources, but providing a directory at once practical

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and spiritual for the monastic way of life, that continued for 1,500 years.

B ENEDICTINE \ 0be-n‘-9dik-0t%n \, member of the Order of Saint Benedict (O.S.B.), the confederated congregations of monks and lay brothers who follow the rule of life of ST. BENEDICT OF NURSIA. The Benedictines, strictly speaking, do not constitute a single religious order because each monastery is autonomous. Benedict wrote his rule with his own abbey in mind; the rule spread slowly in Italy and Gaul, and by the 7th century it had been applied to women, as nuns, whose patroness was deemed Scholastica, sister of Benedict. By the time of Charlemagne at the beginning of the 9th century, the Benedictine Rule had supplanted most other observances in northern and western Europe. During the five centuries following the death of Benedict, the monasteries multiplied both in size and in wealth. They were the chief repositories of learning and literature in western Europe and were also the principal educators. The great age of Benedictine predominance ended about the middle of the 12th century, and the history of the main line of Benedictine MONASTICISM for the next three centuries was to be one of decline and decadence. The 15th century saw the rise of a new Benedictine institution, the congregation. In 1424 the congregation of Santa Giustina of Padua instituted reforms that breathed new life into Benedictine monasticism. Superiors were elected for three years, and the monks no longer took vows to a particular house but to the congregation. This radical reform spread to all the Benedictines. In the turmoil of the Protestant REFORMATION in the 16th century the monasteries and nunneries disappeared almost entirely from northern Europe, and, for almost a century, they suffered greatly in France and central Europe. Benedictinism revived in France and Germany during the 17th century, and though the 18th century witnessed a new decline, from the middle of the 19th century Benedictine monasteries and nunneries again began to flourish. Foundations, including Solesmes in France and Maria Laach in Germany, arose throughout Europe; monks and nuns returned to England; congregations were established in North and South America; and monasteries scattered all over the world. BENEDICTION, a verbal blessing of persons or things, commonly applied to invocations pronounced in God’s name by a priest or minister, usually at the conclusion of a religious service. The Aaronic benediction, which reads, “The Lord bless you and keep you: The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you: The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace” (Numbers 6:24–26) was incorporated by MARTIN LUTHER into his German MASS. It is also used in the Mozarabic liturgy of Spain before the reception of the Host. Some Christian churches, however, prefer the benediction of ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE (2 Corinthians 13:14). In ROMAN CATHOLICISM, benediction commonly means a blessing of persons (e.g., the sick) or objects (e.g., religious articles).

BENE-ISRAEL \b‘-0n@-9iz-r%-‘l, -r@- \ (Hebrew: “Sons of Israel”), Jews of India who for centuries lived in Bombay and adjacent regions isolated from other Jewish influences. According to two equally unverifiable traditions, they arrived in India as a result of a shipwreck or are a remnant of the TEN LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL. When the existence of

BERLIN, ISAIAH BEN JUDAH LOEB a Jewish community in India first attracted public attention in the 18th century, the group still adhered to such Jewish practices as CIRCUMCISION , observance of the SABBATH, certain dietary laws, and the celebration of several major festivals. David Ezekiel Rahabi (1694–1772) and Samuel Ezekiel Divekar (1730–97), both of Cochin, were instrumental in revivifying JUDAISM among the Bene-Israel; contact with Arabic-speaking Jews of Baghdad also facilitated this renewal. The first of numerous Bene-Israel SYNAGOGUES, all following the liturgy of the SEFARDI , was built in Bombay in 1796. Though the Bene-Israel speak Marathi and differ little from their Hindi neighbors in appearance, they claim pure Jewish blood. This contention created problems when a majority of the Bene-Israel migrated to the State of Israel after 1948, for the chief rabbinate objected to their marriage with other Jews on the grounds that the Bene-Israel could not have properly observed rabbinic laws governing marriage and divorce. A compromise was reached in 1964: The Bene-Israel as a group were declared full-fledged Jews, but the chief rabbinate reserved to itself the right to decide the legitimacy of individual marriages.

BENJAMIN \9ben-j‘-m‘n \, one of the 12 tribes that in biblical times constituted the people of ISRAEL, and one of the two tribes (along with JUDAH) that later became the Jewish people. The tribe was named after the younger of two children born to JACOB (also called Israel) and his second wife, Rachel (GENESIS 35:16–18). After the death of MOSES, JOSHUA led the Israelites into the Promised Land and, dividing the territory among the 12 tribes, assigned south-central Palestine to the tribe of Benjamin (Joshua 18:11ff.). Members of the tribe were separated when two distinct kingdoms were established after the death of King SOLOMON (922 )) and the territory of Benjamin was divided between them (1 Chronicles 9:3). Jews belonging to the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel disappeared after the Assyrian conquest of 721 ) and are known in legend as the TEN LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL (2 Kings 17:5–6; 18:9–12). Benjaminites in the southern kingdom of Judah were assimilated by the more powerful tribe of Judah and gradually lost their identity. Modern Jews thus consider themselves to be descendants of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. SAUL, the first of Israel’s kings, and ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE were both of the tribe of Benjamin. BEOWULF \9b@-‘-0w>lf \, heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic. Preserved in a single manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A XV) from c. 1000, it deals with events of the early 6th century and is believed to have been composed between 700 and 750. It did not appear in print until 1815. Although originally untitled, it was later named after the Scandinavian hero Beowulf, whose exploits and character provide its connecting theme. There is no evidence of a historical Beowulf, but some characters, sites, and events in the poem can be historically verified. The poem falls into two parts. It opens in Denmark, where King Hrothgar’s splendid mead hall, Heorot, has been ravaged for 12 years by nightly visits from an evil monster, Grendel, who carries off Hrothgar’s warriors and devours them. Unexpectedly, young Beowulf, a prince of the Geats of southern Sweden, arrives with a small band of retainers and offers to cleanse Heorot of its monster. The king is astonished at the little-known hero’s daring but welcomes him, and, after an evening of feasting, the King

retires, leaving Beowulf in charge. During the night Grendel comes from the moors, tears open the heavy doors, and devours one of the sleeping Geats. He then grapples with Beowulf, whose powerful grip he cannot escape. He wrenches himself free, tearing off his arm, and leaves, mortally wounded. The next day is one of rejoicing in Heorot. But at night as the warriors sleep, Grendel’s mother comes to avenge her son, killing one of Hrothgar’s men. In the morning Beowulf seeks her out in her cave at the bottom of a mere and kills her. He cuts the head from Grendel’s corpse and returns to Heorot. The Danes rejoice once more. Hrothgar makes a farewell speech about the character of the true hero, as Beowulf, enriched with honors and princely gifts, returns home to King Hygelac of the Geats. The second part passes rapidly over King Hygelac’s subsequent death in a battle (of historical record), the death of his son, and Beowulf’s succession to the kingship and his peaceful rule of 50 years. But now a fire-breathing dragon ravages his land and the doughty but aging Beowulf engages it. The fight is long and terrible and a painful contrast to the battles of his youth. Painful, too, is the desertion of his retainers except for his young kinsman Wiglaf. Beowulf kills the dragon but is mortally wounded. The poem ends with his funeral rites and a lament. Beowulf belongs metrically, stylistically, and thematically to the inherited Germanic heroic tradition. Many incidents, such as Beowulf’s tearing off the monster’s arm and his descent into the mere, are familiar motifs from FOLKLORE. The ethical values are manifestly the Germanic code of loyalty to chief and tribe and vengeance to enemies. Yet the poem is so infused with a Christian spirit that it lacks the grim fatality of many of the lays of the EDDAS or of the Icelandic sagas. Beowulf himself seems more altruistic than other Germanic heroes or the heroes of the Iliad. It is significant that his three battles are not against men, which would entail the retaliation of the blood feud, but against evil monsters, enemies of the whole community and of civilization itself. Many critics have seen the poem as a Christian ALLEGORY, with Beowulf the champion of goodness and light against the forces of evil and darkness. His sacrificial death is not seen as tragic but as the fitting end of a hero. BERAKHAH \b‘-r!-9_! \ (Hebrew: “blessing”), plural berakhot \-9_+t \, in JUDAISM, a BENEDICTION that is recited at specific points of the SYNAGOGUE liturgy, during private prayer, or on other occasions (e.g., before performing a commandment). Most berakhot begin with the words Barukh Attah Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha-Olam (“Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe”). Berakhot for food and wine are customarily recited in many Jewish homes as a grace before meals—e.g., “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast created the fruit of the vine.” Many of the berakhot also thank God for sanctifying ISRAEL through the holidays.

BERLIN, ISAIAH BEN JUDAH LOEB \b‘r-9lin \, also called Isaiah Pick (b. October 1725, Eisenstadt, Hungary [now in Austria]—d. May 13, 1799, Breslau, Silesia, Prussia [now Wrocsaw, Pol.]), Jewish scholar noted for his textual commentaries on the TALMUD and other writings. The son of a well-known Talmudic scholar, he moved to Berlin as a youth. He became a member of the rabbinate late in life (1787), and in 1793 he was elected RABBI of Breslau. Berlin’s writings are distinguished for their critical and historical insight. Among his works are commentaries, 123

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BERNADETTE OF LOURDES, SAINT notes, and glosses on many early works of Jewish scholarship. His commentary on the Talmud, Masoret ha-Shas (“Talmud Tradition”), supplements an earlier work by a Frankfort rabbi and is the best known of his collated texts (noting variant readings and parallel passages).

BERNADETTE OF LOURDES, SAINT \0ber-n#-9det . . . 9lrdz \, original name Marie-Bernarde Soubirous (b. Jan. 7, 1844, LOURDES, France—d. April 16, 1879, Nevers; canonized Dec. 8, 1933; feast day April 16, but sometimes February 18 in France), miller’s daughter whose visions led to the founding of the shrine of Lourdes. Bernadette was from a poverty-stricken family. She contracted cholera in the epidemic of 1854 and suffered from other ailments throughout her life. Between February 11 and July 16, 1858, at the age of 14, she is said to have had a series of visions of the Virgin MARY, who revealed her identity with the words “I am the IMMACULATE CON CEPTION.” Bernadette steadfastly defended the genuineness of these visions, despite strong opposition from her parents, the local clergy, and civil authorities, as she relayed messages she said were given her by the Virgin. To escape public attention she became a St. Bernadette boarder in the local school BBC Hulton Picture Library run by the Sisters of Charity of Nevers. In 1866 she was granted admission into the novitiate in the mother house at Nevers. There she completed her religious instruction and passed her remaining years in prayer and seclusion. The chapel of the St. Gildard Convent, Nevers, contains her body.

BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, SAINT \ber-9n#r...kler-9v|... Angl b‘r-9n!rd \ (b. 1090, probably Fontaine-les-Dijon, near Dijon, Burgundy—d. Aug. 20, 1153, Clairvaux, Champagne; canonized Jan. 18, 1174; feast day August 20), CISTERCIAN monk and mystic, the founder of the abbey of Clairvaux and one of the most influential churchmen of his time. Born of landowning aristocracy, Bernard turned away from his literary education, begun at the school at Châtillon-sur-Seine, and from ecclesiastical advancement toward a life of renunciation and solitude. Bernard sought the counsel of the abbot of Cîteaux, Stephen Harding, and decided to enter this struggling new community that had been established to restore Benedictinism to a more primitive and austere pattern of life. He entered the Cîteaux community in 1112, and from then until 1115 he cultivated his spiritual and theological studies. In 1115 Stephen Harding appointed him to lead a small group of monks to establish a monastery at Clairvaux, on the border of Burgundy and Champagne. Bernard and his companions endured extreme deprivations for well over a decade before Clairvaux was self-sufficient. Meanwhile, as Bernard’s health worsened, his spirituality deepened. Under pressure from his ecclesiastical superiors and his friends, he

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retired to a hut near the monastery and to the discipline of a quack physician. It was here that his first writings evolved. They are characterized by references to the CHURCH FATHERS and by the use of analogues, etymologies, alliterations, and biblical symbols. He also produced a small but complete treatise on MARIOLOGY, “Praises of the Virgin Mother.” Bernard was to become a major champion of a moderate cult of the Virgin, though he opposed the notion of the IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. The mature and most active phase of Bernard’s career occurred between 1130 and 1145. In these years both Clairvaux and Rome focused upon Bernard. Mediator and counselor for several civil and ecclesiastical councils and for theological debates during seven years of papal disunity, and the confidant of five popes, Bernard considered it his role to assist in healing the church of wounds inflicted by the ANTIPOPES and to oppose the rationalistic influence of the greatest and most popular dialectician of the age, PETER ABELARD. Bernard finally claimed a victory over Abelard, not because of skill or cogency in argument but because of his homiletical denunciation and his favored position with the bishops and the PAPACY. His greatest literary endeavor, “Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles,” was written during this active time. It was a love song supreme: “The Father is never fully known if He is not loved perfectly.” Add to this one of Bernard’s favorite prayers, “Whence arises the love of God? From God. And what is the measure of this love? To love without measure,” and one has a key to his doctrine.

B ERTINORO , O BADIAH ( BEN A BRAHAM YARE ) OF \ 0+-b‘-9d&-‘ . . . 0ber-t%-9n+r-+ \ (b. c. 1450, Bertinoro, Papal States—d. before 1516), Italian rabbinic author whose commentary on the MISHNAH, incorporating literal explanations from the medieval commentator RASHI and citing rulings from the philosopher MOSES MAIMONIDES, is a standard work of Jewish literature and since its first printing in 1548 has been published in almost every edition of the Mishnah. Bertinoro is also remembered as the author of three celebrated letters describing his three-year journey (1486–88) to Jerusalem and containing invaluable descriptions of the people and customs of the Jewish communities he visited on the way. The letters, written to Bertinoro’s father and brother during the period 1488–90, have been published under the titles Darkhei Xiyyon and HaMassa le-Erex Yisrael and translated into several languages. He lived in Jerusalem almost continuously after 1488, acting as spiritual head of the Jewish community there.

BES \9bes \, in ancient EGYPTIAN RELIGION, a minor god represented as a dwarf with large head, goggle eyes, protruding tongue, bowlegs, bushy tail, and usually a crown of feathers. The name Bes is now used to designate a group of deities of similar appearance with a wide variety of ancient names. The god’s figure was intended to inspire joy or drive away pain and sorrow, his hideousness being perhaps supposed to scare away evil spirits. Contrary to the usual rule of representation, Bes was commonly shown full-faced rather than in profile. He was portrayed on mirrors, ointment vases, and other personal articles. He was associated with music and with childbirth and was represented in the “birth houses” devoted to the cult of the child god. BETHEL \9be-th‘l, be-9thel \, ancient city of Palestine, located just north of Jerusalem. Originally called Luz (GENESIS 28:19; Judges 1:23), and in modern times Baytin, Bethel was

BHAGAVAD GJTE important in OLD TESTAMENT times and was frequently associated with ABRAHAM and JACOB (Genesis 12:8; 13:3; 28:10– 22; 35:1ff.). Excavations suggest that Bethel may have been the actual scene of the events described in the Old Testament as having taken place at Ai during the Israelite conquest of CANAAN (Joshua 8ff.) After the division of ISRAEL, Jeroboam I (10th century )) made Bethel the chief SANCTUARY of the northern kingdom (Israel; 1 Kings 12:28–30), and the city was later the center for the prophetic ministry of AMOS (Amos 7:10–13). The city apparently escaped destruction by the Assyrians at the time of the fall of Samaria (721 )), but it was occupied by JOSIAH of JUDAH (reigned c. 640–c. 609 ); 2 Kings 23:4,15f.; 2 Chronicles 34:1–7).

(1574), defending the right of revolt against tyranny, grew out of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572), from which many surviving French Protestants were welcomed by Beza in Geneva. Beza’s book overthrew the earlier Calvinist doctrine of obedience to all civil authority and became a major political manifesto of CALVINISM. His other works include anti-Catholic tracts, a biography of Calvin, and the Histoire ecclésiastique des Églises réformées au royaume de France (1580; “Ecclesiastical History of the Reformed Church in the Kingdom of France”). Both as a theologian and as an administrator, despite occasional charges of intolerance made against him, Beza is considered not only Calvin’s successor but also his equal in securing the establishment of Calvinism in Europe.

B ETHLEHEM , S TAR OF , celestial phenomenon mentioned in the Gospel According to Matthew as leading “wise men from the East” to the birthplace of JESUS CHRIST. While the fact that the year of Jesus’ birth is unknown prevents certain identification, natural events that might well have been considered important OMENS and described as stars include exploding stars (novae and supernovae), comets (Halley’s Comet was visible in 12 and 11 )), meteors, and planetary conjunctions—i.e., apparent close approaches of two or more planets to each other. Chinese annals record novae in 5 ) and 4 ). Several striking planetary conjunctions also took place within 10 years of the chronological point now taken as the beginning of the Christian era. A triple conjunction in early 6 ), in which Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn stood at the points of a triangle, has often been mentioned as a possible explanation of the star. Prior to that, in 7 ), Jupiter and Saturn were for eight months within three degrees of each other and three times within that period passed within one degree. Several years later, on June 17, 2 ), the bright planets VENUS and Jupiter would have appeared to observers in Babylon to have merged just before setting in the general direction of Bethlehem to the west.

BHADRABEHU I \0b‘-dr‘-9b!-h< \, Jain leader and philoso-

BEZA, THEODORE \9b%-z‘ \, French Théodore de Bèze \d‘9bez \ (b. June 24, 1519, Vézelay, France—d. Oct. 13, 1605, Geneva), author, translator, educator, and theologian who assisted and later succeeded JOHN CALVIN as a leader of the Protestant REFORMATION centered at Geneva. After studying law at Orléans, France (1535–39), Beza established a practice in Paris, where he published Juvenilia (1548), a volume of amorous verse that earned him a reputation as a leading Latin poet. On recovering from a serious illness, he underwent a conversion experience and in 1548 traveled to Geneva to join Calvin. A year later Beza became a professor of Greek at Lausanne, where he wrote in defense of the burning of the anti-Trinitarian heretic MICHAEL SERVETUS (d. 1553). For several years Beza traveled throughout Europe defending the Protestant cause. He returned to Geneva in 1558. There, in 1559, with Calvin, he founded the new Geneva academy, destined to become a training ground for promotion of Calvinist doctrines. As its first rector, Beza was the logical successor to Calvin upon the reformer’s death in 1564. Beza remained the chief pastor of the Geneva church for the rest of his life, contributing numerous works that influenced the development of Reformed theology. Beza’s sermons and commentaries were widely read in his time; his Greek editions and Latin translations of the NEW TESTAMENT were basic sources for the Geneva BIBLE and the KING JAMES VERSION (1611). His De jure magistratum

pher who, after a serious 12-year-long famine, is held to have led an exodus from the Jain stronghold in northeastern India to Sravana-Belgola, near Mysore, southwestern India, about 300 ). The DIGAMBARA sect of JAINISM , whose monks wear no clothing, recognizes Bhadrabehu as their founder, claiming that he left the Mauryan capital Peealiputra in the company of the first king of the dynasty, who had embraced the life of Jain mendicancy. Many inscriptions in the Mysore area lend credibility to an early southward migration, though not necessarily captained by Bhadrabehu or Candra Gupta (Chandragupta Maurya). According to Digambara sources, monks in Bhadrabehu’s following returned to Peealiputra after his death but were unable to accept doctrinal and practical changes that had been instigated in their absence by the faction that came to be called UVETEMBARA. Uvetembara sources represent this history differently. Bhadrabehu is believed to have been the author of three of the Jain sacred books as well as of Niryuktis, short commentaries on 10 of the 12 original sacred books. He is reputed to have died by realizing the Jain ideal of starving to death.

BHAGAVAD GJTE \9b‘-g‘-0v‘d-9g%-0t! \ (Sanskrit: “Song of God”), one of the greatest of the Hindu SCRIPTURES. It forms part of Book VI of the MAHEBHERATA and is written in the form of a dialogue between the warrior Prince ARJUNA and his friend and charioteer, KRISHNA (often considered an earthly incarnation of the god VISHNU, but in the conception of the text itself he is the supreme divinity). The Bhagavad Gjte, consisting of 700 Sanskrit verses divided into 18 chapters, is of a later date than many parts of the Mahebherata and was most probably written in the 1st or 2nd century (. The setting is a battlefield, just prior to the war between the PEDQAVAS and the Kauravas (the cousins of the Pedqavas). The two armies stand opposing each other, and, on seeing many of his friends and kinsmen among those lined up on the other side, Prince Arjuna hesitates. He considers whether it would not be better to allow himself to be slain by the enemy rather than to engage in a cruel albeit just war. He is recalled to his sense of duty as a warrior by Krishna, who points out to him that the higher way is the dispassionate discharge of his duty, performed sacrificially, with faith in Krishna, and without concern for personal triumph or gain. The Bhagavad Gjte considers broadly the nature of ultimate reality. As a predominantly theistic work, it often describes that reality as a personal god, Krishna, but it also refers to the supreme as a seemingly impersonal transcendent absolute, and equally as the state of one’s own awakened 125

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BHEGAVATA spirit. The Bhagavad Gjte elaborates and correlates three disciplines (YOGAS) creating the possibility for transcending the limitations of this world: JÑENA (knowledge or wisdom), KARMA (dispassionate action), and BHAKTI (love of God). The earliest commentary on the Bhagavad Gjte is that of the great philosopher UAUKARA. Outstanding modern commentaries are those of B.G. Tilak, URJ AUROBINDO, MAHATMA GANDHI , and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. GITA PRESS was founded in the 1930s with the purpose of making the Bhagavad Gjte accessible to every Hindu, and the claim that it is the most widely revered Hindu scripture has gained plausibility throughout the 20th century.

B HEGAVATA \9b!-g‘-v‘-t‘ \ (Sanskrit: “One Belonging to the Glorious One [Vishnu]”), member of the earliest recorded Hindu sect, representing the beginnings of theistic, devotional worship and of modern VAIZDAVISM. The Bhegavata sect apparently originated among the Yedava people of the Mathura area in the centuries preceding the beginning of the Common Era. Inscriptional evidence locates it in surrounding North India in the 2nd century ). It was introduced into South India at an early date, quite possibly as early as the 3rd or 2nd century ), and continued to be prominent within Vaizdavism until at least the 11th century. Some have argued that part of its success derived from royal patronage made possible by its relatively lenient approach to accepting initiates from nonbrahmanical communities. The Bhegavata system centered upon a personal god variously called VISHNU, VESUDEVA, KRISHNA, Hari, or Nereyada, and was known as ekentika dharma (“religion with one object”—i.e., MONOTHEISM). The religious poem the BHAGAVAD GJTE (1st–2nd century () is the earliest extant exposition of

the Bhegavata system, but the magisterial text is the BHEwhose lengthy and influential 10th book focuses on Krishna. By the time of the Gjte, Vesudeva (Krishna), the hero-deity of the Yedava clan, was identified with the Vedic Lord Vishnu. Bhegavata religion, unlike Vedic practice (see VEDIC RELIGION), is associated with worship through images, and a case has been made that some of India’s earliest extant temples, such as the impressive 8th-century temple of Vishnu as Vaikudeha Perumet in Keñchjpuram, owe their design to Bhegavata inspiration. It is also argued that the Bhegavata Pureda should be understood as the great Bhegavata SCRIPTURE, even from a relatively early date. GAVATA PUREDA,

BHEGAVATA PUREDA \9b!-g‘-v‘-t‘-p>-9r!-n‘ \ (Sanskrit: “Ancient Accounts of the Glorious One [VISHNU]”), the most celebrated text of a variety of Hindu sacred literature in Sanskrit that is known as the PUREDAS, and the specific text that is held sacred by the BHEGAVATA sect. The Bhegavata Pureda was probably composed about the 10th century, somewhere in the Tamil country of South India; its expression of BHAKTI owes a debt to that of the South Indian devotional poets, the ERVERS. The Pureda is made up of some 18,000 stanzas divided into 12 books; but it is book 10, which deals with KRISHNA’S childhood and his years spent among the cowherds of Vsndevana, that accounts for its immense popularity with Vaizdavas throughout India (see VAIZDAVISM). The attempts on Krishna’s life made by his wicked uncle Kausa, the childhood pranks he played on his foster mother Yauode, his love for the gopjs (cowherd wives and daughters) and their passionate abandonment to him are treated with endearing charm and grace, even while transfused with deep religious significance. In theology, the Bhegavata Pureda attempts to build a synthesis between bhakti devotionThe child Krishna stealing butter, painting from the Bhegavata Pureda, Kengra school, alism and the abstract phi1790–1800 losophy of ADVAITA VEDENTA. The F.F. Wadia Collection, Pune, India BHAIZAJYAGURU \b&-9sh‘jy‘-9g>r-< \ (Sanskrit), Tibetan Sman-Bla-Rgyal-Po \9man-l!9g?el-b+ \, Chinese Yao-ShihFo \9ya>-9sh~-9f+, -9sh‘r- \, Japanese Yakushi Nyorai \9y!-k>sh%-9n%-y+-r& \, the healing Buddha, widely worshiped in Tibet, China, and Japan. According to popular belief, some illnesses are effectively cured by merely touching Bhaizajyaguru’s image or by calling out his name. More serious illnesses, however, require the performance of complex rituals, which are described in the Bhaizajyaguru Sjtra. He is associated with the “self-born,” eternal Buddha, AKZOBHYA (and by some Japanese sects with another eternal Buddha, i.e., VAIROCANA), and rules over the Eastern Paradise. In Japan, Bhaizajyaguru is especially venerated by the 126

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BHAKTI Tendai (T’IEN-T’AI), SHINGON, and ZEN sects. In Japan he is often represented in the garb of a blue-skinned Buddha with his medicine bowl in one hand. In Tibet he often holds the medicinal myrobalan fruit. He has in his retinue 12 divine yakza, or nature spirits, generals who protect true believers. Chinese Buddhists, in a later phase, connected these generals with the 12 hours of the day and the 12 years of the Chinese calendar’s cycle. BHAJAN \9b‘-j‘n \: see KJRTAN or BHAKTI. BHAKTI \9b‘k-t% \, in various South Asian religions, particularly HINDUISM, the devotional sentiment widely understood to be a predominant aspect of religious practice and expression. Derived from the Sanskrit verbal root bhaj, originally meaning “to share, to apportion,” bhakti came to mean “love, sharing, worship, devotion.” In BUDDHISM and JAINISM, bhakti was an infrequent technical term implying veneration and awe of the BUDDHA GOTAMA or MAHEVJRA, one factor among others, such as knowledge of SCRIPTURE or ASCETICISM, necessary for spiritual practice. In South Asian ISLAM, the rudiments of bhakti appeared in works of SUFISM, particularly during the reign of AKBAR (1556–1605), and in the veneration of a pjr, or charismatic Sufi figure. SIKHISM, emerging in the 16th century, incorporated many practices associated with bhakti, such as an emphasis on the name ( NE M) of God in worship. However, bhakti is most prevalent in Hinduism, where loosely interdependent religious communities arose with bhakti as a guiding theological and social principle. Proponents of bhakti—often called collectively “the bhakti movement”—challenged the dominance of sacrificial VEDIC RELIGION, CASTE boundaries, gender inequity, and the use of Sanskrit as the exclusive language of religion. Bhakti integrates aspects of personal RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, social protest, and a variety of ritual modes around a notion of intimacy with one’s deity that colors all aspects of human existence. Precursors to bhakti existed as early as the SG VEDA (c. 1200 )), where devotees extolled the virtues of certain deities, entreating the goddess SARASVATJ, for example, to show benevolence. The word’s earliest datable occurrence is in the work of the preeminent Sanskrit grammarian Pedini, who uses bhakti to mean “devotion.” It also appears in the early Buddhist text, the THERAGETHE. Several early factors opened the way for bhakti’s appearance as a religious, social, and philosophical ideology. Jainism, Buddhism, and Upanishadic thought presented challenges to VEDIC RELIGION through their radical models of religious expression that emphasized communal support for individual effort toward spiritual evolution, rather than a reliance on priestly authority and sacrificial rituals. Concurrently, the Indian epics REMEYADA and MAHEBHERATA and the PUREDA literature about the lives of deities, depicted gods and goddesses in direct relationship with humans, joining together in war, love, and friendship. The most famous example of this is the intense relationship between KRISHNA and ARJUNA in the BHAGAVAD GJTE (c. 1st century (), where Krishna explicitly propounds bhakti in the context of Arjuna’s loyalty and challenge. By the early centuries of the Common Era, bhakti was apparent in various forms of religious expression, particularly during the “Golden Age” of the Gupta Empire (320– 647 () and the reign of the Pallavas and the Pedqyas in South India (4th–10th centuries (). Temple construction became important as an act of bhakti. There, as in private homes, sacred icons were the objects of visual bhakti, a

process today known familiarly as DAR U AN , or “seeing,” whereby a devotee sees and is seen by God. Another typical aspect of Hindu worship came to light in this ambiance: PJJE, whereby the deities in image form are welcomed with flowers, fruits, and sweets as if they were honored guests in the devotee’s home. Temple construction and personal worship began to reflect sectarian preference for VISHNU, SHIVA, or manifestations of the Goddess (DEVJ, UAKTI, DURGE). The first written records of songs voiced in a vernacular language rather than in Sanskrit appeared in Tamil in the 6th century in South India. In the course of the next several centuries, massive collections of Tamil hymns to Shiva and Vishnu emerged, soon to be accompanied by a separate literature describing the lives of the poets who produced them. The Uaiva poets are called collectively N E YA AE RS , the Vaizdava poets ERVERS. Today bhakti poetry continues to be composed and sung in every South Asian language. See also UAIVISM and VAIZDAVISM. Bhakti saint-poets have expressed their love of God through song in two general modes. In the first, SAGUD A (“with traits”), the poets evoke the image of the deity, portrayed in human and tangible ways, with color, personality, and definition. Sometimes they take their inspiration from specific temple icons and sculpture, rich with physical detail, as well as from pilgrimages that bring saguda devotees to these holy sites. Saguda bhakti songs also explore various relationships between the deity and the devotee by conceiving of them in familiar human terms—e.g., a child trusting in a parent, a servant humbled before his master, or a lover yearning for her beloved. Two good examples of saints “in love” with their God are the female poets MAHEDEVJ (12th century), who sings to her lord Shiva, “white as jasmine,” and MJREBEJ (16th century), who seeks shelter in Krishna, her beloved “mountain lifter.” But female poets are not the only ones to suffer by being separated from a God portrayed as male; from the 1st millennium onward, male poets have assumed female personae to express the same longing. A second bhakti mode, NIRGUDA (“without traits”), conceives of divinity as singular and ineffable, beyond the realm of human perception. Nirguda saint-poets often challenge sensory religious practices such as pjje and daruan, and question the efficacy of pilgrimages to temples and holy sites, as BASAVA (12th century) did in South India and KABJR (15th century) in the North. They are apt to prefer a focus on the simple recitation of God’s name. Nirguda saint-poets like Kabjr, RAVIDES, and NENAK (15–16th centuries) often articulated bhakti’s intensity in ways that elude comparison to the “natural” forms of relationship favored by saguda poets. Yet in the communities that formed around them, the teacher-student relationship loomed large, and in their own poetry as well we find the figure of the transcendent True Teacher (satguru)—either as an internal voice of authority or as an external guide or both. Finally, nirguda and saguda modes are sometimes indistinguishable, as with the 14th-century Marathi saint-poet NEMDEV, who sings to his deity, “You are unfathomable . . . I see you wherever I go.” Bhakti has an explicitly theological dimension. Systematic theologians such as REMENUJA (11th–12th century) and VALLABHA (16th century) sought to achieve a rapprochement between the personalist convictions of bhakti and the abstract philosophical rigor of various schools of VEDE NTA. Each proposed ways in which the universe could be understood as both displaying the divine, of which it is an em-

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BHAKTIVEDANTA bodiment, and obscuring it. Such theologies, like those that developed by and around BASAVA (from Karnataka), CAITANYA (from Bengal), NENAK (from the Punjab), and KABJR (from the Gangetic valley), helped give distinctive regional forms to bhakti. Sometimes they also echoed sectarian styles that can be seen in poetry, social protest, ritual performance, and even cuisine.

B HAKTIVEDANTA , A( BHAY ) C( HARANARAVINDA ) \0b‘k-ti-v@-9d!n-t‘, -9v@-d!n-t‘ \, also called Swami Prabhupeda \ 9sw!-m%-0pr‘-b>-9p!-d‘, -9pr‘-b>-0p!d \ (b. Sept. 1, 1896, Calcutta, India—d. Nov. 14, 1977, Vrindevan, Uttar Pradesh), Indian religious leader who in 1965 founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), commonly known as the Hare Krishna movement. In 1922 Bhaktivedanta, a pharmacist by trade, was urged by his GURU, a spiritual leader of one of the Vaizdava sects of HINDUISM (see VAI ZD AVISM ), to preach the teachings of KRISHNA throughout the Western world. Thereafter Bhaktivedanta devoted much time as lecturer, writer, editor, and translator for the Vaizdava sect to which he belonged. In 1933 he was formally initiated as a disciple at Allahebed, Uttar Pradesh. Because his family did not share his religious interests, Bhaktivedanta turned over his business to a son and renounced all family ties in 1954 to devote his full time to religious work. He received the title of swami in 1959 and in 1965 moved to Boston and then New York City, where he established the headquarters of the Hare Krishna movement. The movement, which he claimed could affect the consciousness of a world afflicted with rampant materialism, became especially popular among young people, and many of the swami’s books began to be studied on college and university campuses. Despite his failing health, by the time of his death Bhaktivedanta had written and published more than 50 books on ancient Vedic culture and had opened more than 100 centers throughout the world.

girls became synonymous with prostitutes. In the latter half of the 19th century in Tanjore, Chinnaiah, Ponnaiah, Vadivelu, and Shivanandam, four talented dancers who were brothers, revived the original purity of desi eeeam by studying and following the ancient texts and temple friezes, with missing links supplied by the socially spurned devadesjs. Their popularized form of desi eeeam was called bherata neeya.

BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY \0b!r-‘-9t%-y‘-0j‘-n‘-9t! \ (Indian People’s Party), also called BJP, political party of postindependence India that includes a strong Hindu nationalist component and that succeeded in forming a coalition government at the national level in 1998. Standing in the lineage of the earlier Jan Sangh Party, the BJP forms a triad with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and VISHVA HINDU PARISHAD (VHP). This triad is commonly called the Sangh Parivar (“Sangh” family [of organizations]), after the RSS, considered the parent group providing leadership for all three. While a certain proportion of the BJP’s success at the polls has followed from its attempt to represent itself as being opposed to the “corruption as usual” practices of the Congress Party and others, it has also attempted to mobilize sentiment in favor of a majority Hindu polity. Some of the key ideological planks in this program were laid out by V.D. Savarkar in 1923 under the banner HINDUTVA (“Hinduness”), a concept insisting that Hindus give true definition to Indian national identity because they embrace their “fatherland” (pitsbhjmi) as “sacred land” (pudyabhjmi). Such ideas have had the effect of estranging Muslims, Christians, and many low-caste Hindus from membership in the BJP. In the 1990s the BJP made efforts to include these groups, but its legacy as the party that supported the drive to deBherata neeya dance drama Mohan Khokar

BHERATA NEEYA \9b!r-‘-t‘-9n!-ty‘ \ (Sanskrit: “Bharata’s dancing”), also called dasj eeeam; the principal of the classical dance styles of India (the others being kuchipuqi, kathak, kathakati, manipuri, and orissi). It is indigenous to Tamil Nadu but has become well known throughout India and abroad. Bherata neeya serves the expression of Hindu religious themes and devotions, and its techniques and terminology have been traced back to ancient treatises such as the Neeya-uestra, by the BRAHMIN sage and priest Bharata. It was originally performed exclusively by female temple dancers and was not brought to the stage for public performance until about 1930. A program of bherata neeya usually lasts two hours without interruption and includes a specific list of procedures, all performed by one dancer, who does not leave the stage or change costume. The accompanying orchestra— composed of drums, drone, and singer—occupies the back of the stage, led by the GURU, or teacher, of the dancer. The dancer’s feet beat out complicated counter rhythms; the legs are bent in a characteristic low squat; arms, neck, and shoulders are part of the movement. In the pantomime sections, the hands tell the story through conventional gestural language, while the face expresses the mood. In the pure dance the hands are restricted to 11 hand poses. Bherata neeya has survived to the present through the DEVADESJS, temple dancing girls who devoted their lives to their gods through this medium. In colonial times the institution of devadesj fell into disrepute, and temple dancing

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BHIKZU stroy the Babri Mosque in AYODHYA in 1992 has continued to brand it an ineradicably Hindu nationalist party in the minds of many, as does its ongoing alliance with avowedly anti-Muslim groups such as the Shiv Sena, a regional party in Maharashtra. The BJP’s importation of explicit Hindu forms into political action and discourse—e.g., its use of the vocabulary of Hindu pilgrimage or the language of sacrifice (YAJÑA)—cause it to be regarded with fear and deep suspicion by many committed to political secularism in contemporary India.

B HARTSHARI \9b‘r-tri-0h‘-r%, 9b!r- \ (d. 650, Ujjain, India), Hindu philosopher, poet, and grammarian, author of the Vekyapadjya (“Words in a Sentence”), regarded as one of the most significant works on the philosophy of language in the uabdedvaita school of Indian thought. Three collections of poetry are also attributed to him, attesting to his status as a legendary authority on life’s multiple attractions. All are called uataka (“century”), owing to the fact that they each contain one hundred verses: the Usdgera- (love) uataka, Njti- (ethical and polity) uataka, and Vairegya- (dispassion) uataka. Legends of Bhartshari’s life echo this range but are not entirely consistent with one another. One version says that he was attached to the court of the Maitraka king of Valabhi (modern Vala, Gujarat), where he cultivated the pleasures of this life; but he felt so torn by the needs of the soul that he withdrew to the monastic life on seven separate occasions, each time to reemerge. The 7th-century Buddhist traveler I-ching evidently heard a version of this narrative and believed Bhartshari’s ASCETICISM to have been derived from BUDDHISM. A strong sense of personal irony enlivens the uatakas, as well as a consciousness of the strains and insults associated with being a poet in royal service. In keeping with the breadth of Bhartshari’s persona, another work is sometimes also attributed to him: the Bhaeei kevya (“Poem of Bhaeei”), in which the poet performs linguistic gymnastics to demonstrate the subtleties of Sanskrit. BHEVAVIVEKA \9b!-v‘-vi-9v@-k‘ \, 8th-century Indian Buddhist philosopher who was an interpreter of NEGERJUNA, the founder of MEDHYAMIKA school of philosophy. The disciples of Negerjuna who continued to limit the use of logic to a negative and indirect method, known as prasaega, are called the presaegikas: of these, Aryadeva, Buddhapalita, and CANDRAK J RTI are the most important. Bhevaviveka, however, followed the method of direct reasoning and thus founded what is called the Svetantrika (svatantra; “independent”) school of Medhyamika philosophy. With him Buddhist logic comes to its own. Bhevaviveka developed a notion of two truths in which, at the level of conventional (as distinguished from ultimate) truth, reason could be used to support positive teachings and practices. The Svetantrika tradition played a very important role in the development of Buddhist philosophy in Tibet. BHEDEBHEDA \ 9b@-d!-9b@-d‘ \ (Sanskrit: “difference and nondifference,” or “identity in difference”), an important branch of VEDENTA. Its principal author was Bheskara, probably a younger contemporary of the great thinker UAUKARA. Against Uaukara’s view that ultimately all distinctions are unreal and therefore any particular path of action is irrelevant for a liberated person (SANNYESJ), Bheskara upheld the doctrine of the “cumulative effect of acts and knowledge” (jñena-karma-samuccaya) and declared that a person should only withdraw from active life once he has fulfilled

its obligations. On the important issue of the relationship between BRAHMAN (the absolute) and the world, Bheskara taught that Brahman is the substantial cause of the world, which becomes manifold through power or transformation akin to a spider weaving its web. The self is naturally one with Brahman, but is also different by virtue of conditions (UPEDHIS) that are imposed on Brahman. Although Bheskara’s doctrine never became as widely accepted as that of Uaukara, his work is important for its documentation of the typical BRAHMIN (priestly class) concern not just with MOKZA (release) but with the implementation of DHARMA—caste and individual obligations that keep the world in balance and produce the good society. BHIKZU \9bik-sh< \ (Sanskrit), feminine bhikzudj \9bik-sh>0n% \, Peli bhikku \9bik-k< \, or (feminine) bhikkunj \9bik-k>0n% \, in BUDDHISM, one who has renounced worldly life and joined the mendicant and CONTEMPLATIVE community. While individuals may enter the monastic life at an early age—some renunciate communities include children in their preteens—a candidate for ordination must be 21 years of age and have parental permission. The term bhiksu comes from a verbal root meaning “to beg.” Thus, a Buddhist monk or nun is marked primarily by his or her practice of poverty and nonattachment to the material world. Originally, bhiksus were the mendicant followers of the BUDDHA GOTAMA who had left their families and worldly pursuits in order to meditate and to apply the Buddha’s teachings to their everyday life. Bhiksus tended to live as a group in forest retreats near villages and towns; in exchange for food, the monks taught the townspeople Buddhist ways. Buddhist texts indicate that in the beginning the Buddha allowed only a male monastic community (the SANGHA) but later permitted women to establish a female order as well. (This bhikzudj order has been maintained in some MAHEYENA traditions but has not been maintained in the THERAVEDA context.) A bhikzu is expected to follow the rules that were established by the Buddha and preserved in a text called the Vinaye. There are some 227 to 250 rules regulating the conduct of the bhikzus and an even greater number for bhikzudj. Violations must be confessed in twice-monthly meetings (the uposatha). Four monastic rules, if broken, result in lifelong expulsion from the order: (1) having sexual relations, (2) taking or ordering the taking of life, (3) taking something as one’s own that has not been freely given, and (4) making claims regarding one’s spiritual attainments, powers, or degree of enlightenment. The bhikzu’s head and face are kept shaven. He wears three garments—an upper and lower robe and a stole—originally made of cast-off rags dyed with saffron, now more likely the gift of a layperson. He is allowed to retain only a minimum of possessions—his robes and stole, a girdle, an alms bowl, a razor, a needle and thread for mending, and a strainer to prevent his harming the small insects that might otherwise enter his drinking water. The bhikzu begs daily for his food; the donation of food by the laity is viewed as meritorious. The bhikzu may eat no solid food between noon and the following morning. Except on holy days, which are vegetarian, meat may be eaten but only if it has not been cooked especially for a monk. In the Theraveda countries of Southeast Asia, the monk commonly is prohibited from handling money and from doing physical labor. This is not the case in China and Japan, where Ch’an (ZEN) Buddhism early established the rule, “A day without work, a day without food.”

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BHINDRANWALE, SANT JARNAIL SINGH

BHINDRANWALE, SANT J AR NAIL S INGH \ 0bin-d‘-

B IBLE , the sacred

SCRIPTURES of JUDAISM and CHRISTIANITY. The Christian Bible consists of the OLD TESTAMENT and the NEW TESTAMENT ; in RO MAN CATHOLICISM and EASTERN ORTHODOXY, the

r‘n-9v!-l@ \ (b. 1947, Rhode, Punjab—d. June 6, 1984, AmOld Testament is slightly larger because of their ritsar), SIKH religious leader acceptance of certain books and parts of books and political revolutionary. considered apocryphal in PROTESTANTISM. The Born into a Sikh peasant famJewish Bible includes only the books known to ily, Jarnail Singh attended a Christians as the Old Testament. The arrangeresidential Sikh seminary ments of the Jewish and Christian canons differ (taksel) where students were considerably. However, the Protestant and Rotrained to become granthjs man Catholic arrangements more nearly match (custodians of the GURone another. DWERES), preachers, and regjs (singers of Sikh sacred Traditionally the Jews have divided their hymns) at a nearby village, scriptures into three parts: the TORAH (the “Law”), or PENTATEUCH; the NEBI#IM (the “ProphBhindran. The chief of the Bhindran taksel, Sant Gurets”); and the KETUBIM (the “Writings”), or Hagiographa. The Pentateuch, together with the bachan Singh, was widely rebook of Joshua, can be seen as the account of vered. After his death in how ISRAEL became a nation and of how it pos1969, one of his followers, sessed the Promised Land. The division desigSant Kartar Singh, moved to nated as the “Prophets” continues the story, deMehta, 30 miles from AMRITscribing the establishment and development of SAR , and established a new the monarchy and presentation of the messages taksel there. Jarnail Singh accompanied him and succeedof the prophets to the people. The “Writings” ed him as head of the Mehta include speculation on the place of evil and Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale death in the scheme of things (Job and Ecclesitaksel after his death in 1977. addressing his followers at Amritsar Known for his charisma as astes), the poetical works, and other historical AP—Wide World well as his knowledge of the books. In the APOCRYPHA of the Old Testament, the SCRIPTURE , history, and mythology of SIKHISM, Sant Jarnail Singh was asked by the Conpurpose seems to have been to fill in some of the gaps left by the indisputably canonical books and to carry the histogress Party under Giani Zail Singh, who later became the ry of Israel to the 2nd century ). president of India, to align with them in their effort to Like the Old Testament, the New Testament is a collecbreak the hold of the AKELJ DAL on rank-and-file Sikhs. Sant Jarnail Singh obliged, but in the process he became increastion of books, including a variety of early Christian literaingly aware of the role he might play in Sikh history. By ture. The four GOSPELS deal with the life, the person, and the teachings of JESUS CHRIST , as he was remembered by the setting himself as an example, Sant Jarnail Singh hoped to Christian community. THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES carries the pull the Sikh community back to its traditions of bravery story of Christianity from the RESURRECTION of Jesus to the and martyrdom. He argued against the Akelj Party’s policy end of the career of PAUL. The Letters, or Epistles, are correof negotiating their demands peacefully with the central spondence by various leaders of the early Christian church government in Delhi, insisting that political power in the applying the message of the church to the sundry needs and Punjab was a Sikh right, not a gift of the Delhi regime. Sant problems of early Christian congregations. The REVELATION Jarnail Singh succeeded in convincing a large number of rural Sikhs that the politics of the Akelj Dal were humiliat- TO JOHN is the only canonical representative of a large genre of apocalyptic literature that appeared in the early Chrising for them. tian movement. In July 1982, he moved to the GOLDEN TEMPLE (Darber Sehib) in Amritsar and began preaching that Sikhs should initiate a battle for creation of a separate state of KHALISTAN. BIBLICAL CRITICISM , discipline that studies textual, He gathered a considerable following of like-minded mili- compositional, and historical questions surrounding both tants and stockpiled weapons. In 1984 Prime Minister In- the OLD TESTAMENT and the NEW TESTAMENT. Biblical criticism lays the groundwork for the meaningful interpretadira Gandhi ordered Indian troops to attack the Darber tion of the BIBLE. Sehib complex, and in the confrontation that followed, The major types of biblical criticism are (1) textual critihundreds of people were killed, including Sant Jarnail cism, which is concerned with establishing the original or Singh. For many Sikhs, he died the death of a martyr. Espemost authoritative text, (2) philological criticism, which is cially in the Sikh diaspora, the hope of Khalistan remained the study of the biblical languages for an accurate knowla central feature of Sikh life. edge of vocabulary, grammar, and style of the period, (3) litBHJT \9bn-d‘-9h%-sh‘n \ (Pahlavi: “Original Creation”), ZOROASTRIAN scripture giving an account of the creation, history, and duration of the world, the origin of man, and the nature of the universe. Written in Pahlavi, it dates from the 9th century ( but is based on ancient material from a lost part of the original AVESTA and preserves some pre-Zoroastrian elements. BUNDLES, also called medicine bundles, in NATIVE AMERICAN RELIGIONS, in the tribes of the Great Plains, collections of magical objects of ritual importance. The bundles were often felt to offer protection against disease and general misfortune. Some bundles were personal, the contents of which had been suggested to the individual by a supernatural sponsor, while others were tribal property originating in the mythological past. They were handled reverently and opened according to definite rules. The opening of the Cheyenne sacred arrow bundle, for instance, was the focus of an elaborate tribal rite extending over four days. Among the Crow, the owner of a bundle was permitted to sell part of his power to other men who had not received visions and to create replica bundles for them.

BUREQ \b>-9r!k \, in Islamic tradition, a creature said to have transported the Prophet MUHAMMAD to heaven. Described as “a white animal, half-mule, half-donkey, with wings on its sides,” the Bureq was originally introduced into the story of Muhammad’s night journey (ISRE#) from MECCA to Jerusalem and back, thus explaining how the journey could have been completed in a single night. In some traditions he became a steed with the head of a woman and the tail of a peacock. As the tale of the night journey became connected with that of Muhammad’s ascension to heaven (MI!REJ), the Bureq replaced the ladder as Muham-

BURIAL couraged the development of and rich graveclothes and burial goods. Customarily the body is placed in an extended position, as if in sleep. Bodies of Muslims are laid on their right side and facing Mecca; those of Buddhists are laid with the head to the north. Native Americans often buried their dead in a fetal position, sometimes in a basket or clay urn, with knees under the chin and the body neatly tied into a death bundle. Upright burial has been favored by other people, particularly for warriors. Water burial. The bodies of chiefs and heroes have often been set adrift on rivers and oceans in death ships. Among the Norse, even those who were interred were sometimes given such a bier—a custom that was widespread from Iceland to England during the 7th and 8th centuries (. At Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England, archaeologists found the remains of a wooden boat, 85 feet long, that had been dragged from the river and lowered into the ground. Water burials have been common in other cultures. In the South Pacific it was customary to place the dead in a canoe and launch that on the water. In the Solomon Islands, bodies are simply laid on a reef to be eaten by sharks; in other places they are wrapped and weighted with stones. Scattering ashes on water is widely practiced, especially in Asia. In India, within a year after death, the remains are taken to the GAEGE RIVER and thrown into the sacred water; if it is not possible to do that, they are thrown into another river or stream with the hope that they will eventually make their way to the Gaege. Exposure. Placing the body where it may be eaten by scavenging birds and animals or weathered to its essential elements has been held by many groups to be the most desirable form of disposal for spiritual as well as material reasons. ZOROASTRIANISM has been perhaps the most widely known for this type of burial, which developed out of the belief that the corpse is so unclean that to inter or to cremate it would contaminate the “pure elements” of earth, fire, and water. Since the 6th century ) it has been their custom to leave bodies on mountains or hills at a distance from the community. In Bombay the PARSIS maintain “towers of silence,” high circular structures. The dead are carried to them, and funeral servants place them on stone beds surrounding a central pit. After vultures have stripped the flesh from the bones—usually within a few hours—the bones are gathered and dropped into the central pit. A number of people who expose the dead use trees and platforms (tree burial). Among them are the Balinese, the Nega tribes of India, the tribes of central Australia, and various Native American groups. Commonly, the Sioux robed the dead in their best clothing, sewed them into a deerskin or buffalo shroud, and carried them to a platform about eight feet high. Possessions and gifts were placed on the scaffold, and the body was allowed to remain there for a year, when it was taken down and given an earth burial. COFFINS

Muhammad mounted upon the Bureq By courtesy of Edinburgh University Library

mad’s means of access into heaven. The Bureq was depicted in illuminated mi!rej manuscripts; it still occurs in Afghan truck decorations, where it is intended, in part, to bring the truck under God’s protection, and in Egyptian HAJJ murals where, although it is depicted alongside modern modes of transport that carry pilgrims to Mecca and MEDINA, it still contains the idea of a divine blessing. Bureq is also the name Muslims give to the Western Wall on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where they say the creature was tethered during Muhammad’s ascension. BURIAL , funerary ritual in which human remains are deposited in the earth, a grave, or a tomb; consigned to the water; or exposed to the elements or carrion animals. Geography, religion, and the social system all influence burial practices. Climate and topography influence whether the body is buried under the ground, placed in water, burned, or exposed to the air. Religious and social attitudes help determine how elaborate the burial should be. Inhumation. Burial in the ground by hollowing out a trench in the earth for the body or covering it with rocks or dirt dates back at least to Middle Paleolithic times. Grave burial, or inhumation, may be simple or elaborate. The old Norse people built BARROWS that sometimes reached enormous heights; in North America, large BURIAL MOUNDS were characteristic of eastern Native American cultures from 1000 ) to 700 (. Graves may be mere shallow pits, or they may be intricate and beautifully fashioned subterranean palaces spacious enough to accommodate vast numbers of persons. The Paraca burial chambers in Peru, hewn out of solid rock 18 feet below the surface, were large enough to accommodate 400 corpses with all of the belongings that it was thought they would need in the afterworld. Customarily, however, graves have been for the burial of individuals. Caves have also been used for the dead. The ancient Hebrews used natural single-chamber caves and hewed oblong recesses lengthwise into the walls to accommodate the dead, a custom that led to the building of mausoleums. There are thousands of rock temples in western India and in Sri Lanka, some of which received elaborate architectural and sculptural treatment. Both caves and earth graves en-

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BURIAL MOUND Second burial. Among many people, particularly in indigenous cultures, a period of waiting occurs between the first and a second burial that often coincides with the duration of decomposition. The origin of this practice is considered to be the different concept of death held by these peoples. In most modern societies, death is regarded as instantaneous; it is not so in other societies, where it is held to involve a slow change, a passage from the visible society of the living to the invisible one of the dead. These beliefs may lead to two burials—the interval between the two marking the time it takes for the spirit to pass over into the next world. A second burial of the remains then occurs (or, the remains may be disposed of in a communal area). In areas in which death is believed to be a slow change, customs other than two burials may take place— e.g., during the period of decomposition the corpse is sometimes treated as if it were alive, provided with food and drink, and surrounded by company. BURIAL MOUND , artificial hill of earth and stones built over the remains of the dead. Burial mounds known as BARROWS were a type of burial place constructed in England from Neolithic (c. 4000 )) until late pre-Christian (c. 600 () times. Barrows of the Neolithic Period were long and contained the various members of a family or clan, while those of the Early Bronze Age (c. 1900 )) were round and were used to bury a single important individual. The bodies were placed in stone or wooden vaults, over which large mounds of soil were heaped. Both types of barrows continued to be used in England until the advent of Christianity. Burial mounds were a peculiarly prominent feature of the protohistoric period in Japan (3rd–6th century (), which is known as the tumulus period. The mounds, some of which are spectacularly large and impressive, consist of earthen

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keyhole-shaped mounds surrounded by moats. They were used to bury royalty and prominent members of the aristocracy. One of the largest, the burial site of the 4th-century emperor Nintoku, on the outskirts of the city of Sakai, near Osaka, measures 1,594 feet in length and is 115 feet high. Burial mounds were characteristic of the Indian cultures of east-central North America from about 1000 ) to 700 (. The most numerous ones, found in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys, were large conical or elliptical mounds surrounded by extensive earthworks, and are assigned to the Hopewell and Adena cultures. Along the upper Mississippi River and the Great Lakes, some of the later Indian mounds are in the shape of animals and other forms.

B USHIDJ \9bsh-n‘l \ (b. April 14, 1802, Bantam, Conn., U.S.—d. Feb. 17, 1876, Hartford, Conn.), Congregational minister and controversial theologian, sometimes called “the father of American religious liberalism.” Bushnell joined the Congregational Church (see CONGREGATIONALISM) in 1821, and in 1823 entered Yale to become a minister. Not until 1831, after qualifying for the bar, did his religious doubts diminish sufficiently for him to begin his theological education. He entered Yale Divinity School and in 1833 was ordained minister of the North Congregational Church in Hartford, where he served for more than 20 years until ill health forced his resignation. A major figure in U.S. intellectual history, Bushnell stood between the orthodox tradition of Puritan New England and the new romantic impulses represented by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and especially FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER. His first significant publication, Christian Nurture (1847), was a thorough critique of the prevailing emphasis placed on the conversion experience by revivalists. In God in Christ (1849), published in the year of his mystical experience that illumined the Gospel for him, Bushnell challenged the traditional, substitutionary view of the ATONEMENT (i.e., that the death of Christ was the substitute for man’s punishment for SIN) and considered problems of language, emphasizing the social, symbolic, and evocative nature of language as related to religious faith and the mysteries of God. Christ in Theology (1851) defended his attitude toward theological language, giving special attention to metaphoric language and to an instrumental view of the TRINITY. In Nature and the Supernatural (1858) he viewed the twin elements of the title as constituting the one “system of God” and sought to defend from skeptical attack the Christian position on sin, miracles, INCARNATION, revelation, and Christ’s divinity. Bushnell’s views were bitterly attacked, and in 1852 North Church withdrew from the local “consociation” in order to preclude an ecclesiastical HERESY trial. Despite such opposition, however, his ability to assemble and present coherent arguments guaranteed the impact and influence of his interpretation of CHRISTIANITY.

BUSIRIS \by>-9s&-r‘s \, in Greek mythology, Egyptian king, son of POSEIDON and Lyssianassa (daughter of Epaphus, a legendary king of Egypt). After Egypt had been afflicted for nine years with famine, Phrasius, a seer of Cyprus, arrived in Egypt and announced that the famine would not end until an annual sacrifice of a foreigner to ZEUS was instituted. Later HERACLES, who had arrived in Egypt from Libya, was seized and brought to the altar, but he burst his bonds and slew Busiris and his son Amphidamas. Some Greek writers made Busiris an Egyptian king and successor of Menes (traditionally the first king of a united Egypt), though others rejected him altogether. The name Busiris is most likely an earlier and less accurate hellenization of the name of the Egyptian god known later to the Greeks as OSIRIS ; it derives from an Egyptian compound word meaning literally “temple of Osiris.”

B U - STON \ 0p-w‘l \, also called El-Al ben Shachar \ el-9al-ben-9sh!-_!r \ (b. c. 1220—d. c. 1295), physician, scholar of the TALMUD, and philosopher who defended the ideas of MAIMONIDES during the “years of controversy” (1289–90), when his work was attacked; Hillel ben Samuel denounced in turn the adherents of IBN RUSHD (Averroës), asserting that they precipitated the controversy through their denial of the immortality of the individual human soul.

SACRED RITUALS

Behubali is bathed with milk by Jains every 12 years, Sravana Belgola, Karnetaka, India Reuters—Archive Photos

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Russian Orthodox wedding, St. Petersburg, Russia Sylvain Grandadam—Photo Researchers

Japanese bride is dressed for a Shintj wedding ceremony E.A. Heiniger—Photo Researchers

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Margot Granitsas—Photo Researchers

John Moss—Photo Researchers

Sunday services at the Crystal Cathedral, Garden Grove, Calif. Richard T. Nowitz—Photo Researchers

Bernard Wolf—Monkmeyer

Muslim ablutions before prayers, Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem

Lighting the candles of the Hanukkah menorah

Grant—Monkmeyer

Tom McHugh—Photo Researchers

Zapotec boy adds a candle to a shrine, Oaxaca, Mex.

Ritual exorcism, Sri Lanka

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Group baptism in the Pacific Ocean

Shintj priest blesses children at the SevenFive-Three festival, Meiji Shrine, Tokyo © Cameramann International, Ltd.

Hindu Chariot Festival of the Jaganneth temple, Puri, Orissa, India © Dinodia—Dinodia Picture Agency

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(Above) Buddhist funeral ceremony, South Korea Kim Newton—Woodfin Camp

(Right) Funeral procession with brass band, New Orleans, La. Fred Maroon—Photo Researchers

(Far right) Hindus bathe in the sacred waters of the Gaege (Ganges) at Varanasi, India Porterfield/Chickering—Photo Researchers

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Pope John Paul II baptizes an infant in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City Reuters—Plinio Lepri/Archive Photos

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HINDU CALENDAR Reputed to have lived in Verona, Naples, and Capua, and later in Barcelona, Hillel ben Samuel wrote his major work, Tagmule ha-nefesh (1288–91; “The Rewards of the Soul”), to rebut Ibn Rushd’s theory of the soul. In it, he holds that the soul is composed of “formal substance” that derives from the universal soul and that both are immortal.

G ILLJ , AL - \ #l-_i-9l% \, in full Jamel al-Djn Gasan ibn Yjsuf ibn !Alj ibn Muehahhar al-Gillj (b. Dec. 15, 1250, Gilla, Iraq—d. Dec. 18, 1325), Muslim theologian and expounder of SHI!ITE doctrines. Al-Gillj studied law, theology, and the uzjl, or principles of the faith, in the city of Gilla, an important center for Shi!ite learning in the SUNNI territory of the !Abbesid caliphate (the second Arab dynasty). A scion of a family of Shi!ite theologians, he became known as the “wise man of Gilla.” He also studied philosophy with Mount Everest viewed from Nepal Nazjr al-Djn al-Ejsj (d. 1274), a noted Michael C. Klesius—National Geographic/Getty Images philosopher of his time. Among al-Gillj’s more than 500 scholarly works on the Islamic faith are the Treatise on the more than 2,000 years; Krimchi, a group of four Shiva temPrinciples of Shi!ite Theology (1928) and the Sharg tajrjd ples situated six miles north of the town of Udhampur, itself the home of the important shrine of Vaizdo Devj; and al-i!tiqed. These are standard references on Twelver Shi!ite Gurkha, a town of central Nepal known for its shrine of beliefs and are still used as textbooks in Iran. GORAKHNE TH , the patron saint of the region, as well as a Attracted by the religious freedom of the Mongol IlKhanid dynasty (the descendants of Hülegü, who sacked temple to the Hindu goddess Bhavenj (DEVJ). Baghdad in 1258), al-Gillj emigrated to Iran in 1305. There he was responsible for converting Öljeytü, the eighth Il- HIMORAGI \h%-m|-9r!-g% \ (“offerings to the gods”), in Japanese Shintj tradition, sacred areas or ritual precincts Khanid of Iran, from Sunnism to Shi!ism. In 1305 Shi!ism was proclaimed the state religion of Iran. Al-Gillj was bur- marked off by rocks, tree branches, and hemp ropes. This kind of special cordoned-off natural space serves as a temied in MASHHAD (Meshed), Persia. porary SANCTUARY for KAMI spirits and is the predecessor for HIMALAYAS \0hi-m‘-9l@-‘z, hi-9m!-l‘-y‘z \, Sanskrit Himel- all forms of Shintj shrines. aya, great mountain system of Asia forming a barrier beHJNAYENA \0h%-n‘-9y!-n‘ \ (Sanskrit: “Lesser Vehicle”), in tween the Tibetan Plateau to the north and the alluvial plains of the Indian subcontinent to the south. Hindu my- BUDDHISM, more orthodox, conservative school; the name thology states that the Himalayas are the foothills of Hjnayena is pejorative and was applied by the followers of MOUNT MERU, the golden abode of the gods. the MAHEYENA (meaning “Greater Vehicle”) Buddhist tradiThe Himalayan ranges contain 30 mountains rising to tion in ancient India. The name reflected the Maheyenists’ heights greater than 24,000 feet above sea level, including evaluation of their own tradition as a superior method, but Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, which reaches an the name was not accepted by the conservative schools as elevation of 29,028 feet. The mountains extend from Jamreferring to a common tradition. mu and Kashmir eastward to Namcha Barwa peak in Tibet, Most of the major Hjnayena schools (traditionally 18 in near its southern border with India. Between these western number) predate the emergence of the Maheyena. After the and eastern extremities lie several Indian states and the Hirise of the Maheyena in about the 1st century (, the malayan kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan. Hjnayena schools continued to prosper. However, the TherThe Himalayas are the site of many of the most impor- avedins are the only Hjnayena-type school that maintained tant shrines of HINDUISM and BUDDHISM. In Kashmir, SHIVA is a strong position after the collapse of Indian Buddhism in worshiped in the Amarneth cave in the form of a linga that the 13th century. See THERAVEDA. is a stalagmite of ice. Thousands of pilgrims come yearly to this place, where the god is thought to have imparted the H INDU CALENDAR, dating system used in India from secret of immortality. Shiva and his divine consort are said about 1000 ) and still used to establish dates of the Hindu religious year. It is based on a year of 12 lunar to dwell on Mount Kailesa. Other Himalayan holy sites include Badrjneth, an uninhabited village and shrine situated months; i.e., 12 full cycles of phases of the Moon. The disalong a headstream of the Gaege (Ganges) River which is crepancy between this year of about 354 days and the solar year of about 365 days is partially resolved by intercalation the site of a temple that contains a shrine of Badrjneth, or VISHNU, that has been a well-known PILGRIMAGE center for of an extra month every 30 months. 431 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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HINDUISM

T

he beliefs and practices of Hindus are expressed in a series of characteristic doctrinal, ritual, social, narrative, and poetic forms. INTRODUCTION The term Hinduism. The English term Hinduism was coined by British writers in the first decades of the 19th century and became familiar as a designator of religious ideas and practices distinctive to India with the publication of such books as Sir Monier-Williams’ Hinduism (1877). Initially it was an outsiders’ word, building on centuries-old usages of the word Hindu. Early travelers to the Indus Valley, beginning with the Greeks, spoke of its inhabitants as “Hindu” (Greek: ‘indoi), and in the 16th century residents of India themselves began very slowly to employ the term to distinguish themselves from the “Turks”—i.e., descendants of people who came to India from Central Asia. Gradually the distinction became primarily religious, as opposed to ethnic, geographic, or cultural. Since the late 19th century, Hindus have reacted to the term Hinduism in several ways. Some have rejected it in favor of indigenous formulations. Those preferring the terms VEDA or VEDIC RELIGION want to embrace an ancient textual core and the tradition of BRAHMIN learning that preserved and interpreted it. Those preferring the term SANATANA DHARMA (“eternal law,” or as Philip Lutgendorf has playfully suggested “old-time religion”) emphasize a more catholic tradition of belief and practice (such as worship through images, dietary codes, and the veneration of the cow) not necessarily mediated by Brahmins. Still others, perhaps the majority, have simply accepted the term Hinduism or its analogues in various Indic languages, especially hindj dharma. From the early 20th century onward, textbooks on Hinduism were written by Hindus themselves, often under the rubric of sanatana dharma. These efforts at self-explanation were and are intended to set Hinduism parallel with other religious traditions and to teach it systematically to Hindu youths. They add a new layer to an elaborate tradition of EGAMAS and uestras expositing practice and doctrine that dates back well into the 1st millennium (. The roots of this tradition can be traced back much farther—textually, to the schools of commentary and debate preserved in epic and Vedic writings dating to the 2nd millennium ); and visually, through YAKZAS (luminous spirits associated with specific locales and

Devotees carrying a statue of the Hindu god Gadeua for immersion in the Arabian Sea, Bombay, India Rob Elliott—AFP/Getty Images

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HINDUISM CONTENTS

Introduction 433 The term Hinduism 433 General nature of Hinduism 434 Five tensile strands 434 Doctrine 434 Practice 434 Society 435 Story 436 Devotion 436 Central conceptions 436 Veda, Brahmins, and issues of religious authority 437 Doctrine of etman-Brahman 437 The pantheon 437 Karma, sausera, and mokza 437 Dharma and the three paths 438 Euramas: the four stages of life 438 Sacred texts 439 Vedas 439 Importance and components of the Veda 439 The Sg Veda 440 The Upanishads 440 Sjtras, uestras, and smstis 441 Epics and Puredas 442 The Mahebherata 442 The Remeyada 443 The Bhagavad Gjte 444 The Puredas 445 Myths of time and eternity 445 Major traditions of affiliation 445 Vaizdavism 445 Uaivism 447 Uektism 448 Modes of religious practice 450 Tantrism 450 Domestic rites 451 Temple worship 453 Sacred times and places 454 Festivals 454 Pilgrimages 456 Regional expressions of Hinduism 457 Social correlates of religion 459 Caste 459 Social protest 459 Renunciants and the rejection of social order 460 Hinduism and the world beyond 461 Hinduism and religions of Indian origin 461 Hinduism and Islam 461 Hinduism and Christianity 462 Diasporic Hinduism 462

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natural phenomena) and NEGAS (snakelike divinities) worshiped about 400 )– 400 ( to veneration of goddesses, as seems to be implied by the female terra-cotta figurines found ubiquitously in excavations of INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION (3rd– 2nd millennia )) sites. In recognition of these ancient sources, present-day Hindus often assert that Hinduism is the world’s oldest religion. General nature of Hinduism. More strikingly than any other major religious community, Hindus accept and indeed celebrate the complex, organic, multileveled, and sometimes internally inconsistent nature of their tradition. This expansiveness is made possible by the widely shared Hindu view that truth or reality cannot be encapsulated in any creedal formulation. As many Hindus affirm through the prayer “May good thoughts come to us from all sides,” truth is of such a nature that it must be multiply sought, not dogmatically claimed. Anyone’s view of the truth—even that of a GURU regarded as possessing superior authority—is fundamentally conditioned by the specifics of time, age, gender, state of consciousness, social and geographic location, and stage of attainment. These perspectives enhance a broad view of religious truth rather than diminish it; hence there is a strong tendency for contemporary Hindus to affirm that tolerance is the foremost religious virtue. On the other hand, even cosmopolitan Hindus living in a global environment recognize and prize the fact that their religion has developed in the specific geographic, social, historical, and ritual climates of the Indian subcontinent. Religious practices and ideological formulations that emphasize this fact—from benign PILGRIMAGES to the violent edge of Hindu nationalism—affirm a strong connection to the Hindu homeland. Such a tension between universalist and particularist impulses has long animated the Hindu tradition. When Hindus speak of their religious identity as sanatana dharma, a formulation made popular late in the 19th century, they emphasize its continuous, seemingly eternal (sanatana) existence and the fact that it describes a web of customs, obligations, traditions, and ideals (DHARMA) that far exceeds the recent Christian and Western secularist tendency to think of religion primarily as a system of beliefs. A common way in which English-speaking Hindus often distance themselves from that is to insist that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life. Five tensile strands. Across the sweep of Indian religious history over the past two millennia, at least five elements have given shape to the Hindu religious tradition: doctrine, practice, society, story, and devotion. None of these is univocal; no Hindu would claim that they correspond to the FIVE PILLARS OF ISLAM. Rather, to adopt a typical Hindu metaphor, they relate to one another as strands in an elaborate braid. Moreover, each strand develops out of a history of conversation, elaboration, and challenge. Hence, in looking for what makes the tradition cohere, it is sometimes better to locate major points of tension than to expect clear agreements on Hindu thought and practice. Doctrine. The first of the five strands that weave together to make Hinduism is doctrine, as enunciated and debated in a vast textual tradition anchored to the Veda (“Knowledge”), the oldest core of Hindu religious utterance, and organized through the centuries primarily by members of the learned Brahmin CASTE. Here several characteristic tensions appear. One concerns the status of the One in relation to the Many—issues of POLYTHEISM, MONOTHEISM, and monism—or of supernal truth in relation to its embodied, phenomenal counterpart. Another tension concerns the disparity between the world-preserving ideal of dharma (proper behavior defined in relation to the gods and society) and that of MOKZA (release from an inherently flawed world). A third tension exists between one’s individual destiny, as shaped by KARMA (action in this and other lives), and any person’s deep bond to family, society, and the divinities associated with them. Practice. The second strand in the fabric of Hinduism is practice. Many Hindus, in fact, would place this first. Despite India’s enormous diversity, a common grammar of ritual behavior connects various places, strata, and periods of Hindu life. While it is true that various elements of Vedic ritual survive in modern practice, especially in life-cycle rites (see SAUSKERA), and serve a unifying function, much more influential commonalities appear in the ritual vocabulary of the worship of God in the form of an ICON, or image (PRATIME, mjrti, etc.).

HINDUISM Broadly, this is called (“praising [the deity]”). It echoes conventions of hospitality that might be performed for an honored guest, and the giving and sharing of food is central. Such food is called PRASEDA (in Hindi, prased: “grace”), reflecting the recognition that when human beings make offerings to deities, the initiative is not really theirs. They are actually responding to the generosity that bore them into a world fecund with life and auspicious possibility. The divine personality installed as a home or temple image receives praseda, tasting it (Hindus differ as to whether this is a real or symbolic act, gross or subtle) and offering the remains to worshipers. Consuming these leftovers, worshipers accept their creaturely status as beings inferior to and dependent upon the divine. An element of tension arises because the logic of pjje and praseda would seem to accord all humans an equally ancillary status with respect to God, yet exclusionary rules have often been sanctified rather than challenged by praseda-based ritual. Specifically, lower-caste people and those perceived as outsiders or carriers of pollution have historically been forbidden to enter certain Hindu temples, a practice that continues in some instances even today. Society. The third aspect that has served to organize Hindu life is society. Since the scholar al-Bjrjnj traveled to India in the early 11th century, visitors have been struck by an unusually well stratified (if locally variant) system of social relations that has come to be called familiarly the caste system. While it is true that there is a vast slippage between the ancient vision of society as divided into four ideal classifications (VARDAS) and the thousands of endogamous birthgroups (JETIS, literally “births”) that constitute Indian society in reality, few would dispute that Indian society is notably plural and hierarchical in its organization. This has to do with an understanding of truth or reality as being similarly plural and multilayered, whether one understands the direction of influence to proceed from social fact to religious doctrine or vice versa. Seeking its own answer to this conundrum, a well-known Vedic hymn (SG VEDA 10.90) describes how in the beginning of time a primordial person underwent a process of sacrifice that produced a four-part cosmos and its human counterpart, a four-part social order. PJJE

Vishnu on the serpent Ueza, c. 500 (, Deogarh, Madhya Pradesh, India Borromeo—Art Resource

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HINDUISM

Uaivite sadhu Earl Scott—Photo Researchers

As in the realms of doctrine and religious practice, so also in this social domain there is a characteristic tension. Ideally, we have the humble, even-handed view that each person or group approaches truth in a way that is necessarily distinct, reflecting its own perspective. Only by allowing each to speak and act in such terms can a society constitute itself as a proper representation of truth or reality. Yet this pluriform, context-sensitive habit of thought can too easily be used to legitimate a social-system that enshrines privilege and prejudice. If it is believed that no standards apply universally, one group can too easily justify its dominance over another. Historically, therefore, certain Hindus have been able to espouse tolerance at the level of doctrine but practice intolerance in the social realm: caste discrimination. Responding to such oppression, especially when justified by allegedly Hindu norms, lower-caste groups have sometimes insisted, “We are not Hindus!” Yet their own communities may enact similar inequalities, and their religious practices and beliefs often continue to tie them to the greater Hindu fold. Story. Another dimension drawing Hindus into a single community of discourse is narrative. For at least two millennia, people in almost all corners of India—and now well beyond—have responded to certain prominent stories of divine play and of interactions between gods and humans. These concern major figures in the Hindu pantheon: KRISHNA and his lover REDHE, REMA and his wife SJTE and brother Lakzmada, SHIVA and his consort PERVATJ (or, in a different birth, SATJ), and the Great Goddess DURGE, or DEVJ as a slayer of the buffalo demon Mahizesura. Often such narratives illustrate the interpenetration of the divine and human spheres, with deities such as Krishna and Rema entering entirely into the human drama. Many tales focus in different degrees on dharmic exemplariness, genealogies of human experience, forms of love, and the struggle between order and chaos or duty and play. In performing and listening to these stories, Hindus have often experienced themselves as members of a single imagined family. Yet simultaneously these narratives serve as an arena for articulating tensions. Women performers sometimes tell the REMEYADA as the story of Sjte’s travails at the hands of Rema rather than as a testament of Rema’s righteous victories. The virtues of Rema’s enemy REVADA, even supplanting those of Rema himself, may be emphasized in South Indian performances. And lower-caste musicians of North India present epics such as ELHE or QHOLE, enacting their own experience of the world rather than playing out the upper-caste milieu of the MAHEBHERATA, which these epics nonetheless echo. To the broadly known pan-Hindu, male-centered narrative traditions, these variants provide both resonance and challenge. Devotion. Finally, there is a fifth strand that contributes to the complex unity of Hindu experience through time: BHAKTI (“sharing,” or “devotion”), a broad tradition of loving God that is especially associated with the lives and words of vernacular poet-saints throughout India. Devotional poems attributed to these figures, who represent both sexes and all social classes, have elaborated a store of images to which access can be had in a score of languages. Individual poems are sometimes strikingly similar from one language or century to another, without there being any trace of mediation through the pan-Indian, distinctly upper-caste language Sanskrit. Often, individual motifs in the lives of bhakti poet-saints also bear strong family resemblances. Because bhakti verse first appeared in Tamil (c. 6th century), in South India, bhakti is sometimes attributed to a muse or goddess who spent her youth there, aging and revivifying as she moved northward into other regions with different languages. With its central affirmation that religious enthusiasm is more fundamental than rigidities of practice or doctrine, bhakti provides a common challenge to other aspects of Hindu life. At the same time, it contributes to a common Hindu heritage—in part, a common heritage of protest.

CENTRAL

CONCEPTIONS

In the following sections, we will take up various aspects of this complex whole, proceeding in a fashion that allows us to develop a measure of historical perspective on the development of the Hindu tradition. This approach has its costs, for it may seem to give priority to aspects of the tradition that appear in its earliest extant texts. These owe their preservation primarily to the labors of up436 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM per-caste men, especially Brahmins, and often tell us far too little about the perspectives of others. Particularly early on, readers must therefore read both with and against the grain, noting silences and imagining rebuttals to skewed visions of the experiences of women, regional communities, and people regarded by Brahmins as being of low status—all of whom nowadays call themselves Hindus or identify with groups that can sensibly be placed within the broad Hindu span. Veda, Brahmins, and issues of religious authority. For members of the upper castes, a principal characteristic of Hinduism has traditionally been a recognition of the Veda, the most ancient body of Indian religious literature, as an absolute authority revealing fundamental and unassailable truth. The Veda is also regarded as the basis of all the later uestric texts used in Hindu doctrine and practice, including, for example, the medical corpus known as EYURVEDA. Parts of the Veda are quoted in essential Hindu rituals (e.g., weddings), and it is the source of many enduring patterns of Hindu thought, yet its contents are practically unknown to most Hindus, and it is seldom drawn upon for literal information or advice. Still, it is venerated from a distance by most Hindus, and groups who reject its authority outright (as in BUDDHISM and JAINISM) are regarded by Hindus as unfaithful to their common tradition. Another characteristic of much Hindu thought is its special regard for Brahmins as a priestly class possessing spiritual supremacy by birth. As special manifestations of religious power and as bearers and teachers of the Veda, Brahmins have often been considered to represent an ideal of ritual purity and social prestige. Yet this has also been challenged, either because of competing claims to religious authority—especially by kings and rulers—or because Brahminhood is regarded as a status attained by depth of learning, not birth. Evidence of both these challenges can be found in Vedic literature itself, especially the UPANISHADS, and bhakti literature is full of vignettes in which the small-mindedness of Brahmins inversely mirrors the true depth of RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. Doctrine of etman-Brahman. Hindus believe in an uncreated, eternal, infinite, transcendent principle that, “comprising in itself being and non-being,” is the sole reality, the ultimate cause and foundation, source, and goal of all existence. This ultimate reality may be called BRAHMAN. As the All, Brahman either causes the universe and all beings to emanate from itself, transforms itself into the universe, or assumes the appearance of the universe. Brahman is in all things and is the self (ETMAN) of all living beings. Brahman is the creator, preserver, or transformer and reabsorber of everything. Hindus differ, however, as to whether this ultimate reality is best conceived as lacking attributes and qualities—the impersonal Brahman—or as a personal God, especially VISHNU, Shiva, or the Goddess (these being the preferences of adherents called Vaizdavas, Uaivas, and Uektas, respectively). The conviction of the importance of a search for a One that is the All has been embedded in India’s spiritual life for more than 3,000 years. The pantheon. Hindus typically focus their worship of the One on a favorite divinity (izeadevate); they do not, however, insist that there is anything exclusive in that choice. Although a range of deities may be so worshiped, many Hindus worship Vishnu and Shiva. Vishnu is often regarded as a special manifestation of the preservative aspect of Supreme Reality, while Shiva is regarded as the manifestation of the destructive aspect. Another deity, BRAHME, whose name is a masculine inflection of the noun Brahman, is the creator and remains in the background as a DEMIURGE . These three great figures (Brahme, Vishnu, and Shiva) constitute the so-called Hindu trinity (TRIMJRTI). This conception was an early attempt to harmonize the conviction that the Supreme Power is singular with the plurality of gods addressed in daily worship. The trimjrti is still seen in Hindu theological writing, but it is virtually absent in practice, since Brahme is rarely worshiped. Much closer to lived religion is another attempt to make sense of the pantheon, in which the Great Goddess (known variously as Devj, Durge, or UAKTI) replaces Brahme as the third element in a trinity (see DEVJ MEHETMYA; UEKTISM). Karma, sausera, and mokza. Hindus generally accept the doctrine of transmigration and rebirth and the complementary belief in karma (“action”), the idea that prior acts condition a being in subsequent forms of life. The whole process of 437 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM rebirths is called SAUSERA, a cyclic process with no clear beginning or end that encompasses lives of perpetual, serial attachments. Actions (karma), if generated by desire and an appetite for results, propel the system forward and bind one’s spirit (JJVA) to an endless series of births and deaths unless a person is able to control the root cause of interested action, desire. Desire motivates any social interaction (particularly when involving sex or food), resulting in the mutual exchange of good and bad karma. In one prevalent view, the very meaning of salvation is one’s final emancipation (mokza) from this morass, an escape from the impermanence that is an inescapable feature of mundane existence. In this view the only goal is the one permanent and eternal principle: the One, God, Brahman, which is totally opposite to phenomenal existence. People who have not fully realized that their being is identical with Brahman are thus seen as deluded. Fortunately, the very structure of human experience teaches the ultimate identity between Brahman and the kernel of human personality, the selfhood called etman. One may learn this lesson by different means: by realizing one’s essential sameness with all living beings, by responding in love to a personal expression of the divine, or by coming to appreciate that the competing attentions and moods of one’s waking consciousness are grounded in a transcendental unity. We have a taste of this unity in our daily experience of deep, dreamless sleep. Dharma and the three paths. Hindus disagree about the best way (MERGA) to attain such release and concede that no “one size fits all.” Three paths to salvation are presented in an extremely influential religious text, the BHAGAVAD GJTE (“Song of God”; c. 100 (). These three are (1) the karma-merga (“path of duties”), the disinterested discharge of ritual and social obligations, (2) the jñena-merga (“path of knowledge”), the use of meditative concentration preceded by a long and systematic ethical and contemplative training (YOGA) to gain a supraintellectual insight into one’s identity with Brahman, and (3) the bhakti-merga (“path of devotion”), love for a personal God. These ways are regarded as suited to various types of people, but they are interactive and potentially available to all. Although the pursuit of mokza is institutionalized in Hindu life through ascetic practice and the ideal of withdrawing from the world at the conclusion of one’s life, such practices of withdrawal are explicitly denigrated in the Bhagavad Gjte itself. Because action is inescapable, these three disciplines are better thought of as simultaneously achieving the goals of world maintenance (dharma, doing one’s duty) and world release (mokza). Through the suspension of desire and ambition and through a taste for the fruits (phala) of one’s actions, one is enabled to float free of life while engaging it fully. This matches the goals of most Hindus, these being: to execute properly one’s social and ritual duties; to support one’s caste, family, and profession; and to do one’s part to achieve a broader stability in the cosmos, nature, and society. The designation of Hinduism as sanatana dharma emphasizes this goal of maintaining personal and universal equilibrium, while at the same time calling attention to the role played by the performance of traditional (sanatana) religious practices in achieving that goal. Such tradition is understood to be inherently pluriform, since no one person can occupy all the social, occupational, and age-defined roles that are requisite to maintaining the health of the life-organism as a whole. Hence universal maxims (e.g., AHIUSE, the desire not to harm) are qualified by the more particular dharmas that are appropriate to each of the four major vardas, or classes of society: Brahmins (priests), KZATRIYAS (warriors and kings), VAIUYAS (the common people), and UJDRAS (servants). These four rather abstract categories are further superseded by the more practically applicable dharmas appropriate to each of the thousands of particular castes (jetis). And these, in turn, are cross-referenced to obligations appropriate to one’s gender and stage of life (eurama). In principle, then, Hindu ethics are exquisitely context-sensitive, and Hindus expect and celebrate a wide variety of individual behavior. Euramas: the four stages of life. In the West, the so-called life-negating aspects of Hinduism—rigorous disciplines of Yoga, for example—have often been overemphasized. The polarity of ASCETICISM and sensuality, which assumes the form of a conflict between the aspiration for liberation and the heartfelt desire to have descendants and continue earthly life, manifests itself in Hindu social life as 438 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM the tension between the different goals and stages of life. For many centuries, the relative value of an active life and the performance of meritorious works (pravstti) as opposed to the renunciation of all worldly interests and activity (nivstti) has been a debated issue. While philosophical works such as the Upanishads placed emphasis on renunciation, the dharma texts argued that the householder who maintains his sacred fire, begets children, and performs his ritual duties well also earns religious merit. Nearly 2,000 years ago these texts elaborated the social doctrine of the four euramas (see ASHRAM; stages of life). It held that a male member of the three higher classes should first become a chaste student (brahmacerj); then become a married householder (gshastha), discharging his debts to his ancestors by begetting sons and to the gods by sacrificing; then retire to the forest to devote himself to spiritual contemplation; and finally, but not mandatorily, become a homeless wandering ascetic (SANNYESJ). The situation of the forest dweller was often omitted or rejected in practical life. Although the status of a householder was often extolled and some authorities, regarding studentship a mere preparation for this next eurama, went so far as to brand all other stages inferior, there were always people who became wandering ascetics immediately after studentship. Theorists were inclined to reconcile the divergent views and practices by allowing the ascetic way of life to those who are, owing to the effects of restrained conduct in former lives, entirely free from worldly desire, even if they had not gone through the prior stages. The texts describing such life stages were written by men for men; they paid scant attention to paradigms for women. The MANU-SMSTI (200 )–300 (; “Laws of Manu”), for example, was content to regard marriage as the female equivalent to initiation in the life of a student, thereby effectively denying that the student stage in life is appropriate for girls. Furthermore, in the householder stage a woman’s purpose was summarized as service to her husband. What we know of actual practice, however, challenges the idea that these patriarchal norms were ever perfectly enacted or that women entirely accepted them. While some women became ascetics (sannyesinjs), many more focused their religious lives on realizing a state of blessedness (kalyeda) that is understood to be at once this-worldly and expressive of a larger, cosmic well-being. Women have often directed the cultivation of the auspicious (urj) life-giving force (uakti) they possess to the benefit of their husbands and families, but as an ideal it has independent status.

SACRED

Shrine to Vishnu in a Hindu temple in New York City Katrina Thomas—Photo Researchers

TEXTS

Vedas. Importance and components of the Veda. The Veda (“Knowledge”) is a collective term for the sacred SCRIPTURES of the Hindus. Since about the 5th century ), the Veda has been considered the creation of neither human nor god; rather, it is regarded as the eternal truth that was in ancient times directly re439 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM

Krishna, from Orissa, India, c. 1800; ivory with traces of polychrome Archive Photos

440 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

vealed to or “heard” by gifted and inspired seers (szis) who uttered it in the most perfect human language, Sanskrit. Although most of the religion of the Vedic texts, which revolves around rituals of fire sacrifice, has been eclipsed by other aspects of Hindu doctrine and practice, parts of the Veda are still memorized and recited as a religious act of great merit. The Veda is the product of early inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent who referred to themselves as ARYAN (erya, “noble”). It represents the particular interests of the two classes of Aryan society—the priests (Brahmins) and the warriorkings (Kzatriyas)—who ruled over the far more numerous peasants (Vaiuyas). Because it is the literature of a ruling class, it probably does not represent all the myths and cults of the early Indo-Aryans, let alone those of non-Aryans. Vedic literature ranges from the Sg Veda (composed c. 1200 )) to the Upanishads (composed c. 700 )–100 (). The most important texts are the four collections (Sauhites) known as the Veda or Vedas (i.e., “Book[s] of Knowledge”): the Sg Veda (“Wisdom of the Verses”), the YAJUR VEDA (“Wisdom of the Sacrificial Formulas”), the SEMA VEDA (“Wisdom of the Chants”), and the ATHARVA VEDA (“Wisdom of the Atharvan Priests”). Of these, the Sg Veda is the oldest. In the Vedic texts that succeeded these earliest compilations, the BREHMADAS (discussions of Vedic ritual), Eradyakas (books studied in the forest), and Upanishads (secret teachings concerning cosmic correlations), the interest in the early Sg Vedic gods wanes, and these gods become little more than accessories to Vedic ritual. Polytheism begins to be replaced by a sacrificial PANTHEISM of PRAJEPATI (“Lord of Creatures”), who is the All. In the Upanishads Prajepati merges with the concept of Brahman, the supreme reality and substance of the universe, replacing any specific personification, thus transforming the mythology into abstract philosophy. Together, the components of each of the four Vedas—the Sauhites, Brehmadas, Eradyakas, and Upanishads—constitute the revealed scripture of Hinduism, or URUTI (“heard”). All other works—in which the actual doctrines and practices of Hindus are encoded—are recognized as having been composed by human authors and are thus classed as smsti (“remembered”). The categorization of Veda, however, is capable of elasticity. First, uruti is not exactly closed; Upanishads, for example, have been composed until recent times. Second, the texts categorized as smsti inevitably claim to be in accord with the authoritative uruti and, thus, worthy of the same respect and sacredness. In all this, the important thing to grasp is that the category of Veda functions as a symbol of authority and hallowed tradition. The Sg Veda. The religion reflected in the Sg Veda is a polytheism mainly concerned with the propitiation of divinities associated with the sky and the atmosphere. The old Indo-European sky father Dyaus was little regarded by the time the hymns of the Sg Veda were composed. More important were such gods as INDRA, VARUDA (the guardian of the cosmic order), AGNI (the sacrificial fire), and SJRYA (the sun). The main ritual activity referred to in the Sg Veda is the SOMA sacrifice. Scholars disagree as to whether the soma beverage was a hallucinogen derived from the fly agaric mushroom native to mountain climates or (perhaps more likely) a stimulant squeezed from ephedra, a desert shrub. The Sg Veda contains a few clear references to animal sacrifice, which probably became more widespread later. There is doubt whether the priests formed a separate class at the beginning of the Sg Vedic period. If they did, the prevailing loose class boundaries made it possible for a man of nonpriestly parentage to become a priest. By the end of the period, however, they had become a separate class of specialists, the Brahmins (brehmadas), who claimed superiority over all the other social classes, including the Rejanyas (later Kzatriyas), the warrior-kings. The Upanishads. The phase of Indian religious life roughly between 700 and 500 ) was the period of the beginnings of philosophy

HINDUISM and mysticism marked by the early Upanishads (“Connection,” or “Correspondence”). With the Upanishads, the earlier emphasis on ritual was challenged by a new emphasis on knowledge alone—primarily, knowledge of the interconnectedness and ultimate identity of all phenomena, which merely appear to be separate. Historically, the most important of the Upanishads are the two oldest, the Bshaderadyaka (“Great Forest Text”) and the Chendogya (pertaining to the Chandogas, a class of priests who intone hymns at sacrifices), both of which are compilations that record the traditions of sages of the period, notably YEJÑAVALKYA. A primary motive of the Upanishads is a desire for mystical knowledge that would ensure freedom from punarmstyu (“re-death”). Throughout the later Vedic period, the idea that the world of heaven was not the end—and that even in heaven death was inevitable—had been growing. For Vedic thinkers, apprehension about the impermanence of religious merit and its loss in the hereafter, as well as the anticipation of the transience of any form of existence after death, culminating in the much-feared prospect of repeated death, assumed the character of an obsession. The Brehmadas laid out a largely ritual program for escaping and conquering death and achieving a full, integrated life. The Bshaderadyaka, however, placed more emphasis on the knowledge of the cosmic connection that formed the underpinnings of ritual. When the doctrine of the identity of etman (the self) and Brahman was established in the Upanishads, the true knowledge of the self and the realization of this identity were (by those sages who were inclined to meditative thought) set above the ritual method. In the following centuries the main theories connected with the divine essence underlying the world were harmonized and combined, and the tendency was to extol one god as the supreme Lord and Originator (JUVARA), who is at the same time Puruza, Prajepati, Brahman, and the inner self (etman) of all beings. For those who worshiped him, he became the goal of identificatory meditation, which leads to complete cessation of phenomenal existence and becomes the refuge of those who seek eternal peace. The philosopher UAUKARA (c. 800 () exercised enormous influence on subsequent Hindu thinking through his elegant synthesis of the nontheistic and theistic aspects of Upanishadic teaching. In his commentaries on several of the Upanishads, he distinguished between NIRGUDA (without attributes) and SAGUDA (with attributes) aspects of Brahman, that ultimate reality whose relation to the phenomenal world can best be described as nondual (ADVAITA). This “nonrelationship” states the world’s deepest truth. The origin and the development of the belief in the transmigration of souls are very obscure. A few passages suggest that this doctrine was known even in the days of the Sg Veda, but it was first clearly propounded in the Bshaderadyaka. There it is stated that normally the soul returns to earth and is reborn in human or animal form. This doctrine of sausera (REINCARNATION) is attributed to the sage Uddelaka Erudi, who is said to have learned it from a Kzatriya chief. In the same text, the doctrine of karma (actions), according to which the soul achieves a happy or unhappy rebirth according to its works in the previous life, also occurs for the first time, attributed to the teacher and sage Yejñavalkya. Both doctrines appear to have been new and strange ones, circulating among small groups of ascetics who were disinclined to make them public, but they must have spread rapidly, for in the later Upanishads and in the earliest Buddhist and Jain scriptures they are common knowledge. Sjtras, uestras, and smstis. Among the texts inspired by the Veda are the DHARMA SUTRAS, or manuals on dharma, which contain rules of conduct and rites as they were practiced in a number of branches of the Vedic schools. Their principal contents address duties at various stages of life, or euramas (studenthood, householdership, retirement, and asceticism); dietary regulations; offenses and expiations; and the rights and duties of kings. They also discuss purification rites, funerary ceremonies, forms of hospitality, and daily oblations. Finally, they mention juridical matters. The more important of these texts are the sjtras of the BUDDHA GOTAMA, Baudheyana, and Epastamba. Although the relationship is not clear, the contents of these works were further elaborated in the more systematic DHARMA UESTRAS, which in turn became the basis of Hindu law. 441 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM

Hanumen, chief among monkeys, goes to Laeke, episode in the Bhegavata Pureda, 17thcentury Indian miniature from Malwa Borromeo—Art Resource

First among them stands the Dharma Uestra of Manu, also known as the MANU(“Tradition [or Laws] of Manu”), with 2,694 stanzas divided into 12 chapters. It deals with various topics such as COSMOGONY, definition of dharma, the SACRAMENTS, initiation and Vedic study, the 8 forms of marriage, hospitality and funerary rites, dietary laws, pollution and purification, rules for women and wives, royal law, 18 categories of juridical matters, and religious matters, including donations, rites of reparation, the doctrine of karma, the soul, and punishment in hell. Law in the juridical sense is thus completely embedded in religious practice. The framework is provided by the model of the four-varda society. The influence of the Dharma Uestra of Manu as a statement of ideal norms has been very great, but there is no evidence that it was ever employed as a working legal code in ancient India. Second only to Manu is the Dharma Uestra of Yejñavalkya; its 1,013 stanzas are distributed under the three headings of good conduct, law, and expiation. The uestras are a part of the SMSTI (“remembered,” or traditional) literature, which, like the sjtra literature that preceded it, stresses the religious merit of gifts to Brahmins. Because kings often transferred the revenues of villages or groups of villages to Brahmins, either singly or in corporate groups, the status and wealth of the priestly class rose steadily. In agraheras, as the settlements of Brahmins were called, Brahmins were encouraged to devote themselves to the study of the Vedas and to the subsidiary studies associated with them; but many Brahmins also developed the sciences of the period, such as mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, while others cultivated literature. Epics and Puredas. During the centuries immediately preceding and following the beginning of the Christian Era, the recension of the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahebherata and the Remeyada, took shape out of existing material, such as heroic epic stories, mythology, philosophy, and above all the discussion of the problem of dharma. Much of the material of which the epics were composed dates back into the Vedic period; the rest continued to be added until well after 1000 (. The actual composition of the Sanskrit texts, however, dates to the period from 500 ) to 400 ( for the Mahebherata and to the period from 200 ) to 200 ( for the Remeyada. The Mahebherata. The Mahebherata (“Great Epic of the Bherata Dynasty”), a text of some 100,000 verses attributed to the sage Vyesa, was preserved both orally and in manuscript form for centuries. The central plot concerns a great batSMSTI

442 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM tle between the five sons of Pedqu (called the PEDQAVAS) and the sons of Pedqu’s brother Dhstarezera. Pedqu had been placed under a curse: to have intercourse with any of his wives would cause his death. One wife, however, Kuntj, had a boon that permitted her to conceive through use of a MANTRA. Thus, Kuntj invoked the gods to allow her to conceive the Pedqavas: the five brothers are ARJUNA, conceived of Indra; Yudhizehira, conceived of Dharma; Bhjma, conceived of Veyu; and the twins, Nakula and Sahadeva, conceived of the Auvins. The battle eventually leads to the destruction of the entire race, save one survivor who continues the dynasty. The epic is deeply infused with religious implications, and the battle itself is sometimes understood as a great sacrifice. There are, moreover, many passages in which dharma is systematically treated, so that Hindus regard the Mahebherata as one of the Dharma Uestras. Religious practice takes the form of Vedic ritual (on official occasions), pilgrimage, and, to some extent, adoration of gods. Apart from the Bhagavad Gjte (part of book 6 of the Mahebherata) much of the didactic material is found in the Book of the Forest (book 3), in which sages teach the exiled heroes, and in the Book of Peace (book 12), in which the wise Bhjzma expounds on religious and moral matters. In the Mahebherata the Vedic gods have lessened in importance, surviving principally as figures of FOLKLORE. Prajepati of the Upanishads is popularly personified as the god Brahme, who creates all classes of beings and dispenses boons. Of far greater importance in the Mahebherata is Krishna. In the epic he is primarily a hero, a leader of his people, and an active helper of his friends, yet at a grander, subtler level it is he who superintends the battle-sacrifice as a whole. Krishna’s biography appears primarily elsewhere—in the Harivauua (1st–3rd centuries (?) and various PUREDAS—and there his divinity shows through more obviously than in the epic. Although he is occasionally identified with Vishnu in the Mahebherata, he is mostly a chieftain, a counsellor, and an ally of the Pedqavas, the heroes of the epic. He helps the Pedqava brothers to settle in their kingdom and, when the kingdom is taken from them, to regain it. In the process he emerges as a great teacher who reveals the Bhagavad Gjte, arguably the most important religious text in Hinduism today. In the further development of Krishna worship, this dharmic aspect somewhat recedes, making way for the idyllic story of Krishna’s boyhood, when he played with and loved young cowherd women (gopjs) in the village while hiding from an uncle who threatened to kill him. The influence of this theme on art has been profound. But even in the Mahebherata, where it is often said that Krishna becomes incarnate in order to sustain dharma when it wanes and in order to combat adharma (forces contrary to dharma), he commits a number of deeds in direct violation of the warrior ethic and is indirectly responsible for the destruction of his entire family. This adharmic shadow is also cast in the Puredic idyll because the gopjs he woos are the wives of other men. In both cases, Krishna’s actions illuminate levels of truth that go deeper than any conventional dharma—either a subtle dharma inscrutable to players immersed in the Mahebherata’s epic battle or a quality of divine playfulness that characterizes the deepest rhythms of the cosmos itself. Far remoter than Krishna in the Mahebherata is Shiva, who also is hailed as the supreme god in several myths recounted of him, notably the Story of the Five Indras, Arjuna’s battle with Shiva, and Shiva’s destruction of the sacrifice of Dakza. The epic is rich in information about sacred places, and it is clear that making pilgrimages and bathing in sacred rivers constituted an important part of religious life. Occasionally these sacred places are associated with sanctuaries of gods. More frequent are accounts of mythical events concerning a particular place and enriching its sanctity. Numerous descriptions of pilgrimages (tjrthayetres) give the authors opportunities to detail local myths and legends. In addition to these, countless edifying stories shed light on the religious and moral concerns of the age. Almost divine are the towering ascetics capable of fantastic feats, whose benevolence is sought and whose curses are feared. The Remeyada. The classical narrative of Rema is recounted in the Sanskrit epic Remeyada, whose authorship is attributed to the sage Velmjki. Rema is deprived of the kingdom to which he is heir and is exiled to the forest; his wife Sjte 443 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM Vishnu sleeping between two periods of cosmic evolution—i.e., between the destruction of this world and the creation of the new universe; c. 17th century, from Rajasthan, India Werner Forman—Art Resource

444 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

and his brother Lakzmada accompany him. While there, Sjte is abducted by Revada, the demon king of Laeke. In their search for Sjte, the brothers ally themselves with Sugrjva, a monkey king whose chief, HANUMEN (an important deity in modern Hinduism), finds Sjte in Laeke. In a cosmic battle, Revada is defeated and Sjte rescued. When Rema is restored to his kingdom, the populace casts doubt on Sjte’s chastity during her captivity. Rema banishes Sjte to a hermitage, where she bears him two sons and eventually dies by reentering the earth from which she had been born. Rema’s reign becomes the prototype of the harmonious and just kingdom to which all kings should aspire; Rema and Sjte set the ideal of conjugal love; Rema’s relationship to his father is the ideal of filial love; and Rema and Lakzmada represent perfect fraternal love. Everything in the myth is designed to show harmony, which after being disrupted is at last regained—or so, at least, Velmjki would have it. This accords with the fact that in all but its oldest form (before c. 1st century (), the Remeyada identifies Rema with Vishnu. Yet there are deep fissures: Rema’s killing of Velj in violation of all rules of combat and his banishment of the innocent Sjte are troublesome to subsequent tradition. The problems of the “subtlety” of dharma and the inevitability of its violation, central themes in both the Remeyada and the Mahebherata, have remained the locus of argument throughout Indian history, both at the level of abstract philosophy and in local performance traditions. In Kerala, for instance, men of the low-ranked artisan caste worship Velj through rites of dance-possession that implicitly protest their ancestors’ deaths as soldiers conscripted by highcaste leaders such as Rema. And throughout India women performers have shifted the thrust of various episodes, emphasizing Sjte’s story—her foundling infancy, her abduction by Revada, her trial by fire, her childbirth in exile—thereby openly challenging Rema. In the words of a Bengali women’s song translated by Nabaneeta Dev Sen, “Five months pregnant, Sjte was in the royal palace, and a heartless Rema sent her off to the forest!” The Mahebherata and the Remeyada have also made an impact in Southeast Asia, where their stories have been continually retold in vernacular, oral, and visual versions. As for India, even today the epic stories and tales are part of the early education of almost all Hindus; a continuous reading of the Remeyada— whether in Sanskrit or in a vernacular version such as that of TULSJDES (16th century)—is an act of great merit, and the enacting of Tulsjdes’ version of the Remeyada, called the REMCARITMENAS, is an annual event across the northern part of the subcontinent. The Remeyada’s influence is expressed in a dazzling variety of local and regional performance traditions—story, dance, drama, art—and extends to the spawning of explicit “counter epics,” such as those published by the Tamil separatist E.V. Ramasami beginning in 1930. The Bhagavad Gjte. The Bhagavad Gjte (“Song of God”) is perhaps the most influential of any single Indian religious text, although it is not strictly classed as uruti, or revelation. It is a brief text, 700 verses divided into 18 chapters, in quasidialogue form. When the opposing parties in the Mahebherata war stand ready to begin battle, Arjuna, the hero of the favored party, despairs at the thought of hav-

HINDUISM ing to kill his kinsmen and lays down his arms. Krishna, his charioteer, friend, and adviser, thereupon argues against Arjuna’s failure to do his duty as a noble. The argument soon becomes elevated into a general discourse on religious and philosophical matters, at the climax of which Krishna reveals his infinite, supernal form as Time itself. The text is typical of Hinduism in that it is able to reconcile different viewpoints, however incompatible they seem to be, and yet emerge with an undeniable character of its own. In its way, it does constitute URUTI (“what is heard”), since Arjuna receives its teachings from the divine Krishna. The Puredas. The Gupta Period (c. 320–540) saw the first of the series (traditionally 18) of often-voluminous texts that treat in encyclopedic manner the myths, legends, and genealogies of gods, heroes, and saints. Along with the epics, to which they are closely linked in origin, the Puredas became the scriptures of the common people; they were available to everybody, including women and members of the lowest order of society (Ujdras), and were not, like the Vedas, supposedly restricted to initiated men of the three higher orders. The origin of much of their contents may be non-Brahminical, but they were also accepted by Brahmins, who thus brought new elements into Vedic religion. For example, goddesses are rarely discussed in the Veda, yet they rose steadily in recognition in Puredic mythology. The Devj Mehetmya (“Glorification of the Goddess”), which belongs to the genre, dates to the 5th or 6th century (, and the DEVJ BHEGAVATA PUREDA is sometimes regarded as being almost as old. In other Puredas Vishnu and Shiva establish their primacy. Both are known in the Vedas, though they play only minor roles: Vishnu is the god who, with his three strides, established the three worlds (heaven, atmosphere, and earth) and thus is present in all three orders; and Rudra-Shiva is a mysterious god who must be propitiated. Puredic literature reveals various stages in which these two gods progressively attract to themselves the identities of other popular gods and heroes: Vishnu assumes the powers of gods who protect the world and its order, Shiva the powers that are outside and beyond Vishnu’s range. To these two is often added Brahme; although still a cosmic figure, Brahme appears in the Puredas primarily to appease over-powerful sages and demons by granting them boons. Myths of time and eternity. Puredic myths develop around the notion of YUGA (world age). The four yugas, Ksta, Trete, Dvepara, and Kali—they are named after the four throws, from best to worst, in a dice game—constitute a maheyuga (“large yuga”) and are periods of increasing deterioration. Time itself deteriorates, for the ages are successively shorter. Each yuga is preceded by an intermediate “dawn” and “dusk.” The Ksta yuga lasts 4,000 god-years, with a dawn and dusk of 400 god-years each, or a total of 4,800 god-years; Trete a total of 3,600 godyears; Dvepara 2,400 god-years; and Kali (the current yuga) 1,200 god-years. A maheyuga thus lasts 12,000 god-years and observes the usual coefficient of 12, derived from the 12-month year, the unit of creation. Since each god-year lasts 360 human years, a maheyuga is 4,320,000 years long in human time. Two thousand maheyugas form one kalpa (eon), which is itself but one day in the life of Brahme, whose full life lasts 100 years; the present is the midpoint of his life. Each kalpa is followed by an equally long period of abeyance (pralaya), in which the universe is asleep. Seemingly the universe will come to an end at the end of Brahme’s life, but Brahmes too are innumerable, and a new universe is reborn with each new Brahme.

MAJOR

TRADITIONS OF AFFILIATION

Vaizdavism. VAIZDAVISM is the worship of Vishnu and his various incarnations. During a long and complex development from Vedic times, there arose many Vaizdava groups with differing beliefs and aims. Some of the major Vaizdava groups include the Urj Vaizdavas and Dvaitins (“[Theological] Dualists”) of South India, the followers of the teachings of the philosopher VALLABHA in western India, and several Vaizdava groups in Bengal in eastern India, who follow teachings derived from those of the saint CAITANYA. The majority of Vaizdava believers, however, take what they like from the various traditions and blend it with various local practices. 445 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM

Ume-Maheuvara Mjrti—Shiva with Pervatj, c. 10th–11th century, Rajasthan, India Archive Photos

446 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

In the Veda, Vishnu is the god who penetrates and traverses the triple spaces of the universe to make their existence possible. All beings are said to dwell in his three strides or footsteps (tri-vikrama); his highest step, or abode, is beyond mortal ken in the realm of heaven. Vishnu is the god who serves as the pillar of the universe and is identified with sacrifice, which attempts by ritual means to open channels between the several levels of the universe. Vishnu imparts his all-pervading power to the sacrificer, who imitates his strides and so identifies himself with the god, thus conquering the universe and attaining “the goal, the safe foundation, the highest light” (Uatapatha Brehmada). In the centuries preceding the beginning of the Common Era, Vishnu became the Juvara (immanent deity) of his special worshipers, fusing with the Puruza-Prajepati figure; with Nereyada, whose cult discloses a prominent influence of ascetics; with Krishna, who in the Bhagavad Gjte revealed a form of dharma-affirming devotional religion, in principle accessible to everyone; and with VESUDEVA , adored by a group known as the PEÑCARETRAS. The extensive mythology attached to Vishnu consists largely of his incarnations (AVATARS, literally “descents” into this world). Although the notion of incarnation is found elsewhere in Hinduism, it is basic to Vaizdavism. The concept is particularly geared to the social role of Vishnu; whenever dharma is in danger, Vishnu departs from his heaven, Vaikudeha, and incarnates himself in an earthly form to restore the proper order. Each incarnation has a particular mythology. The classical number of these incarnations is 10, ascending from theriomorphic (animal form) to fully anthropomorphic manifestations. In their most familiar version, these are fish (Matsya), tortoise (Kjrma), boar ( VAREHA ), man-lion ( NARASIUHA ), dwarf (VE-MANA), Rema with the ax (PARAUUREMA), King Rema, Krishna, the Buddha Gotama, and the future incarnation, KALKJ. A god thus active for the good of society and the individual inspires love. Vishnu has indeed been the object of devotional religion (bhakti) to a marked degree, but he is especially worshiped in his incarnations as Krishna and Rema. The god rewards devotion with his grace, through which the votary may be lifted from transmigration to release or, more crucially, into Vishnu’s intimate presence. Like most other gods, Vishnu has his especial entourage: his wife is LAKZMJ, or Urj, the lotus goddess, granter of beauty, wealth, and good luck. She came forth from the primordial MILK-OCEAN when gods and demons churned it to recover from its depths the ambrosia or elixir of immortality, amsta. At DJVELJ, or Djpevalj, the festival many Hindus regard as beginning the commercial year, special worship is paid to her for success in personal affairs. Vishnu’s mount is the bird GARUQA, archenemy of snakes, and his emblems—which he carries in his four hands—are the lotus, club, discus (as a weapon), and conch shell. Whatever justification the different Vaizdava groups offer for their philosophical position, all Vaizdavas believe in God as a person with distinctively high qualities and worship him through his manifestations and representations. Vaizdava faith is essentially monotheistic, whether the object of adoration be Vishnu-Nereyada or one of his avatars, such as Rema or Krishna. Preference for any one of these manifestations is largely a matter of tradition. Thus,

HINDUISM most South Indian Urj Vaizdavas prefer Vishnu or Urj; North Indian groups tend to worship Krishna and his consort Redhe or Rema and his consort Sjte. While most Hindus would acknowledge the overarching avatar framework as a way of organizing the Vaizdava side of the pantheon, more encompassing commitments to Rema or Krishna are also possible, as in the Bhegavata Pureda’s frequently quoted dictum “Krishna himself is God.” A pronounced feature of Vaizdavism is the strong tendency to devotion (bhakti), a passionate love and adoration of God, a complete surrender. The widespread bhakti movement seems a natural corollary of the Vaizdava ideal of a loving personal God and aversion to a conception of salvation that puts an end to all consciousness or individuality. The belief expressed in the Bhagavad Gjte—that those who seek refuge in God with all their being will, by his benevolence and grace (praseda), win peace supreme, the eternal abode—was generally accepted: bhakti will result in divine intercession with regard to the consequences of one’s deeds. A more radical position was embraced by certain followers of the 11th– 12th-century theologian REMENUJA. They held that the efficaciousness of human action is limited to self-surrender (PRAPATTI); all the rest is Vishnu’s grace. Equally radical—even paradoxical—forms of bhakti thrive in Uaiva and Uekta soil. Uaivism. The character and position of the Vedic god Rudra—called Shiva, “the Mild or Auspicious One,” when the gentler side of his ambivalent nature is emphasized—remain clearly perceptible in some of the important features of the great god Shiva, who together with Vishnu and the Great Goddess (Devj, Durge, or Uakti) came to dominate Hinduism. During a development from ancient, possibly pre-Vedic times, many different groups within UAIVISM arose. Major groups such as the Kashmir Uaivas and the Uaiva Siddhentins and VJRAUAIVAS of southern India contributed the theological principles of Uaivism, and Uaiva worship became an amalgam of pan-Indian Uaiva philosophy and local forms of worship. In the minds of ancient Indians, Shiva seems to have been especially associated with the uncultivated, dangerous, and much-to-be-feared aspects of nature. Shiva’s character lent itself to being split into partial manifestations—each said to represent only one aspect of him—as well as to assimilating divine or demoniac powers of a similar nature from other deities. Already in the Sg Veda, appeals to him for help in case of disaster—of which he might be the originator—were combined with the confirmation of his great power. In the course of the Vedic period, Shiva—originally a ritual and conceptual outsider yet a mighty god whose benevolent aspects were emphasized—gradually gained access to the circle of respectable gods who preside over various spheres of human interest. Many characteristics of the Vedic Prajepati (the creator), of Indra with his sexual potency, and of Agni (the great Vedic god of fire) have been integrated into the figure of Shiva. In those circles that produced the Uveteuvatara Upanishad (c. 200 )), Shiva rose to the highest rank. In its description of Shiva, he is the ultimate foundation of all existence and the source and ruler of all life, who, while emanating and withdrawing the universe, is the goal of that identificatory meditation that leads to a state of complete separation from phenomenal existence. While Vishnu came to be seen as an ally and advocate of humankind, Rudra-Shiva developed into an ambivalent and many-sided lord and master. As Pauupati (“Lord of Cattle”), he took over the fetters of the Vedic Varuda; as Aghora (“To Whom Nothing Is Horrible”), he showed the uncanny traits of his nature (evil, death, punishment) and also their opposites. Shiva might be the sole principle above change and variation, yet he did not sever his connections with innumerable local deities, some of them quite fearsome. Whereas Vishnu champions the cause of the gods, Shiva sometimes sides with the demons. Shiva exemplifies the idea that the Highest Being encompasses semantically opposite though complementary aspects: the terrible and the mild, creation and reabsorption, eternal rest and ceaseless activity. These seeming contradictions make Shiva a paradoxical figure, transcending humanity and assuming a mysterious sublimity of his own. Although Brahmin philosophers like to emphasize his ascetic aspects and TANTRIC HINDUS his sexuality, the seemingly opposite strands of his nature are generally accepted as two sides of one character. 447 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM Shiva interrupts his austerity and asceticism (TAPAS), which is sometimes described as continuous, to marry Pervatj—he is even said to perform ascetic acts in order to win her love—and he combines the roles of lover and ascetic to such a degree that his wife must be an ascetic (Yogi) when he devotes himself to austerities and a lustful mistress when he is in his erotic mode. Various Uaiva myths show that both chastity and the loss of chastity are necessary for fertility and the intermittent process of regeneration in nature, and ascetics who act erotically are a familiar feature of Hindu lore. By their very chastity, ascetics accumulate (sexual) power that can be discharged suddenly and completely so as to produce remarkable results, such as the fecundation of the soil. Krishna’s irrepressible sexuality often has a certain idyllic cast, as represented through the metaphor of love beyond the bonds of marriage, whereas Shiva’s complex sexuality plays itself out within the various facets of his marriage to Pervatj. That marriage becomes a model of conjugal love, sanctifying the forces that carry on the human race. Many of Shiva’s poses express positive aspects of his nature: as a dancer, he is the originator of the eternal rhythm of the universe; he catches the waters of the heavenly GAEGE (Ganges) River, which destroy all sin; and he wears in his headdress the crescent moon, which drips the nectar of everlasting life. Yet he is unpredictable. He is the hunter who slays and skins his prey and dances a wild dance while covered with the bloody hide. Far from society and the ordered world, he sits on the inaccessible Himalayan plateau of Mount Kailesa, an austere ascetic averse to love who burns KEMA, the god of love, to ashes with a glance from the third eye—the eye of insight beyond duality—in the middle of his forehead. Snakes seek his company and twine themselves around his body. He wears a necklace of skulls. He sits in meditation, with his hair braided like a hermit’s, his body smeared white with ashes. These ashes recall the burning pyres on which the sannyesjs (renouncers) take leave of the social order of the world and set out on a lonely course toward release, carrying with them a human skull. And, at the end of the eon, he will dance the universe to destruction. Nevertheless, he is invoked as Shiva, Uambhu, Uaukara (“the Auspicious One,” or “the Peaceful One”), for the god that can strike down can also spare. The form in which Shiva is most frequently worshiped is the among the sturdiest, plainest imaginable: an upright rounded post called a LIEGA (“sign”), usually made of stone. Commentators often observe that its erect male sexuality is counterbalanced by the horizontal plane (YONI)—bespeaking female sexuality—in which it is often set. Yet the sexual dimension is not primary for most devotees, for whom the liega’s aniconic form simply marks Shiva’s inscrutable stability. Uektism. The term UEKTISM stands alongside Vaizdavism or Uaivism as a way of designating a third aspect of Hindu religion that is indisputably ancient and influential: the worship of goddesses, especially when they are understood as expressions or aspects of a single Goddess (Devj) or Great Goddess (Mahedevj). This Goddess personifies a power, or energy (Uakti), present throughout the universe and challenges any notion of the feminine as passive or quiescent. She can be related to a widely dispersed tradition that associates forceful female deities, many inhabiting particular locales, with the offering of animal sacrifices. Such deities are summarized in the legendry of the uekta pjehes (“seats of power”) that are said to have been established when various parts of the dismembered goddess Satj, consort of Shiva, fell there. The texts often consider that there are 108 of these PJEHAS, extending throughout all of India and commemorated by a network of temples. The power and variousness of the Great Goddess is expressed in her primary myth of origin, as recorded in the Devj Mehetmya. The text explains that the gods found themselves powerless in the face of opposing forces, especially a primordial buffalo demon (Mahizesura), and pooled their angry energies to create a force capable of triumphing over such unruly, evil powers. The Great Goddess, summarizing and concentrating their various energies, emitted a menacing laugh, drank wine, refused the buffalo’s overtures of marriage, and vanquished him utterly from atop her lion mount, piercing his chest with her trident and decapitating him with her discus. Devj’s victory is memorialized in a series of sculptures 448 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM that began to appear in the Gupta and Pallava periods (4th–8th centuries), contemporary with the Devj Mehetmya. In a fashion loosely comparable to the process of gathering disparate divine energies that is so prominent in Devj’s myth of origins, regional and local goddesses from all over South Asia have for centuries been found to exemplify the person and mythology of an overarching Goddess who offers maternal nurturance to the earth (one of her personas) and her devotees but is death to threatening outsiders. Yet these goddesses retain their local power as mothers guarding particular places and lineages. A key concept in enunciating the nature of this connection is uakti—power personified as female. Uakti may be associated with males, as in Devj’s origination myth or in the depiction of goddesses as consorts, but in its essence it eludes the categories constructed by men. Thought to possess both natural and ritual force and to be embodied in human women, uakti as a description of divinity expresses (among other things) a recognition that women are far more powerful than their social position usually indicates. Hence texts such as the Devj Bhegavata Pureda effectively feminize the older, all-male trimjrti by placing the Goddess, not Brahme, alongside and indeed above Vishnu and Shiva. Like any category that attempts to name broad traditions of belief and practice, Uektism (like Vaizdavism and Uaivism) is imprecise. With Uektism, however, this is especially so, since the ancient egamic traditions of ritual and theological practice solidified primarily around male deities— Vishnu and Shiva. Nonetheless, several motifs are particularly salient in contributing to a Uekta religious orientation. One is the close parallel between Puredic tales of the Great Goddess eagerly shedding and drinking blood and the ritual motif of blood sacrifice, an exchange of Uakti that has apparently been a singular feature of goddess worship throughout India from earliest times. Another is the enduring association between various forms of the Goddess and pots, especially those seen to be overflowing with vegetation, and the great tendency of widely disparate goddesses to express themselves by possessing their devotees. All of these display the organic energy of uakti. Yet the roles Uakti assumes as the enabling power of all beings remain various, and especially in early texts, are depicted as both horrific and benign. The Great Goddess’s role is different in the various systems. She may be seen as the central figure in a philosophically established doctrine, the dynamic aspect of Brahman, producing the universe through her MEYE, or mysterious power of illusion; a capricious demoniac ruler of nature in its destructive aspects; a benign mother goddess; or the queen of a celestial court. There is a comprehensive Uektism that identifies the goddess (usually Durge) with Brahman and worships her as the ruler of the universe by virtue of whom even Shiva exists. As Maheyoginj (“Great Mistress of Yoga”), she produces, maintains, and reabsorbs the world. In Bengal’s devotion to the goddess KELJ, she demands bloody sacrifices from her worshipers lest her creative potency fail her. Kelj worshipers believe that birth and death are inseparable, that joy and grief spring from the same source, and that the frightening manifestations of the divine should be faced calmly.

A yoga chart showing the kudqalinj serpent coiled asleep in the human body, Indian drawing, c. 18th–19th century The Granger Collection

449 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM The Great Goddess also manifests herself as the divine consort. As ARDHANERJU(“the Lord Who Is Half Female”), Shiva shares ultimate reality with her and presides over procreation. Accordingly, Uektas—often closely associated with Uaivism—hold that creation is the result of the eternal lust of the divine couple. Thus a man who is blissfully embraced by a beloved woman who is Pervatj’s counterpart assumes Shiva’s personality and, liberated, participates in the joy of Shiva’s amorous sport. Similarly, in all his incarnations Vishnu is united with his consort, Lakzmj. The sacred tales of his relations with her manifestations cause his worshipers to view human devotion as parallel to the divine love and hence as universal, eternal, and sanctified. In his supreme state, Vishnu and his uakti are indissolubly associated with one another, forming a dual divinity called LakzmjNereyada. Thus in art Lakzmj often rests on Vishnu’s bosom. VARA

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Tantrism. There is a close connection between Uekta persuasions and Tantrism, but they are not the same thing. Tantrism is the search for spiritual power and ultimate release by means of the repetition of sacred syllables and phrases (mantras), symbolic drawings (MANDALAS), and other secret rites elaborated in the texts known as TANTRAS (“looms”). Based especially on convictions about divine creative energy (uakti) as experienced in the body, Tantrism is a method of conquering transcendent powers and realizing oneness with the divine by yogic and ritual means. It appears in both Buddhism and Hinduism from the 5th century ( onward, coloring many religious trends and movements. Tantrics take for granted that all factors in both the macrocosm and the microcosm are closely connected. The adept (sedhaka) is almost always understood as a man, who performs the relevant rites on his own body, transforming its normally chaotic state into a “cosmos.” The macrocosm is conceived as a complex system of powers that by means of ritual-psychological techniques can be activated and organized within the individual body of the adept. According to Tantrism, concentration is intended to evoke an internal image of the deity and to resuscitate the powers inherent in it so that the symbol changes into mental experience. This “symbolic ambiguity” is also much in evidence in the esoteric interpretation of ritual acts performed in connection with images, flowers, and other cult objects and is intended to bring about a transfiguration in the mind of the adept. Mantras (sacred utterances, such as hju, hrju, and klau) are also an indispensable means of entering into contact with the power they bear and of transcending normal mundane existence. Most potent are the monosyllabic, fundamental, so-called bjja (“seed”) mantras, which constitute the main element of longer formulas and embody the essence of divine power as the eternal, indestructible prototypes from which everything phenomenal derives its existence. The cosmos itself owes its very structure and harmony to them. Also important is the introduction of spiritual qualities or divine power into the body by placing a finger on the spot relevant to each (accompanied by a mantra). Tantrics are often classified as being of two types: “right handed” or “left handed.” The former confine to the sphere of metaphor and visualization what the latter enact literally. Tantrics who follow the right-hand path value Yoga and bhakti and aspire to union with the Supreme by emotional-dynamic means, their Yoga being a self-abnegation in order to reach a state of ecstatic bliss in which the passive soul is lifted up by divine grace. They also adopt a Tantric Mantra Yoga, as described above, and a HAEHA YOGA (“Discipline of Force”). Haeha Yoga incorporates normal yogic practices—abstinences, observances, bodily postures, breath control that requires intensive training, withdrawal of the mind from external objects, and concentration, contemplation, and identification that are technically helped by MUDRES (i.e., ritual intertwining of fingers, or gestures expressing the metaphysical aspects of ceremonies or of the transformation effected by mantras). Haeha Yoga goes on to involve vigorous muscular contractions, internal purifications (e.g., washing out stomach and bowels), shaking the abdomen, and certain forms of strict self-discipline. The whole process is intended to control the “gross body” in order to free the “subtle body.” 450 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM The left-hand Tantric practice (vemecera) consciously violates all the TABOOS of conventional Hinduism, both for the purpose of helping the adepts to understand their provisional nature and to work from the base of strength provided by the sensory capabilities inherent in bodily existence. For the traditional five elements (tattvas) of the Hindu cosmos, these Tantrics substitute the five “m”s: meusa (flesh, meat), matsya (fish), madya (fermented grapes, wine), mudre (frumentum, cereal, parched grain, or gestures), and maithuna (fornication). This latter element is made particularly antinomian through the involvement of forbidden women, such as one’s sister, mother, the wife of another man, or a low-caste woman, who is identified with the Goddess. Menstrual blood, strictly taboo in conventional Hinduism, is also used at times. Such rituals, which are described in Tantric texts and in tracts against Tantrics, have made tantra notorious among many Hindus. It is likely, however, that such rituals have never been regularly performed except by a relatively small group of highly trained adepts; the usual (right-handed) Tantric ceremony is purely symbolic and even more fastidious than the pjjes in Hindu temples. All forms of tantra seek to realize the unity of flesh and spirit, the interconnection of the human and the divine, and the experience of transcending time and space. The goal of surpassing the phenomenal duality of spirit and matter and recovering the primeval unity is often conceived as the realization of the identity of God and his Uakti—the core mystery of Uektism. Ritual practice is varied. Extreme Uekta communities perform the secret nocturnal rites of the urjcakra (“wheel of radiance”; described in the Kulerdava Tantra), in which they avail themselves of the natural and esoteric symbolic properties of colors, sounds, and perfumes to intensify their sexual experiences. Or, in experiencing “the delectation of the deity,” the male adept worships the mighty power of the Divine Mother by making a human woman the object of sexual worship, invoking the Goddess into her and cohabiting with her until his mind is free from impurity. The texts reiterate how dangerous these rites are for those who are not initiated, and most Uekta Tantrics probably do not exemplify this left-handed type. As if to make this point clear, Tantric practice in general has sometimes been described as comprising not two contrasting types—left and right—but three. According to this taxonomy a Tantric may be either pauu (bestial), vjra (heroic), or divya (divine). Of these, only the vjra type is left-handed, consuming the five substances as literally enjoined in the texts. Pauus, by contrast, use physical substitutes—e.g., they imbibe coconut milk rather than wine and surrender to the feet of the Goddess (or another deity) rather than submitting to ritual intercourse. Sometimes they are classed in the right-handed group, but sometimes their bhakti approach is felt to exempt them from the left/right dichotomy altogether. Finally, there are the divya adepts, right-handed Tantrics who use not physical but mental substitutes. Instead of drinking wine, they taste the nectar that flows down from the body’s uppermost “center,” the sahasrera cakra, when its snakelike physical energy (KUDQALINJ) has risen from its anal base to its cranial apex, in the process being refined into a subtle, spiritual form. This then is interpreted as the true love-juice from the play of Shiva and Uakti in union, which divya adepts experience not through ritualized intercourse but through meditation. As in most religious communities, such oscillations between visible expression and inner meaning form a major dimension of Hindu life. The Tantric tradition exploits this dynamic exquisitely, yet few would doubt that it is exceptional. Publicly enacted rituals such as temple ceremonies, processions, pilgrimage, and home worship—each, admittedly, with possibilities for interpretation that are all its own—form the backbone of Hindu practice. To these we now turn, beginning with a set of rituals that many Hindus regard as the most important of all. Domestic rites. The fire rituals that served as the core of Vedic religion have long since been supplanted in most Hindu practice by image worship, whether in home or temple settings, and by various forms of devotionalism. Yet in the arena of domestic (gshya) ritual one can still see formulas and sequences that survive from the Vedic period. The domestic rituals include five obligatory daily offerings: (1) offerings to the gods (food taken from the meal), (2) a cursory offering 451 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM (bali) made to “all beings,” (3) a libation of water and sesame, offered to the spirits of the deceased, (4) hospitality, and (5) recitation of the Veda. Although some traditions prescribe a definite ritual in which these five “sacrifices” are performed, in most cases the five daily offerings are merely a way of speaking about one’s religious obligations in general. The morning and evening adorations (sandhye), a very important duty of the traditional householder, are mainly Vedic in character, but they have, by the addition of Puredic and Tantric elements, become lengthy rituals. If not shortened, the morning ceremonies consist of self-purification, bathing, prayers, and recitation of mantras, especially the geyatrj mantra (Sg Veda 3.62.10), a prayer for spiritual stimulation addressed to the sun. The accompanying ritual comprises (1) the application of marks (TILAKS) on the forehead, characterizing the adherents of a particular religious community, (2) the presentation of offerings (water and flowers) to the Sun, and (3) meditative concentration. There are Uaiva and Vaizdava variants, and some elements are optional. The observance of the daily obligations, including the care of bodily purity and professional duties, leads to mundane reward and helps to preserve the state of sanctity required to enter into contact with the divine. A second major aspect of domestic rites comprises life-cycle rituals. These sacraments (sauskera) of refinement and transition are intended to make a person fit for a certain purpose or for the next stage in life by removing taints (sins) or by generating fresh qualities. In antiquity there was a great divergence of opinion about the number of RITES OF PASSAGE, but in later times 16 came to be regarded as the most important. Many of the traditional sauskeras cluster in childhood, extending even before birth to conception itself. The impregnation rite, consecrating the supposed time of conception, consists of a ritual meal of pounded rice (mixed “with various other things according to whether the married man desires a fair, brown, or dark son; a learned son; or a learned daughter”), an offering of rice boiled in milk, the sprinkling of the woman, and intercourse; all acts are also accompanied by mantras. In the third month of pregnancy, the rite called puusavana (begetting of a son) follows. The birth is itself the subject of elaborate ceremonies, the main features of which are an oblation of ghj (clarified butter) cast into the fire; the introduction of a pellet of honey and ghj into the newborn child’s mouth, which according to many authorities is an act intended to produce mental and bodily strength; the murmuring of mantras for the sake of a long life; and rites to counteract inauspicious influences. Opinions vary as to when the namegiving ceremony should take place; in addition to the personal name, there is often another one that should be kept secret for fear of sinister designs against the child. However that may be, the defining moment comes when the father utters the child’s name into its ear. A hallmark of these childhood sauskeras, as one can see, is a general male bias and the conscripting of natural processes into a person evoked by cultural means and defined primarily by male actors. In the birth ritual (jetakarma) the manuals direct the father to breathe upon his child’s head, in a transparent ritual co-opting of the role that biology gives the mother. In practice, however, the mother may join in this breathing ritual, thereby complicating the simple nature-to-culture logic laid out in the texts. Going still further against the patriarchal grain, there exists an array of life-cycle rites that focus specifically upon the lives of girls and women. In South India, for instance, one finds an initiation rite (vitakkieu kalyedam) that corresponds roughly to the male initiation called upanayana, and that gives girls the authority to light oil lamps and thereby become full participants in proper domestic worship. There are also rites celebrating first MENSTRUATION and marking various moments surrounding childbirth.Typically women themselves act as officiants. In modern times many of the textually mandated sauskeras (with the exceptions of impregnation, initiation, and marriage) have fallen into disuse or are performed in an abridged or simplified form without Vedic mantras or a priest. For example, the important upanayana initiation should by rights be held when an upper-caste boy is between the ages of 8 and 12, to mark his entry into the ritual 452 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM community defined by access to Vedic learning. In this rite he becomes a “twiceborn one,” or DVIJA, and is invested with the sacred thread (upavjta; see UPANAYANA). Traditionally, this was the beginning of a long period of Vedic study and education in the house and under the guidance of a teacher (guru). In modern practice, however, the haircutting ceremony—formerly performed in a boy’s third year—and the initiation are often performed on the same day, and the homecoming ceremony at the end of the period of Vedic study often becomes little more than a formality, if it is observed at all. More extreme still, the upanayana might also be ignored until it is inserted as a prelude to marriage. Wedding ceremonies, the most important of all sauskeras, have not only remained elaborate (and often very expensive) but have also incorporated various elements—among others, propitiations and expiations—that are not indicated in the oldest sources. In ancient times there already existed great divergences in accordance with local customs or family or caste traditions. However, the following practices are usually considered essential. The date is fixed after careful astrological calculation; the bridegroom is conducted to the home of his future parents-inlaw, who receive him as an honored guest; there are offerings of roasted grain into the fire; the bridegroom has to take hold of the bride’s hand; he conducts her around the sacrificial fire; seven steps are taken by bride and bridegroom to solemnize the irrevocability of the unity; both are, in procession, conducted to their new home, which the bride enters without touching the threshold. Of eight forms of marriage recognized by the ancient authorities, two have remained in vogue: the simple gift of a girl and the legalization of the alliance by means of a marriage gift paid to the bride’s family. Yet it is noteworthy that the payment of a dowry—often very large—to the groom has become far more typical. In the Vedic period, girls do not seem to have married before they reached maturity, but that too changed over time. By the 19th century child marriage and customary upper-caste bars to the remarriage of widows (often a pressing issue if young girls were married to much older men) had become urgent social concerns in certain parts of India. These practices have abated since the mid-19th century, but laws against child marriage have been required, and they are sometimes flouted even today. The traditional funeral method is CREMATION (which involves the active participation of members of the family of the deceased), but burial or immersion is more appropriate for those who have not been so tainted by life in this world that they require the purifying fire (i.e., children) and those who no longer need the ritual fire to be conveyed to the hereafter, such as ascetics who have renounced all earthly concerns. An important and meritorious complement of the funeral offices is the ureddha ceremony, in which food is offered to Brahmins for the benefit of the deceased. Many people are solicitous to perform this rite at least once a year even when they no longer engage in any of the five obligatory daily offerings. Temple worship. I m a g e w o r ship takes place both in small household shrines and in the temple. Many Hindu authorities claim that regular temple worship to one of the deities of the devotional cults procures the same results for the worshiper as did the performance of

Hindu wedding ceremony in Suriname Porterfield/Chickering—Photo Researchers

453 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM the great Vedic sacrifices, and one who provides the patronage for the construction of a temple is called a “sacrificer” (yajamena). More to the point, once they have been enlivened by a mantric process of ritual inauguration, the images (mjrti) installed in temples, shrines, and homes are regarded as participating in the actual substance of the deities they represent. Some are even said to be self-manifest (svayambhj). Hence to encounter them with the proper sentiment (bheva) is to make actual contact with the divine. This happens through paradigmatic acts such as daruan, the reciprocal act of both “seeing” and being seen by the deity; ERATJ, the illumination of the image and the receiving of that light by worshipers; and praseda, food offerings which, after being partially or symbolically consumed by the deity, return to the worshipers as blessings from the divine repast. The erection of a temple is a meritorious deed recommended to anyone desirous of heavenly reward. The choice of a site, which should be serene and lovely, is determined by ASTROLOGY and DIVINATION as well as by its location with respect to human dwellings; for example, a SANCTUARY of a benevolent deity should face the village. Temples vary greatly in size and artistic value, ranging from small village shrines with simple statuettes to the great temple-cities of South India whose boundary walls, pierced by monumental gates (gopura), enclose various buildings, courtyards, pools for ceremonial bathing, and sometimes even schools, hospitals, and monasteries. From the point of view of construction, there is no striking difference between Uaiva and Vaizdava sanctuaries, but they are easily distinguishable by their central objects of worship (e.g., mjrti, liega), the images on their walls, the symbol fixed on their finials (crowning ornaments), and the presence of Shiva’s bull, NANDJ, or Vishnu’s bird, Garuqa (the theriomorphic duplicate manifestations of each god’s nature), in front of the entrance. Worship in Hindu temples takes place on a spectrum that runs from ceremonies characterized by fully orchestrated congregational participation to rituals focused almost entirely on the priests who act as the deities’ ritual servants to episodic acts of prayer and offering initiated by families or individual worshipers. Sometimes worshipers assemble to meditate, to take part in singing and chanting, or to listen to an exposition of doctrine. The pjje (worship) performed in public “for the well-being of the world” is, though sometimes more elaborate, largely identical with that executed for personal interest. It consists essentially of an invocation, a reception, and the entertainment of God as a royal guest. Paradigmatically, it involves 16 “attendances” (upaceras): an invocation by which the omnipresent God is invited to direct his/her attention to the particular worship; the offering of a seat, water (for washing the feet and hands and for rinsing the mouth), a bath, a garment, a sacred thread, perfumes, flowers, incense, a lamp, food, homage, and a circumambulation of the image and dismissal by the deity. Daruan, eratj, and praseda emerge as significant features of these “attendances,” whether experienced at specific times of day (such as the eight “watches” that are observed in many Krishna temples) or according to a freer, perhaps sparser schedule. In front of certain temples, ritual possession sometimes also occurs. Sacred times and places. Festivals. Hindu festivals are combinations of religious ceremonies, semiritual spectacles, worship, prayer, lustrations, processions (to set something sacred in motion and to extend its power throughout a certain region), music, dances, eating, drinking, lovemaking, licentiousness, feeding the poor, and other activities of a religious or traditional character. The functions of these activities are clear from both literary sources and anthropological observation: they are intended to purify, avert malicious influences, renew society, bridge over critical moments, and stimulate, celebrate, and resuscitate the vital powers of nature (and hence the term utsava, which means both the generation of power and a festival). Calendrical festivals refresh the mood of the participants, further the consciousness of the participants’ power, help to compensate for any sensations of fear or inferiority in relation to the great forces of nature, and generally enable participants as individuals and communities to align their own hopes with the rhythms of the cosmos. Hindu festivals are anchored in a lunar calendar that is brought into conformity with the solar calendar every three years by the addition 454 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM of an intercalary month, the anomalous status of which renders it a particular focus of ritual attention. There are also innumerable festivities in honor of specific gods, celebrated by individual temples, villages, and religious communities. Hindu festival calendars are so varied from region to region that it is difficult to describe them briefly. Merely as example, we introduce two festivals that function roughly as New Year’s rites throughout much of northern and central India. The first is HOLJ, a saturnalia connected with the spring equinox and, in western India, with the wheat harvest. The mythical tradition of the festival describes how young Prahleda, in spite of his demonic father’s opposition, persisted in worshiping Vishnu and was carried into the fire by the female demon Holike, who believed herself to be immune to the ravages of fire. Through Vishnu’s intervention, however, Prahleda emerged unharmed, while Holike was burned to ashes. The bonfires are intended to commemorate this event or rather to reiterate the triumph of virtue and religion over evil and sacrilege. This explains why objects representing the sickness and impurities of the past year (many people calculate the new year as beginning immediately after Holj) are thrown into the bonfire, and it is considered inauspicious not to look at it. Moreover, people pay or forgive debts, and try to rid themselves of the evils, conflicts, and impurities that have accumulated during the prior months, translating the conception of the festival into a justification for dealing anew with continuing situations in their lives. Various enactments of chaos (e.g., the throwing of colored water), reversal (a ritualized battle in which women wield clubs and men defend themselves with shields), and extremity ( FIRE WALKING through the Holj bonfire) constitute the “body” of Holj. These contrast vividly with the decorous reaffirmations of social relations that ensue when they are done: people bathe, don clean clothing, and visit family and gurus. There are local variants on Holj; for example, among the MAREEHES , heroes who died on the battlefield are “danced” by their descendants, sword in hand, until the descendants become possessed by the spirits of the heroes. In Bengal and Braj, swings are made for Krishna. An even more widely celebrated New Year festival called DJVELJ, or Djpevalj, occurs on the

Temple dedicated to the sun god Sjrya, showing a wheel of his sky-chariot, c. 1238–58, Konerak, Orissa, India George Holton—Photo Researchers

455 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM

Temple dedicated to Shiva and Pervatj, c. 1200, Halebjd, Karnataka, India Porterfield/Chickering—Photo Researchers

456 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

new moon of the month of Kerttika in mid-autumn. It involves ceremonial lights welcoming Lakzmj, the goddess of wealth and good fortune; fireworks said to chase away the spirits of wandering ghosts; and gambling, an old ritual custom intended to secure luck for the coming year. Like Holj, it concludes with an affirmation of ritual, social, and calendrical order; special attention is given to honoring cattle and to celebrating and sampling the fall harvest. Pilgrimages. Like processions, pilgrimages (tjrthayetre) to holy rivers, mountains, forests, and cities were already known in Vedic and epic times and remain today one of the most remarkable aspects of Indian religious life. It is often said that pilgrimage is a layperson’s renunciation (sannyesa): it is physically difficult, it means leaving behind the array of duties and pleasures associated with home and family, and it has for centuries been a major aspect of the lives of many ascetics. Various sections of the Puredas eulogize temples and the sacredness of places situated in beautiful scenery or wild solitude (especially the HIMALAYAS). The whole of India is considered holy ground that offers everyone the opportunity to attain religious fulfillment, but certain sites have for many centuries been regarded as possessing exceptional holiness. The Sanskrit Puredas often mention Ayodhya, Mathura, Hardwar, VARANASI (Banaras), Kanchipuram, Ujjain, and Dvaraka, but at the same time strong regional traditions create very different lists. The reason for the sanctity of such places derives from their location on the bank of a holy river (especially the Gaege), from their connection with figures of antiquity who are said to have lived there, or from the local legend of a manifestation of a god. Many places are sacred to a specific divinity; the district of Mathura, for example, encompasses many places of pilgrimage connected with Krishna, especially VRINDEBAD (Vsndevana) and Mount Govardhan. Pilgrimages to Gaya, Hardwar, and Varanasi are often undertaken for the sake of the welfare of deceased ancestors. In most cases, however, devotees hope for increased well-being for themselves and their families in this life (often in response to the fulfillment of a vow),

HINDUISM for deliverance from sin or pollution, or for emancipation from the world altogether (mokza). The last prospect is held out to those who, when death is near, travel to Varanasi to die near the Gaege. On special occasions, be they auspicious or, like a solar eclipse, inauspicious, the devout crowds increase enormously. The most impressive of these is the KUMBH MELA, the world’s most massive religious gathering (10 million pilgrims at Hardwar in 1998). The Kumbh Mela is largest when held at the confluence of the Gaege and JAMUNE rivers at Prayeg (Allahabad) every 12 years. These and other pilgrimages have contributed much to the spread of religious ideas and the cultural unification of India. The geography of Hindu pilgrimage is in a process of constant evolution. The mountain deities Vaizdo Devj (in the Himalayas) and Aiyappan (in the Nilgiri Hills) attracted vastly increased numbers of pilgrims toward the end of the 20th century, as did gurus such as SATHYA SAI BABA at his centers in Andhra state and near Bangalore. Yet traditional Vaizdava shrines such as Puri and TIRUPATI and Uaiva sites such as Amarneth have kept pace. Given their typically fluid sense of the boundaries between Hinduism and other faiths, Hindus also flock to Muslim, Jain, and Christian places of pilgrimage; sacred and secular tourism (to destinations such as the Taj Mahal) are often combined.

REGIONAL

EXPRESSIONS OF

HINDUISM

Many of the most important magnets for Hindu pilgrimage are regional in focus—e.g., Urjrangam for Tamil Nadu, PANDHARPUR for Maharashtra, or Gaegesegar for Bengal. Similarly, Hindu life is expressed in a variety of “mother tongue” languages that contrast vividly to pan-Indian Sanskrit. The localized sacred literatures are related in complex ways to Sanskrit texts and, crucially, each other. Of the four primary Dravidian literatures—Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam—the oldest and best known is Tamil. The earliest preserved Tamil literature, the so-called Caekam, or Saegam, poetry anthologies, dates from the 1st century ). These poems are classified by theme into akam (“interior,” primarily love poetry) and puqam (“exterior,” primarily about war, the poverty of poets, and the deaths of kings). The bhakti movement has been traced to Tamil poetry, beginning with the poems of the devotees of Shiva (Neyaaers) and the devotees of Vishnu (Ervers). The Neyaaers, who date from about 500–750 (, composed hymns addressed to the local manifestations of Shiva in which they “dance, weep, worship him, sing his feet.” The most famous Neyaaer lyricists are Appar (whose words were just quoted, from Indira Peterson’s translation), Campantar, and Cuntarar; their hymns are collected in the Teveram (c. 11th century). More or less contemporary were their Vaizdava counterparts, the Ervers, including the poetess EDEET, the untouchable-caste poet TIRUPPAN, and the farmercaste Nammerver, who is held to be the greatest. Whether Uaiva or Vaizdava, their devotion exemplifies the bhakti movement, which values direct contact between human beings and God (especially as expressed in song), challenges rigidities of caste and ritual, and celebrates the experience of divine grace. These saints became the inspiration for major theological systems: the Uaivas for the Uaiva Siddhenta, the Vaizdavas for VIUIZEEDVAITA. In Kannada the same movement was exemplified by poet-saints such as BASAVA and MAHEDEVJ, whose utterances achieved great popularity. Their religion, Vjrauaivism, was perhaps the most “protestant” version of bhakti religion. New Dravidian genres continued to evolve into the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Tamil Cittars (from the Sanskrit SIDDHA, “perfected one”), who were eclectic mystics, composed poems noted for the power of their naturalistic diction. The Tamil sense and style of these poems belied the Sanskrit-derived title of their authors, a phenomenon that could stand as a symbol of the complex relationship between Dravidian and Sanskrit religious texts. From middle India northward one encounters Indo-Aryan vernaculars related to Sanskrit, including Bengali, Hindi (the most important literary dialects of which are Brajbheze and Avadhj and which bleeds into Urdu, with its increased PersoArabic content), Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Assamese, 457 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM Nepali, Rajasthani, and Sinhalese. Most of these languages began to develop literary traditions around 1000 (. Marathi was the first to develop a substantial corpus of bhakti poetry and HAGIOGRAPHY, starting with the 13th–14th-century Vaizdava saints JÑENEUVAR and NEMDEV, both of whom especially praised the deity Vieehal (Viehobe) of Pandharpur, as did Jñeneuvar’s sister Muktebej and the untouchable saint COKHEMELE (14th century). TUKEREM (17th century), with his searchingly autobiographical poems, was to become the most famous of these Verkarj (literally, “Pilgrim”) poets. Religious poetry of enduring significance in Hindi starts with a collection of antinomian, Haeha Yoga benj (utterances) attributed to GORAKHNETH in perhaps the 14th century and continues with the interior-oriented, iconoclastic poet-saint Kabjr (15th century). The earliest dated manuscripts for Hindi bhakti emerge toward the end of the 16th century, placing Kabjr alongside NENAK (the founder of SIKHISM) in one collection and alongside SJRDES (16th-century Krishna lyricist) in another. The earliest hagiographies (c. 1600), written by Anantades and Nebhedes, tend to firm up this distinction between sants like Nenak or Kabjr and Vaizdavas like Sjrdes or MJREBEJ, though not absolutely. Sjrdes with his Sjrsegar (“Sjr’s Ocean”) and Tulsjdes (16th–17th century) with his Remcaritmenas (“Sacred Lake of the Acts of Rema”) vie for the honor of being Hindi’s greatest poets. Mjrebej is equally well known, though the corpus of romantic Krishna poetry attributed to her is almost completely unattested before the 19th century and shows evidence of complex patterns of oral transmission in Gujarati, Rajasthani, and Brajbheze. Hindi poets such as Sjrdes and the low-caste leatherworker Ravides mention the Marathi poet Nemdev, showing the importance of cross-regional affiliations, and Nemdev has an independent corpus of poetry in Hindi and Punjabi. Although the earliest Hindu text in Bengali is a mid-15th-century poem about Redhe and Krishna, medieval texts in praise of gods and goddesses, known as MAEGAL-KEVYAS, must have existed in oral versions long before that. In later Bengal Vaizdavism, the emphasis shifts from service and surrender to mutual attachment and attraction between God (i.e., Krishna) and humankind: God is said to yearn for the worshiper’s identification with himself, which is his gift to the wholly purified devotee. Thus, the highest fruition of bhakti is admission to the eternal sport of Krishna and his beloved Redhe, which is sometimes glossed as the mutual love of God and the human soul. The best-known poets in this vein are the Bengali Cadqjdes (c. 1400) and the Maithili poet Vidyepati (c. 1400). The greatest single influence was Caitanya, who in the 16th century renewed Krishnaism with his emphasis on community chanting and celebration (saukjrtan) and his dedication to what he saw as the renaissance of Vaizdava culture in Braj, where Krishna is thought to have spent his youth. Caitanya left next to no writings of his own, but he inspired many hagiographies, among the more important of which is the Caitanya Caritemsta (“Nectar of Caitanya’s Life”) by Krishna Des (born 1517). Almost equally influential, in a very different way, were the songs of REMPRASED SEN (1718–75), which honor Uakti as mother of the universe and are still in wide devotional use. The Uekta heritage was continued in the poetry of Kamalekenta Bhaeeecerya (c. 1769–1821) and eventually culminated in the ecstatic RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA (1836–86), whose inspiration caused VIVEKANANDA to establish the Remakrishna Maeh in India and the VEDENTA Society in the West. Numerous important works of Hindu literature are omitted from this brief survey, not only in the five regional languages we have mentioned but even more so in Gujarati, Telugu, Maliyalam, and a host of others. We have focused primarily on bhakti lyrics, but these are complemented by a range of vernacular epics, such as the Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali Remeyadas of Kampan, Buddhareja, and Ksttibesa (11th–14th centuries), respectively, and the highly individual Mahebherata of the 16th-century Kannada poet Gadugu. The Tamils composed their own epics, notably Itaekj Aeikat’s CILAPPATIKERAM (“The Lay of the Anklet”) and its sequel, Madimekhalai (“The Jeweled Girdle”). In Telugu there is the great Palnequ Epic; Rajasthani has an entire epic cycle about the hero Pabuji; and Hindi has its Elhe and Qhole, the latter with a lower-caste base and focusing on the goddess Uakti. 458 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM This only begins to scratch the surface of a massive “literature” of oral performance that includes dance and theatre. Almost all of it is ritually circumscribed in some way, and some is actually performed in temple contexts, but that is not to underestimate the importance of a poem of Sjrdes or Kabjr that gets sung by a blind singer moving from car to car on a local train on the vast plains of North India. Nor is it meant to understate the influence of cassette recordings of devotional songs in a host of regional languages or the evident power of nationally televised Hindi versions of the Mahebherata, Remeyada, and Bhegavata Pureda. Remenand Segar’s Remeyada (1987–88), which claimed a heritage including versions of the epic in a dozen languages but drew mainly from Tulsjdes’ Remcaritmenas, was easily the most-watched program ever aired on Indian television. The vast majority of India’s population is reported to have seen at least one weekly episode, and many people were loath to miss a single one.

SOCIAL

CORRELATES OF RELIGION

Caste. The origin of the so-called caste system is not known with certainty. Hindus attribute the proliferation of the castes (jetis) to the subdivision of the four classes, or vardas, due to intermarriage (which is prohibited in Hindu works on dharma). Modern theorists, however, tend to assume that castes arose from differences in family ritual practices, racial distinctions, and occupational differentiation and specialization. Many modern scholars doubt whether the simple varda system was ever more than a theoretical socioreligious ideal and have emphasized that the highly complex division of Hindu society into nearly 3,000 castes and subcastes was probably in place even in ancient times. In general, a caste is an endogamous hereditary group of families bearing a common name, often claiming a common descent, as a rule professing to follow the same hereditary calling, and maintaining the same customs. Moreover, tribes, guilds, or religious communities characterized by particular customs—for example, the Vjrauaivas—could easily be regarded as castes. The status of castes varies in different localities, and especially in urban settings social mobility is possible. Traditional Hindus are inclined to emphasize that the ritual impurity and “untouchability” inherent in these groups does not essentially differ from that temporarily proper for mourners or menstruating women. This, and the fact that some exterior group or other might rise in estimation and become an interior one or that individual outcastes might be well-to-do, does not alter the fact that the spirit of exclusiveness was in the course of time carried to extremes. The lower, or scheduled, castes were subjected to various socioreligious disabilities before mitigating tendencies helped bring about reform. After India’s independence, social discrimination was prohibited, the practice of untouchability was made a punishable offense, and various programs of social amelioration were instituted, including the reservation of a certain percentage of places in educational institutions and government jobs for lower-caste applicants. Before that time, however, scheduled castes were often openly barred from the use of temples and other religious institutions and from public schools, and these groups faced many oppressive restrictions in their relations with individuals of higher caste. Hindu texts such as the Manu-smsti were seen to justify low social status, explaining it as the inevitable result of sins in a former life. Social protest. For many centuries India has known religious communities dedicated in whole or in part to the elimination of caste discrimination. Many have been guided by bhakti sentiments, including the Vjrauaivas, Sikhs, Kabjr Panthjs, Satnemjs, and Remnemjs, all of whom bear

Sade Shiva with Nandj and the flowing Gaege, Bikaner school, mid17th century; Guimet Museum, Paris Giraudon—Art Resource

459 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM

World distribution of Hinduism

460 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

a complicated relation to the greater Hindu fold. A major theme in bhakti poetry throughout India has been the ridicule of caste and the etiquette of ritual purity that relates to it, although this element is stronger on the nirguda side of the bhakti spectrum than the saguda. Other religions have provided members of low-ranked castes with a further hope for escaping social hierarchies associated with Hindu practice. Sikhism has already been mentioned. ISLAM played this role in Kerala from the 8th century onward and elsewhere in India since the 12th century, although certain convert groups have retained their original caste organization even after embracing Islam. CHRISTIANITY has exercised a similar force, serving for centuries as a magnet for disadvantaged Hindus. And in 1956 B.R. Ambedkar, the principal framer of the Indian constitution and a member of the scheduled MAHAR caste, abandoned Hinduism for Buddhism, eventually to be followed by millions of his lower-caste followers. Yet many Ambedkarite DALITS (“the Oppressed”) continue to venerate saints such as Kabjr, Cokhemele, and Ravides who figure in the general lore of Hindu bhakti. Other Dalits, especially members of the CAMER caste (traditionally leatherworkers), have gone further, identifying themselves explicitly as Ravidesjs, creating a scripture that features his poetry, and building temples that house his image. Still other Dalit communities have claimed since the early 20th century that they represent India’s original religion (edi dharma), rejecting castecoded Vedic beliefs and practices as perversions introduced by Aryan invaders in the 2nd millennium ). Renunciants and the rejection of social order. Another means of rejecting the social order that forms the background for significant portions of Hindu belief and practice is the institution of renunciation. The rituals of sannyesa, which serve archetypally as gateway to a life of religious discipline, often mimic death rituals, signifying the renouncer’s understanding that she or, more typically, he no longer occupies a place in family or society. Other rituals serve a complementary function, inducting the initiate into a new family—the alternative family provided by a celibate religious order, usually focused on a guru. In principle this family should not be structured along the lines of caste, and the initiate should pledge to renounce commensal dietary restrictions. In practice, however, some dietary restrictions remain in India’s most influential renunciant communities (though not in all), and certain renunciant orders are closely paired with specific communities

HINDUISM of householders. This crystallizes a pattern that is loosely present everywhere. Householders and renouncers offer each other mutual benefits, with the former dispensing material substance to the theoretically propertyless renunciants while the latter dispense religious merit and spiritual guidance in return. Such an enactment of the values of dharma and mokza is symbiotic, to be sure, but that does not serve to domesticate renunciants entirely. Their existence questions the ultimacy of anything tied to caste, hierarchy, and bodily well-being.

HINDUISM

AND THE WORLD BEYOND

Hinduism and religions of Indian origin. Hinduism, Buddhism, and JAINISM originated out of the same milieu: the circles of world renouncers of the 6th century ). Although all share certain non-Vedic practices (such as renunciation itself and various yogic meditational techniques) and doctrines (such as the belief in rebirth and the goal of liberation from perpetual transmigration), Buddhists and Jains do not accept the authority of the Vedic tradition and therefore are regarded as less than orthodox by Hindus. Especially in the 6th–11th centuries there was strong and sometimes bloody competition for royal patronage among the three communities—with Brahmins representing Hindu values—as well as between Vaizdavas and Uaivas. In general the Brahmin groups prevailed. In a typically absorptive gesture, Hindus in time recognized the Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu—usually the ninth—but this was often qualified by the caveat that Vishnu assumed this form to mislead and destroy the enemies of the Veda. Hence, the Buddha avatar is rarely worshiped by Hindus, though often highly respected. At an institutional level, certain Buddhist shrines, such as the one marking the Buddha’s Enlightenment at BODH GAYE, have remained partly under the supervision of Hindu ascetics and are visited by Hindu pilgrims. After the rise of Buddhological studies in the West combined with the archaeological discoveries and restorations that began at the end of the 19th century, thus clarifying the ecumenical achievements of the Buddhist emperor AUOKA, the Republic of India adopted the lion capital of the pillar found at Sarnath, which marked the place of the Buddha’s first teaching, as its national emblem. Hinduism has so much in common with Jainism, which until recently remained an Indian religion, especially in social institutions and ritual life, that nowadays many Hindus tend to consider it a Hindu sect. The points of difference—e.g., a stricter practice of ahiuse and the absence of sacrifices for the deceased in Jainism—do not give offense to orthodox Hindus. Moreover, many Jain laypeople worship images as Hindus do, though with a different rationale. There are even places outside India where Hindus and Jains have joined to build a single temple, sharing the worship space. Hinduism and Islam. Hindu relations with Islam and Christianity are in some ways quite different from the ties and tensions that bind together religions of Indian origin. Hindus live with a legacy of domination by Muslim and Christian rulers that stretches back many centuries—in North India, to the Delhi Sultanate established at the beginning of the 13th century. It is hardly the case that Muslim rule was generally loathsome to Hindus. Direct and indirect patronage from the Mughal emperors AKBAR (1542–1605) and Jahengjr (1569–1627), whose chief generals were Hindu Rejpjts, laid the basis for the great burst of Krishnaite temple and institution building that transformed the Braj region beginning in the 16th century. Yet there were periods when the political ambitions of Islamic rulers took strength from iconoclastic aspects of Muslim teaching and led to the devastation of many major Hindu temple complexes, from Mathura and Varanasi in the north to Chidambaram and MADURAI in the far south; other temples were converted to mosques. Episodically, since the 14th century, this history has provided rhetorical fuel for Hindu warriors eager to assert themselves against Muslim rivals. The bloody partition of the South Asian subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947 added a new dimension. Mobilizing Hindu sensibilities about the sacredness of the land as a whole, extremists have sometimes depicted the creation of Pakistan as a rape of the body of India, in the process demonizing Muslims who remain within the political boundaries of India. 461 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM These strands converged at the end of the 20th century in a campaign to destroy the mosque built in 1528 by a lieutenant of the Mughal emperor Bebar in Ayodhya, a city that has since the 2nd century been identified with the place so named in the Remeyada, where Rema was born and ruled. In 1992 Hindu militants from all over India, who had been organized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP: “World Hindu Council”), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS: “National Volunteer Alliance”), and the BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY (BJP: “Indian People’s Party”), destroyed the mosque in an effort to “liberate” Rema and establish a huge “Rema’s Birthplace Temple” on the spot. In the aftermath, several thousand people—mostly Muslims—were killed in riots that spread across North India. The conflict in Ayodhya illustrated some of the complexities of Hindu-Hindu and Hindu-Muslim relations. The local police force, having been largely purged of its Muslim members shortly after partition and independence, was largely inactive. Certain leaders from Ayodhya’s several communities of Hindu ascetics joined the militants, while others regarded the militants’ actions as an outsiders’ takeover that was injurious to their own standing and integrity. Local Muslims, who had for centuries lived at peace with Hindu neighbors, reflected bitterly on the fact that Hindu mobs also attacked an outlying shrine to a Muslim pjr (holy man) whose annual festival (!urs) typically attracted even more Hindu worshipers than Muslims. A Delhi-based artists’ collective, echoing a lament that was voiced by millions of Hindus, mounted an exhibition called “We Are All Ayodhya,” which documented the city’s vividly multireligious history and traveled both in India and abroad. Hinduism and Christianity. Relations between Hinduism and Christianity have also been shaped by unequal balances of political power and cultural influence. Although communities of Christians have lived in South India since the middle of the 1st millennium, the great expansion of Indian Christianity followed the efforts of missionaries working under the protection of British colonial rule. Their denigration of selected features of Hindu practice—most notably, image worship, satj, and child marriage (the first two had also been criticized by Muslims)—was shared by certain Hindus. Beginning in the 19th century and continuing to the present, a movement that might be called neo-Vedenta has emphasized the monism of certain Upanishads, decried “popular” Hindu “degenerations” such as the worship of idols, acted as an agent of social reform, and championed dialogue between other religious communities. Relations between Hindus and Christians are complicated. Many Hindus are ready to accept the ethical teachings of the Gospels, particularly the SERMON ON THE MOUNT (whose influence on GANDHI is well-known), but reject the theological superstructure. They are apt to regard Christian conceptions about love and its social consequences as a kind of bhakti and to venerate Jesus as a saint, yet many resent the organization and the exclusiveness of Islam and Christianity, considering these as obstacles to harmonious cooperation. They subscribe to Gandhi’s opinion that missionaries should confine their activities to humanitarian service and look askance at conversion, finding also in Hinduism what might be attractive in Christianity. Such sentiments took an unusually extreme form at the end of the 20th century when Hindu activists attacked Dalit Christians and their churches in various parts of India, especially Orissa and Gujarat. A far more typical sentiment is expressed in the eagerness of Hindus of all social stations, especially the middle class, to send their children to high-quality (often English-language) schools established and maintained by Christian organizations. Diasporic Hinduism. Since the appearance of Swami Vivekananda at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and the subsequent establishment of the Vedenta Society in various American and British cities, Hinduism has had a growing missionary profile outside the Indian subcontinent. Conversion as understood by Christians or Muslims is usually not the aim. As seen in the Vedenta Society, Hindu perspectives are held to be sufficiently capacious that they do not require new adherents to abandon traditions of worship with which they are familiar, merely to see them as part of a greater whole. The Vedic formula “Truth is one, but scholars speak of it in many ways” (ekam sat vipra bahudhe 462 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDUISM vadanti) is much quoted. Many transnational Hindu communities, including Radhasoami, TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION, Siddha Yoga, the SELF-REALIZATION FELLOWSHIP, the Sathya Sai Baba Satsang, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON, popularly called Hare Krishna), have tended to focus on specific gurus, particularly in their stages of most rapid growth. They frequently emphasize techniques of spiritual discipline more than doctrine. Of the groups just mentioned, only ISKCON has a deeply exclusivist cast—which makes it, in fact, generally more doctrinaire than the Gauqjya Vaizdava lineages out of which its founding guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta, emerged. At least as important as these guru-centered communities in the increasingly international texture of Hindu life are communities of Hindus who have emigrated from South Asia to other parts of the world. Their character differs markedly according to region, class, and the time at which emigration occurred. Tamils in Malaysia celebrate a festival to the god Murukan (Thaipusam) that accommodates body-piercing vows long outlawed in India itself. Formerly indentured laborers who settled in the Caribbean island Trinidad in the mid-19th century have tended to consolidate doctrine and practice from various locales in Gangetic India, with the result that Rema and Sjte have a heightened profile. Many migrants from rural western India, especially Gujarat, became urbanized in East Africa in the late 19th century and have now resettled in Britain. Like those Gujaratis who came directly to the United States from India since the liberalization of U.S. immigration laws in 1965, once abroad they are more apt to embrace the reformist guru-centered SWEMJNEREYAD faith than they would be in their native Gujarat, though this is by no means universal. Professional-class emigrants from South India have spearheaded the construction of a series of impressive Urj Vaizdava-style temples throughout the United States, sometimes taking advantage of financial and technical assistance from the great Vaizdava temple institutions at Tirupati. The siting of some of these temples, such as the Penn Hills temple near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reveals an explicit desire to bring forth resonances of Tirupati’s natural environment on American soil. Similarly, Telugu-speaking priests from the Tirupati region have been imported to serve at temples such as the historically important GADEUA temple, constructed from a preexisting church in Queens, New York City, in 1975–77. Yet the population who worship at these temples tends to be far more mixed than one would find in India. This produces sectarian and regional eclecticism on the one hand—images and shrines that appeal to a wide variety of devotional tastes—and on the other hand a vigorous attempt to establish doctrinal common ground. As Vasudha Narayanan has observed, educational materials produced at such temples typically hold that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life, that it insists in principle on religious tolerance, that its Godhead is functionally trinitarian (the male trimjrti of Brahme, Vishnu, and Shiva is meant, although temple worship is often very active at goddesses’ shrines), and that Hindu rituals have inner meanings consonant with scientific principles and conducive to good health. Pacific and ecumenical as this sounds, members of such temples are also important contributors to the VHP, whose efforts since 1964 to find common ground among disparate Hindu groups have sometimes also contributed to displays of Hindu nationalism such as were seen at Ayodhya in 1992. As the 21st century opens, there is a vivid struggle between “left” and “right” within the Hindu fold, with diasporic groups playing a more important role than ever before. Because of their wealth and education, because globalizing processes lend them prestige and enable them to communicate constantly with Hindus living in South Asia, and because their experience as minorities tends to set them apart from their families in India itself, their contribution to the evolution of Hinduism is sure to be a very interesting one. As we have seen, “Hinduism” was originally an outsider’s word, and it designates a multitude of realities defined by period, time, sect, class, and caste. Yet the veins and bones that hold this complex organism together are not just chimeras of external perception. Hindus themselves—particularly diasporic Hindus—affirm them, accelerating a process of self-definition that has been going on for millennia. 463 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

HINDU MAHESABHE

H INDU M AHESABHE \ 9hin-d-9t!-n@ \ (b. Sept. 25, and soon thereafter became for all intents and purposes de1776, Akita, Japan—d. Oct. 4, 1843, Akita), thinker and funct. leader of the Japanese Restoration SHINTJ (also known as Fukko Shintj) school. His thought, stressing the divine naHINDUTVA \ hin-9d>t-v‘ \ (Sanskrit and Hindi: “Hinduture of the emperor, exerted a powerful influence on royalness”), concept of Indian cultural, national, and religious ists who fought for the restoration of imperial rule during identity first articulated in a book written by the Hindu nathe second half of the 19th century. tionalist leader Vinayak Damodar SAVARKAR while he was in prison for sedition in 1922. It has subsequently become the At the age of 20, Hirata moved to Edo (modern Tokyo). centerpiece of the Hindu nationalist movement in all its He studied NEO-CONFUCIANISM but turned to Shintj, becoming a disciple of MOTOORI NORINAGA, one of the pioneers of forms. Savarkar defined a Hindu as “a person who regards the the National Learning (KOKUGAKU) movement. Hirata attempted to develop a Shintj theological system that would land of Bharat Varsha [India], from the Indus to the Seas, as provide normative principles for social and political action. his Father-Land as well as his Holy-Land,” and hindutva In his later years he became increasingly critical of the embodied that identity. The term thus conflates a geoTokugawa shogunate’s reduction of the emperor to a powgraphically based religious, cultural, and national identity: erless symbol; as a result Hirata was confined to his birtha true “Indian” is one who partakes of this “Hindu-ness.” place for the rest of his life. Some Indians insist, however, that hindutva is primarily

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HITOGAMI Hirata preached Japan’s natural superiority as the land of the gods, who transmit the “True Way” to Japan through the imperial line. Despite his nationalism and xenophobia, he accepted certain features of Western science he learned through Chinese translations, even drawing on theology written by JESUIT missionaries in China.

H IRSCH, S AMSON R APHAEL \9hirsh, 9h‘rsh \ (b. June 20, 1808, Hamburg [Ger.]—d. Dec. 31, 1888, Frankfurt am Main, Ger.), major Jewish religious thinker and founder of Trennungsorthodoxie (Separatist Orthodoxy), or Neo-Orthodoxy, a theological system that helped make ORTHODOX JUDAISM viable in Germany. Hirsch was a RABBI successively in Oldenburg, Emden, Nikolsburg, and Frankfurt am Main. While still chief rabbi at Oldenburg, he published Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum (1836; Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel), in which he expounded Neo-Orthodoxy. This system required two chief courses of action: (1) an educational program that combined strict training in the TORAH with a modern secular education—so that Orthodoxy could withstand the challenge of REFORM JUDAISM; and (2) a separation of Orthodox congregations from the larger Jewish community when the latter deviated from a strict adherence to Jewish tradition. In 1876 Hirsch was a prime mover in getting the Prussian parliament to pass a law permitting Jews to secede from the state-recognized Jewish religious community (which Hirsch considered unfaithful to the Torah) and to establish separate congregations. Among his many works are Horeb, Versuche über Jissroéls Pflichten in der Zerstreuung (1837; “Essays on the Duties of the Jewish People in the Diaspora”), an Orthodox textbook on JUDAISM, and commentaries on the PENTATEUCH (1867–78). He founded (1855) and edited the monthly Jeshurun (the poetic name for Israel). Six volumes of his essays were published in 1902–12.

H IRSCH , S AMUEL \ 9hirsh, 9h‘rsh \ (b. June 8, 1815, Thalfang, near Trier, Prussia [now Germany]—d. May 14, 1889, Chicago, Ill., U.S.), religious philosopher, RABBI, and a leading advocate of radical REFORM JUDAISM. He was among the first to propose holding Jewish services on Sunday. Educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Leipzig, Hirsch became rabbi at Dessau in 1838 but was forced to resign (1841) because of his views. From 1843 to 1866 he served as chief rabbi of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Called to Philadelphia in 1866 to succeed David Einhorn as head of the Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, he remained in that position for 22 years. He was elected president of the rabbinical conference held in Philadelphia in 1869 and in that capacity helped formulate the principles of Reform Judaism. The conference proclaimed that the dispersal of the Jews was part of a divine plan to lead all nations of the world to the true knowledge and worship of God. For Hirsch, Judaism was not law but doctrine, which was expressed in symbolic ceremonies that should change as needs require. His most ambitious work was Religionsphilosophie der Juden, 2 vol. (1842). HISBA \9his-b‘ \, in the law and custom of ISLAM, the practice of overseeing public morality and, especially, fair trading in the marketplace. This custom became especially developed during the time of the !Abbesid dynasty when the responsibility for the practice of hisba was bestowed upon the muhtasib. The muhtasib was charged with regulating daily affairs and was the officer that the small craftsman or merchant turned to first. He was responsible for bringing

wrongdoers to justice and for punishing drunkards and the unchaste with flogging. He also had the duty to amputate the hands of thieves caught in the act. Hisba is a practice thus designed to promote Islamic morals in the Muslim community. HISTORICAL RELIGION , religion that entails history and linear time as an essential element in its concept of community, salvation, and truth. The 19th-century Pan-Babylonian school used the concept to draw a distinction between biblical and Hellenistic religious concepts of historical and cyclical time, and the distinction made by the school— “Jerusalem/Athens”—remains popular to this day. Historical religion is usually identified with JUDAISM and CHRISTIANITY in contrast to cyclical/mythical religions such as HINDUISM, BUDDHISM, and TAOISM. The concept was often used to draw a distinction between what was seen as the truth of historical religions as opposed to mythical religions of nonWestern cultures. It is no longer in use in contemporary studies of religion. HISTORICISM \hi-9st|r-‘-0si-z‘m, -9st!r- \, view that the law of existence is change. Historicism emerged in the 19th century as an alternative to Enlightenment thinking concerning the universal nature of reason and morality in human existence. Historicism posited that as reason and morality were in themselves products of history, they too were subject to change. Historicism also opposed any transcendental norms or metaphysical principles. Values, religion, morality, and reason itself were subject to historical contexts and thus explained by contextual description. This objective and autonomous view of history gave rise to the establishment of history as an independent academic discipline separate from philosophy and theology. The rise of historiography had an important impact on the STUDY OF RELIGION as an academic inquiry. The historical-contextual method became the framework for biblical studies and what eventually became known as the history of religions, which attempted a value-free, or objective, approach to the study of religion. The notion that all human events are historically constituted contained the seed of historical RELATIVISM and the inevitable conclusion that given the historicist law of change there could be no such thing as value-free historical analysis. To posit such a principle contradicted the law of existence as change. The late 20th-century emergence of a “new historicism,” or “neo-historicism,” emphasizes the radical notion that all knowledge is relative to the standpoint of the author. Thus, theory is introduced once again as crucial to the study of other social and cultural histories and the history of everyday life. See also INTERPRETATION. HISTORY OF RELIGIONS : see

RELIGIONSGESCHICHTLICHE

SCHULE.

HITOGAMI \h%-0t+-9g!-m% \ (Japanese: “man-god”), category of Japanese RELIGIOUS BELIEF and practice that depends on the close relationship between a deity and his transmitter, such as a seer or a SHAMAN. As a religious system, hitogami is based on personal faith and contrasts with the UJIGAMI (“guardian deity”) system, which is dependent on family or geographic origin. The hitogami type of belief is evident in the deification of heroes such as HACHIMAN and Tenjin, god of calligraphy; in the ecstatic singing and dancing of Japanese festival processions; and in the charismatic leadership of some of the new religions of Japan.

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HITO-NO-MICHI

H ITO - NO - MICHI \ h%-9t+-0n+-9m%-ch% \ (Japanese: “Way of Man”), Japanese religious sect founded by Miki Tokuharu (1871–1938); it was revived in a modified form after World War II as PL KYJDAN (from the English words “perfect liberty” and a Japanese term for “religious body”). Hito-nomichi was a development of an earlier religious movement, Tokumitsu-kyj, named after its founder, Kanada Tokumitsu (1863–1919), who taught that the sufferings of his followers could be transferred to him by divine mediation and that he would vicariously endure their troubles. Hito-no-michi was compelled by the government to affiliate itself with one of the SECT SHINTJ denominations, Fusjkyj; but its unorthodox teachings and growing strength (in 1934 it claimed a membership of 600,000) aroused the disfavor of the government. In 1937 the sect was ordered disbanded, and Miki Tokuharu and his son Miki Tokuchika were jailed. Tokuchika was released from prison in 1945 and shortly afterward established PL Kyjdan. HITTITE RELIGIONS \9hi-0t&t \: see ANATOLIA, RELIGIONS OF. HOLDHEIM, SAMUEL \9h|lt-0h&m \ (b. 1806, Kempen, Prussia [now Ktpno, Poland]—d. Aug. 22, 1860, Berlin), German RABBI, founder and leader of radical REFORM JUDAISM. From 1836 to 1840 Holdheim officiated as a rabbi at Frankfurt an der Oder. In 1840 he went as Landesrabbiner (rabbi of a whole province) to Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Three years later he published Ueber die Autonomie der Rabbinen (“The Autonomy of the Rabbis”), in which he concluded that Jewish marriage and divorce laws were obsolete because they represented the national aspect of JUDAISM (no longer valid) as against its enduring religious aspect. Such laws, he held, should be superseded by the laws of the state, for Judaism is a religion only, whose essence is in biblical ethics and doctrine. During the rabbinical conferences of 1844–46, which elaborated the ideology of Reform Judaism, Holdheim played a dominant role. In 1847 he became rabbi of the Jüdische Reformgenossenschaft (“Congregation of the Jewish Reform Alliance”) in Berlin, where, for Reform Jews, he established Sunday as the day of worship and, except for Rosh Hashanah, abolished the keeping of the second day of holidays. Holdheim’s writings form part of the classical literature of Reform Judaism. GOL HA - MO ! ED \ 9_+l-0h!-m+-9@d \ (from Hebrew gol, “weekday,” and ha-mo!ed, “[of] the festival”), also spelled hol hamoed, or chol hamoed, in JUDAISM, the lesser festive days or semiholidays that occur between the initial and final days of the PASSOVER (Pesag) and SUKKOT religious holidays. The number of gol ha-mo!ed days is regulated by the locale. The principal ceremonies (such as the eating of MATZAHS ) are observed during gol ha-mo!ed, but not all work is forbidden. Marriages are postponed until after the festival, lest the one occasion interfere with the other.

HOLJ \9h+-l% \, Hindu spring festival celebrated throughout North India on the full-moon day of Phelguna (February– March). The festival has many characteristics of a saturnalia, like CARNIVAL in certain Christian countries. Participants throw colored waters and powders on one another, and, on this one day only, license is given for the usual rankings of CASTE, gender, status, and age to be reversed. In the streets the celebrations are often marked by ribald language and behavior, but at its conclusion, when everyone bathes, dons clean white clothes, and visits friends, teach-

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ers, and relatives, the ordered patterns of society are reasserted and renewed. The festival is particularly enjoyed by worshipers of KRISHNA. Its general frivolity is considered to be in imitation of Krishna’s play with the gopjs (wives and daughters of cowherds), and in Braj (also spelled Braja or Vraja), rituals of reversal culminate in a battle in which the women of REDH E ’s natal village pummel the men of Krishna’s village with staves; the men defend themselves with shields. A major expression of Holj’s mood of relaxation is the Qolayetre (“swing festival”), in which images of the gods are placed on specially decorated platforms and are swung to the accompaniment of cycles of songs sung only in this spring season. But the most memorable rite in many locales is the kindling of an early-morning bonfire, which represents the burning of the demoness Holike (or Holj), sister of Hiradyakauipu, who had enlisted her in his attempt to kill his son Prahleda. It was Prahleda’s unshakable devotion to VISHNU that had alienated him from his family. The burning of Holike prompts worshipers to remember how Vishnu (in the form of a lion-man) attacked and killed Hiradyakauipu, showing that faith prevails. HOLIDAY (from “holy day”), originally, a day of dedication to religious observance; in modern times, a day of either religious or secular commemoration. Many holidays of the major WORLD RELIGIONS tend to occur at the approximate dates of more ancient festivals. In the case of CHRISTIANITY, this is sometimes owing to the policy of the early church of scheduling Christian observances at dates when they would eclipse pre-Christian ones—a practice that proved more efficacious than merely prohibiting the earlier celebrations. In other cases, the similarity of the date is due to the tendency to celebrate turning points of the seasons or to a combination of the two factors.

H OLINESS MOVEMENT, fundamentalist religious movement that arose in the 19th century among Protestant churches in the United States, characterized by a doctrine of sanctification centering on a postconversion experience. The numerous Holiness churches that arose during this period range from quasi-Methodist sects to groups that are similar to Pentecostal churches. The movement traces back to JOHN WESLEY, the founder of METHODISM , who issued a call to Christian “perfection.” Perfection was to be the goal of all who desired to be altogether Christian; it implied that the God who is good enough to forgive SIN (justify) is great enough to transform the sinner into a saint (sanctify), thus enabling him to be free from outward sin as well as from “evil thoughts and tempers,” in short, to attain to a measure of holiness. From the outset, the motto of colonial American Methodism was “to spread Christian holiness over these lands.” But, in practice, the doctrines of holiness and perfectionism were largely ignored by American Methodists during the early decades of the 19th century. In 1843 about two dozen Holiness ministers withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church to found the Wesleyan Methodist Church of America, as sizable numbers of Protestants from the rural areas of the Midwest and South were joining the Holiness movement. These people had a penchant for Puritan-like codes of dress and behavior. Most of them had little sympathy for Christians preoccupied with wealth, social prestige, and religious formalism. Between 1880 and World War I a number of new Holiness groups emerged. Some, such as the Church of God (Ander-

HOLOCAUST Owing to the complexity of the theological and metason, Ind.), were established to protest against bureaucratic denominationalism. Others, such as the Christian and Mis- physical issues relating to the Holocaust, and the differing premises that individual thinkers and communities bring sionary Alliance and the CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE, were organized to serve the spiritual and social needs of the urban to these matters, it is not surprising that many different, often incompatible “answers” and “explanations” to the copoor, who quite frequently were ignored by the middlenundrum have been offered. So, for example, more radical class congregations representing the mainstream of PROTESscholars of theology such as Richard Rubinstein and Arthur TANTISM. Almost all of these Holiness bodies arose in order to facilitate the proclamation of a second-blessing experi- A. Cohen and Irving Greenberg have argued that the Holoence of sanctification with its concomitants—a life of sepa- caust requires theological revisions within Judaism and changes in the HALAKHAH (Jewish law). An example of a proration and practical holiness. posed change to halakhah would be changing the criteria Several of these Holiness groups demonstrated a capacity for sustained growth. Among these are the “older” denomi- for who is or is not Jewish. By halakhic standards only one born to a Jewish mother is considered Jewish, but many innations—the Wesleyan Methodist Church and the Free dividuals in Nazi Germany who were identified as Jews and Methodist Church of North America (founded 1860)—as well as the newer ones: the Church of God (Anderson, Ind.), killed had Jewish fathers and GENTILE mothers. Some scholars have proposed to change halakhah to define a Jew as the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the SALVATION ARMY, someone with one Jewish parent, whether father or mother, and the Church of the Nazarene. The Church of the Nazarene, which claims nearly a third of the total membership allowing those who were murdered for Jewishness to be of the Holiness movement, is generally recognized as being counted as Jewish. its most influential representative. Theological conservatives such as Eliezer Berkovits, JaContemporary Holiness churches tend to stand closer, cob Neusner, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe (that is, the Rabbi doctrinally speaking, to fundamentalism than to their Menachem Mendel Schneerson; 1902–94), however, have Methodist antecedents. Their tenets include such conser- argued that no such changes are necessary. Neusner, vative evangelical beliefs as “plenary inspiration” (verbal Schneerson, and Berkovits have all held that within Judainspiration of the whole BIBLE), “Christ’s ATONEMENT for the ism there already exist paradigms that answer the problem entire human race,” and “the personal SECOND COMING of (for instance, the story of Job may be seen as a way to unChrist.” Although the doctrinal statements of a few derstand the PROBLEM OF EVIL in instances where the innochurches—Church of the Nazarene and Christian and Mis- cent suffer). sionary Alliance—contain brief allusions to divine healing and Pentecostal experi- Inmates of the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Ger., 1945. During the ence, they should be distin- Holocaust thousands of slave laborers died at Buchenwald from overwork, disease, and guished from the Pentecostal malnutrition. Culver Pictures movement.

H OLOCAUST \ 9h!-l‘-0k|st, 9h+- \ , Hebrew Sho#Ah, or

Gurban, the 12 years (1933– 45) of Nazi persecution of Jews and other minorities; it climaxed in the “final solution” (die Endlösung), the attempted extermination of European Jewry. This near destruction of European Jewry during World War II has raised fundamental theological issues for the Jewish people and others. Not least, it has forced a reconsideration of the basic theological premises of JUDAISM. Given the Jewish belief that history and events can be seen as the revelation of God’s plan, especially for the Jewish people, an event of such horror as the Holocaust has called into question other core beliefs, such as the belief in an omnipotent and loving God and the existence of a specific, caring relationship between God and Israel, usually expressed through the notion of COVENANT.

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HOLY The actual situation, however, if judged on the grounds of philosophical and theological arguments produced by both sides of the debate, is that neither has made a compelling case for its claims. Neither Rubinstein’s endorsement of the “death of God,” Cohen’s call for a diminished idea of a God who cannot interfere in human affairs, Greenberg’s declaration that “the covenant has been broken,” Berkovit’s recycling of the “Free-Will Defense,” nor the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s conservative qabbalistic pronouncements on the Holocaust as a tikkun (an act that creates the possibility of worldly and cosmic “repair”) flow necessarily from the event itself. All of these and other denominational expositions are extrinsic to the reality of the death camps. One issue in particular has become important to the theological conversation: the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Those who would make theologic and halakhic changes feel that because the Holocaust is a unique historical event the response to it must be novel and innovative as well. Alternatively, those who oppose change tend to view the Holocaust as just another case of anti-Semitism, if on a larger scale, or as another instance of the more general condition of “man’s inhumanity to man.” However, any theological position, given the present state of the theological dialogue, is compatible with the singularity of Sho#Ah. Religious conservatives who intuitively reject the uniqueness of the Holocaust on the usually implicit grounds that such an unequivocal conclusion would necessarily entail ominous alterations in the inherited halakhic tradition are simply mistaken. One can adopt without self-contradiction an unexceptional conservative theological posture while accepting the contention that the destruction of European Jewry was an event unparalleled in history. Conversely, the theological radicals who hold that the singularity of the Holocaust necessarily entails theologic transformations and Halakhic changes have not shown this to be the case. They have merely assumed it. It may be that one of these alternative positions is true, but so far neither side has made a convincing case. In analyzing the concept of “uniqueness” one needs to specify more precise conditions of what this concept means, i.e., to show that the Holocaust is unique in respect of conditions a, b, c, etc. In applying this approach many scholars argue that the Holocaust is unique by virtue of the fact that never before has a state set out, as a matter of not just intentional principle but of actualized policy, to annihilate every man, woman, and child identified as belonging to a specific people. It is this that defines the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Given this definition of uniqueness two conclusions follow. First, historical study would confirm that the Holocaust is without real precedent. Second, crucially, the basis of this uniqueness—the Nazi’s intention to murder every Jewish man, woman, and child without exception—does not necessarily require theological transformations within Judaism, because what makes the Holocaust distinctive does not carry any particular status within Judaism. To return to the example already given, the Third Reich, according to the Nuremberg Laws, defined a person as Jewish if he or she had one Jewish parent (and, unlike in Judaism, whether father or mother), and indeed relationships less close caused one to be considered Jewish by the Third Reich. But, this has no relevance to the internal Jewish discussion based on traditional Jewish principles and values of “who is a Jew.” It may be that there are significant, even compelling grounds, for altering the classical definition of “who is a Jew” in our time, but one such ground, at least in

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Jewish theology, cannot be Nazi racial theory and its various corollaries. Finally, given the value system of Judaism, it must be recognized that, if the Holocaust is counted as negative theological evidence, then the creation of the state of Israel three years later should be counted as positive evidence. That is, the larger history of the Jewish people, of which the Holocaust is only a segment, must be appropriately accounted for as part of any broad theological judgment. How to do this is a complicated issue, for it is not a simple matter—it may even be impossible—to assign evidentiary value to specific historical events. This fact among others shows how very difficult it actually is to think through the theological implications of the Holocaust. See also JUDAISM: 20TH-CENTURY JUDAISMS BEYOND THE RABBINIC FRAMEWORK and JUDAISM: AMERICAN JUDAISM OF HOLOCAUST AND REDEMPTION. HOLY, also called sacred, term often used to define the unique characteristics of religion as an experience or as a distinct phenomenon. It is frequently used in opposition to the profane. The classic theological treatise on the holy remains Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy (1923). Otto thought of the holy in Kantian terms—that is, as a religious a priori (a self-evident truth). He described the history of religions as ideograms, or symbolic representations, of a numinous, transcendental reality called the holy in all of its mysterious, fascinating, awesome, and repellent aspects. MIRCEA ELIADE developed the concept of the holy as having a paradoxical ontological relation with the profane in The Sacred and the Profane (1959). EMILE DURKHEIM’S The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915) remains the classical theoretical statement of the opposition between the sacred and the profane as representations of social life. The sacred marks an absolute division from the profane that is both cognitive and moral in its representations of the social life. Many scholars have pointed out that the distinction between the sacred and the profane cannot be applied across all religions. Moreover, they have challenged the theoretical adequacy of the concepts as useful for the STUDY OF RELIGION.

H OLY L ANCE , RELIC discovered in June 1098 during the First Crusade by Christian Crusaders at Antioch, in Syria. It was said to be the lance that pierced the side of JESUS CHRIST at the CRUCIFIXION. The recovery of the relic inspired the crusaders to take the offensive against the Muslims, routing them in battle and securing Christian possession of Antioch. Disputes about the authenticity of the lance, however, caused dissension among the Crusaders, and its discoverer, Peter Bartholomew, was eventually discredited. H OLY OF H OLIES , Hebrew Qodesh ha-Qadashim, also called Devir, innermost and most sacred area of the ancient TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM , accessible only to the Israelite HIGH PRIEST. Once a year on YOM KIPPUR he was permitted to enter the square, windowless enclosure to burn incense and sprinkle sacrificial animal blood. By this act, the most solemn of the religious year, the high priest atoned for his own SINS and those of the PRIESTHOOD. The Holy of Holies was located at the west end of the Temple, and in Solomon’s Temple it enshrined the ARK OF THE COVENANT, a symbol of Israel’s special relationship with God. At the entrance to the Holy of Holies stood a small cedar altar overlaid with gold. After his conquest of Jerusalem in 63 ) Pompey desecrated the Temple by daring to enter the Holy of Holies.

HOLY WATER the east and south sides of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are widely interpreted to mark the course of the second wall. If so, the site of the church lay just outside the city wall in the time of Jesus, and this could be the actual place of his Crucifixion and burial. No rival site is supported by any real evidence.

HOLY SPIRIT, also called Paraclete, or Holy Ghost (from

The Holy Spirit, represented as a dove, descends on the disciples at Pentecost; woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, 1511 The Bridgeman Art Library—private collection

HOLY SEPULCHRE , tomb in which JESUS CHRIST was buried and name of the church built on the traditional site of his CRUCIFIXION and burial. According to the BIBLE, the tomb was close to the place of Crucifixion (John 19:41–42), and so the church was planned to enclose the site of both. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre lies in the northwest quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. CONSTANTINE the Great first built a church on the site. It was dedicated about 336 (, burned by the Persians in 614, restored by Modestus (ABBOT of the monastery of Theodosius, 616–626), destroyed by the caliph al-Hekim bj-Amr Alleh (see HAKIM, AL-) about 1009, and restored by the Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomachus. In the 12th century the Crusaders carried out a general rebuilding of the church. Since that time, frequent repair, restoration, and remodeling have been necessary. The present church dates mainly from 1810. Various Christian groups, including the Greek, Roman, Armenian, and Coptic churches, control parts of the present church and conduct services regularly. This site has been continuously recognized since the 4th century as the place where Jesus died, was buried, and rose from the dead. Whether it is the actual place, however, has been hotly debated. It cannot be determined that Christians during the first three centuries could or did preserve an authentic tradition as to where these events occurred. Another question involves the course of the second north wall of ancient Jerusalem. Some archaeological remains on

Old English: gast, “spirit”), in Christian belief, third Person of the TRINITY. The GOSPELS record a descent of the Holy Spirit on JESUS CHRIST at his BAPTISM, and numerous outpourings of the Spirit are mentioned in THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, in which healing, PROPHECY, the expelling of DEMONS (EXORCISM), and speaking in tongues (glossolalia) are particularly associated with the activity of the Spirit. Christian writers have seen in various references to the Spirit of YAHWEH in the OLD TESTAMENT an anticipation of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Hebrew word ruag (usually translated “spirit”) is often found in texts referring to the free and unhindered activity of God, either in creating or in revitalizing creation, especially in connection with the prophetic word or messianic expectation. There was, however, no explicit belief in a separate divine person in biblical Judaism; in fact, the NEW TESTAMENT itself is not entirely clear in this regard. One suggestion of such belief is the promise of another helper, or intercessor (paraclete), that is found in the Gospel According to John. The definition that the Holy Spirit was a distinct divine Person equal in substance to the Father and the Son and not subordinate to them came at the COUNCIL OF CONSTANTI NOPLE in 381 (, following challenges to its divinity. The Western church has since viewed the Holy Spirit as the bond, the fellowship, or the mutual CHARITY between Father and Son; they are absolutely united in the Spirit. The relationship of the Holy Spirit to the other Persons of the Trinity has been described in the West as proceeding from both the Father and the Son, whereas in the East it has been held that the procession is from the Father through the Son. From apostolic times, the formula for baptism has been Trinitarian. CONFIR MATION (in the Easter n OR THODOX CHURCH, chrismation), although not accepted by most Protestants as a SACRAMENT, has been closely allied with the role of the Holy Spirit in the church. The Eastern Orthodox church has stressed the role of the descent of the Spirit upon the worshiping congregation and upon the eucharistic bread and wine in the prayer known as the EPICLESIS. HOLY WAR, any war fought by divine command or for a religious purpose. The concept of holy war is found in the BIBLE (e.g., the Book of Joshua) and has played a role in many religions. See also JIHAD. HOLY WATER, in the Eastern Christian and ROMAN CATHOLIC churches, water that has been blessed and is used to convey a blessing to churches, homes, persons, and objects. In the early Christian community the “living” water of rivers and streams was preferred for BAPTISM and apparently received no special blessing. By the time of the 4th century the still waters of the baptismal font or pool were exorcised and blessed with the sign of the cross. Other water was blessed for the use of the faithful as a means of warding off the unclean spirit and as a safeguard against sickness and disease. In the course of time this blessed, or holy, water was used as a reminder of baptism by the faithful on entering the church and by the celebrant in sprinkling the congregation before the Sunday MASS.

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HOLY WEEK

H OLY WEEK , in the Christian church, week between PALM SUNDAY and EASTER, a time of devotion to the passion of JESUS CHRIST. In the Greek and Roman liturgical books it

is called the Great Week because great deeds were done by God during this week. The name Holy Week was used in the 4th century by ATHANASIUS, bishop of Alexandria, and Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia. Originally only Friday and Saturday were observed as holy days; later Wednesday was added as the day on which Judas plotted to betray Jesus, and by the beginning of the 3rd century the other days of the week had been added. The pre-Nicene church celebrated one great feast, the Christian PASSOVER, on the night between Saturday and Easter Sunday morning. By the later 4th century the various events were separated and commemorated on the days of the week on which they occurred: Judas’ betrayal and the institution of the EUCHARIST on MAUNDY THURSDAY; the passion and death of Christ on GOOD FRIDAY; his burial on Saturday; and his RESURRECTION on Easter Sunday. The Holy Week observances in the Roman missal were revised according to the decree Maxima Redemptoris (Nov. 16, 1955) to restore the services to the time of day corresponding to that of the events discussed in SCRIPTURE. HOMOOUSIAN \0h+-m+-9 \ (Japanese: “original substance, manifest traces”), Chinese Buddhist idea that was transmitted to Japan, greatly influencing the SHINTJ

HORA understanding of deity, or KAMI. As developed in the medieval period, the theory reinterpreted Japanese kami as the “manifest traces” of the “original substance” of BUDDHAS or BODHISATTVAS. Ryjbu (“Dual Aspect”) Shintj is particularly expressive of this principle, and the Yui-itsu school of Shintj chauvinistically reversed the formula to make Japanese kami the “original substance.” This principle generally allowed for the pervasive blending of Shintj and Buddhist divinities and practices, a characteristic of Japanese religious life that continues in contemporary Japan.

H ONOS \ 9h+-0n!s \, ancient Roman deified abstraction of honor, and particularly of honor perceived as military virtue. The earliest shrine of this deity in Rome was perhaps built not earlier than the 3rd century ) and was located just outside the Colline Gate. A double TEMPLE of Honos and Virtus stood outside the Porta Capena, and another, built by Marius (d. 86 )), was probably located on the Capitoline Hill. HOOKER, RICHARD \9h>-k‘r \ (b. March 1554?, Heavitree, Exeter, Devon, Eng.—d. Nov. 2, 1600, Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, Kent), theologian who created a distinctive ANGLICAN theology. In 1568 he entered Corpus Christi College at Oxford, where he was trained in the traditions of Genevan PROTESTANTISM. Leading scholars at Oxford were, however, loyal to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and used the vestments demanded by ecclesiastical law. Hooker looked beyond CALVINISM and read widely in scriptural interpretation, the early CHURCH FATHERS, and Renaissance THOMISM (the philosophical school influenced by the thought of ST. THOMAS AQUINAS). Hooker became a scholar of Corpus Christi College in 1573 and took his M.A. in 1577. In the same year he became a fellow of his college. In 1585 he was elected master of the Temple. With the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the Church of England passed beyond the crisis of the threat of ROMAN CATHOLICISM. Now the threat was that of Calvinism, not only in doctrine but in ecclesiastical organization as well. The reformers’ hold on general sympathy was so strong that even the bishops were lukewarm about suppressing them and allowed their growth to increase unchecked. In June 1572 radical religious reformers had issued An Admonition to the Parliament, which, though Queen Elizabeth I forbade its consideration by Parliament, became the platform of the PURITANS. The leading bishops were alarmed by the influence of the Admonition, and the Archbishop of Canterbury turned to John Whitgift, vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge, to reply to it. Whitgift was answered in turn by Thomas Cartwright, professor at Cambridge and the leading Puritan clergyman. The controversy was continued in a whole series of books. Hooker set himself the task of replying to the Admonition. After he ceased to be master of the Temple in 1591, he took up residence at his father-in-law’s house and wrote his masterpiece, Of the lawes of ecclesiasticall politie. The Politie was to be a work of eight books, but the fifth book (1597) was the last one to appear in Hooker’s lifetime. In the Politie, Hooker defended the Elizabethan church against Roman Catholics and Puritans alike. He upheld the threefold authority of the Anglican tradition— BIBLE , church, and reason. Roman Catholics put Bible and tradition on a parity as the authorities for belief, while Puritans looked to SCRIPTURE as sole authority. Hooker avoided both extremes, allowing to Scripture absolute authority when it spoke plainly and unequivocally; where it was silent or am-

Richard Hooker; engraving by E. Finden after a print by W. Hollar By courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.

biguous, wisdom would consult the tradition of the church; but he insisted that a third element lay in human reason, which should be obeyed whenever both Scripture and tradition needed clarification or failed to cover some new circumstance. In his view, the Puritans adopted an impossible position; they claimed to be loyal to the Queen while repudiating the Queen’s church. According to tradition Hooker served the churches at Drayton Beauchamp and Boscombe following his term as master of the Temple, but more probably he received his salary as a VICAR but allowed a lesser clergyman to perform the duties that the PARISH required. In 1595 he accepted an appointment as vicar of Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury.

H ORA \ 9h+r-‘, 9h|r- \ , plural Horae \ 9h+r-0%, 9h|r-, -0& \ , in Greek mythology, any of the personifications of the seasons and goddesses of natural order; in the Iliad they were the custodians of the gates of Olympus. According to Hesiod, the Horae were the children of ZEUS and THEMIS, and their names (Eunomia, Dike, Eirene—i.e., Good Order, Justice, Peace) indicate the extension of their functions from nature to the events of human life. At Athens they were apparently two in number: Thallo and Carpo, the goddesses of the flowers of spring and of the fruits of summer. Their yearly festival was the Horaea. In later mythology the Horae became the four seasons, daughters of the sun god, HELIOS, and the moon goddess, SELENE, each represented with the conventional attributes. Subsequently, when the day was divided into 12 equal parts, each of them took the name Hora. 471

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HOROSCOPE HOROSCOPE, in ASTROLOGY, chart of the heavens, showing the relative positions of the Sun, the Moon, the planets, and the ascendant and midheaven signs of the zodiac at a specific moment in time. A horoscope is used to provide information about the present and to predict events to come. An individual’s horoscope usually plots the positions at the moment of birth and is used by astrologers to analyze character, as well as—in conjunction with other astrological data—to predict the future. This is in accordance with the belief that each celestial body has its own mythological character, modified according to its geometric relationship with the other celestial bodies at a given moment. Everything in the universe being interrelated, these bodies exert an influence, particularly on the newborn. In casting a horoscope, the heavens are commonly represented by a circle divided into 12 sections, called houses. Each of these houses is assigned several aspects of human life, such as wealth or marriage. The planet that falls within a particular house is said to influence matters pertaining to that house.

H ORUS \ 9h+r-‘s, 9h|r- \, Egyptian Hor \ 9h+r, 9h|r \, or Har \9h!r \, in ancient EGYPTIAN RELIGION, god in the form of a falcon whose eyes were the sun and the moon. Falcon cults were widespread in Egypt. At Nekhen (Greek: Hierakonpolis), however, the conception arose that the reigning king was a manifestation of Horus and, after Egypt had been united by the kings from Nekhen, this conception became a generally accepted dogma. The first of the Egyptian king’s five names was the Horus name—i.e., the name that identified him with Horus. From the 1st dynasty (c. 2525– 2775 )), Horus and the god SETH were perpetual antagonists who were reconciled in the harmony of Upper and Lower Egypt. In the myth of OSIRIS , who became prominent about 2350 ), Horus was the son of Osiris. He was also the opponent of Seth, who murdered Osiris and contested Horus’ heritage, the royal throne of Egypt. Horus finally defeated Seth, thus avenging his father and assuming the rule. In the fight his left eye (i.e., the moon) was damaged and was healed by the god THOTH . The figure of the restored eye (the wedjat eye) became a powerful AMULET. Horus appeared as a local god in many places and under different names and epithets: for instance, as Harmakhis (Har-em-akhet, “Horus in the Horizon”); Harpocrates (Har-pe-khrad, “Horus the Child”); Harsiesis (Har-siEse, “Horus, Son of Isis”); Harakhty (“Horus of the Horizon,” closely associated with the sun god RE ); and, at Kawm Umbj (Kom Ombo), as Haroeris (Harwer, “Horus the Elder”). HoHorus offering a libation, bronze statue, 22nd dynasty (c. 800 )); in the Louvre, Paris Giraudon—Art Resource

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rus was later identified by the Greeks with APOLLO, and Edfu was called Apollinopolis (“Apollo’s Town”) in the Greco-Roman period. In the Ptolemaic period the vanquishing of Seth became a symbol of Egypt triumphing over its occupiers. At Edfu, where rebellions frequently interrupted work on the temple, a ritual drama depicting Horus as pharaoh spearing Seth in the guise of a hippopotamus was enacted.

HOSEA \h+-9z@-‘, -9z%- \, also spelled Osee, Assyrian Ausi, in the OLD TESTAMENT (2 Kings 15:30; 17:1–6), son of Elah and last king of Israel (c. 732–724 )). He became king through a conspiracy in which his predecessor, Pekah, was killed. The Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III claimed that he made Hosea king, and Hosea paid an annual tribute to him. After Tiglath-pileser died (727), Hosea revolted against the new Assyrian king, Shalmaneser, who then invaded Israel, took Hosea prisoner, and besieged Samaria. When the city fell three years later, many of Israel’s citizens were deported to Assyria, and the Assyrians ruled in Israel. H JTOKU \9h+-t|-k> \ (Japanese: “requital of a kindness”), semireligious movement among Japanese peasants initiated in the 19th century by Ninomiya Sontoku (1787– 1856). He combined a nonsectarian ethic of cooperation with practical economic measures such as crop rotation and famine relief. Hjtoku emphasized the debt owed to gods, nature, ancestors, emperor, and parents. This debt could be repaid only through frugality and conformity with the cosmic order, which was equated with moral sincerity. Ninomiya Sontoku’s teachings were disseminated by his followers and played an important part in shaping 19thand 20th-century Japanese popular morality. HOU- CHI \9h+-9j% \, Pinyin Hou Ji, in Chinese mythology, Lord of Millet Grains, who was worshiped for the harvests that he provided. Conceived when his childless mother stepped on the toeprint of a god, he was reared in a forest by birds and animals and served as minister of agriculture in prehistoric times. Sacrifices in his honor were offered by rulers of the Hsia dynasty (22nd–18th/19th century )) and of the later Chou dynasty (600–255 )), which claimed him as their ancestor.

H RUNGNIR \ 9hr>=-nir \, in Norse mythology, GIANT who fought a single combat with THOR. Hrungnir was made of stone, and his weapons were a shield and a whetstone. Thor’s helper Thjalfi tricked Hrungnir into lowering his shield by telling him that Thor would attack from underneath. Thus Hrungnir was standing on his shield and was unprotected when Thor threw his hammer. Hrungnir threw his whetstone, but Thor’s hammer shattered the whetstone and killed the giant. The dead giant’s leg pinned Thor to the ground, and a piece of whetstone was lodged in his head. Only Magni (“Strength”), a son of Thor, was able to move the leg of the giant off Thor. This duel, which is said to be the first fought between Thor and a giant, is seen as a mythic prototypical duel, which was an important institution in the Viking age. HSIAO \ 9shya> \, Pinyin xiao, Japanese kj \ 9k+ \ (Chinese: “filial piety”), in CONFUCIANISM, the attitude of obedience, devotion, and care toward one’s parents and elder family members that is the basis of individual moral conduct and social harmony. Hsiao consists in putting the needs of parents and family elders over self, spouse, and children, defer-

HSÜAN-HSÜEH ring to parents’ judgment, and observing toward them the prescribed behavioral proprieties (LI). Hsiao was originally rooted in the hierarchical ideology of Chinese feudalism, but CONFUCIUS raised it to a moral precept by citing it as the basis of JEN (“humanity”), the cultivated love of other people that was the Confucian moral ideal. He delineated the importance of hsiao for both family harmony and sociopolitical stability and facilitated its practice by reemphasizing the rites and behaviors associated with it. The concept, rendered kj, was adopted in Japan during the 17th century, when Confucianism became the official doctrine of the Tokugawa shogunate. HSIEN \9shyen \, Pinyin xian (Chinese: “immortal being”), in Chinese TAOISM , practitioner who has achieved immortality. Early Taoist sages referred to immortal beings with magical powers, perhaps allegorically; some followers interpreted these references literally and devoted themselves to discovering the “drug of immortality” and prolonging their lives through breath control, yogalike exercises, and abstention from grains. Adepts in these practices, though appearing to die, were believed to achieve physical immortality and admission to heavenly realms inaccessible to the spirits of mere mortals. The pursuit of this state fostered Taoist alchemical and other esoteric techniques and lore.

H SIN - HSÜEH \ 9shin-9shwe \ , Pinyin Xinxue (Chinese: “Mind-Heart Teaching,” or “School of Mind”), Chinese movement associated with LU HSIANG-SHAN (Lu Chiu-yüan; 1139–93) and WANG YANG-MING (1472–1529). In contrast with Chu Hsi’s (1130–1200) School of Principle, this school taught that the awareness and activation of the ruling principle of life is attained by mental introspection and not through the examination of external reality. Wang Yang-ming’s subjectivist development of the school especially reveals the influence of Buddhist ideals of meditative insight, the centrality of the moral ideal of “extending the good,” and an emphasis on the basic unity of mind and body, thought and action. NEO-CONFUCIAN

H SI - WANG - MU \ 9sh%-9w!=-9m< \, Pinyin Xiwangmu (Chinese: “Queen Mother of the West”), in the folk mythology of TAOISM in China, queen of the immortals in charge of female spirits who dwell in a fairyland called Hsi-hua (“West Flower”). The queen was a former mountain spirit transformed into a beautiful woman. Her garden was filled with rare flowers, extraordinary birds, and the flat peach (p’ant’ao) of immortality. These stories were based on an earlier Han period mythology in which she was the goddess of the sacred mountain K’un-lun. According to myth, Hsi-wang-mu’s birthday is celebrated by the PA-HSIEN (“Eight Immortals”) with a grand banquet during which Hsi-wang-mu serves special delicacies: bear paws, monkey lips, and dragon liver. P’an-t’ao are offered as the last course. A Taoist romance relates that during a visit to Wu-ti, emperor of the Han dynasty, Hsi-wang-mu gave him the famous peach of immortality. He was anxious to bury the stone, but she discouraged him, saying that Chinese soil was not suitable and, in any case, the tree bloomed only once in 3,000 years.

H SI - YU CHI \ 9sh%-9y+-9j% \, Pinyin Xiyouji (“Record of a Journey to the West”), foremost Chinese comic novel, written by the long-anonymous Wu Ch’eng-en (1500–c. 1582).

Based on the actual 7th-century PILGRIMAGE of the Buddhist monk HSÜAN-TSANG (602–664) to India in search of sacred texts, the story was already a part of Chinese folk and literary tradition in the form of colloquial stories, a poetic novelette, and a six-part drama when Wu Ch’eng-en formed it into his novel. The novel is composed of 100 chapters. The first seven deal with the birth of a monkey from a stone egg and his acquisition of magic powers; five relate the story of Hsüan-tsang, known as Tripitaka, and the origin of his mission to the Western Paradise; while the bulk of the novel recounts the adventures that befall Tripitaka and his entourage of three animal spirits—the magically gifted Monkey, the slow-witted and clumsy Pigsy, and the fish spirit Sandy—on their journey to India, culminating in their attainment of the sacred scrolls. This novel has many levels of religious and philosophical interpretation from the perspectives of BUDDHISM, TAOISM, and NEO-CONFUCIANISM. Besides the overt Buddhist theme, the novel also displays Taoist and Neo-Confucian ideas of self-cultivation. HSÜ \9sh} \, Pinyin xu (Chinese: “emptiness”), in TAOISM, a state of being that is characterized by total tranquility and transcendence of self, through which individual consciousness becomes one with the Tao; the TAO can be understood only through individual experience of hsü. CONTEMPLATIVE Taoists attain hsü by stilling their thought processes and emotions, which they regard as corruptions of the Tao. Many schools of Taoism have made use of breath-control techniques in order to quiet the mind; the more elaborate systems, requiring years of practice, were condemned by some as being contrary to the Tao, which is beyond human striving. HSÜAN \9shw!n \, Pinyin xuan (Chinese: “dark,” or “mysterious”), common term in most forms of Chinese religion and philosophy that connotes a hidden or occult dimension to some aspect of experience or reality. First used metaphysically in the TAO-TE CHING, it is an idea that is given mystical significance in many aspects of later Taoist and Buddhist tradition. See also HSÜAN-HSÜEH.

H SÜAN - HSÜEH \ 9shw!n-9shwe \, Pinyin Xuanxue (“Dark Learning”), intellectual movement among Chinese scholars that arose in the 3rd and 4th centuries ( during a period of widespread disenchantment with contemporary CONFUCIANISM. The movement found its scriptural support in drastically reinterpreted Confucian sources as well as in texts of TAOISM. Wang Pi (226–249 () is regarded as the school’s founder. The movement was grounded in the assumption that all temporally and spatially limited phenomena—anything “nameable”; all movement, change, and diversity; in short, all “being”—is produced from and sustained by one impersonal principle, which is unlimited, unnameable, unmoving, unchanging, and undiversified. Hsüan-hsüeh concentrated on the question of whether this ultimate reality was Being (yu) or Not-Being (WU) and whether the principle (LI) underlying a thing was universal or particular. The school came to reign supreme in cultural circles and represented the more abstract, unworldly, and idealistic tendency in early medieval Chinese thought. The proponents of Hsüan-hsüeh regarded themselves as true Confucians and interpreted CONFUCIUS as an enlightened sage who had inwardly recognized the ultimate reality but had kept silent about it in his worldly teachings, knowing that these mysteries could not be expressed in words. 473

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HSÜAN-TSANG Hence, his doctrine was supposed to be a mere set of ad hoc rules intended to answer the practical needs of the times. This concept of “hidden saintliness” and the expedient character of the canonical teachings came to play a very important role in upper-class BUDDHISM. Under the influence of Hsüan-hsüeh, likewise, early Chinese Buddhist philosophers directed their attention chiefly to Being and Nonbeing. The question of universality and particularity, or of one and many, led to the development of truly Chinese Buddhist schools, whose concern was the relationship between principle, which combines all things as one, and facts, which differentiate things into the many.

HSÜAN-TSANG \9shw!n-9dz!= \, Pinyin Xuanzang, original name Ch’en I, honorary epithet San-tsang, also called Much’a T’i-p’o, Sanskrit Mokzadeva (b. 602, Ch’en-lu, China— d. 664, China), Buddhist monk and Chinese pilgrim to India who founded the Wei-shih (“Ideation Only”) school. Born into a family of scholars, Hsüan-tsang received a classical Confucian education in his youth but became interested in the Buddhist SCRIPTURES and soon converted to BUDDHISM. He traveled to Ssu-ch’uan (modern Szechwan) and began studying Buddhist philosophy. He was soon troubled by numerous discrepancies and contradictions in the texts. Not finding any solution from his Chinese masters, he decided to go to India to study at the fountainhead of Buddhism. Being unable to obtain a travel permit, he left Ssu-ch’uan by stealth in 629. On his journey he traveled north, passing through such oasis centers as Tashkent and Samarkand, then beyond the Iron Gates into Bactria, across the Hindu Kush, and into Kashmir in northwest India. From there he sailed down the GAE GE (Ganges) River to Mathura, then on to the holy land of Buddhism in the eastern reaches of the Gaege, where he arrived in 633. In India, Hsüan-tsang visited all the sacred sites connected with the life of the BUDDHA GOTAMA, and he journeyed along the coasts of the subcontinent. The major portion of his time, however, was spent at the Nelande monastery, the great Buddhist center of learning, where he perfected his knowledge of Sanskrit, Buddhist philosophy, and Indian thought. Hsüan-tsang’s reputation as a scholar was such that the king in northern India wanted to meet him. Owing to that king’s patronage, Hsüan-tsang’s return trip to China, begun in 643, was greatly facilitated. Hsüan-tsang returned to Ch’ang-an, the T’ang capital, in 645, after an absence of 16 years. He was accorded a tumultuous welcome at the capital. Hsüan-tsang spent the remainder of his life translating the Buddhist scriptures, which numbered 657 items packed in 520 cases, that he had brought back from India. He was able to translate only a small portion of these, but his translations included some of the most important MAHEYENA scriptures. Hsüan-tsang’s main interest was the philosophy of the YOG E C E RA (Vijñenaveda) school, and he and his disciple K’uei-chi (632–682) began the Wei-shih school in China. Its doctrine was set forth in Hsüan-tsang’s Ch’eng-wei-shih lun (“Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness Only”), a translation of the essential Yogecera writings, and in K’uei-chi’s commentary. The main thesis of this school is that the whole world is but a representation of the mind. While Hsüan-tsang and K’uei-chi lived, the school achieved some degree of eminence, but with the passing of the two masters the school rapidly declined. A Japanese monk, Djshj, arrived in China in 653 to study under Hsüan-tsang. He later introduced the doctrines of Wei-shih into Japan. During the 7th and 8th centuries, this 474 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

school, called Hossj by the Japanese, became the most influential of all the Buddhist schools in Japan. In addition to his translations, Hsüan-tsang composed the Ta-T’ang Hsi-yü-chi (“Records of the Western Regions of the Great T’ang Dynasty”), the great record of the various countries he passed through during his journey. Hsüantsang’s travels were later dramatized in a folk tradition that culminated in the 16th century in Wu Ch’eng-en’s great novel The Journey to the West.

H SÜN - TZU \ 9sh}n-9dz~ \ , Pinyin Xunzi, original name Hsün K’uang \-9kw!= \, honorary name Hsün Ch’ing \-9chi= \ (b. c. 300 ), Chao Kingdom, China—d. c. 230 ), Lanling, Ch’u Kingdom, China), philosopher who was one of the three great philosophers of the Classical period of CONFUCIANISM in China. He elaborated and systematized the work undertaken by CONFUCIUS and MENCIUS , and the strength he thereby gave to that philosophy has been largely responsible for its continuance as a living tradition for over 2,000 years. Little is known of his life save that he belonged for some years to the Chi-hsia academy of philosophers maintained in Ch’i by the ruler of that eastern state, and that, later, because of slander, he moved south to the state of Ch’u, where he became magistrate of a small district in 255 ) and later died in retirement. Hsün-tzu’s major work, known today as the Hsün-tzu, is a milestone in the development of Chinese philosophy. In his book he introduced a rigorous writing style that emphasized topical development, sustained reasoning, detail, and clarity. Hsün-tzu’s most famous dictum is that “the nature of man is evil; his goodness is only acquired training.” Human nature at birth, he maintained, consists of instinctual drives which, left to themselves, are selfish, anarchic, and antisocial. Society as a whole, however, exerts a civilizing influence upon the individual, gradually training and molding him until he becomes a disciplined and morally conscious human being. Of prime importance in this process are the LI (ceremonies and ritual practices, rules of social behavior, traditional mores) and music (which he regarded as having a profound moral significance). Hsün-tzu’s view of human nature was radically opposed to that of Mencius, who had optimistically proclaimed the innate goodness of man. Both thinkers agreed that all men are potentially capable of becoming sages, but for Hsün-tzu this meant that every man can learn from society how to overcome his initially antisocial impulses. Thus began what became one of the major controversies in Confucian thought, and in later centuries Mencius’ growing prominence led to a neglect of Hsün-tzu’s work. During this time, a period of great change and instability, the historical li (ritual practices) were being abandoned by an increasingly agnostic intelligentsia. Hsün-tzu believed that these ritual practices were too important to be lost because they were a culturally binding force for a people whose existence depended on cooperative economic efforts. Further, those practices were important to the individual because they provided an aesthetic and spiritual dimension to one’s life. By his insistence on the necessity of cultural continuity for both a person’s physical and psychological well-being, Hsün-tzu provided an ethical and aesthetic philosophical basis for these ritual practices as their religious foundation was weakening. The li are accordingly the basic stuff out of which he builds the ideal society as described in his book, and the scholar-officials who are to govern that society have as

HUANG-TI their primary function the preservation and transmission of these ritual practices. Like all early Confucians, Hsün-tzu was opposed to hereditary privilege, advocating literacy and moral worth as the determinants of leadership positions; and these determinants were to have as their foundation a demonstrated knowledge of the high cultural tradition— the li. The li were to be employed by scholars to ensure that everyone was in a place, and officials were to employ the li to ensure that there was a place for everyone. Hsün-tzu engaged in polemic with rival schools, and he bitterly lamented the lack of a centralized political authority that could impose ideological unity from above. Indeed, he was an authoritarian who formed a logical link between Confucianism and the totalitarian Legalists; among his students were two of the most famous Legalists, the theoretician Han Fei-tzu (c. 280–233 )) and the statesman Li Ssu (c. 280–208 )). Both of these men earned the enmity of later Confucian historians, and their reputations have also negatively affected the evaluation of their teacher. For several centuries after Hsün-tzu’s death, his influence remained greater than that of Mencius. Only with the rise of NEO-CONFUCIANISM in the 10th century ( did his influence begin to wane, and not until the 12th century was the triumph of Mencius formalized by the inclusion of the Mencius among the Confucian classics. Hsün-tzu was declared heterodox. Only recently have his works emerged from this period of neglect.

H UAI- NAN-TZU \9hw&-9n!n-9dz~ \, Pinyin Huainanzi (Chinese: “Master Huai-nan”), Chinese Taoist classic written c. 139 ) under the patronage of the nobleman Huai-nan-tzu (Liu An). The writing is an important statement of the Han period (HUANG-LAO) TAOISM concerned with COSMOLOGY, astronomy, and statecraft. The Huai-nan-tzu states that the TAO originated from vacuity, and vacuity produced the universe, which in turn produced the material forces. The material forces combined to form yin and yang, which in turn give rise to the myriad things. In its broad outline, this COSMOGONY and cosmology have been retained as orthodox doctrine by Taoist philosophers and also by later Confucianists. The Huai-nan-tzu introduces such ideas as immortality on earth and the physical techniques, such as breathing, used to achieve it (see HSIEN).

HUANG-LAO \9hw!=-9la> \, Pinyin Huanglao, political ideology drawing on the art of rulership attributed to the legendary Yellow Emperor (HUANG-TI) and the founder of TAOISM, LAO-TZU. This method of governance, which stressed the principles of reconciliation and noninterference, overtook Legalism as the dominant ideology of the imperial court in the early years of the Western Han (206 )–25 (). The Huang-Lao masters venerated Lao-tzu as a sage whose instructions, contained in his cryptic book TAO-TE CHING, describe the perfect art of government. Huang-ti was depicted as a ruler of the Golden Age who achieved his success because he applied his teachers’ precepts to governH U , S IA , AND H EH \ 9hn \, Pinyin hundun (Chinese: “chaos,” or “primal lump”), ancient term that alludes to the spontaneous creation of the world from a primordial CHAOS, imagined sometimes as a kind of primal wonton, a lumpish sac of cosmic stuff, or a primal gourd. The theme was important in early Taoist texts like the TAO - TE CHING and the CHUANG-TZU and refers to the ideal of the sage who attempts through physiological and mental methods to reverse the process of creation and return to the original condition of chaotic wholeness—hun-tun, or p’u, the “uncarved block.” In later sectarian TAOISM the theme of hun-tun had both positive and negative connotations and was incorporated

HUS, JAN sented the church as one of the heaviest land taxers. There was thus a basis of potential support for any movement to reform the church. Attempts at reform had been made by the Bohemian king Charles IV, and Wycliffe’s works were the chosen weapon of the national refor m movement founded by Jan Milíl of Kromspíu (d. 1374). I n 1 3 9 1 M i l í l ’s p u p i l s founded the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, where public sermons were preached in Czech (rather than in Latin) in the spirit of Milíl’s teaching. From 1402 Hus was in charge of the chapel, which had become the center of the growing national reform movement. He became increasingly absorbed in public Jewish wedding with bride (left) and groom under a guppah, detail from an preaching and eventually illustrated German manuscript, c. 1272 emerged as the popular leader The Granger Collection of the movement. Despite his extensive duties at the Bethlehem Chapel, Hus contininto elaborate new mythologies (often influenced by BUD- ued to teach in the university faculty of arts and became a candidate for the doctor’s degree in theology. DHISM), liturgical practices of community renewal, and routines of introspective meditation by Taoist priests and alIn 1403 a German university master, Johann Hübner, chemical adepts. drew up a list of 45 articles from Wycliffe and had them condemned as heretical; the articles were henceforth reGUPPAH \_-p‘ \, also spelled chuppah, plural gupgarded as a test of orthodoxy. The principal charge against pot \_r-%-‘n \: see ANATOLIA, RELIGIONS Council and in so doing had the support of the German OF. masters of the University of Prague, while Hus and the Czech masters supported the Council. The German masHUS, JAN \9h‘s, 9h>s \, also spelled Huss (b. c. 1370, Husi- ters had a voting majority in university affairs until King nec, Bohemia [now in Czech Republic]—d. July 6, 1415, Wenceslas in January 1409 gave a predominance of votes to Konstanz [Germany]), the most important 15th-century the Czech masters, and the resulting exodus of Germans to Czech religious Reformer, whose work anticipated the several German universities left Hus as rector of the now Lutheran REFORMATION by a full century. Czech-dominated university. About 1390 Hus enrolled in the University of Prague, and The final break between Archbishop Zbynsk and Hus octwo years after his graduation in 1394 he received his mascurred when the Council of Pisa ineffectually deposed both ter’s degree and began teaching at the university. He be- Pope Gregory XII and the ANTIPOPE Benedict XIII and in their place elected Alexander V. The archbishop and the came dean of the philosophical faculty there in 1401. higher clergy in Bohemia remained faithful to Gregory, In that same year JOHN WYCLIFFE’S works and theological whereas Hus and the reform party acknowledged the new writings became available in Prague, and Hus was particularly impressed by Wycliffe’s proposals for reform of the ROpope. The archbishop, through a large bribe, induced AlexMAN CATHOLIC clergy. The clerical estate owned about oneander to prohibit preaching in private chapels. Hus refused half of all the land in Bohemia, and the wealth and simonito obey the pope’s order, whereupon Zbynsk excommuniacal practices of the higher clergy aroused jealousy and re- cated him, though Hus continued to preach at the Bethlesentment among the poor priests. The peasantry, too, re- hem Chapel and to teach at the University of Prague.

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GUSAYN IBN !ALJ, ALKarbale#, Iraq), SHI!ITE Muslim hero and martyr, grandson of the Prophet MU HAMMAD and son of ! AL J (the fourth Islamic CALIPH ) and F EE IMA, daughter of Muhammad. He is revered by Shi!ite Muslims as the third IMAM (after !Alj and Gusayn’s older brother, GASAN). After the assassination of their father, Gasan and Gusayn acquiesced to the r u le of the first Umayyad caliph, Mu!ewiya, from whom they received pensions. Gusayn, however, refused to recognize the legitimacy of Mu!ewiya’s son and successor, Yazjd (April 680). Gusayn was then invited by the townsmen of Kjfa, a city with a Shi!ite majority, to revolt against the Umayyads. Gusayn set out for Kjfa with a small band of relatives and followers. The governor of Iraq, on behalf of the caliph, sent 4,000 men to arrest Gusayn and his band. They trapped Gusayn near the banks of the Euphrates River (October 680) at KARBALE#. When Gusayn refused to surrender, he and his escort were slain, and Gusayn’s head was sent to Yazjd in Damascus. In remembrance of the martyrdom of Gusayn, Shi!ite Muslims observe the 10th day of Mugarram (the date of the battle according to the Islamic calendar) as the culmination of the 10-day observance of tazia (ta!ziyah), which coincides with !ESHJRE#. Revenge for Gusayn’s death was turned into a rallying cry that helped under mine the Jan Hus at the stake in 1415, colored Bohemian woodcut, 1563 Umayyad caliphate and gave impetus to The Granger Collection the rise of a powerful Shi!ite movement. The details of Gusayn’s life are obIn 1412 the case of Hus’s HERESY was revived owing to a scured by the legends that grew up surrounding his martyrnew dispute over the sale of INDULGENCES that had been is- dom, but his final acts appear to have been intended to sued by Alexander’s successor, John XXIII, to finance his found a regime that would reinstate a “true” Islamic polity campaign against Gregory XII. Their sale in Bohemia had as opposed to what he considered the unjust rule of the been approved by King Wenceslas, who shared in the pro- Umayyads. His shrine in Karbale# became one of the leadceeds. Hus publicly denounced these indulgences and by so ing Shi!ite PILGRIMAGE centers, aside from MECCA and MEDINA. Many SUNNIS venerate him at his shrine in Cairo. Devotees doing lost the support of Wenceslas. Hus’s enemies then rehold that Gusayn possesses extraordinary powers of internewed his trial at the Curia, where he was declared under cession and healing. During the 20th century he was remajor EXCOMMUNICATION for refusing to appear. Hus left Prague in October 1412 and found refuge mostly in south- garded by Sunnis and Shi!ites alike as a revolutionary hero. ern Bohemia in the castles of his friends. His enemies H USSITE \9h‘-0s&t, 9h>- \, any of the followers of the Bohewrote a large number of polemical treatises against him, mian religious reformer JAN HUS, who was condemned by which he answered in an equally vigorous manner. He also the COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE (1414–18) and burned at the wrote a large number of treatises in Czech and a collection stake. After his death in 1415 many Bohemian knights and of sermons entitled Postilla. nobles published a formal protest and offered protection to Invited to the COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE to explain his views and promised safe-conduct, Hus was arrested shortly after those who were persecuted for their faith. The movement’s his arrival there. He was tried before the Council of Con- chief supporters were Jakoubek of Stpíbro (died 1429), Hus’s stance as a Wycliffite heretic, and in three public hearings successor at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague; Václav Koranda, leader of the Taborites (extreme Hussites named for he was allowed to defend himself and succeeded in refuting some of the charges against him. The council urged Hus to the city of Tábor, their stronghold some 50 miles south of recant in order to save his life, but when he refused he was Prague); and Jan Uelivský, who organized the extreme resentenced and burned at the stake. form party in Prague. The Hussites broke with Rome over two key issues: the G USAYN IBN !A LJ , AL - \ _>-9s&n-0i-b‘n-!-9l% \ (b. January use of a Czech liturgy and the administration of the EUCHA626, Medina, Arabia [now in Saudi Arabia]—d. Oct. 10, 680, RIST to the laity under the forms of both bread and wine.

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HVARENAH (The doctrine supporting this was called Utraquism [from the Latin utraque, “each of two”] and the more moderate Hussites were called UTRAQUISTS.) Under King Wenceslas (Václav) IV of Bohemia, the movement spread widely. In 1419, however, he died and was succeeded by his half brother Sigismund, king of the Romans and of Hungary. The Hussites would have acknowledged Sigismund had he accepted the Four Articles of Prague that Jakoubek had formulated: (1) freedom of preaching; (2) communion in both kinds; (3) poverty of the clergy and expropriation of church property; (4) punishment of notorious sinners. In 1420, however, Sigismund, who had failed to get possession of Prague, published a bull of Pope Martin V proclaiming a crusade against the Hussites. The Hussite union, which included the municipalities of Prague and other cities and the chief military power of Bohemia, deposed Sigismund and repelled two crusading attacks against Prague. Various crusades and battles against the Hussites failed for the next several years. In 1427 the Hussites, led by Prokop Holý, began a more revolutionary, rather than defensive, political program. Pope Martin V organized another crusade against them but did not live to see it decisively beaten by the Hussites in 1431. Peace negotiations began in 1431, when the Council of Basel of the ROMAN CATHOLIC church agreed to negotiate with the Hussites on an equal basis, which Pope Martin V had refused to do. A Hussite delegation spent three months in Basel in 1433 discussing the Four Articles of Prague. The Council then sent a mission to Prague, which granted communion in both kinds to the Hussites. This grant split the Hussites, since the Utraquists were willing to make peace on these terms, but the more radical Taborites were not. Utraquists and Catholics then joined forces to defeat the Taborites in a battle at Lipany in 1434, which ended the Taborites’ influence. The Utraquist Hussites then resumed peace negotiations, and in July 1436 they obtained a peace treaty (the Compact of Iglau) that ensured all the principal gains of the war: communion in both kinds, the expropriation of church lands (which broke the economic power of the Roman Catholic church in Bohemia), and an independent Bohemian Catholic church under Jan Rokycana as its elected archbishop. Although association with the Roman Catholic church continued, the church of the Utraquist Hussites survived SCHISMS and periodic persecutions until c. 1620, when it was finally absorbed by the Roman Catholics. In the mid-15th century the UNITAS FRATRUM (Unity of Brethren) movement began in Bohemia among some of the Hussites, and it established its own independent organization in 1467. During the REFORMATION, the Unitas Fratrum was in contact with Lutheran and Reformed Protestants. Eventually, however, Bohemian and Moravian PROTESTANTISM was suppressed, and the Roman Catholic COUNTER REFORMATION was victorious after 1620, when the Protestant barons were defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain during the Thirty Years’ War. Remnants of the Unitas Fratrum remained, however, and in 1722 a group of them fled Moravia and settled on the estate of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf in Saxony. A number of exiles from Moravia and Bohemia followed, and they formed the community of Herrnhut, where they were organized as the MORAVIAN CHURCH. There is also some continuity with 20th-century Czech Protestantism.

H UTTERITE \ 9h‘-t‘-0r&t, 9hl-#r-#-9b% \, in full Mugyi al-Djn Abj

!Abd Alleh Mugammad ibn !Alj ibn Muhammad ibn al-!Arabj al-Getimj al-Eej ibn al-!Arabj, also called al-Shaykh alAkbar \#l-9sh&_-#l-ak-9b!r \ (b. July 28, 1165, Murcia, Valencia—d. Nov. 16, 1240, Damascus), celebrated Muslim mystic-philosopher who gave the esoteric, mystical dimension of Islamic thought its first full-fledged philosophic expression. Ibn al-!Arabj was educated in Seville, then an outstanding center of Islamic culture and learning. He stayed there for 30 years, studying traditional Islamic sciences. During those years he traveled a great deal in Spain and North Africa in search of masters of the Sufi (mystical) Path (see SUFISM) who had achieved great spiritual progress. During one of these trips he had a dramatic encounter with the great Aristotelian philosopher IBN RUSHD (Averroës; 1126– 98) in the city of Córdoba. After the early exchange of only a few words, it is said, the mystical depth of the boy so overwhelmed the old philosopher that he began trembling. In 1198, while in Murcia, he had a vision in which he was ordered to leave Spain and set out for the East. The first notable place he visited on this journey was MECCA (1201), where he “received a divine commandment” to begin his major work al-Futjget al-Makkjya (“The Meccan Revelations”), which was to be completed much later in Damascus. In 560 chapters, it is a personal encyclopedia extending over all the esoteric sciences in ISLAM as Ibn al-!Arabj understood and had experienced them, together with valuable information about his own inner life. It was also in Mecca that he became acquainted with a young girl of great beauty who, as a living embodiment of the eternal sophia (wisdom), was to play in his life a role much like that which Beatrice played for Dante. Her memory was eternalized by Ibn al-!Arabj in a collection of love poems (Tarjumen al-ashweq; “The Interpreter of Desires”), upon which he himself composed a mystical commentary. His pantheistic expressions drew down on him the wrath of Muslim authorities, some of whom prohibited the reading of his works at the same time that others were elevating him to the rank of the prophets and saints. After Mecca, he visited Egypt (also in 1201) and then Anatolia, where, in Qunya, he met Zadr al-Djn al-Qjnawj, who was to become his most important follower and successor in the East. From Qunya he went on to Baghdad and Aleppo. By the time his long PILGRIMAGE had come to an end at Damascus (1223), his fame had spread all over the Islamic world. Venerated as the greatest spiritual master, he spent the rest of his life in Damascus in contemplation, teaching, and writing. During his Damascus days he composed (1229) one of the most important works in mystical philosophy in Islam, Fuzjz al-gikam (“The Bezels of Wisdom”). Its importance as an expression of his mystical thought in its most mature form cannot be overemphasized. Starting in the 14th century his ideas flourished among Sufis in India and later in Indonesia.

I BN AL -F ERIQ \ 0ib-n#l-9f!r-id \, in full Sharaf al-Djn Abj Gafz !Umar ibn al-Feriq (b. March 22, 1181 or March 11, 1182, Cairo—d. Jan. 23, 1235, Cairo), Arab poet whose expression of Sufi MYSTICISM is regarded as the finest in the Arabic language. Son of a Syrian-born inheritance-law functionary, Ibn alFeriq studied for a legal career but abandoned law for a solitary religious life in the Muqaeeam hills near Cairo. He spent some years in or near MECCA, where he met the renowned Sufi Abj Gafz !Umar AL-SUHRAWARDJ of Baghdad (d. 485

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IBN AL-JAWZJ 1234). Venerated as a saint during his lifetime, Ibn al-Feriq was buried in the Muqaeeam hills, where his tomb is still visited. In later times his verse became the subject of controversy. Some religious authorities accused him of favoring pantheistic ideas, similar to those of IBN AL -! ARAB J , which were held to undermine the SHARJ!A and to be conducive to infidelity. In the end, his saintly status was redeemed with the assistance of the Mamljk sultan Qe#it Bey (d. 1496). Many of Ibn al-Feriq’s poems are qazjdas (“odes”) on the lover’s longing for reunion with his beloved. He expresses through this convention his yearning for a return to Mecca and, at a deeper level, a desire to be assimilated into the spirit of MUHAMMAD, first projection of the Godhead. He developed this theme at length in Naxm al-suljk (Eng. trans. by A.J. Arberry, The Poem of the Way, 1952). Almost equally famous is his “Khamrjya” (“Wine Ode”; Eng. trans., with other poems, in Reynold Alleyne Nicholson’s Studies in Islamic Mysticism [1921] and in The Mystical Poems of Ibn al-Feriq, translated by A.J. Arberry [1956]), which describes the effects of the wine of divine love. See also SUFISM.

IBN AL-JAWZJ \0ib-n>l-ja>-9z% \, in full !Abd al-Ragmen ibn !Alj ibn Muhammad Abj al-Farash ibn al-Jawzj (b. 1126, Baghdad—d. 1200, Baghdad), jurist, theologian, historian, preacher, and teacher who became an important figure in the Baghdad establishment and a leading spokesman of traditionalist Sunni ISLAM (see SUNNA). Ibn al-Jawzj received a traditional religious education and chose a teaching career, becoming by 1161 the master of two religious colleges. A fervent adherent of Ganbalj doctrine (one of the four schools of Islamic law), he was a noted preacher whose sermons were conservative in viewpoint and supported the religious policies of the Baghdad ruling establishment. In return he was favored by the CALIPHS, and by 1178/79 he had become the master of five colleges and the leading Ganbalj spokesman of Baghdad. In the decade 1170–80 he attained the height of his power. Becoming a semiofficial inquisitor, he constantly searched for doctrinal heresies. He was particularly critical of Sufis (Muslim mystics; see SUFISM) and of SHI!ITE scholars. His zeal antagonized many liberal religious scholars. The arrest in 1194 of Ibn Yjnus, his old friend and patron, marked the end of Ibn al-Jawzj’s career and his close links with governmental circles. In that year he was arrested and exiled to the city of Wesie. He was partially rehabilitated on the eve of his death and allowed to return to Baghdad. Ibn al-Jawzj’s scholarly works reflected his adherence to Ganbalj doctrine. Much of his work was of a hagiographical and polemical nature. Of particular interest was his Zifat al-Zafwah (“Attributes of Mysticism”), an extensive history of MYSTICISM, which argued that the true mystics were those who modeled their lives on the COMPANIONS OF THE PROPHET. See also GANBALJ LEGAL SCHOOL. IBN !AQJL \0i-b‘n-a-9k%l \, in full Abj al-Wafe# !Alj ibn !Aqjl ibn Muhammad ibn !Aqjl ibn Agmad al-Baghdedj az-Xafarj (b. 1040, Baghdad—d. 1119), Islamic theologian and scholar of the Ganbalj school, the most traditional of the schools of Islamic law. His thoughts and teachings represent an attempt to give a somewhat more liberal direction to Ganbalism. In 1055–66 Ibn !Aqjl received instruction in Islamic law according to the tenets of the Ganbalj school. During these years, however, he also became interested in liberal theo486 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

logical ideas that were regarded as reprehensible by his traditionalist Ganbalj teachers. These ideas represented two diverse trends within Islamic thought—that of the Mu!tazilites, those who sought to understand and interpret religious doctrine according to the canons of logical inquiry and reason, and that of the teachings of the mystic AL G ALL E J , especially his concept of unity of phenomena (wagdat al-shuhjd), a doctrine that attempted to accommodate the idea of unity (TAWGJD) of SUFISM and the scripturalist theologians’ concern with the revealed law (shar!). Ibn !Aqjl’s attraction to these ideas weakened his standing in the conservative Ganbalj community of Baghdad. He aroused further animosity when in 1066 he attained a professorship at the important mosque of al-Manzjr. The professional jealousy of those theologians who had been passed over, coupled with his espousal of innovative and controversial doctrines, led to Ibn !Aqjl’s persecution. After the death of his influential patron, Abj Manzjr ibn Yjsuf, in 1067 or 1068, he was forced to retire from his teaching position. Until 1072 he lived in partial retirement under the protection of Abj Manzjr’s son-in-law, a wealthy Ganbalj merchant. The controversy over his ideas came to an end in September 1072, when he was forced to retract his beliefs publicly before a group of scripturalist theologians. This retraction may have been based on expediency and was in keeping with the recognized practice of TAQJYA (precautionary dissimulation). Ibn !Aqjl spent the rest of his life in the pursuit of scholarship. His most famous work was the Kiteb al-funjn (“Book of Sciences”), an encyclopedia covering a large variety of subjects. This work was said to have included between 200 and 800 volumes, all but one of which have been lost. See also GANBALJ LEGAL SCHOOL.

IBN BEBAWAYH \0i-b‘n-9b!-ba>-0w& \, also spelled Ibn Babjye, in full Abj Ja!far Muhammad ibn Abj al-Gasan !Alj ibn Gusayn ibn Mjse al-Qummj, also called al-Zadjq \#lsa-9dd \, also called Rabad I \r!-9b!d, 9ra-bad \ (b. c. 1110, Toledo, Castile—d. c. 1180, Toledo), physician and historian who was the first Jewish philosopher to draw on Aristotle’s writings in a systematic fashion. Ibn Daud wrote his history Sefer ha-kabbala (“Book of Tradition”) in answer to an attack on rabbinic authority by the Karaites, a Jewish sect that considered only SCRIPTURE as authoritative, not the Jewish oral law as embodied in the TALMUD. Thus, he attempted to demonstrate an unbroken chain of rabbinic tradition from MOSES , providing much valuable information about contemporary Spanish Jewry, their SYNAGOGUES, and their religious practices. Deriving his Aristotelianism from the 11th-century physician and philosopher IBN SJNE (Avicenna) and other Islamic writers, Ibn Daud intended his major philosophic work, Sefer ha-emuna ha-rama (“Book of Sublime Faith”) as a solution to the problem of FREE WILL. Divided into three sections dealing with physics and metaphysics, religion, and ethics, the Emuna ha-rama was eclipsed by the more precise Aristotelian writings of the 12th-century rabbi MOSES MAIMONIDES. IBN EZRA, ABRAHAM BEN MEIR \0i-b‘n-9ez-r‘ \ (b. 1092/ 93, Tudela, Emirate of Saragossa—d. 1167, Calahorra, Spain), poet, grammarian, traveler, Neoplatonic philosopher, and astronomer, best known as a biblical exegete whose commentaries contributed to the Golden Age of Spanish JUDAISM. As a young man he lived in Muslim Spain. He was on friendly terms with the eminent poet and philosopher JUDAH HA-LEVI, and he traveled to North Africa and possibly to Egypt. Primarily known as a scholar and poet up to that point, about 1140 Ibn Ezra began a lifelong series of wanderings throughout Europe, in the course of which he produced distinguished works of biblical EXEGESIS and disseminated biblical lore. His biblical commentaries include expositions of the BOOK OF JOB, the Book of Daniel, Psalms, and, most important, a work produced in his old age, a commentary on the PENTATEUCH. Although his exegeses are basically philological, he inserted enough philosophical remarks to reveal himself to be a Neoplatonic pantheist. At the same time,

he believed that God gave form to uncreated, eternal matter, a concept somewhat at odds with Neoplatonic doctrine. His commentary on the Pentateuch is sometimes ranked with the classic 11th-century commentaries by RASHI on the TALMUD. Ibn Ezra translated the Hispano-Hebrew grammarians from Arabic and wrote grammatical treatises. He also had a good knowledge of astronomy and cast HOROSCOPES, and he believed in numerological MYSTICISM as well.

IBN FALAQUERA \9i-b‘n-0f!-l!-9k@-r! \, in full Shemtob ben Joseph ibn Falaquera, Falaquera also spelled Palquera \p!l9k@-r! \ (b. c. 1225—d. c. 1295), Spanish-born Jewish philosopher and translator who propagated a reconciliation between Jewish Orthodoxy and philosophy and defended MAIMONIDES against the attacks of traditionalists. His works include Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Man of Piety; an ethical treatise known as The Balm of Sorrow; an introduction to the study of the sciences entitled Reshit gokhma (“The Beginning of Wisdom”); Sefer ha-ma!alot (“Book of Degrees”), which advocates the Neoplatonic ideal of the CONTEMPLATIVE life; a commentary on Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed under the title More ha-more (“Guide of the Guide”); and an abstract of Ibn Gabirol’s influential Fons vitae in Hebrew. IBN G ANBAL , A GMAD \ 0i-b‘n-9_!n-b‘l \ (b. 780, Baghdad—d. 855, Baghdad), Muslim theologian, jurist, and martyr. He was the compiler of the traditions (HADITH) of the Prophet MUHAMMAD and formulator of the Ganbalj, the most strictly scripturalist of the four Sunni Islamic schools of law. When Ibn Ganbal was 15 he began to study the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, supplementing his study with travels to the cities of Kufa and Basra in Iraq and MECCA, Hijaz, and MEDINA in Arabia. He also traveled to Yemen and Syria. He made five PILGRIMAGES to Mecca, three times on foot. Ibn Ganbal led a life of ASCETICISM and self-denial, winning many disciples. Two of his children were well known and closely associated with his intellectual work: Zelig (d. 880) and !Abd Alleh (d. 903). The inquisition, known as al-migna, was inaugurated in 833, when the CALIPH al-Ma#mjn made obligatory upon all Muslims the belief that the QUR#AN was created, a doctrine espoused by the Mu!tazilites (a rationalist school that argued that reason was equal to revelation as a means to religious truth). Ibn Ganbal refused to subscribe to the Mu!tazilj doctrine and was imprisoned. In 833 Ibn Ganbal was tried before the caliph al-Mu!tazim for three days, and upon his continued refusal to recant he was flogged until fears of popular protest brought the torture to an end. After his release Ibn Ganbal did not resume his lectures until the inquisition was publicly proclaimed at an end. The inquisition continued under the next caliph, alWethiq, but Ibn Ganbal was no longer molested, in spite of attempts on the part of his opponents to persuade the caliph to persecute him. The new caliph, like his predecessor, was most likely influenced by the threat of a popular uprising should he lay hands on a man popularly held to be a saint. The momentum of the inquisition carried it two years into the reign of al-Mutawakkil, who finally put an end to it in 848. The most important of Ibn Ganbal’s works is his collection of the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions. This collection, the Musnad, was once believed to

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IBN GAZM have been compiled by the author’s son (!Abd Alleh), but there is now evidence that the work was compiled and arranged by Ibn Ganbal himself. These traditions were considered by Ibn Ganbal as a sound basis for argument in law and religion. Historical scholarship regarding Ibn Ganbal and his school has suffered from a lack of sufficient documentation, among other things. Too much stress has been laid on the influence of the teachings of Shefi!j, the founder of the SHEFI!J LEGAL SCHOOL, whom Ibn Ganbal apparently met only once. He had a high respect for Shefi!j but also for the other great jurists who belonged to other schools of law, without, for that matter, relinquishing his own independent opinions. He was against codification of the law, maintaining that canonists had to be free to derive the solutions for questions of law from scriptural sources, namely the Qu#ran and the SUNNA (the body of Islamic custom and practice based on Muhammad’s words and deeds). It was to this end that he compiled his great Musnad, wherein he registered all the traditions considered in his day acceptable as bases for the solution of questions, along with the Qu#ran itself. The fact that the Ganbalj school was organized at all was due to the impact of Ibn Ganbal on his time. The other Sunni schools were already prospering in Baghdad when the Ganbalj school sprang up in their midst, drawing its membership from theirs. The lateness of the hour accounts for the relatively small membership attained by the Ganbalj school compared with the older schools. Size notwithstanding, in the Middle Ages the school acted as a spearhead of traditionalist Sunnism in its struggle against RATIONALISM . One of Ibn Ganbal’s greatest followers, IBN TAYMJYA (1263–1328), was claimed by both the Wahhebjya, a reform movement founded in the Arabian peninsula during the 18th century, and the modern Salafjya movement, which arose in Egypt and advocated the continued supremacy of Islamic law but with fresh interpretations to meet the community’s changing needs. Ibn Ganbal himself is among the fathers of ISLAM whose names have constantly been invoked against rationalist movements down through the ages. See also GANBALI LEGAL SCHOOL.

I BN G AZM \0i-b‘n-9_#-z‘m \, in full Abj Muhammad !Alj ibn Agmad ibn Sa!jd ibn Gazm (b. Nov. 7, 994, Córdoba, Caliphate of Córdoba—d. Aug. 15, 1064, Manta Ljsham, near Seville), Muslim historian, jurist, and theologian of Islamic Spain, famed for his literary productivity, breadth of learning, and mastery of the Arabic language. Ibn Gazm was born into a notable family that claimed descent from a Persian client of Yazjd, the brother of Mu!ewiya, the first of the Umayyad dynasty rulers in Syria; scholars, however, tend to favor evidence that he was of Iberian Christian background. Gazm, his great-grandfather, probably converted to ISLAM , and his grandfather Sa!jd moved to Córdoba, the capital of the caliphate. Ag-mad, his father, held a high position under al-Manzjr and his successor, al-Muxaffar, who ruled in the name of the CALIPH Hishem II. Upon the death of al-Muxaffar in 1008 ( a bloody civil war erupted and continued until 1031, when the caliphate was abolished and replaced by a large number of petty states. The family was uprooted, and Agmad died in 1012; Ibn Gazm continued to support Umayyad claimants to the office of caliph, for which he was frequently imprisoned. By 1031 he began to express his convictions and activistic inclinations through literary activity, becoming a very 488 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

controversial figure. According to one of his sons, he produced some 80,000 pages of writing, making up about 400 works. Fewer than 40 of these works are still extant. The varied character of his literary activity covers an impressive range of jurisprudence, logic, history, ethics, COMPARATIVE RELIGION , and theology. Probably best known for his work in jurisprudence and theology, for which the basic qualification was a thorough knowledge of the QUR#AN and HADITH, he became one of the leading exponents of the Xehirj (literalist) school of jurisprudence (see XE HIR J YA ). Though his legal theories never won him many followers, he creatively extended the Xehirj principle to the field of theology. He made a comparative study on the religious pluralism of his day, which is among the earliest of such studies and is highly regarded for its careful compilation of historical detail. An activist by nature with a deep sense of the reality of God, Ibn Gazm lived very much in the political and intellectual world of his times; however, he was very much a nonconformist. He conversed and debated with the leading contemporaries of his area, to whom he exhibited a thirst for knowledge as well as uncompromising convictions. Most observant, careful in analysis, meticulous in detail, and devoted to the clarity of his positions, he demanded the same of others. In his writings he attacked deceit, distortion, and inconsistency; but at the same time Ibn Gazm exhibited a sensitive spirit and expressed profound insights about the dimensions of human relationships. He was shunned and defamed for his political and theological views. When some of his writings were burned in public, he said that no such act could deprive him of their content. Although attacks against his thought continued after his death, various influential defenders appeared. He was frequently and effectively quoted, so much so that the phrase “Ibn Gazm said” became proverbial. See also FIQH; KALEM.

I BN I SGEQ \0i-b‘n-%-9sh!k \, in full Muhammad ibn Isgeq ibn Yaser ibn Khiyer (b. c. 704, MEDINA , Arabia—d. 767, Baghdad), Arab biographer of the Prophet MUHAMMAD whose book, in a recension by Ibn Hishem, is one of the most important sources on the Prophet’s life. Ibn Isgeq was the grandson of an Arab prisoner captured by Muslim troops in Iraq and brought to Medina, where he was freed after accepting ISLAM. Ibn Isgeq’s father and two uncles collected and transmitted information about Muhammad in Medina, and Ibn Isgeq soon became an authority on the Prophet’s campaigns. He studied in Alexandria and subsequently moved to Iraq, where he lived in the Jazjra and Gjra regions and finally in Baghdad. Informants met on these travels furnished him with much of the information for his Sjra, or life, of Muhammad (later revised by Ibn Hishem). This extensive biography covers Muhammad’s genealogy and birth, the beginning of his mission and of the revelation of the QUR#AN, and his migration to Medina and campaigns of conquest, and it concludes with his death. Citations from the Sjra also appear in the works of Arabic historians such as ALEABARJ. Ibn Isgeq was criticized by some Muslim scholars, including the jurist MELIK IBN ANAS. AGMAD IBN GANBAL, however, did accept Ibn Isgeq as an authority for the campaigns. But, on the grounds that Ibn Isgeq was not always exact enough in naming his authorities, Ibn Ganbal was not willing to accept the Sjra in regards to traditions about the Prophet having legal force.

IBN RUSHD

I BN K ATHJR \0i-b‘n-ka-9thir \, in full !Imed al-Djn Isme!jl ibn !Umar ibn Kathjr (b. c. 1300, Bursa, Byzantine Empire— d. February 1373, Damascus), Muslim theologian and historian who became one of the leading intellectual figures of 14th-century Syria. Ibn Kathjr was educated in Damascus and obtained his first official appointment in 1341, when he joined an inquisitorial commission formed to determine certain questions of HERESY. Thereafter he received various semiofficial appointments, culminating in June/July 1366 with a professorial position at the Great Mosque of Damascus. As a scholar, Ibn Kathjr is best remembered for his 14volume history of ISLAM, al-Bideya wa#l-niheya (“The Beginning and the End”), a work that formed the basis of a number of writings by later historians. Ibn Kathjr was also a noted student of HADITH; his Kiteb al-jemi! is an alphabetical listing of the COMPANIONS OF THE PROPHET and the sayings that each transmitted and is thus a reconstruction of the chain of authority for each Hadith. I BN K HALDJN \0i-b‘n-_al-9dsht \, also called Averroës, medieval Latin Averrhoës, Arabic in full Abj al-Waljd Muhammad ibn Agmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd (b. 1126, Córdoba— d. 1198, Marrakech, Almohad Empire), Islamic religious philosopher who integrated Islamic traditions and Greek thought in a series of summaries and commentaries on most of Aristotle’s works (1162–95) and on Plato’s Republic, which exerted considerable influence for centuries. He wrote the Decisive Treatise on the Agreement Between Religious Law and Philosophy (Fazl); Examination of the Methods of Proof Concerning the Doctrines of Religion (Manehij); and The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahefut al-tahefut), all in defense of the philosophical STUDY OF RELIGION (1179–80). Ibn Rushd was born into a distinguished family of jurists. Thoroughly versed in the traditional Muslim sciences (especially EXEGESIS of the QUR # AN and HADITH , and FIQH , or Law), trained in medicine, and accomplished in philosophy, he rose to be chief qedj (judge) of Córdoba. After the death of the philosopher IBN EUFAYL, Ibn Rushd succeeded him as

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IBN SHEM TOV was short-lived—though long personal physician to the CAenough to cause him acute LIPHS Abj Ya!qjb Yjsuf in suffering—since the caliph 1182 and his son Abj Yjsuf recalled him after his return Ya!qjb in 1184. In 1169 Ibn to Marrakesh. Eufayl had introduced Ibn There is only one truth for Rushd to Abj Ya!qjb, who reIbn Rushd, that of the reliquested that he provide a gious law, which is the same badly needed new interpretatruth that the metaphysician tion of Aristotle’s philosophy, is seeking. Ibn Rushd stated a task to which he devoted explicitly and unequivocally many years of his life. that religion is for all three Between 1169 and 1195 Ibn classes; that the contents of Rushd wrote a series of comthe Sharj!a are the whole and mentaries on most of Aristotonly truth for all believers; le’s works (e.g., the Organon, and that religion’s teachings De anima, Physica, Metaabout reward and punishphysica, De partibus animament and the hereafter must lium, Parva naturalia, Metebe accepted in their plain orologica, Rhetorica, Poetica, meaning by the elite no less and the Nicomachean Eththan by the masses. Acceptics). Aristotle’s Politica was ing Aristotle’s division of phiinaccessible; therefore he losophy into theoretical wrote a commentary on Pla(physics and metaphysics) to’s Republic. Ibn Rushd’s and practical (ethics and policommentaries exerted contics), he finds that the Sharj!a siderable influence on Jews teaches both to perfection: and Christians in the followabstract knowledge coming centuries. He was able to manded as the perception of present competently AristotGod, and practice—the ethile’s thought and to add concal virtues the law enjoins siderably to its understand(Commentary on Plato’s Reing. He ably and critically public). As a Muslim, Ibn drew upon the ideas of the Rushd insists on the attainclassical commentators Thement of happiness in this and mistius and Alexander of the next life by all believers. Aphrodisias and the falesifa As a philosopher he distin(Muslim philosophers) AL F E R E B J , IBN S J N E (Avicenna), guishes between degrees of and his own countryman IBN Ibn Rushd (Averroës), depicted on a Spanish postage happiness and assigns every stamp BEJJA (Avempace). believer the happiness that His own first work, Gener- Culver Pictures corresponds to his intellectual Medicine (Kulliyet, Latin al capacity. Everyone is entiColliget), was written between 1162 and 1169. Only a few tled to his share of happiness. The Sharj!a of ISLAM demands of his legal writings and none of his theological writings are that the believer should know God. This knowledge is accessible to the naive believer in metaphors, the inner preserved. Undoubtedly his most important writings are meaning of which is intelligible only to the metaphysician three closely connected religious-philosophical polemical with the help of demonstration. treatises, composed in the years 1179 and 1180: the Fazl; its Appendix: Manehij; and Tahefut al-tahefut. In the first two IBN SHEM TOV, JOSEPH BEN SHEM TOV \0i-b‘n-9shemIbn Rushd stakes a bold claim: Only the metaphysician em9t|$, -9t+v \ (b. c. 1400—d. c. 1480), Jewish philosopher and ploying certain proof (syllogism) is capable and competent Castilian court physician who attempted to reconcile Aris(as well as obliged) to interpret the doctrines contained in totelian ethical philosophy with Jewish religious thought, the prophetically revealed law (Shar! or SHARJ!A), and not the Muslim mutakallimjn (dialectic theologians), who rely on best exemplified by his influential Kevod Elohim (written dialectical arguments. To establish the true, inner meaning 1442; “The Glory of God”). Here he argued that answers of RELIGIOUS BELIEFS and convictions is the aim of philosophy sought through philosophical inquiry can be valuable in in its quest for truth. This inner meaning must not be di- one’s quest for religious knowledge and that even religious vulged to the masses, who must accept the plain, external principles should be subjected to such inquiry. Although as meaning of SCRIPTURE contained in stories, similes, and a philosopher he advocated intellectual pursuits, Joseph metaphors. The third work is devoted to a defense of phi- maintained that the immortality of the soul was assured losophy against his predecessor AL-GHAZELJ’S telling attack. not by intellectual development but by conscientious reliIbn Rushd pursued his philosophical quest in the face of gious observance. He also upheld the value of MYSTICISM and intuition in the understanding of religious precepts. strong opposition from the mutakallimjn, who, together with the jurists, occupied a position of great influence. This I BN S JNE \ 0i-b‘n-9s%-n! \, also called Avicenna \ 0a-v‘-9semay explain why Abj Yjsuf—on the occasion of a JIHAD n‘ \, Arabic in full Abj !Alj al-Gusayn ibn !Abd Alleh ibn against a coalition of Christians—dismissed him from high office and banished him to Lucena in 1195. But his disgrace Sjne (b. 980, Bukhara, Iran—d. 1037, Hamadan), Iranian

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IBN SJNE physician, the most famous and influential of the philosopher-scientists of ISLAM. He was particularly noted for his contributions in the fields of Aristotelian philosophy and medicine. He composed the Kiteb al-shife# (“Book of Healing”), a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and the Canon of Medicine, which is among the most famous books in the history of medicine. Ibn Sjne received his earliest education in Bukhara under the direction of his father. Since his father’s house was a meeting place for learned men, from his earliest childhood Ibn Sjne was able to profit from the company of the outstanding masters of his day. By the age of 10 he had memorized the QUR#AN and much Arabic poetry. Thereafter, he studied logic and metaphysics. He read avidly and mastered Islamic law, then medicine, and finally metaphysics. Particularly helpful in his intellectual development was his access to the rich royal library of the Semenids—the first great native dynasty that arose in Iran after the Arab conquest—as the result of his successful cure of the Semenid prince, Njg ibn Manzjr. By the time he was 21 he was accomplished in all branches of formal learning and had already gained a reputation as an outstanding physician. His services were also sought as an administrator, and for a while he even entered government service as a clerk. This was one of the tumultuous periods of Iranian history, when new Turkish elements were replacing Iranian domination in Central Asia, and local Iranian dynasties were trying to gain political independence from the !AbIbn Sjne (Avicenna), postage stamp from Qatar, 1971 The Granger Collection

besid caliphate in Baghdad (in modern Iraq). Fleeing political upheaval, Ibn Sjne left for central Iran, then continued further to Hamadan in west-central Iran, where Shams alDawla was ruling. This journey marked the beginning of a new phase in Ibn Sjne’s life. He became court physician and enjoyed the favor of the ruler to the extent that twice he was appointed vizier. As was the order of the day, he also suffered political reactions and intrigues against him and was forced into hiding for some time; at one time he was even imprisoned. This was the period when he began his two most famous works. Kiteb al-shife# examines logic, the natural sciences, including psychology, the quadrivium (geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music), and metaphysics. His thought in this work owes a great deal to Greek influences, especially Aristotle, and to NEOPLATONISM. His system rests on the conception of God as the necessary existent: in God alone essence—what he is—and existence—that he is—coincide. There is a gradual multiplication of beings through a timeless emanation from God as a result of his selfknowledge. The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qenjn fj al-eibb) is a systematic encyclopedia based on the achievements of Greek physicians of the Roman imperial age and on other Arabic works and, to a lesser extent, on his own experience. Occupied during the day with his duties at court as both physician and administrator, Ibn Sjne spent almost every night with his students composing these and other works and carrying out general philosophical and scientific discussions related to them. Even in hiding and in prison he continued to write. In 1022 Shams al-Dawla died, and Ibn Sjne, after a period of difficulty that included imprisonment, fled to Izfahen

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IBN TAYMJYA (about 250 miles south of Tehran), where he spent the last 14 years of his life in relative peace. He was highly esteemed by !Ale# al-Dawla, the ruler, and by his court. Here he finished the two major works he began in Hamadan and wrote most of his nearly 200 treatises; he also composed the first work on Aristotelian philosophy in the Persian language and the masterly summary of his “Book of Healing” called Kiteb al-najet (“Book of Salvation”). During this time he composed his last major philosophical opus and the most “personal” testament of his thought, Kiteb al-isheret wa#l-tanbjhet (“Book of Directives and Remarks”). In this work he described the mystic’s spiritual journey from the beginnings of faith to the final stage of direct and uninterrupted vision of God. When an authority on Arabic philology criticized him for his lack of mastery in the subject, he spent three years studying it and composed a vast work called Lisen al-!arab (“The Arabic Language”), which remained in rough draft until his death. Accompanying !Ale# al-Dawlah on a military campaign, Ibn Sjne fell ill and, despite his attempts to treat himself, died from colic and exhaustion. In the Western world, Ibn Sjne’s “Book of Healing” was translated partially into Latin in the 12th century, and the complete Canon appeared in the same century. His thought, blended with that of AUGUSTINE, was a basic component of the thought of many of the medieval SCHOLASTICS, especially in the FRANCISCAN schools. In medicine the Canon became the medical authority for several centuries, and Ibn Sjne enjoyed an undisputed place of honor equaled only by the early Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen. In the East his dominating influence in medicine, philosophy, and theology is still alive within the circles of Islamic thought.

IBN TAYMJYA \0i-b‘n-t&-9m%-! \, in full Taqj al-Djn Abj al!Abbes Agmad ibn !Abd as-Salem ibn !Abd Alleh ibn Muhammad ibn Taymjya (b. 1263, Harran, Mesopotamia—d. Sept. 26, 1328, Cairo), one of Islam’s most forceful religious thinkers who, as a member of the Pietist school founded by IBN G ANBAL, sought the return of ISLAM to its sources, the QUR#AN and the SUNNA. He is also the source of the Wahhebjya, a mid-18th-century traditionalist movement of Islam in Arabia. Ibn Taymjya was born in Mesopotamia. Educated in Damascus, where he had been taken in 1268 as a refugee from the Mongol invasion, he later steeped himself in the teachings of the Pietist school. Though he remained faithful throughout his life to that school, he also acquired an extensive knowledge of contemporary Islamic sources and disciplines: the Qur#an, the HADITH, jurisprudence (FIQH), dogmatic theology (KALEM), philosophy, and Sufi theology. As early as 1293 Ibn Taymjya came into conflict with local authorities for protesting a sentence, pronounced under religious law, against a Christian accused of having insulted the Prophet. In 1298 he was accused of ANTHROPOMORPHISM and of criticizing the legitimacy of dogmatic theology. During the great Mongol crisis of the years 1299 to 1303, and especially during the occupation of Damascus, he led the resistance party and denounced the suspect faith of the invaders and their accomplices. During the ensuing years Ibn Taymjya was engaged in intensive polemic activity: either against the Kasrawen SHI!ITES in Lebanon; the Rife!jya, a Sufi (see SUFISM) religious brotherhood; or the ittigedjya school, which taught that the Creator and the created become one, a school that grew out of the teaching of IBN AL!ARABJ (d. 1240). 492 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

In 1306 he was summoned to explain his beliefs to the governor’s council, which, although it did not condemn him, sent him to Cairo; there he appeared before a new council on the charge of anthropomorphism and was imprisoned in the citadel for 18 months. Soon after gaining his freedom, he was confined again in 1308 for several months in the prison of the QEQJS (Muslim judges who exercise both civil and religious functions) for having denounced the worship of saints as being against religious law (SHARJ!A). He was sent to Alexandria under house arrest in 1309, the day after the abdication of the SULTAN Muhammad ibn Qalewjn and the advent of Baybars II al-Jeshnikjr, whom he regarded as a usurper and whose imminent end he predicted. Seven months later, on Ibn Qalewjn’s return, he was able to return to Cairo. But in 1313 he left Cairo once more with the sultan, on a campaign to recover Damascus, which was again being threatened by the Mongols. Ibn Taymjya spent his last 15 years in Damascus. Promoted to the rank of schoolmaster, he gathered around him a circle of disciples from every social class, the most famous of whom was Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzjya (d. 1350). Accused of supporting a doctrine that would curtail the ease with which a Muslim could traditionally repudiate a wife, Ibn Taymjya was incarcerated on orders from Cairo in the citadel of Damascus from August 1320 to February 1321. In July 1326 Cairo again ordered him confined to the citadel for having continued his condemnation of saint worship, in spite of the prohibition forbidding him to do so. He died in prison and was buried in the Sufi cemetery amid a great public gathering. His tomb still exists and is widely venerated. Ibn Taymjya left a considerable body of work—often republished in Syria, Egypt, Arabia, and India—that extended and justified his religious and political involvements and was characterized by its rich documentation, sober style, and brilliant polemic. In addition to innumerable fatwes (legal opinions based on religious law) and several professions of faith, two works particularly meriting attention are his Al-Siyesa al-shar!jya (“Treatise on Juridical Politics”) and Minhej al-sunna (“The Way of Tradition”), the richest work of comparative theology surviving from medieval Islam. Ibn Taymjya desired a return to the sources of the Muslim religion, which he felt had been altered too often, to one extent or another, by the different religious sects or schools. The IJME!, or community consensus, had no value in itself, he insisted, unless it rested on the Qur#an and the sunna. His traditionalism, however, did not prevent Ibn Taymjya from allowing analogical reasoning (QIYES) and the argument of utility (mazlaga) a large place in his thought, on the condition that both rested on the objective givens of revelation and tradition. Only such a return to sources, he felt, would permit the divided and disunited Muslim community to regain its unity. Concerning practices, Ibn Taymjya believed that one could only require, in worship, those practices inaugurated by God and his Prophet and that one could only forbid, in social relations, those things forbidden by the Qur#an and the sunna. Thus, on the one hand, he favored a revision of the system of religious obligations and a brushing aside of condemnable innovations (bid!a), and, on the other, he constructed an economic ethic that was more flexible on many points than that espoused by the contemporary schools. Ibn Taymjya is the source of the Wahhebjya, a strictly traditionist movement founded by MUHAMMAD IBN !ABD AL-

IBN TJMART WAHHEB (d. 1792). Ibn Taymjya also influenced various reform movements that have posed the problem of reformulating traditional ideologies by a return to sources. See also GANBALJ LEGAL SCHOOL.

(Avicenna); and a philosophical work (known in English as the “Book of Principles”) by the Muslim philosopher and Aristotelian disciple AL-FEREBJ (878–950). Moses also translated Euclid’s Elements.

IBN TIBBON , JUDAH BEN SAUL \0i-b‘n-9ti-b‘n \ (b. 1120, Granada, Spain—d. c. 1190, Marseille, France), Jewish physician and translator of Jewish Arabic-language works into Hebrew. He was also the progenitor of several generations of important translators. Persecution of the Jews forced Judah to flee Granada in 1150, and he settled in Lunel, in southern France, where he practiced medicine. In his Hebrew versions, which became standard, Judah made accessible various classic philosophical works by Arabic-speaking Jews who had utilized the concepts of both Muslim and Greek philosophers. Thus, Judah’s translations served to disseminate Arabic and Greek culture in Europe. In addition he often coined Hebrew terms to accommodate the ideas of the authors he was translating. Among his outstanding renditions from Arabic into Hebrew are Amanat wa-i!tiqadat of SA!ADIA BEN JOSEPH (882– 942), a Jewish philosophical classic discussing the relationship between reason and divine revelation, translated as Sefer ha-emunot we-ha-de!ot (1186; Beliefs and Opinions, 1948); Al-Hidayah ile fare#id al-quljb by the rabbinic judge BAHYA BEN JOSEPH IBN PAKUDA, a widely read classic of Jewish devotional literature which examines the ethics of a man’s acts and the intentions that give the acts meaning, translated as Govot ha-levavot (Duties of the Heart, 1925–47); and Sefer ha-Kuzari (“Book of the Khazar”) by the Spanish Hebrew poet JUDAH HA-LEVI (c. 1085–c. 1141), which recounts in dialogue form the arguments presented before the king of the Khazars by a rabbi, a Christian, a Muslim scholar, and an Aristotelian philosopher, with the subsequent conversion of the king to JUDAISM. Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon also translated the grammar of Abj al-Waljd Marwen ibn Janeg (c. 990–c. 1050), which became a basis for the work of future Hebrew grammarians. In addition, he wrote a well-known ethical will, Musar Ab (c. 1190; “A Father’s Admonition”), to his son SAMUEL BEN JUDAH IBN TIBBON, who subsequently also became a noteworthy translator.

IBN TIBBON , S AMUEL BEN J UDAH (b. c. 1150, Lunel, France—d. c. 1230, Marseille), Jewish translator and physician whose most significant achievement was an accurate and faithful rendition from the Arabic into Hebrew of MAIMONIDES ’ classic Dalelat al-ge#irjn (Hebrew More nevukhim; English The Guide of the Perplexed). From his father, JUDAH BEN SAUL IBN TIBBON, Samuel received a thorough grounding in medicine, Jewish law and lore, and Arabic. Like his father, Samuel earned his living as a physician; he also traveled extensively in France, Spain, and Egypt. After corresponding with Maimonides to elucidate difficult passages in the Guide, in about 1190 Samuel published his translation. This work, which interprets SCRIPTURE and rabbinic theology in the light of Aristotelian philosophy, has had an influence on both Jewish and Christian theologians. In the translating process, Samuel enriched the Hebrew language through the borrowing of Arabic words and the adoption of the Arabic practice of forming verbs from substantives. He also translated Maimonides’ treatise on resurrection and his commentary on Pirqe avot (“Sayings of the Fathers”), which appears in the TALMUD; in addition, he translated the works of several Arabic commentators on the writings of Aristotle and Galen.

IBN TIBBON, MOSES BEN SAMUEL (b. Marseille, France, fl. 1240–83), Jewish physician, who like his father, SAMUEL BEN JUDAH IBN TIBBON, and his paternal grandfather, JUDAH BEN SAUL IBN TIBBON, was an important translator of works from the Arabic language into Hebrew. His translations helped to disseminate Greek and Arab culture throughout Europe. Besides his original works, which included commentaries with an allegorical bias on the PENTATEUCH , the Song of Songs, and Haggadic passages (those not dealing with Jewish law; see HALAKHAH AND HAGGADAH) in the TALMUD, he also translated Arabic-language works by Jews and Arabs dealing with philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Following the family tradition, he translated from the Arabic a number of works by the medieval Jewish philosopher MOSES MAIMONIDES (1135–1204), notably portions of Maimonides’ commentary on the MISHNAH and his Sefer hamitzwot, an analysis of the 613 commandments of the Pentateuch. Among the Arabic writings, Moses translated the commentaries on Aristotle by IBN RUSHD (Averroës); a medical digest by the Persian philosopher and physician IBN SJNE

IBN EUFAYL \0i-b‘n-t>-9f&l \, in full Abj Bakr Muhammad

ibn !Abd Al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Eufayl al-Qaysj (b. 1109/10, Guádix, Spain—d. 1185/86, Marrakech, Morocco), Andalusian philosopher and physician who is known for his Gayy ibn Yaqxen (c. 1175; “Living Son of the Wakeful One”), a romance in which he describes the self-education and gradual philosophical development of a man who passes the first 50 years of his life in complete isolation on an uninhabited island. Its moral was that a philosopher must educate himself in the ways of nonphilosophers and understand the incompatibility between philosophical life and the life of the multitude, which must be governed by religion and divine laws. Otherwise, his ignorance will lead him to actions dangerous to the well-being of both the community and philosophy. In addition to his works on philosophy Ibn Eufayl wrote a number of medical treatises in Arabic and he served as the court physician and general adviser to the ALMOHAD ruler Abj Ya!qjb Yjsuf from 1163 to 1184.

IBN TJMART \0i-b‘n-9tl-af-9g!n% \, in full Jamel al-Djn al-Afghenj al-Sayyid Muhammad ibn Zafdar al-Gusayn (b. 1838, Asadebed, Persia [now Iran]—d. March 9, 1897, Constantinople [now Istanbul, Turkey]), Muslim politician, political agitator, and journalist whose belief in the potency of a revived Islamic civilization in the face of European domination significantly influenced the development of Muslim thought in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some scholars believe that Afghenj was not an Afghan but a Persian SHI!ITE. An appreciable part of Afghenj’s activities took place in areas where Sunnism was predominant, and it was probably to hide his Persian and Shi!ite origins, which would have aroused suspicion among SUNNIS, that he adopted the name Afghenj. As a young man he seems to have visited KARBALE# and al-Najaf, the Shi!ite centers in

southern Mesopotamia, as well as India and perhaps Istanbul. The intellectual currents with which he came in contact made him early into a religious skeptic. From the death in 1863 of the famous Djst Muhammad Khen, who had ruled for more than 20 years, Afghanistan had been the scene of civil wars occasioned by the quarrels of his sons over the succession. In 1866 one of these sons, Shjr !Alj Khen, was established in the capital, Kebul, but two of his brothers, Muhammad Afqal Khen and Mogammad A!xam Khen, were threatening his tenure. In January 1867 Shjr !Alj was defeated and expelled from Kebul, where Afqal and, upon his death shortly afterward, A!xam reigned successively in 1867–68. At the end of 1866 A!xam captured Qandaher, and Afghenj immediately became A!xam’s confidential counselor, following him to Kebul. He remained in this position until A!xam was in turn deposed by Shjr !Alj in September 1868. Shjr !Alj expelled Afghenj from his territory two months later. Afghenj next appeared in Istanbul in 1870, where he gave a lecture in which he likened the prophetic office to a human craft or skill. This view gave offense to the religious authorities, who denounced it as heretical. Afghenj had to leave Istanbul and in 1871 went to Cairo, where for the next few years he attracted a following of young writers and divines, among them MUHAMMAD !ABDUH, who was to become the leader of the modernist movement in ISLAM, and Sa!d Pasha Zaghljl, founder of the Egyptian nationalist party, the Wafd. Again, a reputation for HERESY and unbelief clung to Afghenj. The ruler of Egypt then was the Khedive Isme!jl, whose financial mismanagement led to pressure by his European creditors and great discontent among all his subjects by the mid-1870’s. In response to French and British pressure, his suzerain, the Ottoman SULTAN, deposed him in June 1879. During this period Afghenj attempted to gain and manipulate power by organizing his followers in a Masonic lodge, of which he became the leader, and by delivering fiery speeches against Isme!jl, hoping to attract thereby the favor and confidence of Tawfjq, Isme!jl’s son and successor; but the latter, reputedly fearing that Afghenj was propagating republicanism in Egypt, ordered his deportation in August 1879. Afghenj then went to Hyderebed and later, via Calcutta, to Paris, where he arrived in January 1883. Together with his former student !Abduh, Afghenj published an anti-British newspaper, al-!Urwa al-wuthqe (“The Strongest Link”), which claimed (falsely) to be in touch with and have influence over the Sudanese Mahdi (see MAHDIST), a messianic bearer of justice and equality expected by some Muslims in the last days. He also engaged Ernest Renan, the French historian and philosopher, in a famous debate concerning the position of Islam regarding science. He tried unsuccessfully to persuade the British government to use him as intermediary in negotiation with the Ottoman sultan, Abdülhamid II, and then went to Russia, where his presence is recorded in 1887, 1888, and 1889 and where the authorities seem to have employed him in anti-British agitation directed to India. Afghenj next appeared in Iran, where he again attempted to play a political role as the shah’s counselor and was yet again suspected of heresy. The shah, Nezir alDjn Sheh, became very suspicious of him, and Afghenj began a campaign of overt and violent opposition to the Iranian ruler. Again, in 1892, his fate was deportation. For this, Afghenj revenged himself by instigating the shah’s murder in 1896. It was his only successful political act. From Iran, Afghenj went to London, where he stayed briefly, editing a newspaper that attacked the shah. He then

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JAMES, SAINT went to Istanbul, in response to an invitation made by an agent of the sultan. The sultan may have hoped to use him in pan-Islamic propaganda, but Afghenj soon aroused suspicion and was kept inactive, at arm’s length and under observation. His burial place was kept secret, but in 1944 what was claimed to be his body, owing to the mistaken impression that he was an Afghan, was transferred to Kebul, where a mausoleum was erected for it.

JAMES, SAINT \9j@mz \, also called James, Son of Zebedee, or James the Great (b. Galilee, Palestine—d. c. 44 (, Jerusalem; feast day July 25), one of the Twelve APOSTLES, JESUS’ innermost circle, and the only apostle whose martyrdom is recorded in the NEW TESTAMENT (Acts 12:2). James and his younger brother, the apostle JOHN, were, with PETER and ANDREW, the first four disciples whom Jesus called (Mark 1:16–19). His question “Tell us, when will this [the end of time] be, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished?” sparks Jesus’ eschatological discourse in Mark 13. As a member of the inner circle, James is said to have witnessed the raising of Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:37, Luke 8:51), the TRANSFIGURATION (Mark 9:2), and Jesus’ agony in the Garden of GETHSEMANE (Mark 14:33, Matthew 26:37). James was beheaded by order of King Herod Agrippa I of Judaea; Spanish tradition holds that he evangelized in Spain and that his body was taken to Santiago de Compostela, where his shrine attracts pilgrims from all over the world. J EMJ \ 9j|-0m% \, in full Mawlane Njr al-Djn !Abd al-Rag-

men ibn Agmad (b. Nov. 7, 1414, district of Jam—d. Nov. 9, 1492, Heret, Timurid Afghanistan), Persian scholar, mystic, and often regarded as the last great mystical poet of Iran. Jemj spent his life in Heret except for two brief PILGRIMAGES to Mashad (Iran) and the Hijaz. During his lifetime his fame as a scholar resulted in numerous offers of patronage by many Islamic rulers. He declined most of these offers, preferring the simple life of a mystic and scholar to that of a court poet. His prose deals with a variety of subjects ranging from Qur#anic commentaries to treatises on SUFISM and music. Perhaps the most famous is his mystical treatise Lava’ig (Flashes of Light), a clear and precise exposition of the Sufi doctrines of wagdat al-wujjd (the existential unity of Being), together with a commentary on the experiences of other famous mystics. Jemj’s poetical works express his ethical and philosophical doctrines. His poetry is fresh and graceful and is not marred by unduly esoteric language. His most famous collection of poetry is a seven-part compendium entitled Haft Awrang (“The Seven Thrones,” or “Ursa Major”), which includes Salmen o-Absel and Yjsof o-Zaljkhe.

J AMUNE \ 9j‘-m>-n‘ \, also called Jamnne, Jumna, or Yamune, river in Uttar Pradesh state, northern India, rising in the HIMALAYAS near Jamnotri. Near Allahabad (Prayega), after a course of about 855 miles, the Jamune joins the GAEGE (Ganges) River; their confluence is a sacred place to Hindus and is thought to include a third river, now invisible, called the SARASVATJ. The Jamune is regarded as a goddess by Hindus, and in that role is often understood and pictured as the Gaege’s sister; both are liquid forms of the power (uakti) associated with goddesses in general. Since the Jamune is the central artery of the Braj region, where KRISHNA is believed to have spent his youth, the river has a special association with him. Many of the most famous episodes in his childhood, such as his defeat of the black snake Keliya or his

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St. James, detail from a 12th-century mural; in the monastery of Eski Gümüs, Turkey Sonia Halliday

bathing games with the milkmaid gopjs, took place on her banks or in her waters. JANAM SEKHJ \9j‘-n‘m-9s!-k% \ (Punjabi: “life story”), hagiographic genre of Punjabi prose celebrating the life and works of GURJ NENAK, the founder of the Sikh tradition (see SIKHISM). In all likelihood, sekhj traditions began to appear in oral form soon after the death of Nenak in the 16th century, if not before. The earliest extant written versions, however, can be traced back only to the mid-17th century. Nenak’s poetic compositions often provide the themes of these stories. The biographer’s effort is then to explain the narrative context that produced the Gurj’s thought or utterance. Every effort is made to present Nenak as the greatest teacher and spiritual master of the age, but many observers have felt that the resulting stories do not always faithfully support Nenak’s own positions on issues of belief and practice, as enunciated in his own compositions.

JANMEZEAMJ \0j‘n-9m!sh-t‘-0m% \, Hindu festival celebrating the birth (janma) of the god KRISHNA (Kszda) on the eighth (azeamj) day of the dark fortnight of the month of Bhedrapada (August–September). The eighth also has significance in the Krishna legend, as he is usually regarded as the 8th of 10 AVATARS (incarnations) of Lord VISHNU and the eighth child of his mother, Devakj. The occasion is observed with particular splendor in Mathura and VRINDEBAD, the scenes of Krishna’s childhood and early youth. The preceding day devotees keep a vigil and fast until midnight, the traditional hour of his birth. Then or on the following morning the image of Krishna is bathed in five sacred fluids, including water from the River Jamune, and milk; dressed in especially regal clothes; and worshiped. Temples and household shrines are decorated with leaves and flowers; sweets are first offered to the god and then distributed as PRASEDA (the god’s favor) to all the

JASON members of the household. The devotees of Krishna commemorate the events of his birth in various ways, including the res ljle plays in which episodes relating to his birth are reenacted. On the morning of the day following Krishna’s midnight birth, some temples witness scenes of joyful abandon in which devotees take the role of cowherds congratulating Krishna’s foster parents, Nanda and Yauode, on the birth of their baby boy and raining turmeric-dyed curd on one another. There are several regional variations on this theme. In many places pots of milk are hung from tall poles in the streets, and men form human pyramids to reach and break the pots—this in imitation of Krishna’s childhood play with the cowherd boys, when they stole the curds hung out of reach by their mothers. The festival is generally a time for group singing and dancing and is calculated as the beginning of the liturgical year by members of the VALLABHA SAMPRADEYA.

J ANSEN , C ORNELIUS O TTO \9y!n-s‘n, Angl 9jan-s‘n \ (b. Oct. 28, 1585, Acquoi, near Leerdam, Holland—d. May 6, 1638, Ypres, Flanders, Spanish Netherlands [now in Belgium]), Flemish leader of the ROMAN CATHOLIC reform movement known as Jansenism. Jansen entered the University of Louvain in 1602 to study theology. According to the custom adopted by the humanists of the Renaissance, Jansen Latinized his name to Cornelius Jansenius. He was deeply influenced by the thought of Michael Baius, who held that man is affected from his birth by the SIN of ADAM, that his instincts lead him necessarily to evil, and that he can be saved only by the GRACE of JESUS CHRIST, accorded to a small number of the ELECT who have been chosen in advance and destined to enter the kingdom of heaven. This doctrine, inspired by writings of ST . AUGUSTINE , also attracted another student, a Frenchman named Jean Duvergier de Hauranne. The two young men decided to revive theology, which they believed the theologians of the Sorbonne had reduced to subtle and vain discussions of SCHOLASTICISM. In 1611 Jansen followed Duvergier to Bayonne, where he directed the episcopal college from 1612 to 1614. For three years afterward he dedicated himself to the study of the writings of the early CHURCH FATHERS. In 1617 Jansen returned to Louvain, where he directed the college of SaintePulchérie, created for Dutch students. Jansen undertook a thorough study of the works of Augustine, and devoted himself most particularly to those texts drafted to combat the doctrine of PELAGIUS, who had held that, in spite of the fault committed by Adam, man continues to be entirely free to do good and to obtain salvation by means of his own merits. Jansen then began his great work, the Augustinus. For him, the divine grace that alone can save man is not due at all to his good actions but a gratuitous gift by means of which Christ leads the elect to eternal life; the multitude is doomed to damnation. He also wrote commentaries on the evangelists and on the Old Testament—notably on the PENTATEUCH—as well as a “Discourse on the Reformation of the Inner Man.” He was likewise the author of pamphlets directed against the Protestants. Having acquired the degree of doctor in theology at Louvain, Jansen became the rector of that university in 1635, and in 1636 he became bishop of Ypres. A short time later he died of the plague. In 1640 his friends published at Louvain the work he had dedicated to St. Augustine, under the title Augustinus Cornelii Jansenii, Episcopi, seu Doctrina Sancti Augustini de Humanae Naturae, Sanitate, Aegritudine, Medicina adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses (“The

Augustine of Cornelius Jansen, Bishop, or On the Doctrines of St. Augustine Concerning Human Nature, Health, Grief, and Cure Against the Pelagians and Massilians”). In a bull of 1642, Pope Urban VIII forbade the reading of the Augustinus, which had been published without the authorization of the Holy See. Five propositions in the Augustinus were condemned by Pope Innocent X in 1653, and by his successor, Alexander VII. The bishops of France were required to make all of the priests, monks, and nuns sign a formulary conforming to the pontifical decisions. But Duvergier de Hauranne, who had become the abbé of SaintCyran, had taught the doctrine of Jansen to the nuns of the abbey of Port-Royal. This CONVENT became a focus of resistance against the JESUITS, who, having obtained the pontifical decisions in their favor, intended to impose them. Although Louis XIV was determined to eliminate the Jansenists as a threat to the unity of his kingdom, there was a temporary peace after Clement IX became pope in 1667, and the conflict ceased to be a major concern when the PAPACY and the French Roman Catholic church clashed on Gallicanism. But after that conflict was settled, Louis XIV obtained from Clement XI in 1705 a bull that renewed the earlier condemnations. In 1709 Louis XIV ordered the dispersal of the nuns of Port-Royal into diverse convents, and he had the abbey destroyed in 1710. He then obtained in 1713 the bull Unigenitus Dei Filius, which condemned 101 propositions of the exiled Jansenist theologian Pasquier Quesnel. The promulgation of Unigenitus as French law in 1730 began the decline of the Jansenist party. In 1723 followers of Jansen’s views established an autonomous Jansenist church at Utrecht, Holland, which still existed in the late 20th century. Jansenism also spread to Italy, where in 1786 the SYNOD of Pistoia, which was later condemned, propounded extreme Jansenist doctrines.

JANUS \9j@-n‘s \, in ROMAN RELIGION, the spirit of doorways (januae) and archways (jani). The worship of Janus traditionally dated back to Romulus and a period even before the actual founding of the city of Rome. There were many jani (i.e., ceremonial gateways) in Rome; these were usually freestanding structures that were used for symbolically auspicious entrances or exits. It was believed that there were lucky and unlucky ways for a departing Roman army to march through a janus. The most famous janus in Rome was the Janus Geminus, which was actually a shrine of Janus at the north side of the Forum. It was a simple rectangular bronze structure with double doors at each end. Traditionally, the doors of this shrine were left open in time of war and were kept closed when Rome was at peace. According to the Roman historian Livy, the gates were closed only twice in the long period between Numa Pompilius (7th century )) and Augustus (1st century )). Some scholars regard Janus as the god of all beginnings and believe that his association with doorways is derivative. He was invoked as the first of any gods in regular liturgies. The beginning of the day, month, and year, both calendrical and agricultural, were sacred to him. The month of January is named for him, and his festival took place on January 9, the Agonium. Janus was represented by a double-faced head, and he was represented in art either with or without a beard. Occasionally he was depicted as four-faced—as the spirit of the fourway arch. J ASON \9j@-s‘n \, in Greek mythology, leader of the ARGONAUTS

and son of Aeson, king of Iolcos in Thessaly. His fa-

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JEE ther’s half-brother PELIAS seized Iolcos, and thus for safety Jason was sent away to CHIRON, a CENTAUR. Returning as a young man, Jason was promised his inheritance if he fetched the Golden Fleece for Pelias. Jason gathered the Argonauts and, after many adventures, obtained the fleece with the help of the sorceress MEDEA, whom he married. On their return Medea murdered Pelias, but she and Jason were driven out by Pelias’ son and had to take refuge with King Creon of Corinth. Later Jason deserted Medea for Creon’s daughter; this desertion and its consequences formed the subject of Euripides’ Medea.

JEE \9j!t \, also spelled (Punjabi) Jae, major group of farmers

in northern India and Pakistan. Their sense of group solidarity, pride, and self-sufficiency have been historically significant in many ways, as, for instance, during the rule of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (late 17th century), when Jee leaders captained uprisings in the region of Mathura. A Jee kingdom established at nearby Bharatpur in the 18th century became a principal rival for declining Mughal power, its rulers apparently seeing themselves as defenders of Hindu ways against the Muslim Mughals. Jees living toward the western side of the Jee region tend to be Muslim, and those inhabiting eastern Punjab are primarily Sikh. Numerically, Jees form the largest percentage of the Sikh community and therefore vie for leadership of the faith with urban Khatrjs, the group to which all 10 GURJ S belonged. Some scholars attribute Sikh military tradition largely to its Jee heritage.

J ETAKA \9j!-t‘-k‘ \ (Peli and Sanskrit: “Story of a Birth,” akin to Sanskrit j)ta, “born,” j)ti, “birth”), any of the extremely popular stories of former lives of the BUDDHA GOTAMA that are preserved in all branches of BUDDHISM. Some Jetaka tales are scattered in various sections of the Peli canon, including a group of 35 that constitute the last book, the Cariye Pieaka (“Basket of Conduct”), of the Khuddaka Nikeya. Beyond this, a Sinhalese commentary of the 5th century that is questionably attributed to Buddhagosa and called the Jetakaeehavaddane gathers together 547 Jetaka stories. Each tale begins by noting the occasion that prompted its telling and ends with the Buddha disclosing his identity. In whatever form the Buddha appears, he exhibits some virtue that the tale thereby inculcates. Many Jetakas have parallels in the MAHEBHERATA (“Great Epic of the Bherata Dynasty”), the Pañca Tantra (animal fables), and the PUREDAS. Some turn up again in such places as Aesop’s fables. The Jetaka stories have also been illustrated frequently in sculpture and painting throughout the Buddhist world. See also VESSANTARA JETAKA. JETI \9j!-t% \, also spelled jet, CASTE, in Hindu society. The Sanskrit word jeti means literally “birth,” and by extension “the position in the community assigned to one by virtue of one’s birth.” Sociologically, jeti has come to be used universally to indicate a caste group among Hindus. A sharp distinction should be made between jeti, as a limited endogamous group of families, often regionally defined and embracing only a certain set of characteristic occupations, and VARDA, the “classical” four-part model of social organization articulated in various Vedic and postVedic texts. The relation between these two has never been simple, and the ranking of jetis in relation to one another often diverges markedly from one area of India to another. Since the 19th century, Hindu social reformers, such as

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GANDHI, have been eager to challenge the notion that birth should be the key determinant of a society that functions through a natural complementing of its constituent functions. Thinking such an idealist approach unrealistic and doomed to failure, other reformers, such as B.R. AMBEDKAR, have insisted that birth groups—since they exist—be granted separate, differential rights and privileges as a strategy for remedying social injustice.

JAYADEVA \0j!-y‘-9d@-v‘ \: see GJTAGOVINDA. JEHOIACHIN \ji-9h|i-‘-0kin \, also spelled Joachin, Hebrew Joiachin, in the OLD TESTAMENT (2 Kings 24), son of King JEHOIAKIM and king of JUDAH. He came to the throne at the age of 18 and reigned three months. He was forced to surrender to Nebuchadrezzar II and was taken to Babylon (597 )), along with 10,000 of his subjects. He was released nearly 40 years later. JEHOIAKIM \ji-9h|i-‘-0kim \, also spelled Joakim, in the OLD TESTAMENT (2 Kings 23:34–24:17; Jeremiah 22:13–19; 2 Chronicles 36:4–8), son of King JOSIAH and king of JUDAH (c. 609–598 )). Enthroned after his younger brother Jehoahaz (or Shallum) was taken to Egypt by the Egyptian conqueror Necho, Jehoiakim reigned under Egyptian protection for some time and paid heavy tribute. When the new Chaldean Empire under Nebuchadrezzar II defeated Egypt at the Battle of Carchemish (605), however, Jehoiakim changed his allegiance to Nebuchadrezzar. He remained loyal for three years but then revolted; after several battles and invasions, Nebuchadrezzar succeeded in besieging Jerusalem (598). Jehoiakim died at this time, but the circumstances of his death remain uncertain.

JEHORAM \j‘-9h+-r‘m \, also called Joram \9j+-r‘m \, Hebrew Yehoram, or Yoram, one of two contemporary OLD TESTAMENT kings. Jehoram, the son of AHAB and JEZEBEL and king (c. 850–c. 842 )) of ISRAEL (2 Kings 1:17; 3:1–2), maintained close relations with JUDAH . Together with JEHOSHAPHAT , king of Judah, Jehoram unsuccessfully attempted to subdue a revolt of Moab against Israel (2 Kings 3:1–27). As had his father, Jehoram later endeavored to recover Ramoth-gilead from Hazael, king of Damascus. In this matter he was aided by his nephew Ahaziah, then king of Judah. Wounded during the fighting at Ramoth-gilead, Jehoram retired to Jezreel in Judah (2 Kings 8:28–29; 2 Chronicles 22:5–6). During his convalescence a revolution took place and JEHU was anointed king at Ramoth-gilead. Jehu then put to death all the members of Ahab’s family including Jehoram, Jezebel, and Ahaziah (2 Kings 9:1–37; 2 Chronicles 22:7–9). Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat and king (c. 851–c. 842 )) of Judah, married ATHALIAH, daughter of Ahab, and was thus brother-in-law of the Jehoram of Israel. J EHOSHAPHAT \ ji-9h!-s‘-0fat, -sh‘- \, also called Josaphat \9j!-s‘-0fat \, Hebrew Yehoshaphat, king (c. 873–c. 849 )) of JUDAH during the reigns in ISRAEL of AHAB, RAM , with whom he maintained close

Ahaziah, and JEHOpolitical and economic alliances (1 Kings 22:1ff.; 22:41–50). In Judah he reorganized the army and attempted to centralize political power through a series of religious and legal reforms (2 Chronicles 17:1–21:1).

J EHOVAH \ ji-9h+-v‘ \, Judeo-Christian name for God, derived from YHWH. The Masoretes, who from about the 6th

JEHU to the 10th century worked to reproduce the original text of the Hebrew BIBLE, replaced the vowels of the Hebraic name YHWH with the vowel signs of the Hebrew words Adonai or ELOHIM. Thus, the artificial name Jehovah (YeHoWaH) came into being. See YAHWEH.

JEHOVAH’S WITNESS, an adherent of a millennialist sect (see MILLENNIALISM) that began in the United States in the 19th century and has since spread over much of the world; the group is an outgrowth of the International Bible Students Association founded in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1872 by CHARLES TAZE RUSSELL. The name Jehovah’s Witnesses was adopted in 1931 by Russell’s successor, Joseph Franklin Rutherford (Judge Rutherford; 1869–1942), who sought to reaffirm JEHOVAH as the true God and to identify those who witness in this name as God’s specially accredited followers. Under his leadership, the democratic polity devised by Russell was replaced by a theocratic system directed from the society’s headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y. Rutherford’s policies were continued under his successor, Nathan Homer Knorr (1905–77). Knorr established the Watch Tower Bible School of Gilead (South Lansing, N.Y.) to train missionaries and leaders, decreed that all the society’s books and articles be published anonymously, and set up adult education programs to train Witnesses to deliver their own apologetical talks. Under Knorr’s direction a group of Witnesses produced a new translation of the Bible. The Witnesses have little or no association with other denominations and maintain a complete separation from all secular governments. They regard world powers and political parties as the unwitting allies of SATAN. For this reason they refuse to salute the flag of any nation or to perform military services and almost never vote in public elections. Their beliefs also extend to religious denominations, and for many years they disavowed the use of such Baptism by immersion of Jehovah’s Witnesses Archive Photos

terms as minister, church, or congregation in their organizational structure. This attitude has changed, but they are still exclusive and insulated from the ecumenical movement of the 20th century. Their avowed goal is the establishment of God’s Kingdom, the Theocracy, which they believe will emerge following ARMAGEDDON, their basis for this assumption being the apocalyptic books of the Bible, especially Daniel and the Book of Revelation. Theologically they hold that JESUS CHRIST is God’s agent in establishing the Theocracy. The concept of a literal hell is rejected, as is the inevitability of eternal life. Death in certain instances can mean total extinction. Pastor Russell established 1874 as the year of Christ’s “invisible return” and designated 1914 as the year of Christ’s SECOND COMING and the end of the “times of the GENTILES .” Date setting and PROPHECY among the Witnesses have given way, however, to a more contemporary analysis of modern life based on world events and what they regard as signs of the times. Witnesses faced active persecution in Germany and other Axis countries during World War II as well as in several Allied countries where their work was banned. In the postcolonial era, they encountered hostility in a number of new African nations whose nationalism conflicted with the Watch Tower idea of theocracy. The Witnesses meet in churches called Kingdom Halls, baptize by immersion, insist upon a high moral code in personal conduct, disapprove of divorce except on grounds of adultery, oppose blood transfusions on a scriptural basis, and have won many cases in the U.S. courts establishing their right to speak in accordance with their belief. Most members of a local congregation, or “company,” are kingdom publishers, who are expected to spend five hours a week at meetings in Kingdom Hall and spend as much time as circumstances permit in doorstep preaching. Pioneer publishers hold part-time secular jobs and try to devote 100 hours a month to religious service. Special pioneers are full-time, salaried employees of the society who should spend at least 150 hours a month in this work. Each Kingdom Hall has an assigned territory and each Witness a particular neighborhood to canvass. The sect takes great pains to keep records of the number of visits, back calls, Bible classes, and books and magazines distributed. Publishing activities include books, tracts, recordings, and periodicals, chief among which are a semimonthly magazine, the Watchtower, and its companion publication, Awa ke!, which during the early 1980s reached a circulation of more than 10,000,000 in some 80 languages.

J EHU \9j%-0hy- \, member of the Society of Jesus (S.J.), a ROMAN CATHOLIC order of religious men, founded by ST. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, noted for its educational, missionary, and charitable works. The order was once regarded by many as the principal agent of the COUNTER-REFORMATION and later a leading force in modernizing the church. The order grew out of the activity of Ignatius, a Spanish soldier who in 1539 drafted the first outline of the order’s organization, which Pope Paul III approved on Sept. 27, 1540. The society introduced several innovations in the form of the religious life. Among these were the discontinuance of many medieval practices—such as regular penances or fasts obligatory on all, a common uniform, and the choral recitation of the liturgical office—in the interest of greater mobility and adaptability. Other innovations included a highly centralized form of authority with life tenure for the head of the order; probation lasting many years before final vows; gradation of members; and lack of a female branch. Particular emphasis was laid upon the virtue of obedience, including special obedience to the POPE. Emphasis was also placed upon flexibility, a condition that allowed Jesuits to become involved in a great variety of ministries in all parts of the world. The society grew rapidly, and it quickly assumed a prominent role in the Counter-Reformation defense and revival

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of Catholicism. Almost from the beginning, education and scholarship became the principal work. The early Jesuits, however, also produced preachers and catechists who devoted themselves to the care of the young, the sick, prisoners, prostitutes, and soldiers; and they were often called upon to undertake the controversial task of confessor to many of the royal and ruling families of Europe. The society entered the foreign MISSION field within months of its founding. More Jesuits were to be involved in missionary work than in any other activity, save education. By the time of Ignatius’ death in 1556, about 1,000 Jesuits were already working throughout Europe and in Asia, Africa, and the New World. By 1626 the number of Jesuits was 15,544; and in 1749 the total was 22,589. The preeminent position of the Jesuits among the religious orders and their championship of the pope exposed them to hostility. In 1773 Pope Clement XIV, under pressure especially from the governments of France, Spain, and Portugal, issued a decree abolishing the order. The society’s corporate existence was maintained in Russia, where political circumstances—notably the opposition of Catherine II the Great—prevented the canonical execution of the suppression. The demand that the Jesuits take up their former work, especially in the field of education and in the missions, became so insistent that in 1814 Pope Pius VII reestablished the society. After the restoration, the order grew to be the largest order of male religious. Work in education on all levels continued to involve more Jesuits than any other activity; but the number of Jesuits working in the mission fields, especially in Asia and Africa, exceeded that of any other religious order. They were also involved in the field of communications, in social work, in ecumenical groups, and even in politics.

J ESUS C HRIST \ 9j%-z‘s-9kr&st, -z‘z- \, also called Jesus of Nazareth (b. c. 6 ), Judaea—d. c. 30 (, Jerusalem), founder of the Christian faith and arguably the most important figure in the history of western civilization. To the faithful Christian, Jesus is the son of God and God incarnate whose sacrifice on the cross offers the promise of salvation and whose life and passion are the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures. Although the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life—the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and the more philosophical Gospel of John—are marked by inconsistencies and differing agendas and no independent account by contemporary authors exists, a picture of his life can be discerned from Scripture. According to Matthew, Jesus was born to the house of DAVID, as foretold in Jewish scripture and messianic traditions. He was born of Mary, the wife of the carpenter Joseph. According to Luke the birth occurred during the time of a census held by Augustus and according to Matthew during the reign of Herod the Great. Although the chronology of the Gospels is inconsistent, they do agree that Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem, in support of Jewish messianic teachings, and raised in the Galilean town of Nazareth. Little is told of Jesus’ early life except for the stories found in Luke concerning the presentation of Jesus at the Temple and the encounter of Jesus with the teachers in the Temple. While his birth and youth, according to the evangelists, fulfilled scriptural prophecy, it was the adult ministry of Jesus that established the foundation of the faith. Once again the Gospels are not wholly consistent—differences in the length of the ministry and the number of visits to Jerus-

JESUS CHRIST

alem exist—but a coherent picture of the ministry does emerge. It begins with the baptism of Jesus by JOHN THE BAPTIST . Indeed, Jesus recognized the importance of John’s teachings and sought baptism from John. This episode has led to the suggestion that Jesus was a follower of John, and the affinities they had with the teachings of the ESSENES and related Judaic teachings lends some credence to this possibility. But, as John acknowledged, Jesus was the greater of the two and would go beyond John’s own ministry. Jesus began to preach and recruited a number of disciples, including the twelve APOSTLES. Jesus’ ministry was characterized by charismatic preaching exercised with great moral authority that in some ways challenged existing law but also, as Jesus says, fulfilled the law. His preaching, which was often in the form of parables, spoke of the coming of the kingdom of God and demanded repentance of the people in preparation for the coming of the kingdom. Jesus was also a healer—curing a woman of an effusion of blood, healing the sick, and raising Lazarus from the dead—often in apparent violation of Sabbath prohibitions and Jewish laws of purity (see TOHORAH). The Gospels also record that Jesus was a miracle worker and that he calmed the seas, changed water into wine, and fed a great multitude with a few loaves and fishes. The final chapter of Jesus’ life involved his visit to Jerusalem. His entry at PASSOVER, riding a donkey, was heavily symbolic and evoked the messianic traditions of Judaism. It was in this final, although possibly not first, visit to Jerusalem that Jesus probably came to the attention of the authorities as a result of the incident at the TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM, in which he cast out the various merchants, declaring the Temple a house of prayer and not a den of thieves. He was questioned by Jewish leaders who, according to the Gospels, sought to put him in the wrong over such issues as the proper attitude toward the secular authority and over

Jesus Christ as Ruler, with the Apostles and Evangelists (represented by the beasts), mosaic in the apse of Santa Pudenziana, Rome, 401–417 ( De Antonis

matters concerning resurrection. While in Jerusalem Jesus responded to the questions of the Scribes saying that the highest commandment is to love God. He also prophesied the impending destruction of Jerusalem and the world. The most important events of his time in Jerusalem involved his LAST SUPPER and Passion, the events surrounding his trial and death. He established the new CONVENANT by instituting the Eucharist and sharing the bread and wine— his body and blood—with the disciples, who were told to do this in his memory. He was betrayed by one of these disciples, JUDAS ISCARIOT, and condemned to death. For the Jewish authorities he was guilty of violating the law of Moses and blasphemy and for the Romans he was guilty of inciting the overthrow of Roman authority. Indeed, the Romans reserved the horrible punishment of CRUCIFIXION for their most dangerous political criminals. Recognizing himself as the suffering servant, Jesus quietly accepted his fate, forbidding his followers to defend him in the garden of GETHSEMANE when he was arrested and enduring his punishment. Suffering on the CROSS , he sought forgiveness for those around him and commended his soul to God. The sacrifice on the cross was followed by the burial and by the resurrection of Jesus three days later. Having risen, he met Mary Magdalene and other women before revealing himself to his disciples and commanding them to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:20). To understand the teachings of Jesus fully, it is necessary to place him in the context of the JUDAISM of his time. Jesus

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JETHRO was in many ways an observant Jew—honoring the Passover, attending the Temple, and adhering to biblical teaching. Furthermore, the apocalyptic fervor of the period, the beliefs of the QUMREN sect, and the teachings of the PHARISEES shed considerable light on the message of Jesus. During his lifetime there was a wide range of messianic teachings, from the violence of the ZEALOTS to the otherworldly teachings of the Essenes, which foresaw the coming of a savior from the house of David. Notions of the “son of man” as an eschatological figure were current in Jewish circles as well. The Pharisees, moreover, taught a doctrine that included bodily resurrection, ANGELS, and SATAN, and they held an eschatological outlook (see ESCHATOLOGY). Although Jesus was a part of contemporary Judaism, he made these traditions uniquely his own. Reluctant to identify himself as the MESSIAH, he called himself the son of man and placed himself in the contemporary messianic context. His passion can best be understood in light of the suffering servant as prophesied in Isaiah, whose sacrifice atones for the sins of others. His calls to personal moral reform and repentance, too, must be seen in the context of the imminent coming of the kingdom of God that he preached. His moral reform is outlined in the “SERMON ON THE MOUNT,” in which he taught that the kingdom of God awaits the peacemakers, the poor in spirit, and those who have suffered in Jesus’ name. The kingdom is not for the hypocrites or the weak in spirit nor is for those who worship idols or material possessions. Indeed, he asserts that one “cannot serve God and Mammon.” (Matthew 6:24) and that one must love God. Drawn from Jewish tradition but made his own, the doctrine Jesus taught was one of repentance and moral reform, the love of God and service to his will—service that Jesus undertook with his passion on the cross. The passion, Christians believe, was rewarded with resurrection and thus offers the hope of salvation to all.

JETHRO \9jeth-0r+ \, also called Reuel, or Hobab, in the OLD TESTAMENT, priest of Midian of the KENITE clan, with whom MOSES took refuge after he killed an Egyptian and whose daughter Moses married (EXODUS 3:1).

After the Exodus, Jethro visited the Hebrews and brought with him Moses’ wife and sons. There he officiated at a sacrifice and suggested that Moses appoint able men to assist him in judging his people, thus founding the Hebrew judiciary (Exodus 18). Jethro’s Kenite descendants settled in Judaean territory in the Negev.

J EWISH CALENDAR, religious and civil dating system of both ancient and modern JUDAISM, which is based upon both lunar and solar cycles. In the Jewish calendar in use today, a day is counted from sunset to sunset, a week comprises seven days, a month contains 29 or 30 days, and a year has 12 lunar months and approximately 11 days (or 353, 354, or 355 days). In order to bring the calendar in line with the annual solar cycle, a 13th month of 30 days is intercalated in the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th, and 19th years of a 19-year cycle. Therefore, a leap year may total from 383 to 385 days. The Jewish Era in use today was popularly accepted about the 9th century ( and is based on biblical calculations placing the creation in 3761 ). The names of the months of the year are derived from Babylonian terms. (Before the Exile, the names were in Hebrew. Only four of these Hebrew names are known today; those being Ethanim, Bul, Abib, and Ziv.) The months are ordered according to religious usage and are:

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Nisan (Abib): March–April of the Western Gregorian calendar Iyyar (Ziv): April–May Sivan: May–June Tammuz: June–July Av: July–August Elul: August–September Tishri (Ethanim): September–October Geshvan, or Margeshvan (Bul): October–November Kislev: November–December Eevet: December–January Shevae: January–February Adar: February–March The 13th month of the leap year, Adar Sheni (or ve-Adar), is intercalated before Adar and so contains the religious observances normally occurring in Adar. The civil calendar begins with the month of Tishri, the first day of which is the holiday of ROSH HASHANAH. The SABBATH is observed on the seventh day of the week (Saturday). The annual cycle of the religious calendar begins with the celebration of PASSOVER (Pesag) on Nisan 15–22. The next major holiday of the year is that of SHAVUOT, celebrated on Sivan 6–7, the second of the PILGRIM FESTIVALS. The TEN DAYS OF PENITENCE begin with Rosh Hashanah on Tishri 1–2 and end with YOM KIPPUR on Tishri 10. The last of the major holidays, and the third of the Pilgrim Festivals is SUKKOT which is celebrated on Tishri 15–21. The Jewish religious calendar also includes a series of minor holidays—so called because they are not accompanied by the proscription of work—and fasts. HANUKKAH is celebrated for eight days, beginning on Kislev 25, and is marked by the lighting of candles, feasting, songs, and the giving of gifts to children. The five fast days commemorate tragic events in Jewish history. They are Shiva! !Asar be-Tammuz (FAST OF TAMMUZ 17); TISHA BE-AV (Fast of Av 9), which commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples in 586 BCE and 70 CE, respectively; Tzom Gedaliahu (Tishri 3); !Asara be-Eevet (Fast of Eevet 10); and Ta!anit Esther (Fast of Esther; Adar 13). Also celebrated are LAG BA-OMER (Iyyar 18), usually observed as a school holiday, and EU BISHEVAE (Shevae 15), in modern times associated with the planting of trees in Israel. Since the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, three other holidays have been added to the Jewish calendar. They are HOLOCAUST Day (Nisan 27), Remembrance Day (Iyyar 4), and Independence Day (Iyyar 5).

JEZEBEL \9je-z‘-0bel \, also spelled Jezabel (d. c. 843 )), in the OLD TESTAMENT (1 and 2 Kings), the wife of AHAB, King of Israel; by interfering with the exclusive worship of the Hebrew god YAHWEH, disregarding the rights of the common people, and defying the great prophets ELIJAH and ELISHA, she provoked the internecine strife that enfeebled Israel for decades. She has come to be known as an archetype of the wicked woman. Jezebel was the daughter of the priest-king Ethbaal, ruler of the coastal Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon (modern Zayde, Lebanon). When she married Ahab (ruled c. 874–c. 853), she persuaded him to introduce the worship of the Tyrian god Baal-Melkart. She tried to destroy those who opposed her; most of the prophets of Yahweh were killed at her command. These actions provoked the wrath of Elijah; according to 1 Kings 17, he prophesied the onset of a severe drought as divine retribution. Some time later, Elijah had the BAAL priests slain after they had lost a contest with him;

JJLJ, ALwhen Jezebel heard of the slaughter, she angrily swore to have Elijah killed, forcing him to flee (1 Kings 18:19–19:3). A few years later, Ahab perished in battle with the Syrians. Jezebel lived on for approximately another 10 years. Elijah’s successor, Elisha, provoked civil war by causing a military commander named JEHU to be made king of Israel, though Jezebel’s son JEHORAM then ruled. Jehu killed Jehoram and then went to Jezebel’s palace. Expecting him, she adorned herself and, looking down from her window, taunted him. Jehu ordered her eunuchs to throw her out the window. Later, when he commanded that she be properly buried as a king’s daughter, it was discovered that dogs had eaten most of her body.

JIBRJL \ji-9br%l \, also spelled Jabre#jl, in ISLAM, the ARCHANwho acts as intermediary between God and man and as bearer of revelation to the prophets, most notably to MUHAMMAD. Muhammad himself could not at first identify the spirit that possessed him, and the QUR#AN mentions him by name only three times. Jibrjl, however, became Muhammad’s constant helper, according to the HADITH and Ibn Isgeq’s Stra. He and the archangel M J K E L purified Muhammad’s heart in preparation for the Prophet’s ascension to heaven (mi!rej), and then Jibrjl guided him through the various levels until they reached the throne of God. When Muhammad recited a supposed revelation acknowledging the PAGAN goddesses AL-LET, al-!Uzze, and Manet, Jibrjl chastised him for presenting as divine a message inspired by the devil. Jibrjl also helped Muhammad in times of political crisis, coming to his aid at the BATTLE OF BADR (624) with thousands of ANGELS, then telling him to attack the Jewish tribes of Banj Qaynuqe! and Banj Qurayxa. Muhammad generally only heard the voice of his inspiration, but, according to !E#ISHA, his wife, he saw Jibrjl twice “in the shape that he was created” and on other occasions as a man resembling Digya ibn Khaljfa al-Kalbj, a disciple of Muhammad. Others have described the archangel as having 600 wings, each pair so enormous that they crowd the space between East and West. Jibrjl has also been depicted as sitting on a chair suspended between heaven and earth. The popular image of Jibrjl is of an ordinary, turbaned man, dressed in two green garments, astride a horse or a mule. Muslim traditions concerning Jibrjl largely concur with biblical accounts of the angel GABRIEL, but his special relationship with Muhammad inspired a large body of mythical detail. Jibrjl is said to have appeared at ADAM’S side after his expulsion from paradise and shown him how to write and work iron and raise wheat. Jibrjl later appeared in Egypt to help MOSES and to deceive the Egyptians into entering the Red Sea in pursuit of the Jews. His name figures in the preparation of charms and appears with those of the other archangels on the sides of magic squares. GEL

J IGOKU \ 9j%-g|-k> \, in Japanese BUDDHISM, hell, a region popularly believed to consist of a number of hot and cold regions under the earth. Jigoku is ruled over by Emma-j, the Japanese lord of death, who judges the dead. He is assisted in examining the dead by two disembodied heads on pillars at either side of him. The female head, Miru-me, can perceive the sinner’s faults, while the male head, Kagu-hana, can detect any misdeed. Damnation is not eternal; the dead are sentenced to fixed periods of time, which can be shortened by the intervention of BODHISATTVAS. The Jigoku-zjshi, a late 12th-century scroll, depicts the 8 great and the 16 lesser hells in both text and paintings.

JIHAD \ ji-9h!d \, also spelled jehad (Arabic: “fighting,” or “striving”), in ISLAM, a key doctrine which calls upon believers to devote themselves to combating the enemies of their religion, both human and psychological, even if it means sacrificing their own material comforts and lives. As a doctrine of warfare, Islamic legal schools have offered various interpretations of when, how, and by whom it should be conducted. Generally, it may be offensive or defensive in nature, is subject to ethical injunctions upon combatants, and requires collective assent before it can be initiated. Alternately, Sufis (see SUFISM) have conceived of the “greater jihad” as combat against inner impulses and evil desires that prevent seekers from attaining spiritual renewal and a more intimate experience of God (see MUJEHADA). The classical juristic formulations of jihad, based on the QUR#AN and HADITH, were shaped by the experience of building both a community and an empire in a world of warring tribes and states. It was considered to be a duty that could be fulfilled in four ways: by the heart, the tongue, the hand, and the sword. The first is the “greater jihad” of the Sufis. The propagation of Islam through the tongue and hand is accomplished in large measure by supporting what is right and correcting what is wrong. The jihad of the sword, sometimes called the “lesser jihad,” is to physically combat unbelievers and enemies of Islam. Believers who died in combat became martyrs and were guaranteed an esteemed place in paradise among the blessed. People of the Book (AHL AL-KITEB)—Christians and Jews in particular— were shown special consideration in the jihad code. They could embrace Islam, or if they agreed to submit to Islamic rulers by paying poll and land taxes, they could assume the status of a “protected” (dhimmi) community within the House of Islam (DER AL-ISLAM). Through much of Islamic history, wars against other Muslim states as well as non-Muslim ones, even those with significant political overtones, were labeled jihads to rally support and delegitimate opponents. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was invoked by Islamic movements in many regions, including the WAHHEBJS in the Arabian Peninsula, the Algerians in northern Africa, USMAN DAN FODIO (d. 1817) in western Africa, the MAHDISTS of the Sudan, the followers of Ahmad Barelewi (d. 1831) in the Northwest Frontier Province (now Pakistan), and the NAQSHBANDJYA Sufis in the Caucasus and China. During the 20th century jihad was transformed into an ideological weapon to combat western influences and secular national governments and to establish an ideal Islamic society. It inspired the radical Islamist organizations opposed to the Egyptian government and Israeli occupation of the West Bank and southern Lebanon. Even Iraq, with an avowed secular regime, used jihad in its propaganda campaign against coalition forces involved in the 1990–91 Persian Gulf war.

JJLJ, AL- \#l-j%-9l% \, in full !Abd al-Karjm Queb al-Djn ibn

Ibrehjm al-Jjlj (b. 1365—d. c. 1424), mystic whose doctrines of the “perfect man” became popular throughout the Islamic world. Little is known about al-Jjlj’s personal life. Possibly after a visit to India in 1387, he studied in Yemen during 1393– 1403. Of his more than 30 works the most famous is Al-insen al-kemil fi ma!rifat al-awekhir wa#l-awe !il (partial Eng. trans., R.A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism), which contains his complex doctrine of the perfect man. The work shows clearly the influence of the pantheistic Spanish mystic IBN AL-!ARABJ (d. 1240). Al-Jjlj maintained that the perfect man can achieve unity

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JIMMU with the Divine Being. This unity is experienced not only by the prophets, from ADAM to MUHAMMAD, but also by others who reach the highest level of being (wujjd) and become, as it were, the most select of the select. At this level all contradictions, such as being with non-being and vengeance with mercy, are resolved. In every age the perfect man manifests the outward appearance and inner essences of the Prophet Muhammad. The perfect man is thereby a channel through which the community can enjoy contact with the Divine Being. Al-Jjlj claimed that, in the town of Zabjd in Yemen in 1393, he had met the Prophet Muhammad, who then manifested himself through al-Jjlj as SHAYKH, or spiritual leader. Al-Jjlj’s doctrine of the perfect man later developed into a belief that all holy men and mystics were able to achieve contact and unity with God.

JIMMU \9j%m-0m< \, in full Jimmu Tennj \-9ten-0n+ \, original name Kow-Yamato-Iware-Hiko no Mikoto, legendary first emperor of Japan and founder of the imperial dynasty. Japanese chronicles record that Jimmu, a descendant of the sun goddess AMATERASU and husband of a descendant of the storm god SUSANOO, moved eastward from Hyuga in 607 ) along Japan’s Inland Sea, subduing tribes as he went. Arriving in YAMATO, he established his center of power there. Modern historians agree that there was an aggressive movement of peoples from the west, but date it to the early Common Era. Jimmu Tennj (the posthumous reign name by which he is generally known) is said to be buried in Unebi. A SHINTJ shrine was erected there by the Japanese government in 1890, but he has never had much of a cult following, despite his importance as a link between the ruling family of Japan and the divine ancestors.

complexes of buildings to small roadside places of prayer, they generally consist of three units: (1) the honden (also called shinden), the main sanctuary, where the spirit of the deity is enshrined, normally approached only by the priests; here are offered the prayers which “call down” the KAMI and subsequently send it away; (2) the heiden (hall of offerings), or norito-den (hall for reciting prayers), where religious rites are performed by the priests; and (3) the haiden (hall of worship), where the devotees worship and offer prayers. Large shrines may have additional structures, such as the kagura-den (stage for ceremonial dance), shamusho (shrine office), temizu-ya (ABLUTION basin for washing hands and mouth before worshiping), and also komainu (statues of guardian animals) and tjrj (stone or bronze lanterns given as offerings). The sacred compound is demarcated by an entrance gateway, or TORII. From the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the end of World War II, Shintj shrines were governed by the home ministry and subsidized by government funds. Following the disestablishment of STATE SHINTJ, and the constitutional prohibition of subsidies, the shrines have depended for support on the offerings of their parishioners and other worshipers and on revenue from tourism and local services such as kindergartens. Many priests work at second jobs to maintain themselves and their families.

JINN \9jin \, singular jinni, also called genie, Arabic jinnj, in Arabic mythology, supernatural spirits below the level of ANGELS and devils. Ghjl (treacherous spirits of changing shape), !IFRJT (evil spirits), and si!le (treacherous spirits of invariable form) constitute classes of jinn. Jinn are beings of flame or air who are capable of assuming human or animal form and are said to dwell in inanimate objects, underneath the earth, in the air, and in fire. They possess the bodily JINA: see TJRTHAEKARA. needs of human beings and can be killed, but they are free from all physical restraints. Jinn delight in punishing huJINASENA \0ji-n‘-9s@-n‘ \, in JAINISM, 9th-century DIGAMBARA mans for any harm done them, intentionally or not, and are monk, philosopher, and poet said to be responsible for whose royal patron, Amoghamany diseases and all kinds varza I, renounced his throne of accidents; however, those An example of a Shintj jinja, the main building of the to become Jinasena’s disciple Inner Shrine at Ise knowing the proper magical late in life. Jinasena was a procedure can exploit the By courtesy of the Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, Tokyo disciple of Vjrasena. His comjinn to their advantage. mentary on the KazeyaprebBelief in jinn was common hsta (a canonical Jain work) is in early Arabia, where they highly respected by Digamwere thought to inspire pobaras. His Edipureda, a HA ets and soothsayers. MUHAMGIOGRAPHY of Szabha and his MAD originally feared that his two sons Behubali and Bhararevelations might be the ta, provides the first discuswork of jinn, and official IS LAM held that they, like husion of Jain domestic rites, as man beings, would have to well as depicting and lending face eventual salvation or authority to the CASTE system existent among the Jain laity damnation. Jinn, especially of his day. through their association with magic, have always JINJA \9j%n-j!, Angl 9jin-j‘ \, in been favorite figures in North SHINT J , the place where the African, Egyptian, Syrian, spirit of a deity is enshrined Persian, and Turkish FOLKLORE and are the center of an imor to which it is summoned. mense popular literature. In Historically, jinja were locatIndia and Indonesia they have ed in places of natural beauentered local Muslim imagity; in modern times, howevnations by way of the Qur#aner, urban shrines have ic descriptions and Arabic litbecome common. Though erature. they may var y from large

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JJVA

J INNAH , M UHAMMAD !A LI \ 9ji-0n!, 9ji-n‘ \, also called Qe#id-e A!xam (Perso-Arabic: “Great Leader”) (b. Dec. 25, 1876, Karechi, India [Pakistan]—d. Sept. 11, 1948, Karechi), Indian Muslim politician, founder and first governor-general (1947–48) of Pakistan. Jinnah was the child of a prosperous merchant who sent him to England to acquire business experience. Jinnah, however, had made up his mind to become a barrister. He completed his formal studies in London and also made a study of the British political system, frequently visiting the House of Commons, being especially influenced by the liberalism of William E. Gladstone. Jinnah also took a keen interest in the affairs of India and in Indian students and worked in the campaign of the PARSI leader Dadabhai Naoroji, a leading Indian nationalist who was the first Indian to sit in the British House of Commons. Jinnah returned to India in 1896 and started his legal practice in Bombay. He first entered politics by participating in the 1906 Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress. Four years later he was elected to the Imperial Legislative Council. Admiration for British political institutions and an eagerness to raise the status of India in the international community and to develop a sense of Indian nationhood among the peoples of India were the chief elements of his politics. At that time, he still looked upon Muslim interests in the context of Indian nationalism. But, by the beginning of the 20th century, the conviction had been growing among the Muslims that their interests demanded the preservation of their separate identity rather than amalgamation in the Indian nation that would for all practical purposes be Hindu. Largely to safeguard Muslim interests, the All-India Muslim League was founded in 1906, and Jinnah joined it in 1913. When the Indian Home Rule League was formed, he became its chief organizer in Bombay and was elected president of the Bombay branch. Jinnah consistently worked to bring about the political union of Hindus and Muslims. It was largely through his efforts that the Congress and the Muslim League began to hold their annual sessions jointly, to facilitate mutual consultation and participation. In 1916 the two organizations held their meetings in Lucknow, where the Lucknow Pact was concluded. Under the terms of the pact, the two organizations put their seal to a scheme of constitutional reform that became their joint demand vis-à-vis the British government. Meanwhile, a new force in Indian politics had appeared in the person of MOHANDAS K. GANDHI. Opposed to Gandhi’s Non-cooperation Movement and his essentially Hindu approach to politics, Jinnah left both the League and the Congress in 1920. After his withdrawal from the Congress, he used the Muslim League platform for the propagation of his views. When the failure of the Non-cooperation Movement and the emergence of Hindu revivalist movements led to antagonism and riots between the Hindus and Muslims, the league gradually began to come into its own. Among Jinnah’s problems during the following years was to convince the Congress, as a prerequisite for political progress, of the necessity of settling the Hindu-Muslim conflict. To bring about such a rapprochement was Jinnah’s chief purpose during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He called for a federal form of government, greater rights for minorities, one-third representation for Muslims in the central legislature, separation of the predominantly Muslim Sind region from the rest of the Bombay province, and the introduction of reforms in the North-West Frontier Province. Many Muslims, however, thought that he was too nationalistic in

his policy and that Muslim interests were not safe in his hands, while the Indian National Congress would not even meet the moderate Muslim demands halfway. The Punjab Muslim League repudiated his leadership and organized itself separately. In disgust, Jinnah decided to settle in England. From 1930 to 1935 he was in London, devoting himself to practice before the Privy Council. But when constitutional changes were in the offing, he was persuaded to return home to head a reconstituted Muslim League. Soon preparations started for the elections under the Government of India Act of 1935. In the elections of 1937 the Congress obtained an absolute majority in six provinces, and the league did not do particularly well. The Congress decided not to include the league in the formation of provincial governments, and exclusive all-Congress governments were the result. Relations between Hindus and Muslims started to deteriorate. Jinnah had originally been dubious about the practicability of Pakistan, an idea that Sir MUHAMMAD IQBEL had propounded to the Muslim League conference of 1930; but before long he became convinced that a Muslim homeland on the Indian subcontinent was the only way of safeguarding Muslim interests. Accordingly he converted the Muslim League into a powerful instrument for unifying the Muslims into a nation. On March 22–23, 1940, in Lahore, the league adopted a resolution to form a separate Muslim state, Pakistan. Pitted against Jinnah were men of the stature of Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, but ultimately both the Congress and the British government had no option but to agree to the partitioning of India. Pakistan thus emerged as an independent state in 1947. Jinnah became the first head of the new state. JJVA \9j%-v‘ \ (Sanskrit: “life essence”), according to the philosophy of JAINISM, “living sentient substance,” or “SOUL,” as opposed to ajjva, or “nonliving substance.” Souls are eternal and infinite in number and are not the same as the bodies that they inhabit. In a pure state (mukta-jjva), souls rise to the top of the universe, where they reside with other perfected beings and are never again reborn. Most souls are, however, bound to SA U S E RA (mundane earthly existence) because they are covered with a thin veil of good or bad KARMA, which is conceived as a kind of matter, accumulated by the emotions in the same way that oil accumulates dust particles. Jjvas are categorized according to the number of sense organs that they possess. Humans, gods, and DEMONS possess the five sense organs plus intellect. Minute clusters of invisible souls, called nigodas, belong to the lowest class of jjva and possess only the sense of touch, share common functions such as respiration and nutrition, and experience intense pain. The whole space of the world is packed with nigodas. They are the source of souls to take the place of the infinitesimally small number that have been able to attain MOKZA. Hindu thinkers also employ the term jjva, using it to designate the soul or self that is subject to embodiment. Since many Hindu schools of thought do not regard selfhood as intrinsically plural, however, they typically understand these individual jjvas as parts, aspects, or derivatives of the unifying ontological principle E TMAN, which is in turn identified with BRAHMAN. In this usage, jjva is short for jjva-etman, an individual living being. Schools differ as to whether the relation between jjvas and etman/Brahman should be understood as nondual (ADVAITA), nondual in a qualified way (VIUIZEEDVAITA), or simply dual (DVAITA).

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JIZJ

JIZJ \j%-9z+ \: see KZITIGARBHA. JIZYA \9jiz-y‘ \, also spelled jizyah, head or poll tax that early Islamic rulers demanded from their non-Muslim subjects. Islamic law made a distinction between two categories of non-Muslim subjects—pagans and dhimmis (“protected peoples,” or “peoples of the book” [AHL AL-KITAB]; i.e., those peoples who based their RELIGIOUS BELIEFS on sacred texts, such as Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians). The Muslim rulers tolerated the dhimmis and allowed them to practice their religion. In return for protection and as a mark of their submission, the dhimmis were required to pay a special poll tax known as the jizya. The rate of taxation and methods of collection varied greatly from province to province and were greatly influenced by local pre-Islamic customs. In theory the tax money was to be used for charitable purposes and the payment of salaries and pensions. In practice, however, the revenues derived from the jizya were deposited in the private treasuries of the rulers. The Ottomans usually used the proceeds of the jizya to pay their military expenses. A convert to ISLAM, in theory, was no longer required to pay the jizya. The Umayyad CALIPHS (661–750), however, faced with increasing financial difficulties, demanded the jizya from recent converts to Islam as well as from the dhimmis. This discrimination against converts was a cause of the Abj Muslim rebellion (747) in Khoresen and helped to precipitate the downfall of the Umayyads. JÑENA \9gn!-n‘, 9gny!- \ (“knowledge”), in Hindu philosophy, a word with a range of meanings focusing on a cognitive event that proves not to be mistaken. In the religious realm it especially designates the sort of knowledge that is a total experience of its object, particularly the supreme being or reality, as contrasted with vijñena, “knowing one thing from another,” or “practical knowledge.” The total cognitive experience of the supreme object sets the soul free from the transmigratory life and the polarities this imposes upon thought. Its opposite, ajñena (also called avidye), is the false apprehension of reality that keeps the soul from attaining release; it is a form of mistaken knowledge, which has a large measure of validity as far as the realities of the present world are concerned but conceals the truth of a reality outside it. In the BHAGAVAD G J T E , jñena yoga (“the discipline of knowledge”) is recognized as one of three complementary paths to religious fulfillment. It centers on the recognition of the distinction between the perduring self and its transitory embodiments, a recognition fundamentally facilitated by the presence of the divine KRISHNA, who reorients the knowledge of his doubting interlocutor and ultimate devotee, ARJUNA.

JÑENEUVAR \dny!-9n@sh-w‘r, gny!- \, also called Jñenadeva, or Dhyenadev (b. c. 1271–75, India—d. 1296, Alandi, India), foremost among the mystical poets of Maharashtra, and composer of the Bheverthadjpike (popularly known as the Jñeneuvarj), a translation and commentary in Marathi oral verse on the Sanskrit classic BHAGAVAD GJTE. Jñeneuvar was both a Verkarj, a devotee of the Vaizdava (see VAIZDAVISM) deity Vieehal (Viehobe), and a practitioner of the Uaiva (see UAIVISM) YOGA of the Neths. Born into a family that had renounced society (SANNYESJ), Jñeneuvar was considered an outcaste when his family returned to Alandi after years of living in seclusion. To reinstate their socio-religious status, 574 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

the family obtained a certificate of purity from a Brahmin council in the village of Paithan. Poems attributed to another Marathi poet, NEMDEV, provide the oldest description of Jñeneuvar’s life. Three collections of Nemdev’s songs describe Jñeneuvar’s birth and meeting with Nemdev, their travels together through northern India to holy sites, and his entrance into what his followers believe to be a deathless state of meditation ( SAM E DHI ) at Alandi. There is a small temple at Alandi where the saint is entombed. Jñeneuvar, along with Nemdev, is placed historically at the emergence of the Verkarj (“Pilgrim”) devotional school, a 700-year-old sect particular to Maharashtra that conducts annual circumambulatory PILGRIMAGES throughout Maharashtra, culminating at the Vieehal temple in PANDHARPUR in early July. Jñeneuvar composed the Amstenubheva, a work on Upanishadic philosophy, and the Haripeeha, a song praising the name of Hari (VISHNU). His siblings, two brothers, Nivsttineth and Sopenadev, and particularly his sister Muktebej, are themselves highly respected saints of the Verkarj tradition.

JOAB \9j+-0ab \ (fl. 1000 )), in the OLD TESTAMENT, a military commander under King DAVID, who was David’s maternal uncle (2 Samuel 2:13). Joab led the party that captured Jerusalem and as a reward was appointed commander in chief of the army (1 Chronicles 11:6). He played a leading part in many of David’s victories (2 Samuel 10:7; 12:26) and led the force that crushed the rebellion of David’s son ABSALOM ; subsequently he killed Absalom, although David had commanded that his life be saved (2 Samuel 18:5, 14). Joab showed his characteristic ruthlessness in the murder of two of his potential rivals, Abner and Amasa (2 Samuel 3:26–30; 20:9–10; 1 Kings 2:5). During David’s last days, Joab supported the abortive bid for the throne by David’s son Adonijah (1 Kings 1:5–8) and was executed by the successful SOLOMON (1 Kings 2:28–35). J OACHIM OF F IORE \ y+-9!-k%m . . . 9fy+-r@ \, Fiore also spelled Floris, Italian Gioacchino da Fiore (b. c. 1130/35, Celico, Kingdom of Naples [Italy]—d. 1201/02, Fiore), Italian mystic, theologian, biblical commentator, philosopher of history, and founder of the monastic order of San Giovanni in Fiore. Joachim, after a PILGRIMAGE to the Holy Land, became a CISTERCIAN monk at Sambucina and in 1177 ABBOT of Corazzo (Sicily). About 1191 he retired into the mountains to follow the CONTEMPLATIVE life. Although claimed as a fugitive by the Cistercians, Joachim was allowed by Pope Celestine III to form the disciples who gathered around him into the Order of San Giovanni in Fiore in 1196. He was summoned by Pope Lucius III in 1184 and urged to press on with the biblical EXEGESIS he had begun. This probably refers to the Liber concordie Novi ac Veteris Testamenti (“Book of Harmony of the New and Old Testaments”), in which Joachim worked out his philosophy of history, primarily in a pattern of “twos”—the concords between the two great dispensations (or Testaments) of history, the Old and the New. But already Joachim’s spiritual experience was creating in his mind his “pattern of threes.” If the spiritualis intellectus springs from the letter of the OLD TESTAMENT and NEW TESTAMENT, then history itself must culminate in a final age of the spirit that proceeds from both the previous ages. Thus was born his trinitarian philosophy of history in which the three Persons are, as it were, built into the time structure in the three ages or status of the Father, Son, and HOLY SPIRIT.

JOB, THE BOOK OF In the Expositio in Apocalypsim (“Exposition of the Apocalypse”), Joachim seeks to probe the imminent crisis of evil, as pictured in the apocalyptic symbols of ANTI CHRIST, and the life of the spirit to follow. His third main work, the Psalterium decem chordarum (“Psaltery of Ten Strings”), expounds his doctrine of the TRINITY through the symbol of a 10-stringed psaltery. Here and in a lost tract he attacked the doctrine of “quaternity” (an overemphasis on the “one essence” of the Godhead that seems to separate it from the three Persons of the Trinity and so create a fourth), which he attributed to PETER LOMBARD. Joachim’s visual imagination is expressed in the unique Liber figurarum (“Book of Figures”; discovered in 1937), a book of drawings and figures thought to be a genuine work by most Joachim scholars today. Here his vision of the culminating age of history is embodied in trees that flower and bear fruit luxuriantly at the top; his doctrine of the Trinity is expressed in remarkable geometric figures. In his lifetime Joachim was acclaimed as a prophet, gifted with divine illumination, and this is how he was seen by the first chroniclers after his death, though the condemnation of his tract against Peter Lombard by the fourth LATERAN COUNCIL in 1215 dimmed his reputation for a time. The Spiritual FRANCISCANS at mid-13th century and various other FRIARS, monks, and sects down to the 16th century appropriated his PROPHECY of a third age, but the debate as to whether he was orthodox or heretic continues today.

The name Joan was not finally adopted until the 14th century; other names commonly given were Agnes or Gilberta. According to later legend Joan was an Englishwoman, but her birthplace was given as the German city of Mainz—an apparent inconsistency that some writers reconciled by explaining that her parents migrated to that city. She supposedly fell in love with an English Benedictine monk and, dressing as a man, accompanied him to Athens. Having acquired great learning, she moved to Rome, where she became CARDINAL and pope. From the 13th century the story appears in literature, including the works of the Benedictine chronicler Ranulf Higden and the Italian humanists Giovanni Boccaccio and Petrarch. In the 15th century, Joan’s existence was regarded as fact, even by the COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE in 1415. During the 16th and 17th centuries the story was used for Protestant polemics. It was the Calvinist David Blondel who made the first determined attempt to destroy the fable in his Éclaircissement familier de la question: Si une femme a été assise au siège papal de Rome (1647; “Familiar Enlightenment of the Question: Whether a Woman Had Been Seated on the Papal Throne in Rome”).

JOAN OF ARC, SAINT \9j+n … 9!rk \, French Jeanne d’Arc

\ zh!n-9d#rk \ , byname The Maid of Orléans (b. c. 1412, Domrémy, Bar, France—d. May 30, 1431, Rouen; canonized May 16, 1920; feast day May 30; French national holiday, second Sunday in May), national heroine of France, a peasJOAN, POPE \9j+n \, legendary female pontiff who suppos- ant girl who, believing that she was acting under divine edly reigned, as John VIII, for slightly more than 25 months, guidance, led the French army in a momentous victory at from 855 to 858, between the Orléans that repulsed an Enpontificates of Leo IV (847– glish attempt to conquer 855) and Benedict III (855–858). Satan leaves the presence of God to test Job, France during the Hundred I t h a s s u b s e q u e n t l y b e e n engraving by William Blake, 1825, for an illustrated Years’ War. Captured a year afproved that a gap of only a few terward, Joan was burned by edition of the Book of Job weeks fell between Leo and the English and their French By courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum—photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co., Ltd. collaborators as a heretic. She Benedict and that the story is entirely apocryphal. became the greatest national heroine of France; her achieveOne of the earliest extant sources for the Joan legend is ment was a decisive factor in the De septem donis Spiritu the awakening of French naSancti (“The Seven Gifts of the tional consciousness. Holy Spirit”), written by the J OB , T HE B OOK OF \ 9j+b \ , 13th-century French DOMINI CAN Stephen of Bourbon, who OLD TESTAMENT book that is ofdated Joan’s election to approxten counted among the masimately 1100. In this account terpieces of world literature. It the nameless pontiff was a is found in the third section of clever scribe who became a pathe biblical canon known as pal notary and later was electthe KETUBIM, or Writings. The book’s theme is the eternal ed pope; pregnant at the time problem of unmerited sufferof her election, she gave birth ing, and it is named after its during the PROCESSION to the Lateran, whereupon she was central character, Job, who atdragged out of Rome and tempts to understand the sufstoned to death. ferings that engulf him. The story was widely spread The Book of Job may be diduring the later 13th century, vided into two sections of mostly by FRIARS . Support for prose narrative, consisting of a the version that she died in prologue (Chapters 1–2) and childbirth and was buried on epilogue (Chapter 42:7–17); the spot was derived from the and intervening poetic dispufact that in later years papal tation (Chapters 3–42:6). The processions used to avoid a prose narratives date to before particular street, allegedly the 6th century ), and the where the event had occurred. poetry has been dated be575

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JOHANAN BEN ZAKKAI tween the 4th and the 6th century ). Chapters 28 and 32– 37 were probably later additions. The poetic disputations are set within the prose framework of an ancient legend that originated outside ISRAEL. This legend concerns Job, a prosperous man of outstanding piety. SATAN tests whether or not Job’s piety is rooted merely in his prosperity. But faced with the appalling loss of his possessions, his children, and finally his own health, Job still refuses to curse God. Three of his friends then arrive to comfort him, and at this point the poetic dialogue begins, which probes the meaning of Job’s sufferings. Job proclaims his innocence and the injustice of his suffering, while his friends argue that Job is so afflicted because of personal SIN. A final conversation between Job and God resolves the dramatic tension without, however, solving the problem of undeserved suffering. The speeches evoke Job’s trust in the purposeful activity of God in the world, even though God’s ways remain mysterious and inscrutable.

JOHANAN BEN ZAKKAI \j+-9ha-n‘n-ben-9za-k@-0&, -z!-9k& \, one of the most important early rabbinic authorities, who was active during the last years of the Second TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM and, after its destruction (70 (), was founder and head of the rabbinic academy at Jamnia (now Yibna). He is named as the final link in the chain of authorities in Mishnah Abot that begins with MOSES and concludes with the early rabbinic movement. He is said to have received the traditions of the oral TORAH from Shammai and HILLEL, the latter of whom called him “father of wisdom” and “father of the coming generations” (Y. Nedarim 39b). Later sources speak of Johanan’s importance as a teacher of the leading 2nd-century sages and as a principal authority in establishing the foundations of the MISHNAH. But the Mishnah itself quotes in his name only a few matters of law concerning cultic cleanness and, in several cases, related to the impact of the destruction of the Temple on liturgical practices. Later Talmudic sources add a large number of stories about his life and work, commenting frequently on his piety. Among these materials, perhaps most famous is the depiction of his actions during the war with Rome in 70 (. Unable to convince the Jews of Jerusalem to give up their fight for freedom from Roman dominion, Johanan reportedly escaped the besieged city in a coffin and went to the Roman camp. There he met with Vespasian, whom he announced would be made emperor of Rome, a prediction that almost immediately was fulfilled. In recognition of his wisdom, Vespasian is said to have granted Johanan the right to establish at Jamnia a center for study and religious observance (B. Gittin 56a–b). Johanan is noted for his teaching (M. Abot 2:8), “If you have learned much Torah, do not puff yourself up on that account, for it was for that purpose that you were created.” His devotion to study and piety is depicted at B. Sukkah 28a: They said about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai: He never engaged in idle chatter, he never went four cubits without words of Torah and without wearing his phylacteries, no one ever got to the study house before him, he never slept in the study house, neither a real nap nor a snooze, he never reflected upon holy matters while in filthy alleys, he never left anyone behind him in the study house when he went out, no one ever found him sitting and dreaming, but only sitting and repeating traditions, only he himself opened the door of his

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house for his disciples, he never said anything that he had not heard from his master, and he never said, “Time has come to arise from studying in the study house,” except for doing so on the eve of Passover and on the eve of the Day of Atonement [when liturgical obligations required this]. And that is how R. Eliezer, his disciple, conducted himself after him.

J OHN OF D AMASCUS , S AINT , also called Saint John Damascene, Latin Johannes Damascenus (b. c. 675, Damascus—d. Dec. 4, 749, near Jerusalem; Western feast day December 4), Eastern Christian monk and doctor of the Greek and Latin churches who stood in the forefront of the ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY and was also a preeminent intermediary between Greek and medieval Latin cultures. John of Damascus succeeded his father as one of the Muslim caliph’s tax officials, and while still a government minister he wrote three Discourses on Sacred Images, c. 730, defending their veneration against the Byzantine emperor Leo III and the Iconoclasts. The Iconoclasts obtained a condemnation of John at the Council of Hieria in 754 that was reversed at the second COUNCIL OF NICAEA in 787. Soon after 730, John became a monk at Mar Saba, near Jerusalem, and there passed the rest of his life studying, writing, and preaching, acquiring the name “the Golden Orator” (Greek: Chrysorrhoas, literally “the Golden Stream”). Among his approximately 150 written works the most significant is Pugu gnjsejs (“The Source of Knowledge”), a synthesis of Christian philosophy and doctrine that was influential in directing the course of medieval Latin thought and that became the principal textbook of Greek Orthodox theology. Its “Exposition [Ekthesis] of the Orthodox Faith,” through its translation into oriental languages and Latin, served both Eastern and Western thinkers not only as a source of logical and theological concepts but also, by its systematic style, as a model for subsequent theological syntheses by medieval Scholastics in the West. A counterpart to The Source of Knowledge is John’s anthology of moral exhortations, the Sacred Parallels, culled from biblical texts and from writings of the CHURCH FA THERS . Among his literary works are several intricately structured HYMNS for the Greek liturgy, although his reputation in liturgical poetry rests largely on his revision of the Eastern Church’s hymnal, the Octouchos. J OHN OF THE C ROSS , S AINT , original name Juan de Yepes y Álvarez (b. June 24, 1542, Fontiveros, Spain—d. Dec. 14, 1591, Ubeda; canonized 1726; feast day December 14), one of the greatest Christian mystics and Spanish poets, doctor of the church, reformer of Spanish MONASTICISM, and cofounder of the order of Discalced CARMELITES. John became a Carmelite monk at Medina del Campo, Spain, in 1563 and was ordained a priest in 1567. ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA enlisted his help (1568) in her restoration of Carmelite life to its original observance of austerity. A year later, at Duruelo, he opened the first Discalced Carmelite monastery. Reform, however, caused friction within the order and led to his imprisonment in 1576 and again in 1577 at Toledo, where he wrote some of his finest poetry. Escaping in 1578, he later won high office in the order, becoming vicar provincial of Andalusia from 1585 to 1587. Late in his life the Discalced Carmelites were again troubled by dissension, and he withdrew to absolute solitude. John schematized the steps of mystical ascent—a selfcommunion that in quietude leads the individual from the

JOHN THE BAPTIST, SAINT distractions of the world to the sublime peace of reunion between the soul and God. John’s schematization combines a poetic sensitivity for the nuances of mystical experience with a theological and philosophical precision guided by his study of ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. By virtue of his intense poems such as “Cántico espiritual” (“The Spiritual Canticle”) and “Noche obscura del alma” (“The Dark Night of the Soul”), he achieves preeminence in Spanish mystical literature, expressing the experience of the mystical union between the soul and Christ.

J OHN P AUL II, P OPE , Latin Johannes Paulus, original name Karol Wojtysa (b. May 18, 1920, Wadowice, Pol.—d. April 2, 2005, Vatican City), pope from 1978 to 2005, the the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and the first from a Slavic country. A charismatic and popular figure, he was known for his traditional teachings on personal and sexual morality, his anticommunism, and his overtures to other religions, especially JUDAISM. Wojtysa studied for the PRIESTHOOD at an underground seminary in Kraków during World War II; he was ordained in 1946. In 1948 he earned two doctoral degrees, one in philosophy and the other in sacred THEOLOGY. He became archbishop of Kraków in 1964 and cardinal in 1967. He was elected pope on Oct. 16, 1978. In 1981 he was shot in St. Peter’s Square by a Turkish gunman, but he recovered and forgave his would-be assassin. John Paul made numerous trips abroad, where his outdoor masses and sermons attracted some of the largest crowds ever assembled. His messages of nonviolence, democracy, and respect for human rights aided the Solidarity movement in communist Poland and were credited with contributing to the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. He also championed economic and political justice in the West and in developing countries. Hoping to strengthen the Catholic faith in many cultures, he canonized numerous saints from non-Western regions and more saints altogether than had any of his predecessors. His ecumenical efforts included meetings with Jewish, Muslim, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant religious leaders; he was the first pope to enter the Great SYNAGOGUE in Rome and the first pope to enter a MOSQUE. In 2000 he made a historic pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he prayed at the WESTERN WALL. John Paul maintained the church’s traditional prohibitions against the ORDINATION of women and clerical marriage. He also took steps to curb LIBERATION THEOLOGY, which he regarded as too closely allied with Marxism. His positions on issues such as artificial contraception and homosexuality alienated some segments of the laity. His centralized style of church governance was perceived by some clergy as autocratic and stifling. Despite his enormous popularity, he failed to stem the long-standing decline in vocations and church attendance, and late in his reign he was faulted for not dealing effectively with revelations of sexual abuse committed by priests. In 2005 Pope BENEDICT XVI allowed the cause of John Paul II for beatification and CANONIZATION to proceed without the usual fiveyear waiting period. JOHN THE APOSTLE, SAINT, also called Saint John the Evangelist, or Saint John the Divine (fl. 1st century (), in Christian tradition, the author of three letters, the Fourth Gospel, and the REVELATION TO JOHN in the NEW TESTAMENT. He played a leading role in the early church at Jerusalem. The son of Zebedee, a fisherman, and Salome, John and

his brother JAMES were among Jesus’ first disciples. In the Gospel According to Mark, John is always mentioned after James and was no doubt the younger brother. His mother was among the women who ministered to the circle of disciples. John, James, and Simon Peter formed an inner nucleus of intimate disciples. In the Fourth Gospel the sons of Zebedee are mentioned only once, as being at the shores of the lake of Tiberias when the risen Lord appeared; whether the “disciple whom Jesus loved” (who is never named) mentioned in this Gospel is to be identified with John (also not named) is not clear from the text. John’s authoritative position in the church after the RESURRECTION is shown by his visit with PETER to Samaria to lay hands on the new converts there. It is to Peter, James (not the brother of John but “the brother of Jesus”), and John that PAUL submitted his Gospel for recognition. John’s subsequent history is obscure and passes into legend. At the end of the 2nd century, Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, claims that John’s tomb is at Ephesus, identifies him with the beloved disciple, and adds that he “was a priest, wearing the sacerdotal plate, both martyr and teacher.” That John died in Ephesus is also stated by IRENAEUS, bishop of Lyon c. 180 (, who says that John wrote his Gospel and letters at Ephesus and his Revelation at Patmos. Legend was also active in the West, being especially stimulated by the passage in Mark 10:39, with its hints of John’s martyrdom. TER TULLIAN reports that John was plunged into boiling oil from which he miraculously escaped. This event is still annually commemorated on May 6. John’s feast day otherwise is December 27. The belief that John did not die is based on an early tradition. In the original form of the apocryphal Acts of John (second half of the 2nd century) the Apostle dies; but in later traditions he is assumed to have ascended to heaven like ELIJAH. The legends that contributed most to medieval ICONOGRAPHY are mainly derived from the Acts of John, the source of the notion that John became a disciple as a young man. Iconographically, the young, beardless type came to be preferred in the medieval West. In the Byzantine world the evangelist is portrayed as old, with long, white beard and hair, usually carrying his Gospel. His symbol as an evangelist is an eagle. Because of the inspired visions of the book of Revelation the Byzantine churches called him “the Divine,” a title which appears in Byzantine manuscripts of Revelation but not of the Gospel. John is also titled “the Theologian,” as expositor of the doctrine of the TRINITY.

JOHN THE BAPTIST, SAINT (b. Judaea—fl. early 1st cen-

tury (), Jewish prophet of priestly origin who preached the imminence of God’s Final Judgment and baptized those who repented in self-preparation for it; he is revered in the Christian church as the forerunner of JESUS CHRIST. The sources of information about John are the GOSPELS (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, and JOSEPHUS’ Antiquities of the Jews. The Gospels recognize in John the forerunner of Jesus and the herald of of the KINGDOM OF GOD. Each tries to reconcile John’s precedence in time and Jesus’ acceptance of his message and of BAPTISM from his hands (elements suggesting subordination to John) with the author’s belief in Jesus as the MESSIAH and the Son of God. In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, John is the prophet ELIJAH returned; in Luke’s Gospel and his Acts of the Apostles, John is the inaugurator of the time of fulfillment of PROPHECY. John reduces the Baptist to a model Christian preacher and omits Jesus’ baptism. John was born in Judaea to Zechariah, a priest of the or-

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JOHN XXIII, POPE der of Abijah, and his wife, Eliza6:14–29), Herod’s stepdaughter, beth, perhaps a relative of MARY, Salome, prompted by her mother the mother of Jesus. His formaHerodias, demanded John’s head tive years were spent in the Judaeas a reward for dancing for Herod an desert, where monastic comand his guests. It is probable that munities, such as the ESSENES, and John’s followers recovered and individual HERMITS often educated buried his body and revered his the young in their own ideals. In tomb. The traditional burial site, 27/28 or 28/29 John attained pubat Sebaste (originally Samaria), is lic notice as a prophet. His ausattested from 360 onward. In 35– tere camel-hair garment was the 36, Herod was defeated by Aretas, traditional garb of the prophets, an event popularly considered to and his diet of locusts and wild have been divine vengeance for honey represented either strict adkilling John. herence to Jewish purity laws or J OHN XXIII, P OPE , original the ascetic conduct of a NAZIRITE. H i s m e s s a g e w a s t h a t G o d ’s name Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli wrathful judgment on the world (b. Nov. 25, 1881, Sotto il Monte, was imminent and that the people Italy—d. June 3, 1963, Rome; beshould repent their SINS, be bapatified Sept. 3, 2000; feast day October 3), one of the most popular tized, and produce appropriate popes of all times (reigned 1958– fruits of repentance. 63), who inaugurated a new era of Although John had an inner cirthe ROMAN CATHOLIC church by his cle of disciples, baptism was not a openness to change, shown esperite of admission into this group. cially in his convoking of the SECInstead it symbolized repentance OND VATICAN COUNCIL. in preparation for the coming Roncalli began preparing for the judgment; it was to be accompaPRIESTHOOD at age 11. He was sent nied, both before and after, by a to Rome for theological studies in righteous life. It was hardly con1900. After a period of military ceived as a S A C R A M E N T in the Christian sense, and the Jewish service he was ordained on Aug. rite of baptism of converts differs 10, 1904. He returned to Rome for further study, eventually receivfundamentally from it and is not St. John the Baptist, fresco by Pinturicchio, its source. John’s baptism probaing a doctorate in CANON LAW. 1504–05; in the chapel of St. John the Baptist, For most of his life Roncalli bly symbolized not so much anthe cathedral of Siena, Italy toiled in relative obscurity, first ticipated entrance into the KingAlinari—Art Resource as director of the Italian organizadom of God as submission to the tion for the support of foreign MIScoming world judgment, which SIONS, then as apostolic visitor to was represented as a coming secBulgaria (1925–35), and finally as apostolic delegate to ond “baptism” by the HOLY SPIRIT in a river of fire. The discovery of the DEAD SEA SCROLLS has drawn atten- Greece. In 1944 Roncalli, by now an archbishop, was tion to the numerous parallels between John’s mission and named papal nuncio to Charles de Gaulle’s newly liberated that of the Essenes, with whom John may have received France. The post was particularly delicate, as Roncalli’s presome of his religious training. Both were priestly in origin, decessor had cooperated with the hated Vichy government ascetic, and with intense and similar expectations about and there was a growing trend of radicalism among the the end of the world. But John neither belonged to nor in- younger French clergy. His success in this assignment was tended to found any organized community; he did not acknowledged by the PAPACY when he was named a CARDINAL by PIUS XII. In 1953, at age 71, he was appointed Patristress study of the Mosaic Law; and his message was more arch of Venice. After the death of Pius XII on Oct. 9, 1958, widely directed than was that of the Essenes. he was elected pope on the 12th ballot—a compromise canJesus, who was baptized by John, saw in him the last and didate acceptable because of his advanced years. greatest of the prophets, the one who prepared for the comSoon after his coronation, John XXIII announced plans ing of God’s Kingdom (Mark 9, Matthew 11, Luke 7), and in for an ecumenical council, the first in almost a century. He many ways his ministry continued and developed that of was the first pope since the REFORMATION to acknowledge John. Whether John, who probably expected a divine Son of Man, recognized him in Jesus is not clear, but many of his that Catholicism was in need of reform. Some cardinals sought to delay the council until the pope’s death, when disciples later followed Jesus. Some time after baptizing Jesus, John was imprisoned the project could be quietly dropped, but John pushed on with his plan. He presided over the first session of the Secand executed by Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and central ond Vatican Council in the fall of 1962. Transjordan. Herod had married (illegally, by Jewish law) The council was a pastoral one. No new dogmas were to Herodias, the divorced wife of his half brother, after divorcbe pronounced, though old teachings were to be reexaming his first wife, the daughter of King Aretas IV of the Nabataeans. John’s denunciation of this marriage doubtless ined. The council was to work toward achieving Christian unity by putting aside past hostilities and acknowledging a convinced Herod of the danger that his Jewish subjects share of responsibility for the scandal of a divided CHRISwould combine with his semi-Arab subjects in opposition TIANITY. John received EASTERN ORTHODOX, Anglican (see ANto him. According to the Gospel (Matthew 14:1–12; Mark

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JOSEL OF ROSHEIM GLICAN COMMUNION), and PROTESTANT religious leaders with cordiality and made sure that they were invited to send observers to the Vatican Council. He removed certain words offensive to Jews from the liturgy of the church. He played down his own position as ruler of the Vatican, emphasizing his role as “servant of the servants of God.” During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, he publicly urged the United States and the Soviet Union to exercise restraint. His major ENCYCLICAL, Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”), set forth the requirements for world peace in profoundly human terms. John suggested that peaceful coexistence between the West and the Communist East was not only desirable but was actually necessary if humankind was to survive. After his death in 1963 John’s successor, PAUL VI, instituted formal proceedings that could lead to his CANONIZATION.

J ONATHAN \ 9j!-n‘-th‘n \, in the OLD TESTAMENT (1 and 2 Samuel), eldest son of King Saul; he is highly admired for his fidelity to the future king DAVID. Jonathan’s defeat of the Philistines at Geba is described in 1 Samuel 13:2. Later he and his armor bearer took the outpost at Michmash. The Israelites then attacked and defeated the Philistines. SAUL ordered a fast, but the absent Jonathan, unaware of the order, ate wild honey. When Saul asked God about the war and got no answer, Saul blamed the silence on Jonathan’s failure to fast. Jonathan was saved from death when he was ransomed by Saul’s own soldiers. When David joined Saul’s household, he and Jonathan became friends. After Saul turned against David, Jonathan strove to reconcile them. Saul tried to enlist Jonathan’s aid to kill David, but Jonathan warned David instead. When the two met for the last time, they planned that David would be the next king of Israel and Jonathan his minister. Saul, Jonathan, and Jonathan’s brothers were killed in a battle against the Philistines at Mt. Gilboa. Despoiled and exposed by the Philistines, the bodies were buried in Jabesh. Years later, David reinterred the remains in the tomb of Kish in the land of BENJAMIN.

J ÖRD \ 9y[r\ \ (Old Norse: “Earth”), also called Fjörgyn \ 9fy[r-gin \, or Hlódyn \ 9hl+-\in \, in GERMANIC RELIGION, a giantess, mother of THOR and mistress of ODIN. In the late pre-Christian era she was believed to have had a husband of the same name, perhaps indicating her transformation into a masculine personality.

J ÖRMUNGAND \ 9y[r-m>n-0g!nd \, in GERMANIC RELIGION, the evil serpent that encircles the world and is the chief enemy of THOR. Jörmungand is also called the world-serpent, Midgardsorm. Legends relate that the serpent will be the cause of Thor’s death at RAGNARÖK, the doom of the gods. JOSEL OF ROSHEIM \9y+-z‘l, -s‘l . . . 9r+s-0h&m \, also called Joselmann, or Joselin, of Rosheim, or Joseph Ben Gershon Loans (b. c. 1478, Alsace?—d. March 1554, Rosheim, Alsace [now in France]), famous shtadlan (advocate who protected the interests and pled the cause of the Jewish people). He prevented many acts of persecution. Josel realized keenly the precarious status of German Jewry, which was caught between rival imperial, municipal, and Christian religious sovereignties. By his diplomatic skills, he found listeners at the imperial court, which, through him, sought to strengthen its own hold over the Jewish communities. Thus, when Rosheim’s Jewish community was threatened in 1525 by marauding peasants, Jo-

Jim Jones UPI—Corbis–Bettmann

JONES, JIM \9j+nz \, byname of James Warren Jones (b. May 13, 1931, near Lynn, Ind., U.S.—d. Nov. 18, 1978, Jonestown, Guyana), American leader of the Peoples Temple, a NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT, some 900 of whose members died in a mass murder-suicide known as the Jonestown Massacre (Nov. 18, 1978). Jones began the Peoples Temple informally in the 1950s as an independent congregation in Indianapolis, Ind. Inspired by the ideal of a just society and mixing social concerns with FAITH HEALING and an enthusiastic worship style, he attracted mostly African-Americans to the group, though Jones himself was white. In 1965 he moved the church to northern California. Following accusations by journalists and defectors that he was defrauding church members, Jones and hundreds of his followers emigrated to Guyana and set up the Jonestown commune there in 1977. On Nov. 14, 1978, U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan of California arrived in Guyana with a group of newsmen and relatives of church members to conduct an unofficial investigation of alleged abuses. As Ryan’s party and 14 defectors prepared to return to the U.S. from an airstrip near Jonestown, Ryan and 4 others were killed by Jones’ followers. The same day, the vast majority of church members obeyed Jones’ command to drink cyanide-laced fruit punch. Jones died of a gunshot wound to the head, possibly self-inflicted. The death toll at Jonestown included 276 children. 579 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

JOSEPH sel, by a combination of bribery and persuasion, managed to save his city. Soon after the coronation in 1520 of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V, Josel presented him with a memorandum that convincingly refuted the popular accusation that the Jews were allies of the expanding Ottoman Empire; this document averted proposed anti-Semitic measures. In the same year, Josel persuaded the government that the Jews desired better relations with it and convoked an assembly of representatives of all German Jewish communities.

JOSEPH \9j+-s‘f, -z‘f \, in the OLD TESTAMENT, son of the patriarch JACOB and his wife Rachel. According to tradition, his bones were buried at Shechem, oldest of the northern shrines. His story is told in GENESIS (37–50). Joseph, most beloved of Jacob’s sons, is hated by his envious brothers. Angry and jealous of Jacob’s gift to Joseph, a resplendent “coat of many colors,” the brothers sell him to a party of Ishmaelites, or MIDIANITES , who carry him to Egypt. There Joseph gains the favor of the pharaoh of Egypt by his interpretation of a dream and obtains a high place in the kingdom. His acquisition of grain supplies enables Egypt to withstand a famine. Driven by the same famine, his brothers journey from CANAAN to Egypt, where they prostrate themselves before Joseph but do not recognize him. After Joseph reconciles with his brothers, he invites Jacob’s household to come to Goshen in Egypt, where a settlement is provided for the family and their flocks. His brothers’ sale of Joseph into slavery thus proves providential, since it protected the family from famine. The family’s descendants grew and multiplied into the Hebrews, who would eventually depart from Egypt for Israel. The purpose of the story is to relate the preservation of Israel. Its people survive despite their foolishness and wickedness, indeed, ironically, in part because of these. The story is a testimony to the operation of divine providence: “you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20) sums up its moral. Even so, God had realized his end through the faithfulness of Joseph, true to Israel’s ideals under all circumstances and ever mindful of his obligations to his people. JOSEPH, SAINT (fl. 1st century (, Nazareth, Galilee, region of Palestine; principal feast day March 19, Feast of St. Joseph the Worker May 1), in the NEW TESTAMENT, Jesus’ earthly father, the Virgin MARY’s husband, and in ROMAN CATHOLICISM patron of the universal church. His life is recorded in the Gospels, particularly Matthew and Luke. Joseph was descended of King David. After marrying Mary, he found her already pregnant and, being “a just man and unwilling to put her to shame” (Matthew 1:19), decided to divorce her quietly; but an ANGEL told him that the child was the son of God and was conceived by the Holy Ghost. Obeying the angel, Joseph took Mary as his wife. After Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem in Judaea, the holy family eventually settled in Nazareth (Matthew 2:22–23) in Galilee, where Joseph taught his craft of carpentry to Jesus. Joseph is last mentioned in the Gospels when he and Mary frantically searched for the lost Jesus in Jerusalem, where they found him in the Temple (Luke 2:41–48). The circumstances of Joseph’s death are unknown, except that he probably died before Jesus’ public ministry began and was dead before the CRUCIFIXION (John 19:26–27). The 2nd-century Protevangelium of James and the 4thcentury History of Joseph the Carpenter present him as a widower with children at the time of his betrothal to Mary, 580 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

contributing to the confusion over the question of Jesus’ brothers and sisters. Although the veneration of Joseph seems to have begun in Egypt, the earliest Western devotion to him dates from the early 14th century, when the Servites, an order of MENDICANT FRIARS, observed his feast on March 19, the traditional day of his death. Among the subsequent promoters of the devotion was Pope Sixtus IV, who introduced it at Rome c. 1479, and the celebrated 16thcentury mystic ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA. Joseph was declared patron of the universal church by POPE PIUS IX in 1870. In 1955 POPE PIUS XII established the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker as May 1 as a Christian countercelebration to the Communists’ May Day.

JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA, SAINT \0ar-i-m‘-9th%-‘ \ (b. Arimathea, Samaria; fl. c. 30 (; Western feast day March 17, Eastern feast day July 31), according to all four Gospels, secret disciple of JESUS , whose body he buried in his own tomb. In designating him a “member of the council,” Mark 15:43 and Luke 23:50 suggest membership of the town council in Jerusalem. He held a high office and was the one to gain Pontius Pilate’s permission to obtain Jesus’ body for burial. Joseph is accorded a long history in later literature. In the apocryphal Gospel of Peter (2nd century), he is a friend of Jesus and of Pilate. In the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (or Acts of Pilate; 4th/5th century), Jews imprison Joseph after Jesus’ burial, but he is released by the risen Christ, thus becoming the first witness of the RESURRECTION. In Robert de Boron’s verse romance Joseph d’Arimathie (c. 1200), he is entrusted with the Holy Grail (cup) of the LAST SUPPER. A mid-13th-century interpolation relates that Joseph went to Glastonbury (in Somerset, Eng.), of which he is patron saint, as head of 12 missionaries dispatched there by the Apostle St. Philip. JOSEPHUS, FLAVIUS \j+-9s%-f‘s \ (b. 37/38 (, Jerusalem— d. c. 100 (, Rome), historian whose works provide an invaluable record of Roman-era Judaism. Born Joseph, the son of Matthias, into a priestly family in Jerusalem, Josephus fought against the Romans in the great war (66–73/74 (), was captured by them, then spent the last three decades of his life as a free man in Rome. While in Rome he wrote three works in Greek that have survived: Bellum Judaicum (“Judean War” [75–79]); Antiquitates Judaicae (“Judean Antiquities” [93]), and Contra Apionem (“Against Apion”). These works provide by far the most important chronological and geographical guides for the study of JUDAISM in the Greco-Roman world, especially for the period 200 ) to 75 (. A contemporary of the Gospel writers, Josephus incidentally provides critical background for the student of Christian origins. Josephus composed his copious historical material in the service of statements about Judaism. His expression of Judaism gives us unique insight into the views of one aristocrat, though we may safely assume that at least some of his class held similar views. The genius of this outlook is its fusion of biblical themes with core values of the GrecoRoman world. Josephus’ fundamental position was that God controlled all human affairs, causing various world powers to rise and fall in succession. Evincing a special debt to the biblical books of Jeremiah and Daniel, he structured both the War and the Antiquities around this central theme: that several nations had risen and fallen in the past, and now God was with the Romans. In the future, the Jewish nation would itself achieve greatness, and signs of this

JOSHUA astronomy to the Egyptians. Josephus believed that Pythagoras, Plato, and other Greeks had borrowed from the philosopher Moses. In his own day, Josephus described the main Jewish groups—the Essenes, whom he most admired, along with the PHARISEES and Sadducees—as philosophical schools within the national philosophy. Repeatedly throughout his writings, he tackled such philosophical questions as the soul, afterlife, and the roles of fate and free will; he explicitly repudiated EPICUREANISM. Josephus claimed that he wrote the sevenvolume Judean War to combat the numerous anti-Jewish accounts that had appeared after the Jewish-Roman conflict of 66–73/74 (. Those accounts had apparently presented the Roman victory as a triumph of the Roman gods over the Jewish God, and the revolt itself as an expression of the allegedly rebellious, antisocial character of the Jewish nation. Josephus directly challenged both propositions. He claimed that, although the Jews had been sorely pressed by incompetent governors, the people and their legitimate leaders were committed to peaceful existence in a Roman world under divine control. It was only a handful of demagogues among them who had engineered the fateful conflict, and these had now been punished. The Roman victory, further, was orchestrated by the God of the Jews, who used the Romans as he used all others, to achieve his ends. The Romans who formed Josephus’ most immediate audience for the War must Josephus before Vespasian, detail of a manuscript miniature, 14th have been somewhat sympathetic in advance century to bother with this book. By courtesy of the Hessische Landesbibliothek, Fulda, Ger. Josephus composed his major work, the 20volume Judean Antiquities, for the same sort of friendly audience, now associated with one development were already to be seen in the adoption of Epaphroditus, a Gentile named in the Antiquities as paJewish ways by others. The proper human response to this tron. Claiming that he had been pursued by Gentiles who state of affairs, exemplified most brilliantly in Josephus’ were keenly interested in the history and political constitucommentary on the ESSENES, was to be scrupulously faithful tion of the Jews, Josephus finally acceded to their demandto Jewish law and customs, while at the same time cooper- ing request: he offered 10 volumes on the period from creating with the provisional powers then ruling. Josephus’ ation to the destruction of the First Temple (to the 6th view of history thus supported the aristocrats’ comfortable century )) and another 10 on the period of the Second world; in laying responsibility for the choosing of political Temple (to 66 (). This work spells out in detail the founleadership with God, this view enshrined the status quo dations and terms of the Jewish constitution, and then and precluded the popular revolutionary sentiments that gives numerous examples, from Judea and abroad (even threatened ancient aristocracies. from Rome), of its universal effectiveness. The appendix Josephus also believed the Jews to possess the finest known as the Life is a highly rhetorical depiction of Jose“constitution” in existence, one that epitomized the highphus’ character, based on his ancestry and career as Gaest aspirations of the entire world. Discussion of optimal lilean commander in the war. constitutions was widespread in Josephus’ day, and had In Josephus’ final work, commonly known as Against been since Plato and Aristotle. Josephus argued in his work Apion after the essay of that name contained within this that MOSES had crafted the Jewish constitution—that is, ef- work—Josephus further elaborated the age and nobility of fectively, the TORAH—in harmony with the very principles the Jewish constitution, but in a systematic rather than of the universe. This remarkable constitution, which inex- chronological way, and in direct debate with the Jews’ main orably punished criminals and rewarded the virtuous, was literary opponents, most of whom came from Alexandria. known intimately by all Jews, even women and children. It JOSHUA \9j!-sh‘-w‘ \, also spelled Josue \9j!-shn, 9y|- \, also spelled Jöten \-t‘n \, in GERMANIC RELIGION, race of GIANTS that lived in JÖTUNHEIM under one of the roots of YGGDRASILL. They were older than and ruled before the gods (AESIR), to whom they remained hostile. It was believed that RAGNARÖK, the destruction of this world and the beginning of a new one, would be brought about by a final battle between gods and giants.

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J ÖTUNHEIM \ 9y{-0t>n, 9y|- \, also known as Utgard \ 9_ \, also spelled Kushuh, the Hurrian moon god. Kushukh was regularly placed above the sun god, Shimegi; his consort was Niggal (the Sumero-Akkadian Ningal). His home was said to be the city of Kuzina (location unknown), and his cult was later adopted by the Hittites. As Lord of the OATH he had as his special function the punishment of perjury. He was represented as a winged man with a crescent on his helmet and sometimes standing on a lion; in this form he appears among the images of Hittite gods at the rock SANCTUARY of Yaz%l%kaya (near modern Boaazköy in Turkey). See ANATOLIAN RELIGIONS . KU T \9kr \ , ancient Sumerian composition bewailing the collapse of the 3rd Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112–c. 2004 )) in southern Mesopotamia. The lament, primarily composed of 11 “songs” or stanzas of unequal length, begins by enumerating some of the prominent cities and temples of Sumer and the deities who had deserted them. In the second “song,” the people of Ur and of other cities of Sumer are urged to set up a bitter lament. The third “song” relates that the goddess Ningal hears the pleas of the people of Ur, but she is not able to dissuade the gods ANU and ENLIL from their decision to destroy the city, and the remaining “songs” relate the devastating results of Ur’s defeat in battle. The last stanza ends with a plea to NANNA, the husband of Ningal, that the city may once more rise up and that the people of Ur may again present their offerings to him. L AMIA \ 9l@-m%-‘ \ , in Greek mythology, female

DEMON

who devoured children. According to late myths she was a queen of Libya who was beloved by ZEUS . When HERA robbed her of her children from this union, Lamia killed every child she could get into her power. She was also known as a fiend who, in the form of a beautiful woman, seduced young men in order to devour them.

L ANDAU , E ZEKIEL \ 9l#n-0da> \ (b. Oct. 8, 1713, Opatów, Pol.—d. April 29, 1793, Prague), Polish RABBI and author of a much-reprinted book on Jewish law (HALAKHAH). In 1734 Landau was appointed head of the rabbinical court at Brody, and in 1745 he became rabbi of Jampol, Podolia (then part of Poland). There he gained fame by his diplomacy in arbitrating the controversy between Rabbi JACOB EMDEN and Rabbi JONATHAN EYBESCHÜTZ . In 1755 he went to Prague as rabbi and remained there until his death. His Halakhic decisions ( RESPONSA ) were collected under the title Noda! be-Yehuda (“Known in Judah”). He was an implacable opponent of the two major currents of JUDAISM that arose in his generation: HASIDISM , which he opposed as sinfully ignorant, and HASKALAH , which he attacked as a threat to Jewish identity. Landau even went so far as to order the public burning of a famous Hasidic polemic, the Toledot Ya!aqov Yosef (“History of Jacob Joseph”) of JACOB JOSEPH OF POLONNOYE (d. c. 1782). LANGUAGE , RELIGIOUS , language that is usually understood as symbolic in nature, its hidden meanings needing to be decoded or translated. An explanation of religious language, however, really depends upon how we define religion and language. In general there are three basic approaches to the study of religious language. The first assumes that religion refers to some transcendent reality, usually called the sacred, or to all-encompassing questions in life, such as the meaning of life and death, good and evil, and suffering. The second approach views religion as basically expressive of emotions. With both of these approaches, religious language is not to be taken literally but is to be seen as symbols that stand for emotions that are noncognitive. The third approach denies that there is anything special about religious language. This theory, known as se-

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LAEKEVATERA SJTRA mantic theory, draws on LOGICAL POSITIVISM and claims that the meaning of religious language should be explained as part of ordinary language, in which meaning is determined by the truth conditions entailed by all languages. Throughout most of the 20 century the truth conditions of language of the Logical Positivists were based on empirical verification. Semantic theory accordingly takes religious language literally, since the notion of “hidden meaning” does not make semantic sense. This, however, led to the conclusion that religious language can be neither true nor false, since many statements— i.e., about the nature of God, on miracles, etc.—cannot be empirically verified. This in tur n led to the search for hidden meanings on the part of other scholars of religious language. Thus, while the development of many theories of symbolic meaning can be traced back to the power of Logical Positivism in the domain of semantic theory, many contemporary theories of semantic-truth conditions no longer entail the empirical correspondence theory of truth as the basic principle of meaning. While most studies of religious language assume some notion of symbolic, and thus hidden, meaning, no agreement has been reached concerning what the hidden meaning of religious language refers to.

most famous expressions in Virgil’s Aeneid (ii, 109 et seq.) and in the Laocoön statue (now in the Vatican Museum) by three Rhodian sculptors, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, dating probably from the 2nd century ).

L AOMEDON \ l@-9!-m‘-0d!n \, legendary king of Troy and father of Podarces (later famous as King PRIAM of Troy). Laomedon refused to give APOLLO and POSEIDON their wages after they had built the walls of Troy for him. The gods therefore sent a pestilence and a sea monster to ravage the land, which could be delivered only by the sacrifice of the king’s daughter Hesione. But HERACLES killed the monster and rescued the maiden on the understanding that Laomedon should give him his divine horses. When Laomedon later refused, Heracles returned with a band of warriors, captured Troy, and slew Laomedon and all his sons except Priam. Laomedon was buried near the Scaean Gate, and, according to legend, as long as his grave remained undisturbed the walls of Troy would remain impregnable. L AO - TZU \ 9la>-9dz~ \, Pinyin Laozi

(Chinese: “Master Lao,” or “Old Master”), also called Li Erh \9l%-9‘r \, Lao Tun \ -9d>n \, or Lao Tan \ -9d!n \, deified as Lao-chün, T’ai-shang Laochün, or T’ai-shang hsüan-yüan huaL AEKEVATERA S JTRA \ l‘=-0k!ng-ti (fl. c. 6th century )?, China), legendary first philosopher of Chiv‘-9t!r-‘-9s-m! \ (Latvian), Lithuanian Laumw \ 9la>-m@ \, or Deivw \9d?@-v@ \, in Baltic FOLKLORE, fairy who appears as a beautiful naked maiden with long fair hair. Laumas dwell in the forest near water or stones. Being unable to give birth, they often kidnap babies to raise as their own. Sometimes they marry young men and become excellent wives, perfectly skilled in all domestic work. They are noted as swift spinners and weavers, and, when they spin on Thursday evenings and launder after sunset on the other days, no mortal woman is allowed to do the same. Laumas are benevolent, motherly beings, helpful to orphans and poor girls, but they are extremely vindictive when angered, particularly by disrespectful men. Among the Lithuanians, a laumw was sometimes called laumw-ragana, indicating that she may have been a prophetess (ragana) at one time. By the 18th century laumw was totally confused with ragana and came to denote a witch or hag capable of changing into a snake or toad. Not only could a laumw fly, she could also transform people into birds, dogs, and horses and dry up a cow’s milk. Similarly, in modern Latvian lauma is a hag and lauminet means “to practice WITCHCRAFT.”

L AZARUS , M ORITZ \9l!t-s!-r>s \ (b. Sept. 15, 1824, Filehne, Prussia [now Wielev, Pol.]—d. April 13, 1903, Meran, Austria [now Merano, Italy]), Jewish philosopher and psychologist, a leading opponent of ANTI - SEMITISM and a founder of comparative psychology. The son of a rabbinical scholar, Lazarus studied Hebrew literature and history, law, and philosophy at Berlin. He served as professor at Bern (1860–66), at the Kriegs Akademie in Berlin (1867–73), and at the Friedrich Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University of Berlin; 1873). Lazarus’ philosophy stated that truth must be sought in psychological investigation and the psychologist must study humanity from the historical or comparative standpoint, analyzing the elements that constitute the fabric of society. To further this Völkerpsychologie, he founded, with the philologist H. Steinthal, the journal Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (1859). His chief philosophical work is Das Leben der Seele, 3 vol.

LEE, ANN (1855–57; “The Life of the Soul”). In both 1869 and 1871 Lazarus was president of the Liberal Jewish synods at Leipzig and Augsburg. His works on Jewish subjects include Treu und frei: Reden und Vorträge über Juden und Judenthum (1887; “Faithful and Free: Speeches and Lectures About Jews and Judaism”); a monograph on the prophet JEREMIAH (1894); and Die Ethik des Judentums, 2 vol. (vol. 1, 1898; vol. 2, 1911; The Ethics of Judaism), which soon achieved the rank of a standard work.

the ROMAN CATHOLIC lectionaries, Luther including a greater proportion of doctrinal passages. In the Anglican church, the first edition of THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER assigned for each day a passage of the Old Testament and the NEW TESTAMENT to be read at both the morning and evening services. Nearly all the saints’ days were dropped, and the new system assigned chapters of the Bible to be read consecutively.

Moritz Lazarus, 1892 By courtesy of the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin

L EAH \ 9l%-‘, 9l@-‘ \ , also spelled Lia \ 9l&-‘ \, in the OLD TESTAMENT , first wife of JACOB and the traditional ancestor of five of the TWELVE TRIBES OF ISRAEL. Leah was the mother of six of Jacob’s sons: REUBEN , SIMEON , Levi (see LEVITE ), ISSACHAR, ZEBULUN , and JUDAH ( GENESIS 29:31–35; 30:17–20). After Jacob had deprived his brother ESAU of his birthright and blessing (Genesis 25:29–34; 27:1–40), he took refuge in the household of his uncle Laban (Genesis 27:43; 28:1–5). There he fell in love with Laban’s younger daughter, Rachel, working for Laban seven years to win her hand. On the night of the nuptial feast, however, Laban deceived him by sending in Leah; thus, Jacob was compelled to work another seven years for Rachel (Genesis 29:1-30). Jacob did not love Leah, but God consoled her with children before allowing Rachel to become pregnant. According to some traditions, she was buried in Hebron on the west bank of the Jordan River (Genesis 49:31). LECTIONARY \ 9lek-sh‘-0ner-% \ , in CHRISTIANITY, a book containing portions of the BIBLE appointed to be read on particular days of the year. The word is also used for the list of such SCRIPTURE lessons. The early Christians adopted the Jewish custom of reading extracts from the OLD TESTAMENT on the SABBATH. They soon added extracts from the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists. During the 3rd and 4th centuries, several systems of lessons were devised for churches of various localities. At first, the lessons were marked off in the margins of manuscripts of the Scriptures. Later, special lectionary manuscripts were prepared, containing in sequence the appointed passages. The Greek church developed two forms of lectionaries, one (Synaxarion) arranged in accord with the ecclesiastical year and beginning with EASTER, the other (Munologion) arranged according to the civil year (beginning September 1) and commemorating the festivals of various saints and churches. Other national churches produced similar volumes. Among the Western churches during the medieval period the ancient usage at Rome prevailed, with its emphasis on ADVENT. During the 16th-century REFORMATION the LUTHERANS and Anglicans (see ANGLICAN COMMUNION) made changes in

LECTISTERNIUM \ 0lek-t‘-9st‘r-n%-‘m \ (Latin, from lectum sternere, “to spread a couch [with blankets or cushions]”), ancient Greek and Roman rite in which a meal was offered to gods and goddesses whose representations were laid upon a couch positioned in the open street. On the first occasion of the rite (399 )), which originated in Greece, couches were prepared for three pairs of gods: APOLLO and Latona, Hercules (see HERACLES ) and DIANA, MERCURY and NEPTUNE . The feast, lasting for seven or eight days, was also celebrated by private individuals; the citizens kept open house, debtors and prisoners were released, and everything was done to banish sorrow. In later times, similar honors were paid to other divinities. The rite largely replaced the old Roman epulum and daps, in which the god was not visibly represented. In Christian times, the word was used for a feast in memory of the dead.

LEDA \9l%-d‘ \, in Greek mythology, daughter of Thestius, king of Aetolia, and wife of Tyndareus, king of Lacedaemon; alternatively, mother by Tyndareus of Clytemnestra and Castor, one of the DIOSCURI. She was also believed to have been the mother (by ZEUS, who had approached her in the form of a swan) of the other twin, Polydeuces, and of HELEN of Troy, both of whom hatched from eggs. Variant tales gave divine parentage to both the twins and possibly also to Clytemnestra, with all three of them having hatched from the eggs of Leda, while others say that Leda bore the twins to her mortal husband, Tyndareus. Still other variants say that Leda may have hatched Helen from an egg laid by the goddess NEMESIS, who was similarly approached by Zeus in the form of a swan. L EE , A NN \ 9l% \, byname Mother Ann (b. Feb. 29, 1736, Manchester, Eng.—d. Sept. 8, 1784, Watervliet, N.Y., U.S.), religious leader who brought the SHAKER sect from England to the American colonies. The daughter of a blacksmith, she was a factory worker who in 1758 joined the Shaking Quakers, an offshoot of the Quakers. She married in 1762, an unhappy union that probably influenced her later doctrinal insistence on CELIBACY. In 1770, during a period of religious persecution by the English authorities, she was imprisoned and while in jail became convinced of the truth of certain religious ideas perceived in a vision. She came to believe that sexual lust impeded Christ’s work and that only through celibacy could men and women further his kingdom on earth. Four years later, commanded in another vision, Lee persuaded her husband, brother, and six other followers to emigrate to America. There, her followers founded a settlement in the woods of Niskeyuna (now Watervliet), near Albany (in present-day New York state). Beginning with converts from nearby settlements, the Shaker movement grew and began to spread throughout New England to embrace thousands. Mother Ann, as she came to be known, was believed to have ushered in the MILLENNIUM, for the Shakers asserted that, as Christ had embodied the masculine half of God’s dual nature, so she embodied the female half. In 1780 Mother Ann was imprisoned for treason because

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LEI-KUNG of her pacifist doctrines and her refusal to sign an OATH of allegiance. She was soon released and in 1781–83 toured New England. According to witnesses, she performed a number of miracles, including healing the sick by touch.

LEI-KUNG \9l@-9g>= \, Pinyin Leigong, also called Lei-shen \-9sh‘n \ (Chinese: “Lord of Thunder”), Chinese Taoist and folk deity who, when so ordered by heaven, punishes earthly mortals guilty of secret crimes and evil spirits who have used their knowledge of TAOISM to harm human beings. Lei-kung is depicted as a fearsome creature with claws, bat wings, and a blue body and wears only a loincloth. Leikung’s assistants are those capable of producing other heavenly phenomena: lightning (Tien-mu), clouds (Yün-t’ung), rain (Yü-tzu), and winds (Feng-po, later transformed into the goddess Feng p’o-p’o).

L EMMINKÄINEN \ 9lem-m%n-0ka-%-nen \ , hero of Finnish traditional songs. In these songs Lemminkäinen travels to an otherworldly place where he overcomes many obstacles such as a ditch full of burning rocks and a fence made of snakes. When he reaches his goal he must also succeed at a series of tests and best his host in a wizard’s contest. The narrative up until this point is reminiscent of shamanistic tales of travels to the otherworld, but it takes a different turn when Lemminkäinen is killed. In some versions it is done with a hollow reed, in others with a snake, but in all tales he is killed with the only weapon against which he is defenseless. After Lemminkäinen’s death, his mother goes to great lengths to retreive his body and she finally succeeds, but her attempts to revive it are successful in only a few versions of the story. This last part may show some Christian influence and also influence from the Nordic story of the death of BALDER. L EMURES \9le-m‘-0r@s, 9lem-y‘-0r%z \, also called Larvae, in ROMAN RELIGION , wicked and fearsome specters of the dead. Appearing in grotesque and terrifying forms, they were said to haunt their living relatives and cause them injury. To propitiate these ghosts and keep them from the household, ritual observances called Lemuria were held yearly on May 9, 11, and 13. These Lemuria, reputedly instituted by Romulus in expiation of his brother’s murder, required the father of every family to rise at midnight, purify his hands, toss black beans for the spirits to gather, and recite entreaties for the spirits’ departure.

LENT, in the Christian church, period of penitential preparation for EASTER. In Western churches it begins on ASH WEDNESDAY, 6 weeks before Easter, and provides for a 40day fast (Sundays are excluded), in imitation of Jesus Christ’s fasting in the wilderness. In Eastern churches it begins eight weeks before Easter (both Saturdays and Sundays are excluded as fast days). Since apostolic times a period of preparation and fasting has been observed before the Easter festival. It was a time of preparation of candidates for BAPTISM and a time of penance for sinners. In the early centuries fasting rules were strict, as they still are in Eastern churches. One meal a day was allowed in the evening, and meat, fish, eggs, and butter were forbidden. In the West these fasting rules have gradually been relaxed. The strict law of fasting among ROMAN CATHOLICS was dispensed with during World War II, and only Ash Wednesday and GOOD FRIDAY are now kept as Lenten fast days, though the emphasis on penitential practice remains. 658 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

L EO I, SAINT \9l%-+ \, byname Leo the Great (b. late 4th century, Tuscany?—d. Nov. 10, 461, Rome; Western feast day November 10, Eastern feast day February 18), pope from 440 to 461, master exponent of papal supremacy. His pontificate—which saw the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the West and the formation in the East of theological differences that were to split Christendom—was devoted to safeguarding orthodoxy and securing the unity of the Western church. Consecrated on Sept. 29, 440, as successor to St. Sixtus III, Leo worked to suppress HERESY, which he regarded as the cause of corruption and disunity. The monk Eutyches of Constantinople had founded Eutychianism, a form of MONOPHYSITISM holding that Christ had only one nature, his human nature being absorbed in his divine nature. PATRIARCH Flavian of Constantinople excommunicated Eutyches, who then appealed to Leo. Leo sent Flavian (449) his celebrated Tome, which rejected Eutyches’ teaching and argued that Christ’s natures coexist and his INCAR NATION reveals how human nature is restored to perfect unity with divine being. The Council (451) of Chalcedon (moder n Kad%köy, Turkey), summoned to condemn Eutychianism, declared that Leo’s Tome was the ultimate truth. Leo held that papal power was granted by Christ to St. Peter alone and that that power was passed on by Peter to his Leo I, detail of a miniature successors. He cautioned from an ecclesiastical the bishop of Thessalonicalendar, 10th century ca that, although he had Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana been entrusted with office and shared Leo’s solicitude, he was “not to possess the plenitude of power.” Leo further enhanced the prestige of the PAPACY and helped to place Western leadership in its hands by dealing with invading barbarian tribes. He persuaded the Huns not to attack Rome in 452 and the Vandals not to sack Rome when they occupied it in 455. Leo was declared a doctor of the church by Pope Benedict XIV in 1754. L EO X, P OPE , original name Giovanni de’ Medici (b. Dec. 11, 1475, Florence—d. Dec. 1, 1521, Rome), one of the most extravagant of the Renaissance popes (reigned 1513– 21), who made Rome a center of European culture and raised the PAPACY to significant political power in Europe. However, he depleted the papal treasury, and, by his response to the developing REFORMATION, he contributed to the dissolution of the unified Western church. Leo excommunicated MARTIN LUTHER in 1521.

LETO

L EO XIII, P OPE , original name Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci (b. March 2, 1810, Carpineto Romano, Papal States— d. July 20, 1903, Rome), head of the ROMAN CATHOLIC church (1878–1903) who brought a new spirit to the PAPACY, manifested in a more conciliatory position toward civil government, through care that the church not be opposed to scientific progress, and through an awareness of the pastoral and social needs of the times. Pecci’s family was of the lower nobility. After his early education in Viterbo and Rome he completed his studies at the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici (Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics) in Rome. In 1837 he was ordained a priest and entered the diplomatic service of the Papal States. He was made delegate (the equivalent of provincial governor) of Benevento in 1838 and was transferred in 1841 to the more important delegation of Perugia. In January 1843 he was appointed nuncio to Brussels and shortly after was consecrated an archbishop. But King Leopold I, considering him less docile than his predecessor, soon demanded his recall. He was then named, early in 1846, bishop of Perugia, a small DIOCESE to which he was confined for 32 years, despite his having been made a CARDINAL in 1853; his harsh judgment of the opposition in the Papal States to the Roman Revolution of 1848 and his concern to avoid useless conflicts with the Italian authorities after the annexation of Umbria in 1860 made Rome wrongly suspect him of liberal sympathies. During this period of exile Pecci occupied himself with the renewal of Christian philosophy and studied particularly the writings of ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. He was also led to reconsider the problem of the relations between the church and modern society and became increasingly convinced of the mistake committed by ecclesiastical authorities in taking a fearful, negative attitude toward the aspirations of the times. In 1877 he was named camerlengo, the office of chief administrator of the church in the event that the pope dies. At the death of PIUS IX in February 1878 Cardinal Pecci was elected on the third ballot. The age of the new pope and his delicate health caused speculation that his pontificate would be brief. But, in fact, he directed the church for a quarter of a century. Pius IX had been a strong, conservative authoritarian, both in his governing of the church and in his opposition to the new Italian government that annexed the Papal States. Although the pontificate of Leo XIII had a new spirit, the new pope was as intractable as his predecessor on the principle of the temporal sovereignty of the pope and continued to consider the traditional doctrine of the Christian state as an ideal. He reacted strongly against secular liberalism. In church administration he continued to accentuate the centralization of authority in the papacy rather than in the national churches and reinforced the power of the nuncios (papal legates accredited as ambassadors to civil governments). He renewed the condemnations of rationalism— the theory that reason is the primary source of knowledge and of spiritual truth—and pursued with fresh vigor the reestablishment of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. In other respects, however, Leo XIII’s pontificate was characterized by change. In his relations with civil governments, Leo XIII showed his preference for diplomacy. He was also an intellectual sympathetic to scientific progress and to the need for the church to demonstrate itself open to such progress. In several instructions he recommended that CHURCH AND STATE live together in peace within the framework of modern society. The ENCYCLICAL Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”) in 1891 showed that the papacy

had cautiously taken cognizance of the problems of the working class. He supported the organization of the Catholic laity and the attempt to create a link between the Anglican church and Rome (despite his rejection of the validity of Anglican ORDINATION). During the last years of his pontificate there was a hardening of church policy and a more reserved attitude toward Christian democracy. LESHY \ 9l?e-sh~y \, in Slavic mythology, forest spirit. The leshy is a sportive spirit who enjoys playing tricks on people, though when angered he can be treacherous. He is seldom seen, but his voice can be heard in the forest laughing, whistling, or singing. When the leshy is spotted, he can be easily recognized; for, though he often has the appearance of a man, his eyebrows, eyelashes, and right ear are missing and his head is somewhat pointed. In his native forest the leshy is as tall as the trees, but, the moment he steps beyond, he shrinks to the size of grass. The Ukrainians living in steppe country lack a fully articulated leshy and know about him from hearsay. Similar to the leshy are the field spirit (polevoy) and, perhaps, the water spirit (VODYANOY). LEUYE \ 9l@sh-y! \ (Sanskrit: “light,” “tint”), according to JAINISM, the special aura of the soul that can be described in terms of color, scent, touch, and taste and that indicates the stage of spiritual progress reached by the creature, whether human, animal, demon, or divine. The leuye is determined by the adherence of karmic matter to the soul, resulting from both good and bad actions. This adherence is compared to the way in which particles of dust adhere to a body smeared with oil. The JJVA, or soul, is classified according to the good or bad emotions that hold sway. Thus the saleuj (“having leuye”) are all those who are swayed by any of the emotions, and the aleuj are those liberated beings (SIDDHAS) who no longer experience any feelings—neither pain nor pleasure, nor even humor. The three bad emotions (ill will, envy, and untruthfulness) give the leuye a bitter taste, a harsh or dull color, a smell that can be likened to the odor of a dead cow, and a texture rougher than the blade of a saw. The three good emotions (good will, union with goodness, and nondistinction) lend the aura the fragrance of sweet flowers, the softness of butter, a taste sweeter than fruit or honey, and a pleasing hue ranging from bright red to pure white.

LETHE \9l%-th% \ (Greek lKthK, literally, “act of forgetting,” “forgetfulness,” or “oblivion”), in Greek mythology, daughter of ERIS (Strife). Lethe is also the name of a river or plain in the Underworld. In Orphism, it was believed that the newly dead who drank from the River Lethe would lose all memory of their past existence. The initiated were taught to seek instead the river of memory, MNEMOSYNE, thus securing the end of the transmigration of the soul. At the oracle of Trophonius near Lebadeia (modern Levadhia, Greece), which was thought to be an entrance to the Underworld, there were two springs called Lethe and Mnemosyne. Aristophanes’ The Frogs mentions a plain of Lethe. In Book X of Plato’s The Republic the souls of the dead must drink from the “river of Forgetfulness” before rebirth. In the works of the Latin poets Lethe is one of the five rivers of the Underworld.

LETO \9l%-t+ \, Latin Latona \l‘-9t+-n‘ \, in classical mythology, TITAN daughter of Coeus and PHOEBE and mother of APOL659

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LEUCOTHEA LO and ARTEMIS. Leto, pregnant by ZEUS, sought a place of refuge to be delivered. She finally reached the isle of Delos, which, according to some, was a wandering rock borne about by the waves until it was fixed to the bottom of the sea for the birth of Apollo and Artemis. In later versions the wanderings of Leto were ascribed to the jealousy of Zeus’s wife, HERA, who was enraged at Leto’s bearing Zeus’s children. The foundation of DELPHI followed immediately upon the birth of Apollo. Leto has been identified with the Lycian goddess Lada. She was also known as Kourotrophos (Rearer of Youths).

Levi’s work has been criticized because of his bold expression and the unconventionality of his thought, but he continued to exercise wide influence into the 19th century.

L EVITE \9l%-0v&t \, member of a group of clans of religious functionaries in ancient Israel who apparently were given a special religious status, conjecturally for slaughtering idolaters of the GOLDEN CALF during the time of MOSES (EXODUS 32:25–29). There is no clear evidence that the Levites originally constituted a secular tribe that was named after Levi, the third son born to JACOB LEUCOTHEA \ l \, Pinyin Li Ao (d. c. 844, China), Chinese scholar who helped reestablish CONFUCIANISM at a time when it was severely challenged by BUDDHISM and TAOISM, laying the groundwork for the Neo-Confucianists of the Sung dynasty (960–1279). Li was a high official of the T’ang dynasty (618–907) who was apparently friends with or a disciple of the great Confucian stylist and thinker HAN YÜ. Unlike Han Yü, Li was much influenced by Buddhism, helping to integrate many Buddhist ideas into Confucianism and beginning the development of a metaphysical framework to justify Confucian ethical thinking; he insisted that questions of human nature and human destiny were central to Confucianism, ideas that became the core of later NEO-CONFUCIANISM. His quotations from the TA - HSÜEH (“Great Learning”), the CHUNG - YUNG (“Doctrine of the Mean”), and the I - CHING (“Classic of Changes”) helped bring recognition to these previously obscure works. Finally, Li helped establish the importance of MENCIUS for later Neo-Confucians as almost the equal to that of CONFUCIUS. LIBATION , act of pouring a liquid (frequently wine, but sometimes milk or other fluids) as a sacrifice to a deity. LIBERALISM, THEOLOGICAL, form of religious thought that establishes religious inquiry on the basis of a norm other than the authority of tradition. It was an important influence in PROTESTANTISM from the mid-17th century through the 1920s. The defining trait of this liberalism is a will to be liberated from the coercion of external controls and a consequent concern with inner motivation. The first overt evidence of this temper of mind came during the Renaissance, when curiosity about natural man and appreciation for the human spirit developed. The modern period of theological liberalism began, however, in the 17th century with René Descartes, who designated the thinking self as the primary substance from which the existence of other realities was to be deduced (except that of God), and thereby initiated a mode of thinking that remained in force through the 19th century and laid the ground for the presuppositions of this modern consciousness: (1) confidence in human reason, (2) primacy of the person, (3) immanence of God, and (4) meliorism (the belief that human nature is improvable and is improving). The many persons influencing religious thought in this period included the philosophers Benedict de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, John Locke, and Samuel Clarke.

The second stage of theological liberalism, ROMANTICISM, lasted from the late 18th century to the end of the 19th and was marked by the significance it placed on individual experience as a distinctive source of meaning. The American and French revolutions provided the symbol of this spirit of independence and dramatically exemplified it in political action. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant were the architects of Romantic liberalism. In theology, FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER, called the father of modern Protestant theology, was outstanding. Unlike Kant, who saw in moral will the clue to man’s higher nature, Schleiermacher identified the feeling of absolute dependence as simultaneously that which “signifies God for us” and that which is distinctive in the religious response. Thus, self-consciousness becomes God-consciousness; the Christian is brought to this deeper vein of self-consciousness through the man Jesus, in whom the God-consciousness had been perfected. ALBRECHT RITSCHL dominated liberal Protestant theology after Schleiermacher, and Wilhelm Herrmann and Adolf von Harnack were Ritschl’s most prominent followers. In the United States, HORACE BUSHNELL was the most significant liberal theologian, along with WALTER RAUSCHEN BUSCH, leader of the SOCIAL GOSPEL movement. The third period of theological liberalism, MODERNISM, from the mid-19th century through the 1920s, was marked by the significance it placed on the notion of progress. The decisive events stimulating these interests were the Industrial Revolution and the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). Modernists sought to bring religious thought into accord with modern knowledge and to solve issues raised by modern culture, and they transformed the study of Christian doctrine into the psychological, sociological, and philosophical study of RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE , institutions, customs, knowledge, and values. Important figures during this period included Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer, William James, John Dewey, Shailer Mathews, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and ERNST TROELTSCH. After the 1920s many theologically liberal ideas were challenged by neoorthodoxy, a theological movement in Europe and the United States that returned to the traditional language of Protestant orthodoxy and biblical faith centered in Christ, although it accepted modern critical methods of biblical interpretation.

L IBER AND L IBERA \9l%-b‘r . . . 9l%-b‘-r‘ \, in ROMAN RELIGION,

pair of cultivation deities of uncertain origin. Liber, though an old and native Italian deity, came to be identified with DIONYSUS. The triad CERES, Liber, and Libera (his female counterpart) represented in Rome, from early times and always under Greek influence, the Eleusinian DEMETER, Iacchus-Dionysus, and Kore (PERSEPHONE). At the festival of the Liberalia, held at Rome on March 17, the toga virilis was commonly assumed for the first time by boys who were of age. At the town of Lavinium, a month was consecrated to Liber, and the festival activities there were believed to make the seeds grow. LIBERATION THEOLOGY, in late 20th-century ROMAN CATHOLICISM , movement centered in Latin America that sought to apply religious faith to the circumstances of the poor and the politically oppressed. It stressed both heightened awareness of the socioeconomic structures that caused social inequities and active participation in changing those structures. Liberation theologians believed that God speaks particularly through the poor and that the BIBLE can be understood

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LIBITINA only when seen from the perspective of the poor. They perceived that the Roman Catholic church in Latin America was a church for and of the poor, a state fundamentally different from that of the church in Europe. In order to build this church, they established base communities, local Christian groups composed of 10 to 30 members each, that both studied the Bible and attempted to meet their parishioners’ immediate needs for food, water, sewage disposal, and electricity. Many such base communities, led mostly by laypersons, sprang up throughout Latin America. The birth of the movement is usually dated to the second Latin American Bishops’ Conference, which was held in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968. The attending bishops issued a document affirming the rights of the poor and asserting that industrialized nations enriched themselves at the expense of Third World countries. The movement’s seminal text, Teología de la liberación (1971; A Theology of Liberation), was written by Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Peruvian priest and theologian. Other leaders of the movement included Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador (killed in 1980), Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, JESUIT scholar Jon Sobrino, and Archbishop Helder Câmara of Brazil. The liberation theology movement gained strength in Latin America during the 1970s. Because of their insistence that ministry includes involvement in the political struggle of the poor against wealthy elites, liberation theologians were often criticized by those within the Roman Catholic church and others as naive advocates of Marxism and leftwing social activism. By the 1990s the Vatican, under Pope John Paul II, had begun trying to curb the movement’s influence through the appointment of more conservative PRELATES in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America.

L IBITINA \ 0li-b‘-9t&-n‘, -9t%-n‘ \, in ROMAN RELIGION, goddess of funerals. At her SANCTUARY in a sacred grove (perhaps on the Esquiline Hill), a piece of money was deposited whenever a death occurred. There the undertakers (libitinarii) had their offices, and there all deaths were registered for statistical purposes. The word Libitina thus came to be used for the business of an undertaker, funeral requisites, and, by poets, for death itself. Libitina was often mistakenly identified with VENUS Lubentia (Lubentina), an Italian goddess of gardens. L I - CHI \ 9l%-9j% \, Pinyin Liji (Chinese: “Record of Rites”), one of the FIVE CLASSICS (WU-CHING) of Chinese Confucian literature, the original text of which is said to have been compiled by CONFUCIUS (551–479 )). The text was extensively reworked during the 1st century ) by Elder Tai and his cousin Younger Tai. Li-chi underscores moral principles and treats such subjects as royal regulations, ritual objects and sacrifices, education, music, and the doctrine of the mean (CHUNG-YUNG). In 1190 CHU HSI, a NEO-CONFUCIAN philosopher, gave two chapters of Li-chi separate titles (i.e., “Ta-hsüeh” and “Chung-yung”) and published them together with two other CONFUCIAN texts under the name Ssu-shu (“F OUR BOOKS”). This collection is generally used to introduce Chinese students to Confucian literature. L IEH - TZU \ 9lye-9dz~ \, Pinyin Liezi (fl. 4th century ), China), legendary TAOIST master and presumed author of the Taoist work Lieh-tzu. Many of the writings attributed to Lieh-tzu have been identified as later forgeries. Little is known of Lieh-tzu’s life save that, like his contemporaries, he had a large number of disciples and roamed

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through the different warring states into which China was then divided, advising kings and rulers. His work is distinguished stylistically by its wittiness and philosophically by its emphasis on determinism.

LIEH-TZU \9lye-9dz~ \, Pinyin Liezi, Chinese Taoist classic bearing the name of Lieh-tzu, a legendary Taoist master. In its present form, the Lieh-tzu possibly dates from the 3rd or 4th century (. The text echoes themes seen in the Chuang-tzu. The Lieh-tzu’s “Yang Chu” chapter—named after a legendary figure of the 5th–4th century ), incorrectly identified as its author—acknowledges the futility of challenging the immutable and irresistible TAO (Way); it concludes that humans can look forward in this life only to sex, music, physical beauty, and material abundance, and even these goals are not always satisfied. Such fatalism implies a life of radical self-interest (a new development in TAOISM), according to which a person should make no sacrifice for the benefit of others. L JGO FEAST \9l%-gw| \, in BALTIC RELIGION, major celebration honoring the sun goddess, SAULE. It took place on St. John’s Eve (June 23, Midsummer Eve). Bonfires were lighted and the young people leaped over them. L I G U O R I , S A I N T A L F O N S O M A R I A D E ’ \ !l-9f|ns+ . . . l%-9gw|-r% \, Alfonso also spelled Alphonsus (b. Sept. 27, 1696, Marianella, Kingdom of Naples—d. Aug. 1, 1787, Pagani; canonized 1839; feast day August 1), Italian doctor of the church, one of the chief 18th-century moral theologians, and founder of the Redemptorists, a congregation dedicated primarily to PARISH and foreign MISSIONS. After practicing law for eight years, he was ordained a priest in 1726. In 1732 he founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, or the Redemptorists, at Scala. Dissension within the congregation culminated in 1777 when he was tricked into signing what he thought was a royal sanction for his rule but was actually a new rule devised by one of his enemies, thus causing the followers of the old rule to break away. In 1762 Pope Clement XIII made Alfonso bishop of Sant’ Agata del Goti near Naples; he was obliged to resign the appointment in 1775 because of ill health. He was declared a doctor of the church by Pope PIUS IX in 1871, and in 1950 he was named patron of moralists and confessors by Pope PIUS XII. Liguori’s works include moral theology, best represented by his Theologia moralis (1748); ascetical and devotional writings, including Visits to the Blessed Sacrament, The True Spouse of Jesus Christ (for nuns), Selva (for priests), and The Glories of Mary—one of the most widely used manuals of devotion to the Virgin Mary; and dogmatic writings on such subjects as PAPAL INFALLIBILITY and the power of prayer. By the middle of the 20th century, his works had been translated into 60 languages. In theology Liguori is known as the principal exponent of equiprobabilism, a system of principles designed to guide those in doubt, whether they be free from or bound by a given civil or religious law.

L I - HSÜEH \9l%-9shwe \, Pinyin Lixue (Chinese: “School of Universal Principles”), school of NEO-CONFUCIAN philosophy, often called the Ch’eng-Chu after its leading philosophers, Ch’eng I and CHU HSI. The Li-hsüeh school stressed that the way to discover LI (conventional norms grounded in universal principles) is to investigate—by means of induction, deduction, the study of history, and participa-

LIMBO tion in human affairs— the myriad things of the universe in which li is present.

bearing the names of the ANGELS . A cult of Lilith sur vived among some Jews as late as the 7th century (.

LJLE \ 9l%-l! \ (Sanskrit: LIMBO, in ROMAN CATHO“play,” “sport,” “spontaLIC theology, border place neity,” or “drama”), in HINDUISM, a term that has between heaven and hell where dwell those souls several different meanings, most focusing in one who, though not condemned to punishment, way or another on the effortless or playful relation are deprived of the joy of eternal existence with between the Supreme ReGod in heaven. The conality and the contingent cept of limbo probably world. For the monistic developed in the Middle philosophical tradition of VEDENTA, ljle refers to the Ages. Two distinct kinds manifestation of the Cosof limbo have been supmic One, or BRAHMAN, exposed to exist: (1) the pressed in every aspect of limbus patrum (“fathers’ the empirical world. limbo”), which is the Lilith tempting Eve with an apple in the Garden of Eden, place where the OLD TESSome philosophers argue German woodcut, 1470 TAMENT saints were that ljle springs from the The Granger Collection thought to be confined abundance of the Suuntil they were liberated p r e m e B e i n g ’s b l i s s , by Christ in his “descent into hell”; and (2) the limbus inwhich provides a motive for creation. fantum, or puerorum (“children’s limbo”), which is the In the devotional sects, ljle has other and more particular meanings. In the Uekta traditions, ljle is generally under- abode of those who have died without actual SIN but whose stood as a certain sweet and playful goodness that charac- ORIGINAL SIN has not been washed away by BAPTISM. This “children’s limbo” included not only unbaptized infants terizes a universe whose essential nature is Uakti (the powbut also the mentally defective. erful, energetic principle) becoming Uakti. It is therefore The question of the destiny of infants dying unbaptized associated with the goddesses LAKZMJ and Lalite; one of the latter’s names is Ljlevinodinj. The concept takes on other presented itself to Christian theologians at a relatively earshadings and plays a central role in the thinking and prac- ly period. Generally speaking, the Greek Fathers of the tice of the Vaizdava (see VAIZDAVISM) sects. In North India, Church inclined to optimism and the Latin Fathers to pesthe adventures of the god REMA, depicted in the epic REMEYsimism. Indeed, some of the Greek Fathers expressed opinADA, are regarded as his “play,” implying he entered the acions that are almost indistinguishable from the Pelagian tion as an actor might engage a drama—deeply involved, view that children dying unbaptized might be admitted to but with an element of freedom that prevents his being eternal life, though not to the KINGDOM OF GOD. By contrast, ST. AUGUSTINE drew a sharp antithesis between the state of constrained by the “play” of life as lesser beings must be. the saved and that of the damned. Later theologians folAmong the worshipers of the god KRISHNA, ljle refers to the playful and erotic activities in which he sports with the lowed Augustine in rejecting the notion of any final place young women of Braj (gopjs) and especially his favorite, intermediate between heaven and hell, but they otherwise REDHE, as they explore their mutual devotion. His interacwere inclined to take the mildest possible view of the destitions with others who surround him in this pastoral set- ny of the irresponsible and unbaptized. ting—whether heroic, playful, or deeply sad—also qualify The Roman Catholic church in the 13th and 15th centuas ljle. One of the most powerful images associated with ries made several authoritative declarations on the subject this tradition is that of the circle (res) dance, in which of limbo, stating that the souls of those who die in original Krishna multiplies his form so that each gopj thinks it is sin only (i.e., unbaptized infants) descend into hell but are she who is his partner. It provides the touchstone for a se- given lighter punishments than those souls guilty of actual ries of staged dramas called res ljles that replicate Krishna’s sin. The damnation of infants and also the comparative paradigmatic “sports” so as to draw the devotees into an lightness of their punishment thus became articles of faith, appropriate “mood” or emotion of love and ljle so that they but the details of the place such souls occupied in hell or experience the world itself in its true form as divine play. the nature of their actual punishment remained undeterSimilarly, the dramatic reenactment of the events of the mined. From the COUNCIL OF TRENT (1545–63) onward, there were considerable differences of opinion as to the extent of Remeyada are known as Rem Ljle, celebrating his deeds in such a way as to draw devotees of this god into his cosmic the infant souls’ deprivation, with some theologians maintaining that the infants in limbo are affected with sadness play. because of a felt privation, and other theologians holding L ILITH \ 9li-lith \ , in Jewish FOLKLORE , female DEMON de- that the infants enjoy every kind of natural felicity, as rerived from the class of Mesopotamian demons called lilû gards their souls now and their bodies after the RESURRECTION. The concept of limbo has remained undefined and (feminine: liljtu). In rabbinic literature Lilith is variously depicted as the mother of Adam’s demonic offspring or as problematic and in the 20th century has increasingly been relegated to a marginal position in Roman Catholic theohis first wife. The evil she threatened, especially against children, was counteracted by the wearing of an AMULET logy.

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LING L IN G \9li= \, Pinyin ling (Chinese: “numinous energy,” or “magic power”), in Chinese popular religion, term used to refer to the effects achieved by supra-human agents such as gods, ancestors, and DEMONS . It is a particularly potent form of C H ’I (matter-energy). The manifestation of ling is evidence of the active presence and efficacy of the divine realm. When associated with human beings, it can lead to their deification and to the emergence of devotional cults. L I EG A \ 9li=-g‘ \ , also spelled liegam \ -g‘m \ (Sanskrit: “sign,” “distinguishing symbol”), in HIN DUISM , symbol of the god SHIVA , worshiped as an emblem of generative power. The liega is the main object of worship in Uaivite temples (see UAIVISM ) and the private shrines of Uaiva families throughout India. Historically, the liega was a representation of the phallus, as sculptures from the early centuries ( make clear, but many—probably most—modern Hindus do not think of the liega in these terms. In fact, the general stylization of the liega into a smooth cylindrical mass asserts a distinctively aniconic meaning, quite by contrast to the mjrtis (deities in image form) that serve otherwise as the most important foci of Hindu worship. This interplay is found in Uaivite temples themselves, where the liega is apt to be at the center, surrounded by a panoply of mjrtis. A sexual dimension remains in the most common form in which the liega appears today, where the lingam is placed in the center of a discshaped object called the Y O N I , a symbol of the female sexual organ, often associated with the goddess (UAKTI). The two together are a reminder that the male and female principles are forever inseparable and that together they represent the totality of all existence. Worship of the liega is performed with offerings of milk, water, fresh flowers, young sprouts Liega, of a type of grass, fruit, leaves, and sunknown as a liegjddried rice. Among the most imbhavamjrti, c. 900 portant of all liegas are the By courtesy of the trustees of sveyambhuva (“self-originated”) the British Museum liegas, which are believed to have come into existence by themselves at the beginning of time; nearly 70 are worshiped in various parts of India. Another common icon in South India is the liegjdbhavamjrti, which shows Shiva emerging out of a fiery liega. This is a representation of the sectarian myth that the gods VISHNU and BRAHM A were once arguing about their respective importance when Shiva appeared in the form of a blazing pillar to quell their pride. Brahma took the form of a swan and flew upward to see if he could find the top of the pillar, and Vishnu took the form of a boar and dived below to find its source, but neither was successful, and both were compelled to recognize Shiva’s superiority.

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LIN G -PA O \9li=-9ba> \, Pinyin Lingbao, form of TAOISM based upon one of the great Taoist scriptural traditions. Ko Ch’ao-fu began composing the Ling-pao ching (“Classic of the Sacred Jewel”) about 397 (. He claimed that they had been first revealed to his own ancestor, the famous Ko Hsüan, early in the 3rd century. In these works the TAO is personified in a series of “celestial worthies” (t’ien-tsun), its primordial and uncreated manifestations. These in turn were worshiped by means of a group of liturgies, which, during the 5th century, became supreme in Taoist practice, completely absorbing the older, simpler rites of the T ’IEN -SHI TAO (“Way of the Celestial Masters”). As each celestial worthy represented a different aspect of the Tao, so each ceremony of worship had a particular purpose, which it attempted to realize by distinct means. The rites as a whole were called chai (“retreat”), from the preliminary abstinence obligatory on all participants. They lasted a day and a night or for a fixed period of three, five, or seven days; the number of persons taking part was also specified, centering on a sacerdotal unit of six officiants. One’s own salvation was inseparable from that of his ancestors; the Huang-lu chai (Retreat of the Yellow Register) was directed toward the salvation of the dead. Chin-lu chai (Retreat of the Golden Register), on the other hand, was intended to promote auspicious influences on the living. The T’u-t’an chai (Mud and Soot Retreat, or Retreat of Misery) was a ceremony of collective contrition; in Chinese civil law, confession resulted in an automatic reduction or suspension of sentence. These and other rituals were accomplished for the most part in the open, within a specially delimited sacred area, or altar (t’an), the outdoor complement of the oratory. The chanted liturgy, innumerable lamps, and clouds of billowing incense combined to produce in the participants a cathartic experience that assured these ceremonies a central place in subsequent Taoist practices. L IN U S \9l&-n‘s \, also spelled Linos, in Greek mythology, the personification of lamentation. The name derives from the ritual cry ailinos, the refrain of a dirge. According to an Argive story, Linus, child of APOLLO and Psamathe (daughter of Crotopus, king of Argos), was exposed at birth and was torn to pieces by dogs. In revenge, Apollo sent a Poine, or avenging spirit, which destroyed the Argive children. The hero Coroebus killed the Poine, and a festival, Arnis, otherwise called dog-killing day (kunophontis), was instituted, in which stray dogs were killed, sacrifice offered, and mourning made for Linus and Psamathe. In a Theban variant, Linus was the son of OURANIA , muse of astronomy, and the musician Amphimarus, and he was himself a great musician. He invented the Linus song but was put to death by Apollo for presuming to be his rival. A later, half-burlesque story related that Linus was the Greek hero HERACLES ’ music master and was killed by his pupil, whom he tried to correct. LI SH A O -C H Ü N \9l%-9sha>-9j}n \, Pinyin Li Shaojun (fl. 2nd century ), China), noted Chinese Taoist and occult practitioner (fang-shih) of the Han period. Li was the first known Taoist alchemist, the first to make the practice of certain hygienic exercises a part of Taoist rites, and the first to claim that a Taoist’s ultimate goal was to achieve the status of HSIEN , or immortal sage. In 133 ), Li persuaded the emperor Wu-ti that immortality could be achieved by eating from a cinnabar vessel that had been transmuted into gold. When that occurred, one would see the famous sages on P’eng-lai, the legendary

LOGICAL POSITIVISM isles of immortality. If one performed the proper rituals while gazing on these hsien, one would never die. The first step in the transmutation of cinnabar involved prayers to TSAO-CHÜN, the Furnace Prince. These prayers became an established part of some forms of later Taoist ritual, and shortly after Li’s death, Tsao-chün came to be considered the first of the great Taoist divinities.

L ITURGICAL M OVEMENT , 19th- and 20th-century effort in Christian churches to restore the active and intelligent participation of the people in the liturgy, or official rites, of CHRISTIANITY . The movement sought to make the liturgy both more attuned to early Christian traditions and more relevant to modern Christian life by simplifying rites, developing new texts (in the case of ROMAN CATHOLICISM, translating the Latin texts into the vernacular of individual countries), and reeducating both laity and clergy on their role in liturgical celebrations. In the Roman Catholic church, the movement can be traced back to the mid-19th century, when it was initially connected with monastic worship, especially in the BENEDICTINE communities in France, Belgium, and Germany. After about 1910, it spread to Holland, Italy, and England and subsequently to the United States. Changes introduced by POPE PIUS X that mark the beginning of the Liturgical Movement include his eucharistic decrees, which eased the regulations governing daily communion, his revival of the Gregorian plainsong, and his recasting of the breviary and of the missal. POPE PIUS XII issued in 1947 the ENCYCLICAL Mediator Dei, in which he stressed the importance of liturgy and the need for people to participate. The reform of rites began with HOLY WEEK revisions in 1951 and 1955. The SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL (1962–65) recommended that Roman Catholics should actively take part in the liturgy; legislated the use of the vernacular for liturgies, overturning the traditional use of Latin as the sole liturgical language; and ordered the reform of all sacramental rites. A new LECTIONARY and calendar (the Ordo Missae) appeared in 1969, and a definitive Roman Missal was published in 1970. Protestant churches have also revised texts and updated archaic expressions in their liturgical rites. The United Presbyterian Church published a liturgy for congregational use, the Worshipbook, in 1970. In 1978 the Lutheran Church in the United States published its revised Lutheran Book of Worship, offering more individual choices in liturgy and also an expanded variety of musical styles. In 1979 the Episcopal Church adopted a revised Book of Common Prayer, which offered a choice of texts, one preserving the traditional language. LLEU \9hl‘i \, or Lleu Llaw Gyffes \-9hla>-9g‘-fes \: see LUGUS. LLYR \9hlir \, in Celtic mythology, leader of one of two warring families of gods. In Welsh tradition, Llyr and his son Manawydan, like the Irish gods Lir and Manannán, were associated with the sea. Llyr’s other children included BRÂN (Bendigeidfran), a god of bards and poetry; Branwen, wife of the sun god Matholwch, king of Ireland; and Creidylad (in earlier myths, a daughter of Lludd). Hearing of Matholwch’s maltreatment of Branwen, Brân and Manawydan led an expedition to avenge her. Brân was killed in the war, which left only seven survivors, among them Manawydan and Pryderi, son of PWYLL. Manawydan married Pryderi’s mother, RHIANNON, and was thereafter closely associated with them.

LOGIA \9l+-g%-‘, -0! \, hypothetical collection, either written or oral, of the sayings of JESUS, which might have been in circulation around the time of the composition of the SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. (The Greek word logion, which meant “oracular utterance” in Ancient Greek, was used in the plural form logia in the Greek of the SEPTUAGINT and NEW TESTAMENT to refer to bodies of sayings of sacred significance.) Most biblical scholars agree that MATTHEW and LUKE based their written accounts largely on The Gospel According to Mark, but both share a good deal of material that is absent from Mark. This shared material is largely made up of sayings attributed to Jesus, and this has led biblical scholars to hypothesize the existence of a source, perhaps the logia, from which the shared material is drawn. The first references to the logia were made by Papias, a 2nd-century bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, in his work Logijn kyriakjn exuguseis (“Interpretation of the Logia of the Lord”), and by other early Christian writers, such as Polycarp, a 2nd-century bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor. According to EUSEBIUS, a 4th-century church historian, Papias wrote that the apostle Matthew arranged the logia of Jesus in an orderly form in Hebrew. Some scholars contend that the logia was a collection of OLD TESTAMENT oracles predicting the coming of the MESSIAH, but this view has been challenged. In addition to the sayings of Jesus, Matthew and Luke share narrative material. Scholars have therefore hypothesized the existence of a kind of proto-gospel that incorporates the logia. Experts have called this hypothetical source Q (from German Quelle, “source”). The existence of the source Q is theoretical. Though the logia may not have been part of either Q or of the Old Testament messianic oracles, it is generally assumed that early Christians either wrote down or transmitted orally the sayings of Jesus, much as Jews of the period collected the sayings of respected RABBIS, and that this material was used by both Matthew and Luke.

L OGICAL P OSITIVISM , also called Logical Empiricism, philosophical doctrine formulated in Vienna in the 1920s, according to which scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge and all traditional metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless—that the “great unanswerable questions” about substance, causality, freedom, and God are unanswerable just because they are not genuine questions at all. One fundamental element of Logical Positivism is the verification principle, which holds that a statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable or else tautological (i.e., such that its truth arises entirely from the meanings of its terms). According to this principle, which gave what the positivists considered to be the touchstone of meaning, an assertion has meaning if and only if it is verifiable at least in principle by sense experience. Thus, religious and moral statements would be without literal significance, because there is no way in which they can be either justified or falsified (refuted). Such statements may influence feelings, beliefs, or conduct but not in the sense of being true or false and hence of imparting knowledge. A nontautological statement has meaning only if some set of observable conditions is relevant to determining its truth or falsity; thus the meaning of a statement is the set of conditions under which it would be true. In the years immediately after World War II this account of factual meaning was applied to theological statements, raising such questions as: What observable difference does it make whether it is true or false that “God loves us”?

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LOGOS Whatever tragedies occur, do not the faithful still maintain their belief? But if it is not possible to conceive of circumstances in which “God loves us” would have to be judged false, is not the statement factually empty or meaningless? This challenge evoked three kinds of response. Some Christian philosophers declared it to be a non-challenge, on the ground that the positivists never succeeded in finding a precise formulation of the verification criterion that was fully satisfactory even to themselves. Among those who thought it necessary to face this challenge, one group granted that theological statements lack factual meaning and suggested that their proper use lies elsewhere, as expressing a way of looking at the world or a moral point of view and commitment. The other group claimed that THEISM is ultimately open to experiential confirmation. The theory of eschatological verification (developed by John Hick) holds that the belief in future postmortem experiences will be verified if true (though not falsified if false), and that in a divinely governed universe such experiences will take forms confirming theistic faith. Thus although the believer and the disbeliever do not have different expectations about the course of earthly history, they do expect the total course of the universe to be radically different. In the late 20th century attention was directed to the multiple legitimate uses of language in the various language games developed within different human activities and forms of life; and it was urged that RELIGIOUS BELIEF has its own autonomous validity, not subject to verificationist criteria. Statements about God and eternal life do not make true-or-false factual claims but express, in RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE, a distinctive attitude to life and way of engaging in it.

taught that the logos was the intermediary between God and the cosmos, being both the agent of creation and the agent through which the human mind can apprehend and comprehend God. According to Philo and the Middle Platonists, the logos was both immanent in the world and at the same time the transcendent divine mind. In the first chapter of The Gospel According to John, Jesus Christ is identified as “the Word” (Greek logos) incarnated, or made flesh. This identification of Jesus with the logos is based partly on the Jewish view that Wisdom is the divine agent that draws man to God and is identified with the word of God. The author of The Gospel According to John used this philosophical expression, which easily would be recognizable to readers in the Hellenistic world, to emphasize the redemptive character of the person of Christ. Just as the Jews had viewed the TORAH (the Law) as preexistent with God, so also the author of John viewed Jesus, but interprets the logos as inseparable from the person of Jesus and does not simply imply that the logos is the revelation that Jesus proclaims. The identification of Jesus with the logos was further developed in the early church on the basis of Greek philosophical ideas. This development was dictated by the need to express the Christian faith in terms that would be intelligible to the Hellenistic world and to convey the view that CHRISTIANITY was superior to, or heir to, all that was best in preChristian philosophy. Thus, in their apologies and polemical works, the early Christian Fathers stated that Christ as the preexistent logos (1) reveals the Father to humankind and is the subject of the OLD TESTAMENT manifestations of God; (2) is the divine reason in which the whole human race shares, so that the 6th-century-) philosopher and others who lived with reason were Christians before Christ; and (3) is the divine will and word by which the worlds were framed.

LOGOS \ 9l+-g+s, 9l|-0g|s \ (Greek: “word,” “reason,” or “plan”), plural logoi, in Greek philosophy and theology, the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving LOKA \9l+-k‘ \ (Sanskrit: “world,” “open space,” “universe”), it form and meaning. Though the concept defined by the in the cosmography of HINDUISM, the universe or any particterm logos is found in Greek, Indian, Egyptian, and Persian ular division of it. The most common division of philosophical and theological systems, it bethe universe is the tri-loka, or three worlds came particularly significant in Chris(heaven, earth, atmosphere; later, heavtian writings and doctrines to deen, world, netherworld), each of scribe or define the role of JESUS CHRIST as the principle of God acwhich is divided into seven regions. tive in the creation and the Sometimes 14 worlds are enucontinuous structuring of the merated: 7 above Earth and 7 cosmos and in revealing the below. The various divisions divine plan of salvation to illustrate the Hindu concept of man. It thus underlies the bainnumerable hierarchically orsic Christian doctrine of the dered worlds. Lokas are often preexistence of Jesus. associated with particular diThe idea of the logos in vinities, a linkage that is carGreek thought harks back at ried over into BUDDHISM, with the deities replaced by Budleast to the 6th-century-) dhas or BODHISATTVAS. philosopher Heracleitus, who discerned in the cosmic proL OKI \ 9l+-k% \ , in Norse mycess a logos analogous to the thology, cunning trickster reasoning power in man. Latwho had the ability to change er, the Stoics, philosophers Forge stone incised with the face of Loki, his lips his shape and sex. Although who followed the teachings of sewn, Horsens Fjord, Denmark; in the Werner Forman his father was the GIANT Fárthe thinker Zeno of Citium Archive, Arhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark bauti, he was included among (4th–3rd century )), defined Art Resource the AESIR (a tribe of gods). Loki the logos as an active rational was represented as the comand spiritual principle that permeated all reality. They called the logos providence, na- panion of ODIN and THOR, helping them but sometimes causing difficulty for them and himself. He appeared as the ture, god, and the soul of the universe, which is composed enemy of the gods; he caused the death of the god BALDER. of many seminal logoi that are contained in the universal With the giantess Angerboda (Angrboda: “Distress Bringlogos. PHILO JUDAEUS, a 1st-century-( Jewish philosopher,

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LOYOLA, SAINT IGNATIUS OF er”), Loki produced three evil progeny: HEL, the goddess of death; JÖRMUNGAND, the serpent surrounding the world; and FENRIR (Fenrisúlfr), the giant wolf that will swallow Odin at the end of the world. See also GERMANIC RELIGION.

LOLLARDS, followers of JOHN WYCLIFFE in late medieval England. The pejorative name (from Middle Dutch lollaert, “mumbler”) had been applied earlier to groups suspected of heresy. The first Lollard group was formed among some of Wycliffe’s colleagues at Oxford. In 1382 the archbishop of Canterbury forced some Oxford Lollards to renounce their views, but the sect continued to grow. The accession of Henry IV in 1399 signaled a wave of repression. In 1414 a Lollard rising was quickly defeated by Henry V; it marked the end of the Lollards’ overt political influence. A Lollard revival began in 1500, and by 1530 Lollard and Protestant forces had begun to merge. The Lollards were responsible for a translation of the Bible, and their core teachings included an emphasis on personal faith and the authority of the Bible and the rejection of clerical CELIBACY, TRANSUB STANTIATION, and INDULGENCES. LORD’S PRAYER, Latin Oratio Dominica, also called Pater Noster (Latin: “Our Father”), prayer taught by JESUS to his disciples and principal prayer used by all Christians in common worship. It appears in two forms in the NEW TESTAMENT , the shorter version in Luke 11:2–4 and the longer version in Matthew 6:9–13. Scholars believe that the version in Luke is closer to the original, the extra phrases in Matthew’s version having been added in liturgical use. The Lord’s Prayer contains three common Jewish elements: praise, petition, and a yearning for the coming KINGDOM OF GOD. It consists of an introductory address and seven petitions. The Matthean version used by the ROMAN CATHOLIC church is as follows: ◆ Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name; Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. ◆ The English version of the Lord’s Prayer used in many Protestant churches departs from the Roman Catholic version by using “debts” and “debtors” instead of “trespasses” and “those who trespass against us” and adding the concluding DOXOLOGY (short formula of praise): ◆ For thine is the Kingdom And the power And the glory, Forever and ever. ◆ In the Catholic Mass, the doxology is recited following a brief interruption by the presiding priest. The doxology was probably added early in the Christian era, since it occurs in some early manuscripts of the Gospels and is used in both Roman Catholic and EASTERN ORTHODOX liturgies as an elaboration of the Lord’s Prayer. A more straightforward, ecumenical version of the prayer, called the English Language Liturgical Consultation

(ELLC), has been adopted by many denominations, even some Roman Catholic churches, since the 1970s. It eliminates words like “art” and “thine” and replaces them with vocabulary commonly used today. Other changes include replacing “debts” with “sins” and “And lead us not into temptation” with “Save us from the time of trial.” Scholars disagree about Jesus’ meaning in the Lord’s Prayer. Some view it as “existential,” referring to present human experience on earth; others interpret it as eschatological, referring to the coming Kingdom of God. The prayer lends itself to both interpretations, and further questions are posed by the existence of different translations. In the case of “daily bread,” for example, the Greek word epiousion, which modifies “bread,” has no parallels in Greek and may have meant “for tomorrow.” Thus the petition “Give us this day our daily bread” may be given the eschatological interpretation “Give us today a foretaste of the heavenly banquet to come.” This view is supported by Ethiopic versions and by ST . JEROME ’S reference to the “bread of the future” in the lost Gospel According to the Hebrews.

L OTUS -E ATER, Greek plural Lotophagoi, in Greek mythology, one of a tribe encountered by ODYSSEUS on his way back to Ithaca after the Trojan War. Odysseus’ scouts were invited to eat a mysterious plant. Those who did were overcome by blissful forgetfulness; they had to be dragged back to the ship or they would never have returned.The phrase “to eat lotus” is used by numerous ancient writers to mean “to forget,” or “to be unmindful.” L OTUS S UTRA \ 9sn-d‘-9r%-k‘-9st-t‘ \ , given name Upatissa, BRAHMIN ascetic and famous early disciple of the B U D D H A G O TA M A . Ueriputra first heard of the Buddha and his new teaching from Assaji, one of the original 60 disciples. Quickly achieving Enlightenment, he developed a reputation as a master of the Abhidharma; his disciples included EN AN D A , the Buddha’s personal attendant; Re, the Buddha’s son; and Moggallena. The Niddesa (“Exposition”) is attributed to him; its two parts give a philological exegesis of the last two (fourth and fifth) sections of the Suttanipeta. He is said to have died shortly before the Buddha, and his relics were taken to Sevatthi.

SA R PED O N \s!r-9p%-d‘n \, in Greek mythology, son of ZEU S and Laodameia, the daughter of Bellerophon; he was a Lycian prince and a hero in the Trojan War. After he was killed by the Greek warrior Patroclus, a struggle took place for the possession of his body until A PO LLO rescued it from the Greeks, washed it, anointed it with ambrosia, and handed it over to H Y PN O S (“Sleep”) and Thanatos (“Death”), by whom it was conveyed for burial to Lycia. There a SANCTU ARY (Sarpedoneum) was erected in his honor. In later tradition Sarpedon was the son of Zeus and EURO PA and the brother of King M IN OS of Crete. Expelled from Crete by Minos, he and his comrades sailed for Asia Minor, where he finally became king of Lycia. SA R V EST IV ED A \s‘r-0v!s-ti-9v!-d‘ \, important school of

Buddhism. The Sarvestiveda school is generally considered to be one of the 18 Hjnayena schools that developed during the first four to five centuries following the death of the BUDDHA GOTAM A . During the 1st millennium of the Common Era the Sarvestivedins and Sarvestiveda offshoots exerted a strong influence in many parts of the Buddhist world, particularly in northwest India and portions of Southeast Asia. The term Sarvestiveda literally means the teaching that everything exists, and it was especially associated in the Sarvestiveda tradition with the notion that the past, the present, and the future all exist. The major work that expounded Sarvestiveda teaching was the Mahevibheza (“Great Elucidation”), which was written in the late 2nd century (. The importance of this text is suggested by the H JNAY ENA

SATHYA SAI BABA fact that the Sarvestivedins were often called the Vaibhezikas, a name that means followers of the (Mahe) Vibheza. SA R V O D A YA \s‘r-9v+-d‘-y‘ \ (Hindi, literally, “uplifting of all,” from Sanskrit sarva, “all” + udaya, “rise, coming up”), MAHATMA GANDHI ’S philosophy, which advocated community sharing of all resources for the mutual benefit and enhancement of peasant life.

S A - SK Y A - P A \ 9s!-g?!-b! \, also spelled Sakyapa, Tibetan Buddhist sect named for the great Sa-skya (Sakya) monastery founded in 1073 some 50 miles north of Mount Everest. The sect follows the teachings of ’Brog-mi (992–1072), who translated into Tibetan the important Tantric work called the Hevajra Tantra, which remains one of the basic texts of the order (see T A N T R A ). He also transmitted the teachings of the lam-’bras (“way and effect”), which uses the symbolism of sexual union as a means of achieving mystical reintegration of the self. The tutelary deity of the sect is the fierce, protective Hevajra. Abbots are permitted to marry, and succession passes from father to son or from uncle to nephew. A major phase in the history of the Sa-skya-pa sect came in the 13th–14th century when its members, with the help of their Mongol military allies, established the first theocratic state in Tibet and maintained their control for more than a hundred years.

than does Satan. In the Qur#an the proper name Shaitan (“Satan”) is used. See also LUCIFER . SA TA N ISM \9s@-t‘n-0i-z‘m \, also called devil worship, worship of SATAN , or the DEVIL , personality or principle regarded by the Judeo-Christian tradition as embodying absolute evil in complete antithesis to God. This worship may be regarded as a gesture of extreme protest against Judeo-Christian spiritual hegemony. Satanic cults have been documented in Europe and the Americas as far back as the 17th century; but their earlier roots are difficult to trace, just as the number of real satanists in any period is frequently overestimated. Churchmen have readily attributed satanism to witches and to such heretics as GNOSTICS , CATHARI, and BO G O M ILS , but that charge does not correspond with those groups’ own understanding of their beliefs. By the same token, devil worship ascribed to non-Christian religions is usually based on polemic or misunderstanding. Modern WITCHCRAFT and NEO -PAGANISM are not to be confused with satanism, since these groups worship not Satan but pre-Christian gods. Satanism, as devotion to the JudeoChristian source of evil, can only exist in symbiosis with that tradition, for it shares but inverts its worldview. Satanist worship has traditionally centered on the “black mass,” a corrupted rendition of the Christian EUCHARIST , and ritual magic evocations of Satan. Some recent satanist groups have supplanted those practices with rites of self-expression reminiscent of psychodrama and hyperventilation.

SA T A N \9s@-t‘n \, in JUDAISM and CHRISTIANITY, the adversary of God. The word Satan is the transliteration of a Hebrew word for “adver- The Devil, an aspect of Satan, on a French tarot card from the 19th sary.” In THE BOOK OF JOB , “the advercentury sary” comes to the heavenly court The Bridgeman Art Library with the “sons of God.” His task is to roam through the earth seeking out acts or persons to be reported adversely. Satan is cynical about disinterested human goodness and is permitted to test it under God’s authority and within the limits that God sets. In the N E W T E S T A M E N T the Greek transliteration Satanas is used, and this usually appears as Satan in English translations. He is spoken of as the prince of evil spirits, the inveterate enemy of God and of Christ, who takes the guise of an A N G EL of light. Through his subordinate DEM ON S Satan can take possession of men’s bodies, afflicting them or making them diseased. According to the Book of Revelation, when the risen Christ returns from heaven to reign on earth, Satan will be bound with a great chain for a thousand years. He is then to be released, but he will almost immediately face final defeat and thereafter be cast into eternal punishment. His name, Beelzebul, used in the Gospels mainly in reference to demoniac possession, comes from the name of the god of Ekron, Baalzebub (2 Kings 1). He is also identified with the D E V IL (diabolos), and this term occurs more frequently in the New Testament

S A T H Y A S A I B A B A \ 9s‘t-y‘-9s!/-%9b!-b! \ , originally Sathya Narayana Raju (b. 1926, Puttaparthi, India), Indian spiritual leader. Born into a BRAH M I N family, at an early age Sathya Narayana Raju began to perform miracles, and at 14 he declared himself an incarnation of SH IR D I SA I BA BA . Soon after, he took up residence in the garden of a sympathizer, where he led prayers and devotional singing until his first ashram, Prasanthi Nilayam, was completed in 1950. In 1960, Baba revealed his identity further, claiming to be an incarnation of both SHIVA and his consort UAKTI in one, as well as the second in a succession of three incarnations of Shiva of whom the first was Shirdi Sai Baba. Sathya Sai Baba was revered by his many followers for his healing of the sick and his ability to read minds and foretell the future. He offered basic H IN D U teachings with little concern for specific doctrines, and his devotees ranged from the ascetics in his ashrams to lay believers. Devotees also included many non-Indians, especially from Europe and the United States. While his detractors criticized his flamboyance and dismissed his dramatic miracle-working as the antics of a charlatan, his ashram sponsored the construction of a hospital, schools, and colleges, and ashram workers frequently engaged in com-

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SATJ munity service. In addition to Prasanthi Nilayam, he had a large Sathya Sai Baba ashram in Whitefield, outside of Bangalore in Karnetaka, and numerous smaller centers in other Indian cities and around the world. S A T J \ 9s‘-0t%, 0s‘-9t% \, also spelled suttee (Sanskrit: “good woman”), in English usage, the custom of a Hindu widow burning herself to death, either on the funeral pyre of her dead husband or soon after his death. In Indic languages, satj refers less to the action than to the woman herself, who thereby demonstrates her truthfulness (sat) and her virtue. This is sometimes said to blaze forth so intensely at the moment of her impending death that it alone is responsible for igniting the pyre. Strictly speaking, such a woman avoids the inauspicious status of widowhood, which religious law calculates as commencing with the ritual of the husband’s death, not its physical occurrence. In fact, her courage, purity, and auspiciousness are held in certain parts of India (e.g., Rajasthan) to generate a protective power that makes a satj worthy of veneration as a “satj mother” (satjmete). Opponents of the practice of satj reject such notions as horrifying indices of a deeply misogynic value system and therefore prefer to use the term satj as meaning widow immolation. The word satj can also be employed as a proper noun to designate the consort of SH IV A , who protested her father Dakza’s failure to include Shiva among the guests at a sacrifice by throwing herself into the fire. The myth of Satj does not involve the death of her husband. Rather, he rescues her body from the flames and carries it, grief-stricken, throughout India, dismembering it as he goes. Thus the connection between the mythical Satj and the practice called satj is indirect. Critics of satj have often pointed this out, but many Hindus continue to assume it, nonetheless. Numerous satj stones, memorials to women who died in this way, are found all over India, the earliest dated 510 (. The first reference to the practice in a Sanskrit text is in the M AH EBH ERATA , in which some queens undergo satj; but it is mentioned by the 1st-century-) Greek author Diodorus Siculus in his account of the Punjab in the 4th century ). In the medieval period certain Rejputs practiced jauhar (probably from jjvahar, “taking one’s life”) to save women from dishonor by foes, most notably at Chitorgarh. B R A H M IN S may have adopted this practice from warrior classes, modifying it over time to suit their own gender ideology of pure womanhood and producing the phenomenon the British saw as “suttee.” The considerable incidence of satj among the Brahmins of Bengal also undoubtedly followed from the deyabhega system of law (c. 1100), which prevailed in Bengal and which gave inheritance to widows—an economic threat to sons, who would otherwise have been the sole heirs. Satj was often committed voluntarily, if one allows that such a term can be meaningful given the patriarchal context, but cases of compulsion, escape, and rescue are also known. Steps to prohibit satj were taken by the Mughal rulers Humeyjn and his son AKBAR , and it was abolished in British India in 1829. In spite of this, however, frequent instances of satj continued to occur in Indian states for more than 30 years, and, in fact, occasional instances in remote areas are still reported, as in the famous case of 18-year-old Roop Kanwar of Deorala in the Shekhevatj region of Rajasthan in 1987. Many students of Roop Kanwar’s death have concluded it was murder. Satj has never been at all as frequent as travelers’ accounts made it seem, but its symbolic importance is great. Hence the right of satj temples (often founded by Shekhevat com-

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munities), shrines, and rituals to exist in India today is a matter of continued and heated debate.

SATN EM J SEC T \0s‘t-9n!-m% \, any of several groups in India that have challenged political and religious authority by rallying around an understanding of God as satnem (“whose name is truth”). The earliest Satnemjs were a sect of mendicants and householders founded by Bjrbhan in Narnaul, eastern Punjab, in 1657 that defied the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1672 and were crushed by his army. Remnants of this sect or group may have contributed to the formation of another known as Sadhs (i.e., sedhu, “pure”) in the early 19th century, who also designated their deity as satnem. A similar and roughly contemporary group gathered under the leadership of Jagjjvandes of Barabanki district, near Lucknow, that was said to have been formatively influenced by a disciple of the SUFI mystic Yerj Sheh (1668–1725). He projected an image of an overarching creator God as NIRGU DA , devoid of sensible qualities and best worshiped through a regimen of self-discipline and by use of “the true name” alone. Yet Jagjjvandes also wrote works about Hindu deities, and the elimination of CASTE was not part of his message. The most important Satnemj group was founded in 1820 in the Chattisgarh region of middle India by Ghesjdes, a CAM ER farm servant. His Satnem Panth (“Path of the True Name”) succeeded in providing a religious and social identity for large numbers of Chattisgarhi camers (who formed one-sixth of the total population), defying their derogatory treatment by upper-caste Hindus and exclusion from Hindu temple worship. Ghesjdes is remembered as having thrown images of Hindu gods onto a rubbish heap. He preached a code of ethical and dietary self-restraint and social equality. Connections with the KAB JR Panth have been historically important at certain stages, and over time Satnemjs have negotiated their place within a wider Hindu order in complex, even contradictory ways. SA TO RI \9s!-t|-0r%, Angl s‘-9t+r-%, s!-, -9t|r- \ (Japanese), Chinese Wu \9w< \, in Zen BUDDHISM , the inner, intuitive experience of Enlightenment; Satori is said to be unexplainable, indescribable, and unintelligible to reason and logic. It is comparable to the experience undergone by the BU D D H A GOTAMA when he sat under the Bo tree and, as such, is the central ZEN goal. Satori constitutes a complete reordering of the individual in his relation to the universe; it usually is achieved only after a period of concentrated preparation and may occur spontaneously as a result of a chance incident, such as a sudden noise. The relative importance of the period of concentrated attention to the sudden “breaking through” is weighed differently by the two major branches of Zen: the S JT J sect emphasizes quiet sitting (zazen), whereas the RINZAI sect devotes more attention to the various methods of bringing about an abrupt awakening. (See also KOAN .) SA T SA EG \0s‘t-9s‘=-g!, 9s‘t-0s‘=g \, in SIKHISM , “the assembly of true believers,” a practice that dates back to the first GUR J of the religion, N ENAK . While not unique to Sikhism, the convention of gathering together and singing the compositions of the Gurj was understood in peculiarly Sikh terms, at first as a sign of loyalty to the Gurj and the community that formed around him and later as a means of participating in the power of the divine Word that emanated from the hymns and songs of the Gurjs. Such gatherings take place in a dharamsalas or GURDW ER ES (Sikh places of

SAUL worship), are open to men and women of all CASTES , and allow all assembled to share in the merit of the Gurj and the divine word.

SA TU R N \9sa-t‘rn \, Latin Saturnus \sa-9t‘r-n‘s \, in ROMAN RELIGION ,

god of sowing or seed. The Romans equated him with the Greek deity CRONUS . Saturn’s temple at the west end of the Roman Forum at the foot of the Clivus Capitolinus served as the state treasury (aerarium Saturni). Saturn’s cult partner was the obscure goddess Lua, whose name is connected with lues (“plague,” or “affliction”); but he was also associated with Ops, another obscure goddess, the cult partner of CONSUS , probably a god of the storage bin. Saturn’s great festival, the Saturnalia, became one of the most popular of Roman festivals, and its influence is still felt in the celebration of C H R IS T M A S and the Western world’s New Year. The Saturnalia was originally celebrated only on December 17, but it was later extended to seven days. All work and business were suspended, slaves were given a measure of freedom to say and to do what they liked, moral restrictions were eased, and presents were exchanged. The weekday Saturday (Latin: Saturni dies) was named for Saturn.

broad political consequences, as satyegraha, Gandhi also drew from the writings of Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau, from the B IB L E , and from the B H A G A V A D G J T E . Gandhi first conceived satyegraha in 1906 in response to a law discriminating against Asians that was passed by the British colonial government of the Transvaal in South Africa. In 1917 the first satyegraha campaign in India was mounted in the indigo-growing district of Champaran. Over the following years, fasting and economic boycotts were employed as methods of satyegraha, until the British left India in 1947. Critics of satyegraha, both in Gandhi’s time and subsequently, have argued that it is unrealistic and incapable of universal success since it relies upon a high standard of ethical conduct in the opponent, the representative of “evil,” and demands an unrealistically strong level of commitment from those struggling for social amelioration. Nonetheless satyegraha played a significant role in the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States and has spawned a continuing legacy in South Asia itself.

SA TYR A N D SILEN U S \9s@-

t‘r, 9sa-…s&-9l%-n‘s \ , in Greek mythology, creatures of the wild, part man and part beast, S A T Y EG R A H A \ 0s‘t-9y!-gr‘who in classical times were h‘, -9y!-greh \ (Hindi: “insisclosely associated with the tence on, or zeal for, truth,” god DIONYSUS . Satyrs and Sileni were at first represented as from Sanskrit satya, “true, uncouth men, each with a truth” + )graha, “insistence, horse’s tail and ears and an obstinance,” or “zeal, assiduerect phallus, and they later ity”), concept introduced in came to be represented as men the early 20th century by Mahaving a goat’s legs and tail. hetme G AN D H I to designate a determined but nonviolent reThe relation of the two names sistance to evil. Gandhi’s satis not certain; Silenus may yegraha became a major tool Head of the Dancing Satyr, bronze statue from have been slightly earlier, but in the Indian struggle against Pompeii, 2nd century ); in the Museo Archeologico Satyr became the dominant British imperialism and has Nazionale, Naples term by the Classical period. since been adopted by protest Bruckmann Munchen In the Great Dionysia festival groups in other countries. at Athens three tragedies were According to this philosofollowed by a Satyr play (e.g., phy, satyegrahjs—practitioners of satyegraha—achieve Euripides’ Cyclops), in which the chorus was dressed to correct insight into the real nature of a situation by seeking represent Satyrs. Silenus, although bibulous like the Satyrs truth in a spirit of peace and love and undergoing a rigorous in the Satyr plays, also appeared in legend as a dispenser of process of self-scrutiny. By refusing to submit to the wrong homely wisdom. In art the Satyrs and Sileni were depicted or to cooperate with it in any way, satyegrahjs assert the in company with NYMPHS or Maenads whom they pursued. overarching truth bearing on that situation, a truth that transcends the narrower interest of any one party in a S A U L \9s|l \, Hebrew Sha#ul \sh!-9-le \, in BA LTIC RELIG IO N and mythology, the sun goddess, who determines the well-being and regeneration of all life on earth. According to Baltic myth, Saule rides each day through the sky on a horse-drawn chariot with copper wheels. Toward evening Saule washes the horses in the sea, sitting on top of a hill, holding the golden reins in her hand. Then she goes beyond the silver gates into her castle at the end of the sea. The red ball of the setting sun, one aspect of Saule, is portrayed in Baltic art as a ring, a falling red apple, or a crown. As the full light of the sun, she is also represented by a daisy, a wheel, or a rosette. One myth says that Saule’s daughters were courted by the moon god, M U N E S S . Another myth, found in both Lithuanian and Latvian traditions, tells that Muness married the sun goddess, but he soon began to court the goddess of the dawn, the morning star. P URKON S (Lithuanian: Perkjnas), the Thunderer, cut the moon god to pieces in revenge for this slight to Saule. Because of her association with growth and fertility, Saule was remembered in prayers by the farmers at both sunrise and sunset. The major event in her honor was the L J G O FEA ST , a midsummer festival celebrated on June 23 (now St. John’s Eve). On that day, the sun, wreathed in a garland of red flowers, was said to observe the summer solstice by dancing on a silver hill while wearing silver shoes. Great fires were lit on the hills to ward off evil spirits who might threaten health and fertility. Young people, wearing wreaths of flowers, danced and sang Ljgo songs and leaped over the fires. A harmless green snake, UALTYS , was a special favorite of Saule’s, and, because of that, it was considered to be good 974 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

luck to have a ualtys in the house—and, conversely, bad luck to kill one.

S A U T R EN T I K A \ sa>-9tr!n-ti-k‘ \ , ancient school of

H JNAY E-NA Buddhism that emerged in India about the 2nd century ) as an offshoot of the SARV ESTIV EDA . The school is so called because of its reliance on the S JTRAS , or words of the Buddha, and because of its rejection of the authority of the Abhidharma. The Sautrentikas maintained that, although events ( D H A R M A S ) have only momentary existence, there is a transmigrating substratum of consciousness that contains the goodness that exists in every person. The Sautrentika sometimes is characterized as a transitional school that pointed in the direction of MAH EY ENA thought and eventually came to influence the YOG EC ERA branch of Maheyena philosophy.

SA V A RKA R \0s‘-v‘r-9k!r \: see HINDUTVA . S EV IT R J \ 9s!-vi-0tr% \, goddess in Hindu mythology, the daughter of the SOLAR DEITY Savitr and the wife of the creator god BRAHM E. The more common use of the term sevitrj is to designate one of the most important M A N TRA S in H IN D U IS M , taken from S G V E D A 3.62.10, which is also known as the gayatri: “We contemplate the excellent glory of the divine Savitr; may he inspire our intellect.” This mantra is employed in several ritual contexts, the most important of which is the initiation ceremony (U P A N A Y A N A ) traditionally incumbent upon boys of all the “twice-born” CASTES (i.e., excluding UJDRAS and UNTOUCH ABLES ). Depending on the class or caste of the young initiate, the verse would be recited in different meters; this was done at the instruction of the teacher or GURU after the imparting of the sacred thread, the symbol of the “second birth.” The Sevitrj verse inaugurated the period of study of the VEDA under the guidance of this teacher and was meant to inspire the boy to success in his endeavor. Another principal ritual context in which this mantra is featured is the morning prayer, or samdhya, that forms a part of the daily religious practice of millions of Hindus. Some SCRIPTU RES recommend that this verse be repeated several times during the course of this ceremony and that the recitation be drawn out as long as possible, for it is through this prolonged recitation that the ancestors supposedly attained long life, understanding, honor, and glory. SA V O N A RO LA , GIRO LA M O \0sa-v‘-n‘-9r+-l‘, Italian 0s!v+-n!-9r|-l! \ (b. Sept. 21, 1452, Ferrara, Duchy of Ferrara—d. May 23, 1498, Florence), Italian Christian preacher, reformer, and martyr. After the overthrow of the Medici in 1494, Savonarola was the sole leader of Florence, setting up a democratic republic. Early years. Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara. He was educated by his paternal grandfather, Michele, a celebrated doctor and a man of rigid moral and religious principles. Even at an early age, as he wrote in a letter to his father, Savonarola found unbearable the humanistic paganism that corrupted manners, art, poetry, and religion itself. He saw as the cause of this spreading corruption a clergy that was corrupt even in the highest levels of the church hierarchy. On April 24, 1475, he entered the DOMINICAN order at Bologna. Returning to Ferrara four years later, he taught SCRIPTURE in the Convento degli Angeli. The subject had always been, together with the works of T H O M A S AQUINAS , his great passion.

SCARAB Career in Florence. In 1482 Savonarola was sent to Florence to take up the post of lecturer in the convent of San Marco, where he gained a great reputation for his learning and ASCETICISM. At San Gimignano in LENT 1485 and 1486, he put forward his famous propositions: the church needed reforming; it would be scourged and then renewed. The following year (1487) he left Florence to become master of studies in the school of general studies at Bologna. Returning to Florence in 1490, Savonarola preached boldly against the abuses of the government, and popular enthusiasm for Savonarola’s preaching began to grow. Medici rule in Florence did not long survive Lorenzo and was overthrown by the invasion of Charles VIII (1494). Two years before, Savonarola had predicted the coming of Charles and his easy victory. These authenticated prophecies and the part he had played in negotiations with the king enormously increased his authority, and he found himself Florence’s master. He introduced a democratic government; he wanted to found his city of God in Florence as a well-organized Christian republic that might initiate the reform of Italy and of the church. Political intrigues. Savonarola’s triumph soon aroused opposition. A Florentine party called the Arrabbiati formed an alliance with the duke of Milan and the pope, who had joined in the Holy League against the king of France and saw in Savonarola the main obstacle to Florence’s joining them. It was then that the pope sent to Savonarola the brief of July 21, 1495, in which he praised Savonarola’s work and called him to Rome to pronounce his prophecies from his own lips. As that pope was the corrupt Alexander VI, Savonarola saw a trap and asked to be allowed to put off his journey. On September 8 the pope sent him a second brief in which he ordered him to go to Bologna under pain of EXCOMMUNICATION, which met with another refusal. The brief was replaced by another of October 16, in which he was forbidden to preach. After a few months, as Lent 1496 drew near, Alexander VI verbally revoked the ban. Thus Savonarola was able to give his sermons on AMOS, in which he attacked the Roman Court with renewed vigor. He also appeared to refer to the pope’s scandalous private life, and the latter took offense at this. A college of theologians found nothing to criticize in what the FRIAR had said, and after Lent he was able to begin further sermons. As Savonarola’s authority grew, the pope tried to win him over by offering him a cardinal’s hat, which he declined. Then Alexander VI, in a brief of Nov. 7, 1496, incorporated the Congregation of San Marco, of which Savonarola was VICAR, with another in which he would have lost all his authority. If he obeyed, his reforms would be lost. If he disobeyed, he would be excommunicated. As no one came forward to put the brief into force, Savonarola went on unperturbed in ADVENT 1496 and Lent 1497 with another series of sermons. Events in Italy now turned against Savonarola, however, and even in Florence his power was lessened by unfavorable political and economic developments. A government of Arrabbiati forced him to stop preaching and incited riots against him on Ascension Day. The Arrabbiati obtained from the Roman Court a bull of excommunication against their enemy. In effect the excommunication was full of such obvious errors of form and substance as to render it null and void, and the pope himself had to disown it. When Rome proposed an arrangement that made withdrawal of the censure dependent on Florence’s entry into the League, Savonarola was finally silenced by the interdict with which the city was threatened.

Trial and execution. Wi t h p u b l i c o p i n i o n t u r n i n g against Savonarola, the Arrabbiati raised a mob, marched to San Marco, and took Savonarola prisoner along with two of his followers. After formal examination, torture, and a perfunctory ecclesiastical trial, he was handed over to the secular arm to be hanged and burned. Before mounting the scaffold he received the pope’s ABSOLUTION and plenary INDULGENCE. Assessment. After Savonarola’s death a cult was dedicated to him, which had a long history. He was venerated as a saint, an office was said for him, and miracles he had performed were recorded. In the ACTA SANCTORUM he was included among the praetermissi. When the 500th anniversary of his birth came around in 1952, there was again talk of his CANONIZATION. Savonarola’s greatest work is the Triumphus crucis, a clear exposition of Christian APOLOGETICS. His Compendium revelationum, an account of visions and prophecies that came true, went through many editions in several countries. ZAWM \9sa>m \ (Arabic: “fasting”), also spelled ziyem, in ISLAM , any religious fast, but particularly the fast of the month of RAMAQEN. See also FIVE PILLARS OF ISLAM. SAYYID \9s&-yid, 9s@- \ (Arabic: “master,” or “lord”), Arabic title of respect, sometimes restricted, as is the title SHARJF, to the Banj Heshim, members of MUHAMMAD ’S clan—in particular, to the descendants of Muhammad’s uncles al!Abbes and Abj Eelib and of !ALJ ibn Abj Eelib by Muhammad’s daughter FEEIMA. In the Hijaz, sayyid is further restricted to the descendants of Gusayn, who was the younger son of !Alj and Feeima. In Pakistan and India sayyids are numerous, being one of the four main groups of Muslims. They also constitute an influential extratribal class in Yemen, claiming descent from the Prophet through an ancestor who came south from Iraq more than a millennium ago. Many dynasties have also claimed to be sayyids in the restricted sense. See also ISLAMIC CASTE. SCAPEGOAT , Hebrew sa!ir la-!Aza#zel (“goat for Azazel”), in the OLD TESTAMENT ritual of YOM KIPPUR (Leviticus 16:8– 10), a goat symbolically burdened with the SINS of the Jewish people. Some scholars believe that the animal was chosen by lot to placate AZAZEL , a wilderness DEMON , then thrown over a precipice outside Jerusalem to rid the nation of its iniquities. The use of scapegoats has a long and varied history involving many kinds of animals, as well as human beings. In ancient Greece, human scapegoats (pharmakoi) were used to mitigate a calamity. The Athenians chose a man and woman for the festival of THARGELIA. After being feasted, the couple was led around the town, beaten with green twigs, driven out of the city, and possibly even stoned. During the Roman feast of LUPERCALIA, priests (Luperci) cut narrow strips of hide (thongs) from the sacrificial animals (goats and a dog), then raced around the walls of the old Palatine city, striking women (especially) as they passed with the thongs. A blow from the hide of the scapegoat was said to cure sterility. SCARAB \9skar-‘b \, Latin scarabaeus \0skar-‘-9b%-‘s \, in ancient EGYPTIAN RELIGION, important symbol in the form of the dung beetle (Scarabaeus sacer). This beetle may be seen on sunny days forming a ball of dung and rolling it over the sand to its burrow, where the ball is consumed in the fol-

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SCÁTHACH lowing days. The Egyptians apparently shared the widespread belief that the beetle lays its eggs in this ball of dung and saw in the life cycle of the beetle a microcosm of the daily rebirth of the sun; the ancient sun-god Khepri was conceived as a great scarab beetle rolling the sun across the Scarab commemorating the heavens. The scarab marriage of Amenhotep and Queen became a symbol of Tiy, 18th dynasty t h e e n d u r i n g h u - By courtesy of the Oriental Institute, the University of Chicago man soul as well— hence its frequent appearance, often with wings spread, in funerary art. Quantities of dead beetles have been discovered in burials of the earliest period; the later mummification of scarabs stems from the fact that they were sacred to Khepri at HELIOPOLIS. Scarabs of various materials, glazed steatite being most common, form an important class of Egyptian antiquities. Such objects usually have the bases inscribed or decorated with designs and are simultaneously AMULETS and seals. Though they first appeared in the late Old Kingdom (c. 2575–c. 2130 )), scarabs remained rare until Middle Kingdom times (1938–c. 1600? )), when they were fashioned in great numbers. Some were used simply as ornaments, while others were purely amuletic in purpose, as the large basalt “heart scarabs” of the New Kingdom (1539– 1075 )) and later times, which were placed in the bandages of mummies and were symbolically identified with the heart of the deceased. A winged scarab might also be placed on the breast of the MUMMY, and later a number of other scarabs were placed about the body.

S CÁTHACH \9sk!-th‘_ \ (Gaelic: “The Shadowy One”), in Celtic mythology, female warrior, especially noted as a teacher of warriors. Scáthach was the daughter of Árd-Greimne of Lethra. She lived on an island (thought to be the Isle of Skye) in an impregnable castle, the gate of which was guarded by her daughter Uathach. At this fortress Scáthach trained numerous Celtic heroes in the military arts. Her best-known student was CÚ CHULAINN, who stayed with her for a year. A number of other heroes of Celtic mythology also owed their prowess to the training of Scáthach. SCHISM, in CHRISTIANITY, break in the unity of the church. In the early church, schism was used to describe those groups that broke with the church and established rival churches. The terms HERESY and schism were originally almost synonymous, but later schism came to refer to those divisions that were caused by disagreement over something other than basic doctrine. Thus, the schismatic group was not necessarily heretical. Eventually, however, the distinctions between schism and heresy became less clear, and all disruptions in the church came to be referred to as schismatic. The most significant medieval schism was the East-West schism that divided Christendom into Western ( ROMAN

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CATHOLIC )

and Eastern ( EASTERN ORTHODOX ) branches. It began in 1054, and it has never been healed, although in 1965 Pope Paul VI and the ecumenical patriarch Athenagoras I abolished the mutual EXCOMMUNICATIONS of 1054 of the pope and the patriarch of Constantinople. Another important medieval schism was the Western Schism between the rival popes of Rome and Avignon and, later, even a third pope. The greatest Christian schism in the West was that involving the Protestant REFORMATION and the division from Rome. According to Roman Catholic CANON LAW, a schismatic is a baptized person who, though continuing to call himself a Christian, refuses submission to the pope or fellowship with members of the church. Other churches have similarly defined schism juridically in terms of separation from their own communion. In the 20th century the ecumenical movement worked for cooperation among and reunion of churches, and the greater cooperation between Roman Catholics and Protestants after the SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL (1962–65) resulted in more flexible attitudes within the churches concerning the problems of schism.

S CHLEIER MACHER , F RIEDRICH (E R NST D ANIEL ) \ 9shl&-‘r-0m!-_‘r \ (b. Nov. 21, 1768, Breslau, Silesia, Prussia—d. Feb. 12, 1834, Berlin), German theologian, preacher, and classical philologist. He is generally recognized as being the founder of modern Protestant theology. His major work, Der christliche Glaube (1821–22; 2nd ed. 1831; The Christian Faith), is a systematic interpretation of Christian dogmatics. Schleiermacher’s father, a Reformed (Calvinist) military CHAPLAIN, and his mother both came from families of clergymen. From 1783 to 1785 he attended a school of the Moravian Brethren (Herrnhuters; see MORAVIAN CHURCH), an influential Pietistic (see PIETISM) group, at Niesky. In this milieu, individualized study was combined with a piety based on the joy of salvation and a vividly imaginative relation with Jesus as savior. Here Schleiermacher developed his lifelong interest in the Greek and Latin classics and his distinctive sense of the religious life. Later he called himself a Herrnhuter “of a higher order.” Feeling constricted by the lifeless and dogmatic narrowness of the Moravian seminary at Barby, which he attended from 1785 to 1787, he left it with his father’s reluctant permission and at EASTER he matriculated at the University of Halle. A diligent and independent student, Schleiermacher began the study of theology and Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. In his epistemology (theory of knowledge) he remained a Kantian throughout his life. After two years he moved to Drossen (Ouno), and began preparing for his first theological examinations. Though he read more in ethics than in theology, he took his examinations in Reformed theology in 1790, achieving marks of “very good” or “excellent” in all fields except dogmatics, the one in which he was later to make his most original contribution. Schleiermacher then took a position as tutor for the family of the Graf (count) zu Dohna in Schlobitten, East Prussia. Besides tutoring, he preached regularly, chiefly on ethical themes, and continued his philosophical study, particularly of the question of human freedom. After taking his second theological examinations in 1794, Schleiermacher became assistant pastor in Landsberg and then, in

SCHOLASTICISM 1796, pastor of the Charité, a hospital and home for the of God (founded by KARL BARTH and Emil Brunner) as leadaged just outside Berlin. In that city he found his way into ing away from the Gospel toward a religion based on human the circle of the German Romantic writers through the creculture. Since then, however, there has been a renewed ator of early R O M A N T IC ISM , Friedrich von Schlegel, with study and appreciation of Schleiermacher’s contributions, whom he shared an apartment for a time, began a transla- partly because the critique was one-sided, and partly because of a new interest in 19th-century theology. tion of Plato’s works, and became acquainted with the new Berlin society. SC H M A LKA LD IC AR TIC LES \shm!l-9kal-dik, -9k!l- \, also In Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter called Smalcald Articles \9shm!l-0k!ld \, one of the CONFES ihren Verächtern (On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured SIONS OF FAITH of LUTHERANISM , written by MARTIN LUTHER Despisers), written in 1799, Schleiermacher addressed the Romantics with the message that they were not as far from in 1536. The articles were prepared as the result of a bull isreligion as they thought; for religion is the “feeling and in- sued by Pope Paul III calling for a general council of the RO M A N C A T H O L IC church to deal with the R E F O R M A T IO N tuition of the universe” or “the sense of the Infinite in the movement. John Frederick I, Lutheran elector of Saxony, finite,” and CHRISTIANITY is one individual shaping of that feeling. This work, perennially attractive for its view of a wished to determine what issues could be negotiated with living union of religion and culture, greatly impressed the the Roman Catholics and what could not be compromised. young theologians of the time. The Monologen (1800; SolilHe asked Luther to review earlier statements of faith by the oquies) presented a parallel to religion in the view of ethics Reformers to determine what was absolutely essential to as the intuition and action of the self in its individuality. the faith. Luther prepared the articles, and after further disThe individuality of each human being is in this work seen cussion they were sent to the elector in January 1537. as a unique “organ and symbol” of the InIn February 1537 the PROTESTANT secufinite itself. lar heads of state who were members of In Die Weihnachtsfeier (1805; Christthe Schmalkaldic League met with several mas Celebration), which was written in theologians at Schmalkalden to decide the style of a Platonic dialogue, Schleierhow to deal with a council of the Roman macher adopted the D E FIN IT IO N O F R E L I Catholic church. John Frederick I presentGION he later incorporated into Der chrised Luther’s articles to the gathering. Betliche Glaube. Instead of speaking of cause of Luther’s somewhat controversial religion as “feeling and intuition,” he now doctrine of the EUCHARIST , the AUGSBURG CO N FESSIO N and its Apology was adopted called it simply “feeling”—namely, the as an adequate presentation of the reformimmediate feeling that God lives and ers’ faith and the Schmalkaldic Articles works in us as finite human beings. were not officially accepted. Forty-four In 1807 Napoleon’s invasion of Prussia theologians signed them as an expression forced Schleiermacher to move to Berlin, of their personal faith, however, and subgiving lectures on his own and traveling sequently they were included in the BOOK about to encourage national resistance; he OF CONCORD (1580). also assisted Wilhelm von Humboldt in The Schmalkaldic Articles are divided laying plans for the new university to be into three sections. The first discusses the founded in Berlin. He married Henriette unity of God, the T R IN IT Y, the IN C A R N A von Willich, the widow of a close friend of Schleiermacher, detail of an TION , and Christ. The second section dealt his, in 1809. In that same year he became engraving by F. Lehmann, with Christ and JU S T IF IC A T IO N by faith. pastor of Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Trinity 19th century According to Luther, “On this article rests Church) in Berlin and, in 1810, professor of By courtesy of Bildarchiv Preussischer all that we teach and practice against the theology at the new university. This latter Kulturbesitz BPK, Berlin pope, the devil, and the world.” This secposition he retained to the end of his life. tion also discusses the M ASS , monastic orHis activities in the years following were many and varied. He lectured on theology and philos- ders, and the PA PA C Y. The third section dealt with such subjects as SIN , the Law, repentance, the SACRAMENTS , conophy; he preached in Dreifaltigkeitskirche almost every fession, the ministry, and a definition of the church. Sunday until the end of his life; he was a member (from 1800) and permanent secretary of the Berlin Academy of Sciences; he carried on an extensive correspondence; and SC H O LA ST IC ISM \sk‘-9las-t‘-0si-z‘m \, philosophical systems and speculative tendencies of various medieval Chrishe was active in promoting the Prussian Union, which brought Lutheran and Calvinist churches into one body. tian thinkers who, working on a background of fixed religious dogma, sought to solve anew general philosophical His major publications during this period were the Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums (1811; Brief Out- problems—as of faith and reason, will and intellect, realism and nominalism, and the provability of the existence of line of the Study of Theology), presenting a curriculum in God—initially under the influence of the mystical and inwhich the function of theology is to shape and direct the tuitional tradition of the CHURCH FATHERS (especially AU church as a religious community, and Der christliche GUSTINE ) and later under that of Aristotle. Glaube. In the early Middle Ages the authority of the Church FaIn 1834 there were an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people thers still remained important. The impact of the theoloin his long funeral procession through the streets of Berlin. gians PET ER A BELA R D and A N SELM O F C A N T ER BU R Y in the He was buried in the cemetery of Dreifaltigkeitskirche. Schleiermacher’s thought continued to influence theolo- 11th century, however, brought logic to the forefront of gy throughout the 19th century and the early part of the scholastic philosophy and rendered reliance upon the authority of the Fathers alone inadequate. 20th. Between about 1925 and 1955 it was under severe atFor such medieval theologians as ALBERTUS MAGNUS and tack by followers of the “kerygmatic” theology of the Word

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SCHWEITZER, ALBERT ST . THOM AS AQUINAS , reason assumed an important role in theology, not as the antithesis of faith, but as its supplement. Thus, the scholastics made a systematic attempt to map out the field of theology as a science and in so doing developed new treatises on matters, such as the SA C R A M EN T S , that had previously belonged to preaching. They borrowed freely from the philosophy of Aristotle, which came to them largely via the Islamic philosophers IB N R U SH D (Averroës; 1126–98) and IBN S J N E (Avicenna; 980– 1037), and aimed at a synthesis of learning in which theology surmounted the hierarchy of knowledge. The primary methods of teaching were lecture and formal debate, which consisted largely in the presentation and analysis of syllogisms. Although there was fairly general agreement as to method and aim, scholastics did not always agree among themselves on points of doctrine. Distinct schools of theology emerged, the most influential being those of the Franciscan DUNS SCOTUS , for whom a world created in God’s groundless, absolute freedom could exhibit no “necessary reasons,” and the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas, for whom faith, in general, presupposed and therefore required natural reason. The Thomist position tended increasingly to prevail, and Aquinas was eventually considered the repository of sound and orthodox doctrine. His Summa Theologiae (“Summary of Theology”) became the standard textbook of theology, and the era of the great commentaries on Aquinas began. One of the most famous was that of a 16th-century Dominican, Cardinal Tommaso de Vio, commonly known as Cajetan. In the period following the REFOR M ATION , while PROTES TANT theologians stressed scriptural and patristic authority and despised the scholastics as logic-chopping obscurantists, Catholic theologians came to rely on the latter more and more heavily. The Metaphysical Disputations of the late-16th-century Jesuit FRAN CISC O SU Á REZ , however, reveal a concern for the spirit rather than the letter of scholasticism. Rather than a commentary on Aquinas, his work is an original philosophical treatise inspired by Aquinas and others. The first author to try to extract a philosophy (apart from theology) from Aquinas was the Dominican John of St. Thomas in the 17th century with his Cursus Philosophicus, and this example was much followed. Though subsequent philosophers and theologians saw themselves as heirs to the scholastic tradition, by the 18th and 19th centuries scholasticism had fallen out of touch with contemporary thought and science. A Thomist revival was announced and stimulated by Pope Leo XIII’s ENCYCLICAL Aeterni Patris (1879); so-called neo-scholasticism became the dominant school in the Roman Catholic universities. Subsequently, neo-scholasticism and neo-Thomism earned renewed respect on the basis of the historical scholarship of the French Christian philosopher Étienne Gilson and others, who traced the original contributions of the scholastics and their influence on subsequent philosophy.

S C H W E IT Z E R , A L B E R T \ 9shw&t-s‘r \ (b. Jan. 14, 1875, Kaysersberg, Upper Alsace, Ger. [now in France]—d. Sept. 4, 1965, Lambaréné, Gabon), Alsatian-German theologian, philosopher, organist, and M ISSION doctor in equatorial Africa, who received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on behalf of “the Brotherhood of Nations.” The son of a Lutheran pastor, Schweitzer studied philosophy and theology at Strasbourg, where he took the doctor’s degree in philosophy in 1899. At the same time, he was 978 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

also a lecturer in philosophy and a preacher at St. Nicholas’ Church, and the following year he received a doctorate in theology. His book Von Reimarus zu Wrede (1906; The Quest of the Historical Jesus) established him as a world figure in theological studies. In this and other works he stressed the eschatological views (concerned with the consummation of history) of JESUS and ST . PAUL , asserting that their attitudes were formed by expectation of the imminent end of the world. During these years Schweitzer also became an accomplished musician, beginning his career as an organist in Strasbourg in 1893. In 1905 Schweitzer announced his intention to become a mission doctor in order to devote himself to philanthropic work, and in 1913 he became a doctor of medicine. With his wife, Hélène Bresslau, who had trained as a nurse in order to assist him, he set out for Lambaréné in the Gabon province of French Equatorial Africa, where he built a hospital. Interned there briefly as an enemy alien (German), and later in France as a prisoner of war during World War I, he turned his attention increasingly to world problems and was moved to write his Kulturphilosophie (1923; “Philosophy of Civilization”), in which he set forth his personal philosophy of “reverence for life,” an ethical principle involving all living things, which he believed essential to the survival of civilization. Schweitzer returned to Africa in 1924. By 1963 there were 350 patients with their relatives at the hospital and 150 patients in an associated leper colony. Schweitzer never entirely abandoned his musical or scholarly interests. He published Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus (1930; The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle), gave lectures and organ recitals throughout Europe, made recordings, edited J.S. Bach’s works, and wrote a widely influential book on Bach. His address upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Das Problem des Friedens in der heutigen Albert Schweitzer Yousuf Karsh from Rapho/Photo Researchers

SCRIPTURE Welt (1954; The Problem of Peace in the World of Today), had a worldwide circulation. Despite the occasional criticisms of Schweitzer’s medical practice as being autocratic and primitive, and despite the opposition sometimes raised against his theological works, his influence continues to have a strong moral appeal. SC IEN C E A N D RELIG IO N : see MAGIC , SCIENCE , AND LIGION .

RE -

SC IEN T O LO G Y \0s&-‘n-9t!-l‘-j% \, official name Church of Scientology, religio-scientific movement developed in the United States in the 1950s by the author L. Ron Hubbard (1911–86). Its forerunner was Dianetics, a form of psychotherapy originated by Hubbard and later incorporated into Scientology. See NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS . SC IR O PH O R IA \0skir-‘-9f+r-%-‘, -9f|r- \, also spelled Skirophoria, also called Skira, in GREEK RELIGION , annual Athenian festival held at threshing time on the 12th of Skirophorion (roughly, June/July). The priestess of ATHEN A and the priests of POSEIDON and HELIOS walked from the Acropolis to a place on the road to Eleusis called Skiron. The solemnity, which was probably a companion festival to the TH ESM O PH O RIA , may have been held in honor of the goddess Athena; more reliable traditions, however, indicate that it was in honor of DEMETER and her daughter Kore (PER SEPHONE ). S C R I P T U R E , also called sacred scripture, the revered texts, or Holy Writ, of the world’s religions. Scriptures comprise a large part of the literature of the world. They vary greatly in form, volume, age, and degree of sacredness; but their common attribute is that their words are regarded by the devout as sacred. Most sacred scriptures were originally oral and were passed down through memorization from generation to generation until they were finally committed to writing. A few are still preserved orally, such as the hymns of the Native Americans. Many bear the unmistakable marks of their oral origin and can best be understood when recited aloud; in fact, it is still held by many Hindus and Buddhists that their scriptures lack, when read silently, the meaning and significance they have when recited aloud, for the human voice is believed to add to the recited texts dimensions of truth and power that cannot readily be grasped by the solitary reader. The greater part of recorded scripture has either a narrative or an expository character. The types of sacred and semisacred texts are, in fact, many and of a great variety. Besides magical runes (ancient Germanic alphabet characters) and S P E L L S , they include hymns, prayers, chants, myths, stories about gods and heroes, epics, fables, sacred laws, directions for the conduct of rituals, the original teachings of major religious figures, expositions of these teachings, moral anecdotes, dialogues of seers and sages, and philosophical discussions. Types of sacred literature vary in authority and degree of sacredness. The centrally important and most holy of the sacred texts have in many instances been gathered into canons (standard works of the faith). These canons, after being determined either by general agreement or by official religious bodies, then become fixed—i.e., they are limited to certain works that are alone viewed as fully authoritative and beyond all further change or alteration. The works that are not admitted to the canons (those of a semisacred

or semicanonical character) may still be quite valuable as supplementary texts. A striking instance of making a distinction between canonical and semicanonical scriptures occurs in HINDUISM . The Hindu sacred literature contains ancient elements and every type of religious literature that has been listed, except historical details on the lives of the seers and sages who produced it. Its earliest portions, namely, the four ancient VEDAS (hymns) seem to have been provided by IndoAryan families in northwest India in the 2nd millennium ). These and the supplements to them composed after 1000 ), the BR EHM A DAS (commentaries and instruction in ritual), the ERA DYAKAS (forest books of ascetics), and the UPAN ISHADS (philosophical treatises), are considered more sacred than any later writings. They are collectively referred to as UR UTI (“heard”; i.e., communicated by revelation); whereas the later writings are labeled SM STI (“remembered”; i.e., recollected and reinterpreted at some distance in time from the original revelations). The former are canonical and completed, not to be added to nor altered, but the latter are semicanonical and semisacred. The most precisely fixed canons are those that have been defined by official religious bodies. The Jewish canon, known to Christians as the OLD TESTAMENT , was fixed by a synod of RABBIS held at Yavneh, Palestine, about 90 (. The semisacred books that were excluded were labeled by Christians the APOCRYPHA (Greek: “hidden, secret, noncanonical”). ROM AN CATHOLICISM and EASTER N OR THODOXY later included them in their canons. JESU S left nothing in writing, but he so inspired his followers that they preserved his sayings and biographical details about him in oral form until they were written down in the four Gospels. To these were added the letters of P A U L T H E A P O S T L E and others (many of them written before the Gospels), and the Book of R EV ELA T IO N T O JO H N , the whole forming a sacred canon called the N E W T E S T A M E N T , which was ecclesiastically sanctioned by the end of the 4th century (. There were also New Testament Apocrypha, but they did not achieve canonical status because of numerous spurious details. Where no religious body has provided sanction or authorization, scriptures have had to stand on their own authority. Muslims believe that the QUR #AN does this easily. The Qur#an, their only sacred canon or standard of faith, authenticates itself, they believe, by its internal self-evidencing power, for it is composed of the very words of God communicated to M U H A M M A D and recited by him without addition or subtraction. This faith of Muslims in the Qur#an is somewhat similar to that of CH RISTIAN FU N D A M EN TALISTS who believe that the BIBLE , as God’s word, is verbally inspired from beginning to end. There exists a large body of literature that possesses less of the aura of true scripture than the works just noted. They are interpretations about divine truth and divine commands, or stories that illustrate how persons, exalted or lowly, have acted (with or without awareness) in response to a divine stimulus. They are, in effect, supportive of true scripture. An outstanding instance is the TALM UD , which to many Jews has very nearly the authority of the Mosaic TORAH (the Law, or the Pentateuch). Indeed, in the postbiblical rabbinical writings it was generally considered a second Torah, complementing the Written Law of MOSES . Similarly, Christianity’s major CREEDS have, at one time or another, been regarded as infallible statements, to depart from which would be H ERESY. This is particularly true of the APOSTLES ’ CREED and the three “ecumenical creeds” of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), and Chalcedon (451).

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SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS

S C Y L L A A N D C H A R Y B D I S \ 9si-l‘…k‘-9rib-dis \ , in Greek mythology, two immortal and irresistible monsters who beset the narrow waters traversed by the hero O D YS SEUS in his wanderings. Scylla was a supernatural creature, with 12 feet and 6 heads on long, snaky necks, each head having a triple row of sharklike teeth, while her loins were girt with the heads of baying dogs. From her lair in a cave she devoured whatever ventured within reach, including six of Odysseus’ companions. She was sometimes said to have been originally human in appearance but transformed out of jealousy through the magic of CIRCE or AM PHITRITE into her fearful shape. Charybdis, who lurked under a fig tree a bowshot away on the opposite shore, drank down and belched forth the waters three times a day. She was most likely the personification of a whirlpool. The shipwrecked Odysseus barely escaped her clutches by clinging to a tree until the improvised raft that she swallowed floated to the surface again after many hours. SÉA N C E (French: “session,” or “sitting”), in OC C U L T IS M , meeting centered on a medium who seeks to communicate with spirits of the dead. A séance generally involves six or eight persons who normally form a circle and hold hands. Believers assert that communication has been established when a disembodied voice is heard, a voice speaks through the medium, or a ghostly apparition appears. Sometimes music from an unknown source seems to fill the room; objects appear to move for unnatural reasons; or a hand, a limb, or an entire body may take shape from ectoplasm (a peculiar viscous substance said to issue from the medium’s body). Other alleged means of communication include automatic writing, trance speaking, or a O U IJA BOARD or planchette. Whether some spiritualists actually possess the ability to communicate with spirits of the dead remains open to debate.

SEBEK \9se-0bek \, also spelled Sobek \9se-0bek \, Greek Suchos \ 9sr, 9si-d‘r \ (Hebrew: “order”), plural siddurim \0s%-d>-9r%m \, or siddurs, Jewish prayer book that contains the entire liturgy used on the ordinary SABBATH and on weekdays for domestic as well as SYNAGOGUE ritual. It is distinguished from the MAHZOR, which is the prayer book used for the High Holidays. Because tradition long allowed the addition of new prayers and hymns (piyyutim) to voice contemporary needs and aspirations, the siddurim reflect Jewish religious history expressed in liturgy and prayers. Variations persist, but the basic elements are unchanging.

S IEGFRIED \9sig-0fr%d, 9s%g-, German 9z%k-0fr%t \, Old Norse Sigurd \9si-g>rd, -g‘rd \, figure from the heroic literature of the ancient Germanic people. He appears in both German and Old Norse literature, although the versions of his stories do not always agree. He plays a part in the story of Brunhild, in which he meets his death, but in other stories he is the leading character and triumphs. A feature common to all versions is his outstanding strength and courage. It is still disputed whether the figure of Siegfried is of mythical or historical (Merovingian) origin. Siegfried was a boy of noble lineage who grew up without parental care. One story tells of Siegfried’s fight with a dragon, and another of how he acquired a treasure from two brothers who quarreled over their inheritance. These two stories are combined into one in the Norse Poetic EDDA. Siegfried plays a major part in the Nibelungenlied, where

this old material is used but is much overlaid with more recent additions. Das Lied vom hürnen Seyfrid, not attested before about 1500, also retains the old material in identifiable form, although the poem’s central theme is the release of a maiden from a dragon; and an Edda poem tells how Sigurd awakened a VALKYRIE maiden from a charmed sleep. There is doubt about the antiquity of both poems.

S IFRA \si-9fr! \, compilation of midrashic exegeses on the book of Leviticus produced by Jewish sages in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and closed at c. 300 (. Sifra contends that the law of the MISHNAH is not the product of logic—but that it is, and can only be, the product of EXEGESIS of SCRIPTURE. The Mishnah is subordinated to Scripture and validated only through Scripture. The framers of the Mishnah effect their taxonomy through the traits of things. The authorship of Sifra insists that the only true source of classification is Scripture. In the Mishnah one seeks connection between fact and fact, sentence and sentence, by comparing and contrasting two things that are both like and not alike. But, Sifra insists, only Scripture reliably defines the governing classifications by which facts are formed into intelligible patterns. S IFRÉ TO D EUTERONOMY \ si-9fr@ . . . 0dm \ (Hebrew: “termination”), in JU DAISM , celebration, either when a study group completes a tractate of the T A LM U D or when the writing of a T O R A H scroll is completed. The study of the Talmud is frequently arranged so that a tractate can be finished on the eve of PASSOVER (Pesag). Because a special meal (se!uddat mitzva) follows a study of the final passage, the firstborn is exempt from his usual fast on that day. When a Torah scroll is near completion, males are generally allowed the privilege of writing one of the final letters on the sacred manuscript. This event is followed by a celebration.

S K A D I \ 9sk!-\% \, Old Norse Skaoi, in Norse mythology (see G E R M A N IC R E L IG IO N ), giantess wife of the sea god Njörd. In order to avenge the death of her father, the giant Thiazi, Skadi attacked the rival tribe of the gods (the AESIR ) in A SG A R D , home of the gods. The Aesir, wanting to appease her anger, offered her the choice of one of their number for a husband, with the stipulation that she choose a god by his knees (or feet) alone. She chose Njörd, thinking that he was Balder; their marriage failed because Njörd preferred to live by the sea, and Skadi was happier in her father’s home in the mountains (Thrymheim). In some sources, Skadi was known as the goddess of snowshoes. Another tradition relates that Skadi bore sons to the god ODIN .

S K A N D A \ 9sk‘n-d‘ \, also called Kerttikeya, Kumera, or Subrahmadya, Hindu god of war and the first-born son of 1015

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SKANDHA

SLA V IC R ELIG IO N , beliefs and practices of the ancient Slavic peoples of eastern Europe. Slavs are usually subdivided into East Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians), West Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Lusatians [Sorbs]), and South Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Bulgars). Cosmogony. A myth known to all Slavs tells how God ordered a handful of sand to be brought up from the bottom of the sea and created the land from it. Usually it is the Devil who brings up the sand; in Slovenia it is God himself. The 12th-century German missionary Helmold of Bosau recorded his surprise in encountering among the Slavs on the Baltic a belief in a single heavenly God, who ignored the affairs of this world, having delegated the governance of it to certain spirits begotten by him (see D EU S O T IO SU S ). This is the only instance in which the sources allude to a hierarchy of divinities. Divine beings. The 12th- to 13th-century Kiev Chronicle (Povest vremennykh let) enumerates seven Russian preChristian divinities: PER UN , Volos, Khors, D A Z H B O G , S T R IB O G , Simargla, and Mokosh. An earlier Russian text mentions S V A R O G , apparently the son of Dazhbog. Of all these figures only two, Perun and Svarog, are at all likely to have been common to all the Slavs. Common to Slavic Eurasia is a SK A N D H A \9sk‘n-d‘ \ (Sanskrit: divinity called Zcerneboch (or “aggregates”), Peli khandha Chernobog), the Black God, and Tiar noglofi, the Black Head \9k‘n-d‘ \, according to Buddhist thought, the five elements that (Mind or Brain). The Black God constitute an individual’s mensurvives in numerous Slavic tal and physical existence. The curses, and the aid of the White self cannot be identified with God is sought to obtain protecany one of the parts, nor is it the tion or mercy in Bulgaria, Serbia, total of the parts. They are: (1) and Pomerania. This religious DUALISM of white and black gods matter (rjpa), the manifest form is common to practically all the of the four elements—earth, air, peoples of Eurasia. fire, and water; (2) sensations Skanda, stone sculpture from the Gupta period In Estonia the prophet ELIJA H (vedane); (3) perceptions of sense (c. 320–540); in Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi, is considered to be the successor objects (Sanskrit: saujñe; Peli: India to U K K O , the ancient spirit of saññe); (4) mental formations By courtesy of Bharat Kala Bhavan, Banaras Hindu University lightning. Similarly, the prophet (SA USK ER A S , or sankheras); and (5) consciousness (vijñena, or Elijah replaces Elwa in Georgia viññeda). All individuals are subject to constant change, as and Zeus in Greece. It is therefore probable that, among the the elements of consciousness are never the same. The inSlavs also, Elijah is to be considered a successor of Perun. dividual may be compared to a river, which retains an idenAccording to a popular Serbian tradition, God gave the tity though the drops of water that make it up are different lightning to Elijah when he decided to retire from governfrom one moment to the next. ing the world. The Serbian story agrees with Helmold’s description of the distribution of offices by an inactive God. SKU LL C U LT , veneration of human skulls, usually those Elijah is a severe and peevish saint. It is rare that his feast of ancestors, by various prehistoric and some modern peo- day passes without some ill fortune. Fires—even spontaneples. Begun as early as the Early Paleolithic Period, the ous combustion—are blamed on him. practice of preserving and honoring the skull apart from the A similar complex may be seen if the Slavic Perun is rest of the skeleton continued in different forms through- equated with Perkunas, the lightning deity of the Lithuaout prehistoric times. Most authorities agree that the nians. In Latvia, creatures with black fur or plumage were skulls were cleaned and set up for worship after death. Presacrificed to Perkons, as they were to the fire god Agni in historic peoples also paid special attention to animal ancient India. Such deities are therefore generic deities of skulls. This practice is believed to have been a type of fire, not specifically celestial and even less to be regarded as hunting magic, whereas the human skulls were honored supreme. Scholarly efforts to place Perun at the center of with the reverence accorded to heroic ancestors. Slavic religion and to create around him a pantheon of deiSH IVA .

The gods wished for Skanda to be born in order to destroy the DEM O N Teraka, who had been granted a boon that he could only be killed by a son of Shiva. Shiva, however, was lost in meditation and was not attracted to P ER VAT J until struck by an arrow from the bow of K EM A , the god of love. After the many years of abstinence Shiva’s seed was so strong that the gods feared the result, and some accounts say it was deposited into the fire (from which comes the name Skanda, in Sanskrit: “Spurt of Semen”). One tradition has it that Skanda was reared by, or was even the son of, the Ksttikes, six wives of szis who as stars make up the Pleiades, hence the name Kerttikeya (“Son of Ksttikes”). He developed his six faces to drink the milk of his six nurses. He is also often depicted as a six-headed child held by his mother Pervatj and accompanied by his brother G A D E U A . He is called Kumera (Sankskrit: “Youth,” “Boy”) because he never married and in YOGA represents the power of chastity. He has enormous strength and is sometimes shown leading the army of the gods. In South India, where the god originated as Murukaa before merging with the North Indian Skanda, he has a large following under the name Subrahmadya (“Dear to the Brehmadas”), and he is also important among Hindus residing in Southeast Asia.

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SMITH, JOSEPH ties of the Greco-Roman type cannot yield appreciable results. Russian sources treat Svarog, present as Zuarasici among the Liutici of Rethra (an ancient locality in eastern Germany), as a god of the drying-house fire. But the Belarusians of Chernigov, when lighting the drying-house fire, invoke Perun and not Svarog, as if Svarog (apparently from svar, “litigation” or “dispute,” perhaps referring to the friction between the pieces of wood used to produce ignition) were an appellation of Perun. Places of worship. Though the idols of which the Russian chronicles speak appear to have been erected outdoors, the German chronicles provide detailed descriptions of enclosed sacred places and temples among the Baltic Slavs. Such enclosures were walled and were usually of triangular shape at the confluence of two rivers, fortified with earthwork and palisades. Religious buildings contained wooden structures including a cell for the statue of a god, also made of wood and sometimes covered in metal. These representations, all anthropomorphic, very often had supernumerary body parts—e.g., seven arms or three or five heads (Trigelavus, Suantevitus, and Porenutius, respectively). The temples were in the custody of priests, who enjoyed prestige and authority even in the eyes of the chiefs and received tribute and shares of military booty. HUMAN SACRIFICES , including eviscerations, decapitations, and T R E P A N N IN G (drilling of a hole into the human skull), had a propitiatory role in securing abundance and victory. One enclosure might contain up to four temples; those at Szczecin (Stettin), in northwestern Poland, were erected in close proximity to each other. They were visited annually by the whole population of the surrounding district, who brought oxen and sheep to be butchered. The boiled meat was distributed to all the participants without regard to sex or age. Dances and plays, sometimes humorous, enlivened the festival. Communal banquets and related practices. T h e c u s tom of communal banquets has been preserved into modern times in Russia in the bratchina (from brat, “brother”), in the mol’ba (“entreaty” or “supplication”), and in the kanun (a short religious service); in the Serbian slava (“glorification”); and in the sobor (“assembly”) and kurban (“victim” or “prey”) of Bulgaria. In Russia the feasts are dedicated to the memory of a deceased person or to the patron saint of the village and in Serbia to the protecting saint from whom the rod or pleme (“clan”) took its name. In the Serbian seoska slava, or “slava of the village,” the whole community participates and consumes in common the flesh of the victims prepared in the open air. In Russia sometimes the animals (or their flesh) are first brought into the church and perfumed with incense. The social unit sought to secure for itself the favor of a powerful figure of the past, or even of more than one, representing them in several forms on the same pillar or giving to their statues supernumerary body parts that would express their superhuman powers. A hollow bronze idol, probably ancient Russian, was found at Ryazan, Russia. The idol has four faces with a fifth face on its breast. The eastern Finns and the Ugrians venerated their dead in the same way, representing them as polycephalic (multiple-headed), and also held communal banquets in their honor. Until the 19th century there survived here and there throughout the Danubian-Balkan region the custom of reopening graves three, five, or seven years after interment, taking out the bones of the corpses, washing them, wrapping them in new linen, and reinterring them. In protohistoric times the tumuli (BURIAL MOUNDS ) of the mortuaries of the Krivichi (a populous tribe of the East Slavs of the north-

west)—the so-called long kurgans—contained cinerary urns buried in the TUMULUS together and all at one time. Such a practice could occur only as the consequence of collective and simultaneous CREMATION . There must, therefore, have existed a periodic cremation season or date, in preparation for which the corpses were temporarily exhumed.

SLEIPN IR \9sl@p-nir \, in Norse mythology, the god Odin’s magical horse. The offspring of LOKI , disguised as a mare, and SVAD ILFARI , the stallion of a giant, Sleipnir had eight legs and could ride in the air.

SM ER TA SEC T \9sm!r-t‘ \, orthodox Hindu sect composed primarily of BRAHM INS characterized by their allegiance to all the gods of the Hindu pantheon and by their adherence to rules of ritual and of conduct laid down in the ancient S JTRA texts. The sjtras followed by the Smerta sect form part of the SM STI , a class of sacred texts that are considered to be of human authorship. Their greatest teacher and, according to some, the founder of the sect was the 8th-century philosopher UA UKA RA . The monastery he founded at Sringeri, in Karnataka (formerly Mysore state), continues to be the center of the sect, and the head of the monastery, the jagadguru (“teacher of the world”), is the spiritual authority of the Smertas in south India and Gujaret and one of the chief religious personages in India. The Smertas pay allegiance in their worship to the five gods they regard as primary—SHIVA , VISHNU , UAKTI , S JRYA , and GA DE UA —in the pañceyatana pjje (“five-shrines worship”), though Shiva is particularly favored among them today. They are active in all branches of learning and have earned the honorary title of uestrj (Sanskrit: “men of learning”), or, in Tamil, ayyar, which often follows their names. S M IT H , J O SE P H \9smith \ (b. Dec. 23, 1805, Sharon, Vt., U.S.—d. June 27, 1844, Carthage, Ill.), American prophet whose writings, along with the BIBLE , provide the theological foundation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other MOR MON denominations. Smith grew up in western New York at a time of intense religious R E V IV A L IS M . He was a literate but unschooled child, remembered by his neighbors as a diviner who dug for buried treasure. One day in the woods, at the age of 14, Joseph Smith experienced an intense spiritual revelation of God and JESU S CH RIST . In 1827 he claimed that an AN G EL had directed him to buried golden plates whose engraved surfaces contained a history of the American Indians describing them as descendants of the lost tribes of Hebrews who centuries earlier had sailed to North America by way of the Pacific. This BO O K O F M O R M O N he translated from “reformed Egyptian” with the aid of special stones. Published in 1830, the book was offered as scientific evidence of his divine calling. Most non-Mormon scholars, however, regard the book as a collection of local legends of Indian origin, fragments of autobiography, and current religious and political controversies (especially that connected with the Anti-Masonic movement). Smith claimed that the church that he organized on April 6, 1830, at Fayette, N.Y., restored the ancient, primitive Christian religion. The converts whom it attracted followed him from New York to Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, as their neighbors were suspicious of the Mormons’ unorthodox cooperative society ruled by an ecclesiastical oligarchy. Non-Mormons were also hostile toward the sect’s practice of polygamy. Although Smith’s revelation on this

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SMITH, WILLIAM ROBERTSON subject was not made public until 1852, and it is not supported in the Book of Mormon, there is evidence that he may have married as many as 50 wives. Publicly, however, he acknowledged only his first, Emma Hale Smith, who bore him nine children. Smith gover ned by announcing periodic revelations on widely divergent matters. He combined elements of Jewish and Christian MYSTICISM with the goal of perpetual prosperity Joseph Smith, detail of a and sought to establish Mormonism as a com- painting by an unknown artist; in the Heritage Hall plete way of life. In 1839 Smith led his Museum, the Auditorium, Independence, Mo. followers to Commerce, By courtesy of the Reorganized Church of Ill., which he renamed Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nauvoo. The Mormon Independence, Mo. population soon reached 20,000, making it the largest city in Illinois. Smith served as the city’s mayor and commanded a part of the state militia, gaining a reputation as one of the West’s most illustrious citizens. In February 1844, when he announced his candidacy for the U.S. presidency, Mormon dissenters attacked him in their opposition newspaper on grounds of polygamy and political ambition. Smith ordered their press destroyed, and threats of mob violence followed. After Smith called out the Nauvoo militia to protect the town, he was charged with treason and imprisoned, along with his brother Hyrum. A mob of ar med men with blackened faces stormed the jail on June 27 and murdered them both. In addition to the Book of Mormon, the Latter-day Saints also use as scriptural sources Smith’s Doctrine and Covenants (1835) and The Pearl of Great Price (1842).

SM ITH , WILLIA M RO BER TSO N (b. Nov. 8, 1846, Keig, Aberdeenshire, Scot.—d. March 31, 1894, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.), encyclopedist, and scholar of Semitic languages, COMPARATIVE RELIGION , and social anthropology. Smith was ordained a minister in 1870 on his appointment as professor of Oriental languages and Old Testament Exegesis at the Free Church College of Aberdeen. The authorities of the Free Church took strong exception to his early publications on biblical subjects; in 1877 they suspended him from his teaching duties. He was formally tried, and in 1880 the assembly dropped the indictment against him. After a second attack on his opinions, he was again suspended; in 1881 he was removed from his chair. Appointed later that year as joint editor of Encyclopædia Britannica, he wrote The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (1881) and The Prophets of Israel (1882) and took academic positions at the University of Cambridge in 1883. His article “Sacrifice” (1886), his book Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (1885), and his most original work, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889), are important landmarks in the study of comparative religion. These 1018 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

works had a significant influence on such scholars as ÉMILE and SIGMUND FREUD .

DURKHEIM

SM O H A LLA \sm‘-9ha-l‘ \, also called Smowhola, Smoholler, Smokeholer, Smuxale, Snohallow, and Somahallie (b. c. 1815/20, Upper Columbia River, Oregon Country [U.S.]—d. 1895), North American Indian prophet, preacher, and teacher, one of a series of such leaders who arose in response to the encroachment of white settlers. He founded the Dreamers, a religious movement that emphasized traditional Indian values (see also NATIVE AMERICAN RELIGIONS ). Smohalla belonged to the Wanapum, a small Sahaptianspeaking tribe in what is now eastern Washington state. He grew up to become a celebrated MEDICINE MAN and warrior. After a fight with a rival, he left his home to travel and was away for several years. When he returned, he announced that he had died and been resurrected by God. He began to preach and by 1872 had a large following. Smohalla taught that the Indians alone were real people, the first created, and that whites, blacks, and Chinese had been created later by God to punish the Indians for leaving their ancient ways. They must live as their fathers had done and, above all, not plow land or sign papers for land, which was against nature. If they lived as their fathers had and followed the ritual of his Dreamer cult, they would be aided by the forces of nature, as well as by hordes of Indian dead who would be resurrected. God would drive away the non-Indians. The Dreamers got their name from the emphasis Smohalla placed on dreams sent to himself and his priests by God to direct them in the right ways. The ritual emphasized drumming, ringing of bells, and ecstatic dancing, all of which combined to bring on visions and exaltation. Smohalla’s influence spread among the Plateau Indians, Chief Joseph and the Nez Percé being among his most devoted followers. For a generation the cult was the greatest barrier to the U.S. government’s efforts to settle the Indians of the region and to convert them to European ways, and it persisted for several years after Smohalla’s death. SM ST I \9smri-t%, 9sm‘r- \ (Sanskrit: “recollection”), class of Hindu sacred literature in Sanskrit that is based on human memory, as distinct from Vedic literature, which is considered to be UR U TI , or revealed. Formally speaking, smsti is said to elaborate, interpret, and codify authoritative Vedic thought, but in practice Hindus usually have a greater familiarity with smsti SCRIPTURES than with Vedic uruti. Smsti texts include the K A L P A S J T R A S (important religious manuals); the PUR EDAS (compilations of ancient myth, legends, and history); the BHAGAVAD G JT E; and very importantly the R EM EYA DA and MAH EBH ERATA epics. The term smsti has come to refer particularly to texts relating to law and social conduct, such as the M A N U - S M S T I (“Tradition of Manu”). Vernacular texts, which surely constitute the great bulk of “scripture” held dear by Hindus, largely escape the uruti/smsti distinction, although some (especially Tamil hymns) have been claimed as “vernacular Veda” and others have been identified as smsti by the Sanskrit-knowing elite on grounds that only Sanskrit is the “language of the gods.” Many dispute this point of view.

SM YTH , JO H N \9smith, 9sm&th \, Smyth also spelled Smith (d. August 1612, Amsterdam), English religious libertarian and NONCONFOR MIST minister, called “the Se-baptist” (selfbaptizer), who is generally considered the founder of the organized BAPTISTS of England. He also influenced the Pilgrim

SOFER Fathers who immigrated to North America in search of religious toleration in 1620. Smyth studied at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he was a fellow during 1594–98. He was a city preacher at Lincoln from 1600 to 1602, but he renounced Anglicanism in 1606 and became minister at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, to a group of Separatists. With John Robinson, the minister to the Pilgrims in England and later in Holland, Smyth helped organize Separatists in Nottinghamshire. In 1608 both Smyth and Robinson went with their followers to Amsterdam. Adopting Baptist principles there, Smyth baptized first himself and then others, including THOM AS HEL WYS , later an influential London Baptist. He frequently revised his convictions according to conscience, a characteristic that naturally caused divisions among his congregation. When excommunicated by that congregation, he sought in vain for a favorable reception from Dutch M EN N ON ITES . He eventually rejected the doctrine of ORIGINAL SIN and asserted the right of every Christian to hold his own religious views. Among Smyth’s works is The Differences of the Churches of the Separation (probably 1608 or 1609).

S N O R R A E D D A \ 9sn+r-r‘-9e-d‘ \ , or Younger Edda, or Prose Edda, work by Snorri Sturluson. See EDDA . S O C I A L G O S P E L , American religious social-reform movement that was prominent from about 1870 to 1920, especially among liberal Protestant groups dedicated to the betterment of industrialized society. Especially important were the works of Charles Monroe Sheldon (e.g., In His Steps; “What Would Jesus Do?”; 1897) and W A LTER R A U SCHENBUSCH (e.g., Christianity and the Social Crisis; 1907). Labor reforms—abolition of child labor, a shorter workweek, a living wage, and factory regulation—constituted the Social Gospel’s most prominent concerns. During the 1930s many of these ideals were realized through the rise of organized labor and the legislation of the New Deal. SO C IETY A N D RELIG IO N , relation between cultural elements termed “religious” and the wider social context. It has often been stated, ever since the work of É M I L E DURKHEIM , that religion is preeminently social. This means two things: that religion is not simply reducible to individual, subjective experiences, and that religion is not simply a representation, in symbolic form, of a particular social system. As the CASTE system illustrates, religion and society are inextricably intertwined. Accordingly, such an experience as a religious conversion must first of all be understood as a social fact, before the experience, causes, or transformations that take place in the event can be discussed. It is best, therefore, to think of religion and society in the same way we think of society and language: just as the notion of a “private language” is a contradiction in terms, there can be no such phenomenon as a “private religion.” That is, we are born into performing a religion just as we are born into speaking or performing a language. Society and religion are thus two elements whose relations and structures constitute human life; it is the relations between the two elements that describe what we mean by community. See also RITES OF PASSAGE .

S O C IN U S , F A U S T U S \ 9fa>s-t‘s-s+-9s&-n‘s, 9f|- \, Italian Fausto (Paolo) Socini, Sozini, or Sozzini (b. Dec. 5, 1539, Siena [Italy]—d. March 3, 1604, Lussawice, Pol.), Italianborn lay theologian whose anti-Trinitarian teachings led to

the founding of the Socinian sect and were later influential in the development of the theology of UNITARIANISM . Socinus had no systematic education but early began to reject orthodox RO M AN C A TH O LIC religious doctrines. He was denounced by the INQUISITION in 1559 and sought refuge until 1562 in Zürich. His first published work was an interpretation of the prologue of the Gospel According to John, in which he wrote of Christ as divine by office rather than by nature. After fifteen years in Florence and Basel living in outward conformity to the Roman Catholic church, he wrote De Jesu Christo servatore (completed 1578, published 1594), his most important work. Central to Socinus’ teaching was the attainment of eternal life through the study of divinely revealed SCRIPTURE . He saw Christ as a real man, though without SIN , who by his suffering taught men how to bear their own sufferings. In his view, faith is more than the belief that the teaching of Christ is true; faith also results in repentance for sins and in an obedience that leads to eternal life. From 1587 to 1598 Socinus lived in Kraków, but in the latter year an enraged mob tried to take his life, and he took refuge at the neighboring village of Lussawice, where he spent his final years. His incomplete work, Christianae religionis institutio, is possibly the basis for the Racovian C A T E Faustus Socinus CHISM (1605), which is a By courtesy of the Library of Congress, thorough exposition of Washington, D.C. Socinian thought. Unitarian theology, par ticularly the doctrines of the person and work of Christ, was greatly influenced by the introduction of Socinian writings to England in the 17th century.

SO D O M A N D GO M O R RA H \9s!-d‘m . . . g‘-9m|r-‘ \, notoriously sinful cities in the biblical Book of GENESIS ; sexual acts attributed to the Sodomites gave the city’s name to the modern term sodomy. Sodom and Gomorrah constituted, along with the cities of Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar (Bela), the five biblical “cities of the plain.” Destroyed by “brimstone and fire” because of their wickedness (Genesis 19:24), Sodom and Gomorrah presumably were devastated by an earthquake about 1900 ). The cities are now possibly covered by the shallow waters south of Al-Lisen, a peninsula near the southern end of the Dead Sea in Israel. Archaeological evidence indicates that the area was once fertile in the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000–1500 )), with sufficient fresh water to sustain agriculture. Because of the fertile land, the biblical Lot, the nephew of the Hebrew patriarch ABRAHAM , selected the area of the cities of the Valley of Siddim (the Salt Sea, or the Dead Sea) to graze his flocks. S O F E R \ s+-9fer, 9s+-f‘r \ (Hebrew: “scribe”), also spelled sopher, plural soferim, or sopherim \0s+-fe-9r%m \, any of a group of Jewish scholars who interpreted and taught bibli-

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SJKA-GAKKAI cal law and ethics from about the 5th century ) to about 200 ); the first of the soferim was the biblical prophet EZRA . Previously the word had designated an important administrator connected with the Temple but without religious status. Ezra and his disciples initiated a tradition of rabbinic scholarship that remains to this day a fundamental feature of JU D A ISM . Historically, the soferim are credited with initiating rabbinic studies, fixing the canon of O LD TESTAM ENT scriptures, and, as copyists and editors, working to safeguard the purity of the original text. Under foreign rule, the Jews enjoyed cultural autonomy and were allowed to govern themselves under the constitution of the Law of M O SES . The soferim became experts in the Law, applying the idealistic aspirations of the TO RAH and ORAL TRADITION to the exigencies of daily life. With the decline of the soferim, their tradition of biblical scholarship was largely taken over by the PHARISEES and, in later generations, by the tannaim, amoraim, and geonim (see TANNA , AMORA , and GAON ). The soferim disappeared about the 2nd century ); the “scribes” of the NEW TESTAMENT (often referred to in connection with the Pharisees) were doctors of the law, or jurists (usually called gakhamim), who gave advice to judges entrusted with legal administration. Over time, sofer came to mean one who taught the BIBLE to children; it could also signify a copyist, notary, or calligrapher qualified to write Torah scrolls or other religious documents. The Talmud BA V LI (c. 500 () has a soferim tractate that stipulates how such work is to be performed. Modern Hebrew translates sofer as a “man of letters.”

S JK A - G A K K A I \ 9s+-k!-9g!k-0k& \ (Japanese: “Value-Creation Society”), lay religious group associated with the Japanese Buddhist sect Nichiren-shj-shj (see NICHIREN ). Sjkagakkai is the most successful of the new religious movements of the 20th century in Japan; but insofar as it draws upon the teachings of the Buddhist saint Nichiren, it belongs to a tradition dating from the 13th century. The Sjka-gakkai follows an intensive policy of conversion (shakubuku, literally, “break and subdue”). Membership increased within a seven-year period (1951–57) from 3,000 to 765,000 families; in the early 21st century the group claimed a membership of more than 12,000,000. In 1964 Sjka-gakkai established its own political party, Kjmeitj (Clean Government Party), which by the 1980s had become the third largest political party in Japan. In the late 1990s Kjmeitj was renamed the New Komeito party. The association was founded in 1930 by Makiguchi Tsunesaburj under the name Sjka-kyjiku-gakkai (“ValueCreation Educational Society”). The society suffered from the government’s repressive policies during World War II and for a time was disbanded. Makiguchi died in detention during this period. His chief disciple, Toda Jjsei, revived the organization in 1946, renaming it Sjka-gakkai. In common with other Nichiren movements, Sjka-gakkai places great emphasis on the LOTUS SUTRA . SFK K U R A M \9s|k-9k>r-9!m \, Buddhist artificial-cave temple on the crest of Mount T’oham, near the Pulguk Temple, Kyfngju, South Korea. Built in the 8th century, Sfkkuram is a domed circular structure of granite blocks. A square anteroom houses eight guardian figures in relief. On an elevated lotus pedestal a large statue of the BUDDHA GOTAM A (or A M IT EBH A , according to some) seated, about 11.5 feet high, carved out of a single block of granite, occupies the center of the main chamber. On the surrounding walls are 15 slabs in relief depicting BODHISATTVAS and 10 disciples 1020 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

in attendance. The sculpture of this cave temple is one of the finest achievements of Buddhist art in the East.

SO L \9s!l \, in ROM AN RELIGION , name of two distinct sun gods at Rome. The original Sol, or Sol Indiges, had a shrine on the Quirinal, an annual sacrifice on August 9, and another shrine, together with Luna, in the Circus Maximus. After the importation of various sun cults from Syria, the Roman emperor Elagabalus (reigned 218–222 () built a temple to Sol Invictus on the Palatine and attempted to make his worship the principal religion at Rome. The emperor Aurelian (reigned 270–275) later reestablished the worship and erected a magnificent temple to Sol in the Campus Agrippae. The worship of Sol as special protector of the emperors and of the empire remained the chief imperial cult until the rise of CHRISTIANITY. SO LA R D EITY, divinity conceived of as sovereign, all-seeing and usually active in terrestrial life, often identified with the supreme deity of a culture or with the ruler.

S O L O M O N \ 9s!-l‘-m‘n \ , Hebrew Shlomo (fl. mid-10th century )), son and successor of DAVID and traditionally regarded as the greatest king of ISRAEL . He maintained his dominions with military strength and established Israelite colonies outside his kingdom’s borders. The crowning achievement of his vast building program was the famous temple at his capital, Jerusalem (see TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM ). Nearly all that is factually known of Solomon comes from the BIBLE (especially 1 Kings 1–11 and 2 Chronicles 1– 9). His father, David, was a self-made king, who founded the Judaean dynasty and carved out an empire from the border of Egypt to the Euphrates River. In addition, he made common cause with King Hiram of Tyre, forming a land and sea alliance that endured into Solomon’s reign. Solomon’s mother was BATHSHEBA , formerly the wife of David’s Hittite general, Uriah. It was only through her efforts, in concert with the prophet Nathan, that Solomon, who was younger than several of his brothers, was anointed king while David was still alive. Empire builder. As soon as he acceded to the throne, Solomon consolidated his position by liquidating his opponents ruthlessly, one by one. Once rid of his foes, he established his friends in the key posts of the military, governmental, and religious institutions. Solomon also strengthened his position through marital alliances. Although the astonishing harem of Solomon—700 wives and 300 concubines—recorded in 1 Kings is no doubt an exaggeration of popular tradition, the figures do indicate his position as a grand monarch. Such a ménage brought prestige as well as pleasure; in addition, the marriages were a form of diplomacy. The passage in 2 Chronicles 8 recounts Solomon’s successful military operations in Syria, where his targets included Tadmor-Palmyra, a caravan oasis city in the desert, midway between Syria and Mesopotamia. His aim was the control of a great overland trading route. To consolidate his interests in the province, he planted Israelite colonies to look after military, administrative, and commercial matters. This network of Solomon’s far-flung trading posts would eventually form the nucleus of the first great JEWISH DIASPORA . Palestine was strategically located for trade by land and sea. By land, it connects Asia and Africa, with ports on the Atlantic-Mediterranean and Red Sea–Indian Ocean waterways. The nature of Solomon’s empire was predominantly

SOMNETH commercial, and so it served him and friendly rulers to increase trade by land and sea. A celebrated episode in the reign of Solomon is the visit of the Queen of Sheba. Her southern Arabian kingdom lay along the Red Sea route into the Indian Ocean, and her terrain was rich in gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Solomon needed her products and her trade routes for maintaining his commercial network; she needed Solomon’s cooperation for marketing her goods in the Mediterranean via his Palestinian ports. Solomon’s Temple. The demand for fortresses and garrison cities throughout his homeland and empire made it necessary for Solomon to embark on a vast building program; the prosperity of the nation made such a program possible. He was especially lavish with his capital, Jerusalem, where he erected a city wall, a construction called the Millo, the royal palace, and the famous Temple. Around Jerusalem, he built facilities, including shrines, for the main groups of foreigners on trading missions in Israel. Later generations, in less secure and less prosperous times, destroyed those shrines in a parochial spirit that could not accommodate itself to Solomon’s ecumenical outlook. The vigor of Solomon’s building program made it oppressive. Men had to put in one month out of every three in forced labor. In theory, such labor was to be performed by the Canaanites—not by the noble Hebrew tribesmen, who were supposed to be the administrators, priests, and fighters. But Solomon’s demands were such that there were not enough Canaanites to go around, so that Israelites were forced to do menial labor for the crown. Solomon was a vigorous administrator, and he reorganized the old division of the nation into 12 tribes into 12 administrative districts, deviating, for the most part, from the tribal boundaries. The figure of 12 was retained because each district was to “support the palace” (i.e., shoulder federal obligations) for one of the 12 months in the year. Each district had its royally appointed governor, and a chief ruled over the 12 governors. Another important but unpopular appointee of the king was the chief of taxation; taxes were exacted most commonly in the form of forced labor and in kind (taxes paid in a commodity, such as grain). His legendary wisdom. Solomon also became famous as a sage. The biblical Book of Proverbs contains collections of aphorisms and other wise teachings attributed to him. He was also famed as a poet who composed 1,005 songs, and the biblical Song of Solomon is (spuriously) attributed to him in the opening verse. Post-biblical tradition attributed later works to him: the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon and the Odes of Solomon and Psalms of Solomon are tributes to him as sage and poet, respectively. Decline of the kingdom. During Solomon’s reign, it is suspected that the increase in Israel’s wealth was matched by an increase in extravagance and that the wealth was not diffused to the people. It is also considered possible that Solomon’s treatment of the northern tribes showed favoritism to his own tribe of JU D A H . When his son Rehoboam succeeded him, the northern tribes wanted to know his policy concerning the burdens borne by the people. Rehoboam ill-advisedly announced a harsher course, whereupon the northern tribes seceded and formed their own Kingdom of Israel, leaving the descendants of Solomon with the southern Kingdom of Judah. Thus Solomon’s empire was lost beyond recall, and even the homeland was split into two, often hostile, kingdoms.

SO LO V Y O V, VLA D IM IR SER G EY EV IC H \s‘-l‘-9vy|f \, also spelled Soloviev (b. Jan. 16 [Jan. 28, New Style], 1853,

Moscow, Russia—d. July 31 [Aug. 13], 1900, Uzkoye, near Moscow), Russian philosopher and mystic who, reacting to European rationalist thought, attempted a synthesis of religious philosophy, science, and ethics in the context of a universal C H R IST IA N IT Y uniting the EA ST ER N O R T H O D O X and ROMAN CATHOLIC churches under papal leadership. He was the son of the historian Sergey M. Solovyov. After a basic education in languages, history, and philosophy at his Orthodox home, he took his doctorate at Moscow University in 1874 with the dissertation “The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists.” After travels in the West, he wrote a second thesis, a critique of abstract principles, and accepted a teaching post at the University of St. Petersburg, where he delivered his celebrated lectures on “Godmanhood” (1880). This appointment was later rescinded because of Solovyov’s clemency appeal for the March 1881 assassins of Tsar Alexander II. He also encountered official opposition to his writings and to his activity in promoting the union of Eastern Orthodoxy with the Roman Catholic church. Solovyov criticized Western empiricist and idealist philosophy for attributing absolute significance to partial insights and abstract principles. Drawing on the writings of Benedict de Spinoza and G.W.F. Hegel, he regarded life as a dialectical process, involving the interaction of knowledge and reality through conflicting tensions. Assuming the ultimate unity of Absolute Being, termed God in the JudeoChristian tradition, Solovyov proposed that the world’s multiplicity, which had originated in a single creative source, was undergoing a process of reintegration with that source. Solovyov asserted, by his concept of Godmanhood, that the unique intermediary between the world and God could only be man, who alone is the vital part of nature capable of knowing and expressing the divine idea of “absolute unitotality” in the chaotic multiplicity of real experience. Consequently, the perfect revelation of God is Christ’s INCAR NATION in human nature. For Solovyov, ethics became a dialectical problem of basing the morality of human acts and decisions on the extent of their contribution to the world’s integration with ultimate divine unity, a theory expressed in his The Meaning of Love (1894). SO M A \9s+-m‘ \, in ancient Indian cult worship, unidentified plant, the juice of which was a fundamental offering of the Vedic sacrifices. The stalks of the plant were pressed between stones, and the juice was filtered through sheep’s wool and then mixed with water and milk. After first being offered as a LIBATION to the gods, the remainder of the soma was consumed by the priests and the sacrificer. It was highly valued for its exhilarating, probably hallucinogenic, effect. The personified deity Soma was the “master of plants,” the healer of disease, and the bestower of riches. The soma plant grows in the mountains, but its true origin is believed to be heaven, whence it was brought to earth by an eagle, and the pressing of soma was associated with the fertilizing rain. In the post-Vedic classical period, soma is identified with the moon, which wanes when soma is drunk by the gods but which is periodically reborn.

S O M N ET H \ s+m-9n!t \ , also called Petan-Somneth, or

Somneth-Paten, ancient ruined city, southwestern Gujaret state, west-central India. It is the site of the temple of Uiva as Somanetha (which means “lord of the SOMA “ and, by extension, “lord of the moon”). The temple was sacked by the Turkic Muslim invader Magmud of Ghazna in 1024–25 (.

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SON Reconstructed in 1169, it was destroyed again in the final Muslim invasions of the late 13th century. Subsequently rebuilt and destroyed on several occasions, it was reconstructed again beginning in 1951. According to an ancient tradition in the MAHEBHERATA, Somneth was the scene of the internecine massacre of the Yedava clan and of the subsequent death of KRISHNA. Recent excavations there have revealed a settlement dating from about 1500 ).

Temple (founded in 1321 in what is now Ishikawa prefecture and moved in 1911 to Yokohama). Compare RINZAI.

SOUL , immaterial aspect or essence of a human being, conjoined with the body and separable at death. Many cultures have recognized some incorporeal principle of human life or existence corresponding to the soul, and many have attributed souls to all living things. There is evidence even among prehistoric peoples of a belief in an SON: see ZEN. aspect distinct from the body and residing in it. Different religions and philosophers have developed a variety of theoS O R A N U S \ s|-9r@-n‘s \ , in ries as to its nature, its relaROMAN RELIGION, Undertionship to the body, and its world deity worshiped on origin and mortality. Mount Soracte in southern Both the Egyptians and the Etruria. As priests, the hirpi ancient Chinese conceived of Sorani celebrated a rite in a dual soul. The Egyptian KA (breath) survived death but which they marched barer e m a i n e d n e a r t h e b o d y, foot over burning coals. Soranus was identified with Dis, while the spiritual BA proceeded to the region of the the Roman god of the underdead. The Chinese distinworld, and he also had a feguished between a lower, male partner, Feronia, a godsensitive soul, which disapdess of uncertain attributes. pears with death, and a ratioS O R C E R Y, u s e o f p o w e r nal principle, the hun, which gained from the assistance or is the object of A N C E S T O R WORSHIP . The early Hebrews control of spirits. Sorcery is apparently had a concept of distinguished by some writthe soul, related to the coners from WITCHCRAFT in that it may be practiced by anycept of breath, but estabone with the appropriate lished no distinction between knowledge, using charms, the ethereal soul and the corSPELLS, potions, and the like; poreal body; later Jewish whereas witchcraft is considwriters would develop the ered to result from an inheridea of the soul further. ent mystical power, often inAncient Greek concepts of herited, and to be practiced the soul varied considerably by invisible means. During according to the particular the witch-hunts of the 16th era and philosophical school. and 17th centuries, courts The Epicureans considered frequently regarded witches the soul to be made up of atand sorcerers alike as candioms like the rest of the body. dates for burning. For the Platonists, the soul was an immaterial and incorS OTERIA \ 0s+-te-9r%-‘ \ (from poreal substance, akin to the Greek: “Deliverance”), in gods yet part of the world of The circle has special power and significance in sorcery. HELLENISTIC RELIGIONS , any change and becoming. ChrisThe Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse, 1886; in sacrifice or series of sacrifices tian concepts of a body-soul per for med either in com- the Tate Gallery, London dichotomy originated with memoration of or in expecta- Tate Gallery, London—Art Resource the ancient Greeks and were tion of deliverance from a criintroduced into Christian sis; also used for a large-scale theology at an early date by commemorative festival held at planned intervals. Sixteen GREGORY OF NYSSA and by AUGUSTINE. Augustine spoke of the soul as a “rider” on the body, with the soul representing Soteria festivals are known; the most famous was that at DELPHI celebrating the defeat of the Celts in 279–278 ). the “true” person. However, although body and soul were separate, yet still, it was not possible to conceive of a soul S JTJ \9s+-0t+ \, Chinese Ts’ao-tung \9tsa>-9d>= \, largest of without its body. the ZEN Buddhist sects in Japan. It follows the method of Just as there have been different concepts of the relation quiet and meditation (zazen) as a means of obtaining En- of the soul to the body, there have been numerous ideas lightenment. The sect was founded in China in the 9th cenabout when the soul comes into existence and when and if tury by Liang-chieh and Pen-chi. It was transmitted to Ja- it dies. Pythagoras held that the soul was of divine origin pan in the 13th century by DJGEN and further popularized and existed before and after death. Plato and Socrates also in the 13th–14th century by Keizan. accepted the immortality of the soul, while Aristotle conThe headquarters of the sect are the Eihei Temple (found- sidered only part of the soul, the noûs, or intellect, to have ed in 1244 in what is now Fukui prefecture) and the Sjji that quality. Epicurus believed that both body and soul end-

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SPHINX ed at death. The early Christian philosophers adopted the Greek concept of the soul’s immortality and thought of the soul as being created by God and infused into the body at conception. In HINDUISM , each ETMAN (“breath,” or “soul”) is considered to have been created at the beginning of time and imprisoned in an earthly body at birth. At the death of the body, the atman passes into a new body, its position in the Chain of Being determined by KAR M A , or the cumulative consequences of actions. The cycle of death and rebirth (SA US ERA ) is eternal according to some Hindus but others say it persists only until the soul has attained karmic perfection, thus merging with the Absolute. BUDDHISM negates the concept of etman, asserting that any sense of the individual soul or self is illusory. SO U L LO SS , departure of the soul from the body and its failure to return, which in many cultures, especially those in Siberia, Mesoamerica, and the northwestern coast of North America, is believed to be the cause of illness. Though the soul may wander inadvertently when its owner’s guard is relaxed—e.g., in sleep or when sneezing or yawning—the most common cause of soul loss is its enticement and capture by an adversary through WITCHCRAFT . When the owner is conscious of the danger, the soul may be prevented from wandering by ritual measures. In the case of witchcraft, the retrieval of the soul from an enemy’s power requires complex techniques and the services of a religious specialist. SPELL , words uttered in a set formula with magical intent. The correct recitation, often with accompanying gestures, is considered to unleash supernatural power. Some societies believe that incorrect recitation can not only nullify the magic but cause the death of the practitioner. The language of spells is sometimes archaic and is not always understood by the reciter. In some cases meaningless but familiar terms are believed to be efficacious because of their traditional value. Much magical language, however, is clearly and directly correlated with the aim of the recital. Through analogy it represents and foreshadows the technical achievement, and metaphor and simile are freely used. An example is a Maori spell giving speed and grace to a canoe, which speaks of the swiftness of a bird on the wing and the lightness of a seagull and which uses such onomatopoeic effects as speed noises or the wailing of the sea. In blessings and curses, which are similar types of verbal expressions, the efficacy of the recitation is also believed to be connected to the magical power of the words themselves or to the sacred power of a supernatural being. Certain gestures as well as words may be bound up with the act of blessing, as in putting one’s hands on the head of the person being blessed. The curse, a wish to cause harm or misfortune, is usually directed against others, although an important form of curse, associated with oaths, contracts, and treaties, is conditionally directed against oneself, should one fail to keep one’s word or tell the truth.

S P E N E R , P H IL IP P J A K O B \9shp@-n‘r \ (b. Jan. 23, 1635, Rappoltsweiler, Upper Alsace [now Ribeauvillé, Fr.]—d. Feb. 5, 1705, Berlin, Prussia [Germany]), theologian, author, and a leading figure in German PIETISM , a movement among 17th- and 18th-century Lutherans that stressed personal improvement and upright conduct. During his studies at Strassburg (1651–59) Spener developed an interest in reforming Lutheran orthodox theology

and practice, objecting to the rigidity of ecclesiastical structures and the lack of moral discipline among the clergy. In 1666, Spener became president of the Lutheran Church at Frankfurt am Main, where he began his collegia pietatis (“schools of piety”), devotional gatherings intended to encourage personal spiritual growth, prayer, and BIBLE study. His correspondence with the German clergy contributed to the growth of Pietism, as did his major work, Pia Desideria (1675; Pious Desires), which outlined Pietism’s basic program and earned Spener a reputation as the movement’s spokesman. In 1686 he was made first court CH APLAIN at Dresden, then the most valued position in the German Lutheran Church, but his views soon aroused opposition. Attacks upon Pietism came from the orthodox Lutherans at the University of Leipzig and from the Saxon court, whose elector, John George III, had been rebuked by Spener for drunkenness. Spener moved to Berlin in 1691 to become provost of St. Nicholas’ Church. There he gained from the BrandenburgPrussian court the support that enabled him to carry out numerous reforms. Spener obtained positions for his disciples at the University of Halle, founded on a Pietist basis in 1694. By the time of Spener’s death, Pietism was well established in Germany, and its influence reached to England and eventually to the British colonies in America.

S P E N T A M A IN Y U \ span-9t!-m&n-9y< \, in ZO RO ASTRIA N ISM , H O LY SPIRIT , created by A H U RA M AZD E to oppose the Destructive Spirit, Angra Mainyu. Spenta Mainyu is an aspect of Ahura Mazde himself. According to Zoroastrian belief, Spenta Mainyu protects and maintains the sky, water, earth, plants, and children yet to be born.

SPH A G IA \9sf@-j%-‘, 9sfa-g%-‘ \, in ancient GREEK RELIGION , term for the propitiatory sacrifice made to the CHTHO N IC (Underworld) deities and forces (including the winds and the spirits of the dead). The sphagia was not eaten by the worshipers, as in the cults of the Olympian gods; instead the victim was cut to pieces and burned, buried, or cast into a river. SPH IN X , mythological creature with a lion’s body and human head, an important image in Egyptian and Greek art and legend. It was once thought that the word sphinx was derived by Greek grammarians from the verb sphingein (“to bind,” or “to squeeze”). Such an origin is unlikely, however, and leaves unexplained the early variants Sphix and Phix, the latter of which is the oldest known form, found in Hesiod’s Theogony. Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century ), applied the word androsphinx, “male-headed sphinx,” to statues he saw at Sais in the Nile Delta. It has been hypothesized that the Greek application of sphinx to lion-bodied Egyptian figures—and perhaps even the form of the Greek word—was influenced by an Egyptian epithet that may be phoneticized as shep-ankh, “living image,” applied to representations of gods, or of pharaohs viewed as “living images” of gods such as Re. In myth the winged sphinx of Boeotian Thebes was said to have terrorized the people by demanding the answer to a riddle taught her by the Muses—what is it that has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?—and devouring a man each time the riddle was answered incorrectly. Eventually O E D IP U S gave the proper answer: man, who crawls on all fours in infancy, walks on two feet when grown, and leans on a staff in old age; the sphinx thereupon killed herself. From this tale ap-

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SPIRITUAL

The Great Sphinx at Giza, Egypt, 4th dynasty E. Streichan—Shostal Assoc.

parently grew the legend that the sphinx was omniscient, and even today the wisdom of the sphinx is proverbial. The earliest and most famous example in art is the colossal recumbent Sphinx at Giza, Egypt, dating from the reign of King Khafre (4th king of 4th dynasty, c. 2575–c. 2465 )). This is known to be a portrait statue of the king, and the sphinx continued as a royal portrait type through most of Egyptian history. (Arabs, however, know the Sphinx of Giza by the name of Abj al-Hawl, or “Father of Terror.”) The sphinx did not occur in Mesopotamia until about 1500 ), when it was clearly imported from the Levant. In appearance the Asian sphinx differed from its Egyptian model most noticeably in the addition of wings to the leonine body, a feature that continued through its subsequent history in Asia and the Greek world. Another innovation was the female sphinx, which first began to appear in the 15th century ). On seals, ivories, and metalwork they were portrayed sitting on their haunches, often with one paw raised, and were frequently paired with a lion, a GRIFFIN (part eagle and part lion), or another sphinx. About 1600 ) the sphinx first appeared in the Greek world. Objects from Crete at the end of the middle Minoan period and from the shaft graves at Mycenae throughout the late Helladic age showed the sphinx characteristically winged. Although derived from the Asian sphinx, the Greek examples customarily wore a flat cap with a flamelike projection on top. After 1200 ) the depiction of sphinxes disappeared from Greek art for about 400 years, though they continued in Asia in forms and poses similar to those of the Bronze Age. By the end of the 8th century, the sphinx reappeared in Greek art and was common down to the end of the 6th century. The later Greek sphinx was almost always female and usually wore a long-tiered wig; the body became graceful,

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and the wings developed a beautiful curving form unknown in Asia. Sphinxes decorated vases, ivories, and metal works and in the late Archaic period occurred as ornaments on temples; their appearance on temples suggests a protective function. By the 5th century clear illustrations of the encounter between Oedipus and the sphinx appeared on vase paintings, usually with the sphinx perched on a column. Other monuments of classical age showed Oedipus in armed combat with the sphinx and suggested an earlier stage of the legend in which the contest was physical instead of mental. SPIRITUAL , in North American white and black folk music, an English-language folk HYMN. White spirituals include both revival and camp-meeting songs and a smaller number of other hymns. They derived variously, notably from the “lining out” of psalms, dating from at least the mid-17th century. Where congregations could not read, a leader intoned (lined out) the psalm text, one line at a time, alternating with the congregation’s singing of each just-given line to a familiar melody. The tune, sung slowly, was ornamented with passing notes, turns, and other graces, each singer producing his own improvised embellishment at the pitch level he found comfortable. A second source was the singing of hymns (as opposed to psalms only), reintroduced by such 18th-century religious dissenters as John and CHARLES WESLEY, the founders of METHODISM . Hymn verses were composed and set to borrowed melodies, often secular folk tunes. Many of these evangelical hymns passed into ORAL TRADITION. In the late 18th century and up to the mid-19th, there were several waves of religious REVIVALISM. The resulting camp meetings and revivals were marked by spontaneous mass singing. It is not completely known how the campmeeting songs and revival spirituals were sung; but it is thought that they were sung unharmonized, the tune typically begun by the high male voices, the women and basses joining in an octave (or other comfortable interval) above or below. A call-and-response pattern (as in lining out) may have at times been used. The texts had verses and refrains that wandered from song to song; these and a common stock of folk-melody fragments allowed new songs to be improvised upon inspiration. The songs were passed on orally, though many were eventually written down in folk hymnbooks using special shape-note notation.

URAUTA SJTRA A 19th-century offshoot of the spiritual was the gospel song. Influenced by “correct” European music, it had composed melodies and texts, was sung with instrumental accompaniment, and (unlike the folk hymns) was written to be harmonized. The black spirituals developed mostly from white rural folk hymnody. The borrowing of melodies with pentatonic (five-note) and major scales is especially prominent. In voice quality, vocal effects, and type of rhythmic accompaniment, black spirituals differ markedly from white ones. Black spirituals were sung not only in worship but also as work songs; the text imagery often reflects concrete tasks. Musically, it is believed that a complex intermingling of African and white folk-music elements occurred and that complementary traits of African music and white American folksong reinforced each other. For example, the calland-response pattern occurs in both, as do certain scales and the variable intonation of certain notes. Most authorities see clear African influence in vocal style and in the complex polyrhythmic clapped accompaniments. African tradition also included polyphonic and choral singing. The ring shout (a religious dance usually accompanied by the singing of spirituals and clapped rhythms) is also of African ancestry. After the Civil War the black spirituals were “discovered” by Northerners and either developed toward harmonized versions, often sung by trained choirs, or, conversely, preserved in the older traditional style, especially in rural areas and certain sects. Like the white gospel song, the modern black gospel song is a descendant of the spiritual and is instrumentally accompanied. Black GOSPEL MUSIC is closely related to secular black music (as is the spiritual to the work song and blues) and often includes jazz rhythms and instruments alongside traditional clapped accompaniment and often dance. Though gospel songs are usually composed, the melodies are taken for improvisational bases in church services, as popular tunes are improvised upon in jazz.

SPIRITU A L ASSEM BLY, in the BAH E#J FAITH , any of numerous administrative units that conduct an extensive work of missions, publication, education, and general philanthropy. Spiritual assemblies consist of nine members elected or designated annually on the local, national, and world levels during the holy days (April 21, April 29, May 2) commemorating the declaration of the founder’s mission. Since they are said to be invested with their authority by God himself, the members of the spiritual assemblies have absolute jurisdiction over their electorates and are not answerable to them for their decisions and actions. Financial support comes from voluntary contributions from the community. A local spiritual assembly exists in any community of nine or more Bahe#j members. In the mid-1980s there were some 33,000 local assemblies. National spiritual assemblies—numbering 148 by the mid-1980s—appear when there are enough local assemblies in a country to elect a 19member convention, which in turn will elect the nine members of the national group from among all Bahe#js in the country. World leadership of the faith was held by SHOGHI EFFENDI RABB EN J as Guardian of the Cause of God until his death in 1957; since 1963, this leadership has been assumed by the highest order of spiritual assembly, the Universal House of Justice, a body elected by the national spiritual assemblies and possessing the sole right to institute new laws or abrogate the old laws laid down in Bahe#j sacred SCRIPTURES .

SPIRITU A LISM , belief, or practices based upon the belief, that departed souls hold intercourse with mortals, usually through a medium by means of physical phenomena or during abnormal mental states, such as trances. Within the terms of spiritualism, “spirit” is the essential part of the human. After the death of the body the spirit lives on. The “spirit world” is the world of disembodied spirits, while a “medium” is a person on earth who is sensitive to vibrations from the spirit world and is able to convey messages from that world and to produce other spiritualist phenomena. A “control” is a disembodied spirit who gives messages to a medium who in turn gives them to men and women on Earth. The attempt to communicate with discarnate spirits seems to be one of the forms that religion may take in human societies and to be widely distributed in space and time. Practices very like those of a modern spiritualistic seance have been reported in various parts of the world, as, for example, Haiti and among Native North Americans, and there is no reason for supposing that these are of recent origin. The record of an ancient materialization seance is preserved in the OLD TESTAM ENT account of Saul’s visit to the witch of Endor, in the course of which a materialization appeared that was regarded by the king as the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel 28:7–19). UR ED D H A \ 9shr!-d‘, 9sr!- \ , in H IN D U ISM , ceremony performed in honor of a dead ancestor. The rite is both a social and a religious responsibility enjoined on all male Hindus (with the exception of some SANNY ES JS , or ascetics). The rite is performed for the deceased father, grandfather, and great-grandfather and also for the mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. It is intended to nourish, protect, and support the spirits of the dead in their pilgrimage from the lower to higher realms, preceding their REINCAR NATION and reappearance on Earth. The rites are performed between the 11th and 31st days after death, depending on CASTE traditions, and at regular intervals thereafter. During a ureddha ceremony, rice balls (pidqas) are offered to the deceased, which constitute a “body” for the dead person in the preta (or ghostly) world. The first annual death anniversary is observed by a ureddha ceremony that enables the deceased (preta) to be admitted into the assembly of forefathers (PIT S).

SRA O SH A \sra>-9sh!, -9sha \, in ZOROASTRIANISM , divine being who is the messenger of A H U R A M A Z D E, the embodiment of the divine word, and the mediator between human and divine. His name, related to the Avestan word for “hearing,” signifies man’s obedient hearkening to Ahura Mazde’s word and also signifies Ahura Mazde’s omnipresent listening. Zoroastrians believe that no ritual is valid without his presence, and he is very prominent in their liturgy. He has, in addition, a protective role. Three times each night Ahura Mazde sends Sraosha to combat the DE M ON S that harass men. His strongest weapon is prayer. In the end of time, he will be the agent of the final extermination of evil. Sraosha also leads the righteous soul through the ordeal of judgment three days after its body’s death. U R A U T A S JT R A \ 9shra>-t‘-9s-t% \ (Sanskrit: “learning by hearing”), the most revered body of sacred literature in HINDUISM, all of it existing in Sanskrit (or Vedic, its archaic form). Uruti works are considered divine revelation, heard and transmitted by earthly sages, in contrast to SUSTI, or that which is remembered. Although uruti is held to be the more authoritative, in practice the susti texts have been more influential in ancient and modern Hinduism. Uruti texts encompass the four VEDAS, the BRE HMAD AS (ritual treatises), the Eradyakas (“Books of the Forest”), and the UPANISHADS.

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SSU-MA CH’ENG-CHEN \9s~-9m!-9ch‘=-9j‘n \, Pinyin Sima Chengzhen (b. 647—d. 735), sixth patriarch of the Shangch’ing school of TAOISM, who was associated with the poets Li Po and Wang Wei. Called to court during the reign of Emperor Jui-tsung (reigned 710–712), Ssu-ma recommended a government that followed the principles of WU- WEI , or “non-action.” He advised Emperor Hsüan-tsung (reigned 712–756) and was an accomplished calligrapher. He is known for blending Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist methods of mental cultivation. He recommended religious methods that emphasized “inner alchemy” over the external practices and drugs of “outer alchemy.” S TATE S HINTJ \9sh%n-0t+, Angl 9shin-t+ \, Japanese Kokka Shintj \ 9k|k-k!- \ , nationalistic official religion of Japan from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 through World War II. It focused on ceremonies of the imperial household and public SHINTJ shrines. State Shintj was founded on the idea of saisei itchi, the unity of religion and government. National prosperity was believed to be assured by harmony between human politics and the will of the gods. But Shintj came to be dominated by BUDDHISM and NEO-CONFUCIANISM, and the emperor was overshadowed by military rulers. Efforts to restore Shintj and the emperor came to naught in the medieval period. During the Meiji period (1868–1912) the government attempted to institutionalize Shintj. It assumed control of the Shintj shrines, established a Department of Shintj (later the Shintj Ministry), and adopted policies against other religions. Although the 1889 constitution included a nominal guarantee of religious freedom, obeisance at Shintj shrines was considered the patriotic duty of all Japanese. The country’s more than 100,000 Shintj shrines were administered by the government, Shintj moral teaching (shjshin) was made compulsory in the schools, and the divine status of the emperor was fostered by the political authorities. State Shintj was abolished in 1945 by a decree of the Allied occupation forces. The ban was continued in the postwar constitution. The shrines previously administered by the government were reorganized as SHRINE SHINTJ. STEIN, EDITH, original name of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Latin, Sancta Teresia Benedicta a Cruce (b. Oct. 12, 1891, Breslau, Ger. [now Wroc}aw, Pol.] —d. Aug. 9/10, 1942, Auschwitz, Pol.) Roman Catholic convert from JUDAISM, Carmelite nun, philosopher, and spiritual writer who was executed by the Nazis because of her Jewish ancestry and who is regarded as a modern martyr. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family, Stein became an atheist. At the University of Göttingen, she grew interested in philosophy and came into contact with ROMAN CATHOLICISM. She received her doctorate in philosophy (1916) from the University of Freiburg and became one of the university’s leading philosophers. Attracted to Roman Catholicism, Stein read the autobiography of the mystic ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA and converted. She was baptized on Jan. 1, 1922, and began teaching at a Dominican girls’ school in Speyer. In 1934 she entered the Carmelite convent at Cologne, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. In 1938, with the Nazi threat growing, she was transferred to a convent in The Netherlands. The condemnation of Nazi anti-Semitism by the bishops of occupied Holland (July 26, 1942) provoked Adolf Hitler to order the arrest of all non-Aryan Roman Catholics. She was seized by the Gestapo, shipped to Auschwitz, and died in the gas chamber. She was canonized on Oct. 11, 1998.

STONEHENGE

STEIN ER , RU D O LF \9sht&-n‘r, Angl 9st&- \ (b. Feb. 27, 1861, 14th to the 20th century, more than 330 persons were identified as having been stigmatized; 60 were declared saints Kraljevij, Austria—d. March 30, 1925, Dornach, Switz.), or the blessed in the ROMAN CATHOLIC church. Austrian-born scientist, editor, and founder of ANTHROPOS OPHY, a movement based on the notion that there is a spiritual world comprehensible to pure thought but accessible S T O N EH EN G E \9st+n-0henj, 0st+n-9henj \, circular setting of only to the highest faculties of mental knowledge. large standing stones surrounded by a circular earthwork, Attracted in his youth to the works of Goethe, Steiner built in prehistoric times beginning about 3100 ) and loedited that poet’s scientific works and from 1889 to 1896 cated about eight miles north of Salisbury, Wiltshire, Eng. worked on the standard edition of his complete works at The monument consists of a number of structural eleWeimar. Coming gradually to ments, mostly circular in plan. believe in spiritual perception On the outside is a circular independent of the senses, he ditch, with a bank immediatecalled the result of his research ly within it, all interrupted by “anthroposophy,” relating it to an entrance gap on the north“knowledge produced by the east, leading to the Avenue. At higher self in man.” In 1912 he the center of the circle is a founded the Anthroposophical stone setting consisting of a Society. horseshoe of tall uprights of Steiner believed that husarsen (Tertiary sandstone) enmans once participated more circled by a ring of tall sarsen fully in spiritual processes of uprights, all originally capped the world through a dreamlike by horizontal sarsen lintels. consciousness but had since Within the sarsen stone circle become restricted by their atwere also configurations of tachment to material things. smaller and lighter bluestones The renewed perception of (igneous rock of diabase, rhyospiritual things required trainlite, and volcanic ash), but ing the human consciousness most of these bluestones have to rise above attention to matdisappeared. Additional stones ter. The ability to achieve this include the so-called Altar goal by an exercise of the intelStone, the Slaughter Stone, two lect is theoretically innate in Station stones, and the Heel everyone. Stone, the last standing on the In 1913 at Dor nach, near Avenue outside the entrance. Basel, Switz., Steiner built his Small circular ditches enclose first Goetheanum, which he two flat areas on the inner edge characterized as a “school of of the bank, known as the spiritual science.” The Waldorf North and South Barrows, with School movement, derived empty stone holes at their cenfrom his experiments with the ters. Goetheanum, by 1969 was reArchaeological excavations sponsible for some 80 schools since 1950 suggest three main St. Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata, the five attended by more than 25,000 periods of building. In Stonewounds of Christ, from a seraph children in Europe and the henge I, about 3100 ), the United States. Other projects Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art—Culver native Neolithic people, using that have grown out of Steindeer antlers for picks, excavater’s work include schools for ed a roughly circular ditch disabled children; a therapeutic clinical center at Ar- about 320 feet in diameter; the ditch was about 20 feet lesheim, Switz.; scientific and mathematical research cen- wide and 4.5 to 7 feet deep, and the excavated chalky rubters; and schools of drama, speech, painting, and sculpture. ble was used to build the high bank within the circular ditch. They also erected two parallel entry stones on the S T I G M A T A , singular stigma, in Christian M Y S T IC IS M , northeast of the circle (one of which, the Slaughter Stone, bodily marks, scars, or pains corresponding to those of the still survives). Just inside the circular bank they dug—and crucified JESUS CH RIST —that is, on the hands or feet, near seemingly almost immediately refilled—a circle of 56 shalthe heart, and sometimes on the head (from the crown of low holes, named the Aubrey Holes (after their discoverer, thorns) or shoulders and back (from carrying the Cross and the 17th-century antiquarian John Aubrey). The Station scourging). They are often presumed to accompany reli- stones also probably belong to this period, but the evidence gious ECSTASY. is inconclusive. Stonehenge I was used for about 500 years While in his cell on Mount Alverno in 1224, pondering and then reverted to scrubland. on the sufferings of Christ, ST . FRAN CIS OF ASSISI was purDuring Stonehenge II, about 2100 ), the complex was portedly visited by a SERAPH who produced upon his body radically remodeled. About 80 bluestone pillars, imported the five wounds of Christ. Pope Alexander IV and others at- 240 miles from the Preseli Mountains in southwestern tested that they had seen these marks both before and after Wales and weighing up to 4 tons each, were erected in the Francis’ death. In the next century the same alleged wonder center of the site to form what was to be two concentric occurred to the DOMINICAN sister, ST . CATHERINE OF SIENA , circles, though the circles were never completed. The enwho received her first stigma at the age of 23. From the tranceway of this earliest setting of bluestones was aligned 1027 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

STRANG, JAMES JESSE approximately with the sunrise at the summer solstice, the alignment being continued by a newly built and widened approach, called the Avenue, together with a pair of Heel stones. The double circle of bluestones was dismantled in the following period. The initial phase of Stonehenge III, starting about 2000 ), saw the erection of the linteled circle and horseshoe of large sarsen stones whose remains can still be seen today. The sarsen stones were transported from the Marlborough Downs 20 miles north and were erected in a circle of 30 uprights capped by a continuous ring of stone lintels. Within this ring was erected a horseshoe formation of five trilithons (three stones, two of them upright and the third forming a lintel), each of which consisted of a pair of large stone uprights supporting a stone lintel. The sarsen stones are of exceptional size, up to 30 feet long and 50 tons in weight. Their visible surfaces were laboriously dressed smooth by pounding with stone hammers; the same technique was used to form the mortise-and-tenon joints by which the lintels are held on their uprights, and it was used to form the tongue-and-groove joints by which the lintels of the circle fit together. The lintels are not rectangular; they were curved to produce all together a circle. The pillars are tapered upward. In the second phase of Stonehenge III, which probably followed within a century, about 20 bluestones from Stonehenge II were dressed and erected in an approximate oval setting within the sarsen horseshoe. Sometime later, about 1550 ), two concentric rings of holes (the Y and Z Holes, today not visible) were dug outside the sarsen circle. The holes in both circles were left open to silt up over the sucAerial view of Stonehenge, near Salisbury, Wiltshire Aerofilms Ltd.

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ceeding centuries. The oval setting in the center was also removed. The final phase of building in Stonehenge III probably followed almost immediately. Within the sarsen horseshoe the builders set a horseshoe of dressed bluestones set close together, alternately a pillar followed by an obelisk followed by a pillar and so on. The remaining unshaped 60odd bluestones were set as a circle of pillars within the sarsen circle (but outside the sarsen horseshoe). The largest bluestone of all, traditionally misnamed the Altar Stone, probably stood as a tall pillar on the axial line. About 1100 ) the Avenue was extended from Stonehenge eastward and then southeastward to the River Avon, a distance of about 9,120 feet. This suggests that Stonehenge was still in use at the time. Why Stonehenge was built is unknown, though it probably was constructed as a place of worship of some kind. Speculations that the builders were DRUIDS or sun worshipers, or that Stonehenge was a complicated computer for predicting eclipses, have been severely criticized.

S TRANG , J AMES J ESSE \ 9stra= \, also called Jesse James Strang (b. March 21, 1813, Scipio, N.Y., U.S.—d. July 9, 1856, Voree, Wis.), American churchman, dissident of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ( MORMONS ), whose futile attempt to succeed JOSEPH SMITH as its leader led him to found the Strangite sect. Admitted to the bar in 1836 after teaching for a brief period, Strang also served as postmaster for five years at Ellington, N.Y., and owned and edited a weekly paper. In 1843 he followed his wife's family to Burlington, Wis. He met Joseph Smith the next year in Nauvoo, Ill., where the Mormons had established a large settlement. Despite an earlier philosophical skepticism, Strang became a Mormon convert and was ordained an elder by Smith. After Smith’s as-

STRUCTURALISM sassination in June 1844, Strang exhibited a letter, purportedly written by Smith, that named Strang his successor. He also claimed to have had a vision appointing him “seer, revelator, and prophet” of the Mormon Church. However, the Twelve Apostles denounced Strang as an impostor and forger and expelled him from the church. Strang and a group of his own followers then organized a new sect in Voree, Wis. There in 1845 he allegedly translated (with the aid of magic spectacles given him by an ANGEL ) The Book of the Law of the Lord from golden plates from the A R K O F T H E C O V E N AN T . Strang then established a secret society that swore allegiance to him and operated under puritanical rules. Dissension prompted Strang to relocate the colony in 1847 to Beaver Island, in northern Lake Michigan. In 1850 Strang received another revelation in the “plates of Laban.” It sanctioned polygyny, and he was married to four wives at one time. He also claimed that it sanctioned his coronation, and in July he became King James I. The Strangites endured considerable persecution, but Strang was able to preserve the sect and to gain acquittal in the several lawsuits brought against him. Twice elected to the legislature in Michigan (1852, 1854), Strang had more than 5,000 followers when he was shot on June 16, 1856, by two former Strangites. More than 2,000 Strangites were driven from their homes and the sect was all but extinguished.

S T R A U S S , D A V ID F R IE D R IC H \ 9shtra>s \ (b. Jan. 27, 1808, Ludwigsburg, Württemberg [Germany]—d. Feb. 8, 1874, Ludwigsburg), controversial German-Protestant philosopher, theologian, and biographer whose use of dialectical philosophy, emphasizing social evolution through the inner struggle of opposing forces, broke new ground in biblical interpretation by explaining the N EW TESTAM EN T accounts of Christ mythologically. Influenced during his studies at the universities of Tübingen and Berlin (1825–31) by the doctrine of G.W.F. Hegel, Strauss proposed a developmental theory of formative CHRISTIANITY in which the interaction of inherent, conflicting forces and interpretations led to a higher religious synthesis. Such an analysis inspired his first major work, Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet, 2 vol. (1835–36; The Life of Jesus Critically Examined), which was translated into English by the British Victorian novelist George Eliot. In it Strauss denied the historical value of the Gospels and rejected their supernatural claims, describing them as “historical myth,” or the unintentionally created, legendary embodiment by 2nd-century writers of the primitive Christian community’s popular hopes. The ensuing furor among German Protestants prompted Strauss to mitigate his attack by commenting that such criticism did not essentially destroy Christianity, because all religions were based on ideas, not facts. This apology, however, did not avert his exclusion from further university teaching at Tübingen or at the University of Zürich, where previously he had been offered a professorship. In retirement from academic theological circles for more than 20 years, he resided in Ludwigsburg and Darmstadt, where he produced several biographies of political and intellectual figures and held political office as provincial legislator. His religious odyssey closed with the publication of Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872; The Old Faith and the New), in which he ventured to replace Christianity with scientific materialism, a personalized form of Darwinism. Criticized for an inadequate understanding of the biblical and theological texts he criticized, Strauss nevertheless not

only influenced 20th-century liberal and eschatological schools of biblical thought but also challenged subsequent scholars with the search for the “historical Jesus.”

ST R IB O G \str%-9b+g \, one of seven Russian pre-Christian deities, the others being PERUN , Volos, Khors, DAZHBOG , Simargla, and Mokosh. The deities are mentioned in the Kiev Chronicle (Povest vremennykh let)—a 12th- to 13th-century account of events and life in the Kievan state. STR U C TU RA LISM , theory and critical method applied in such disciplines as anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and literary studies. Modern versions of structuralism in the cultural sciences trace their origin to the linguistic work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) and the theories of the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908). The first principle of structuralism is that the true object of study is not immediately given. Thus, appeal to sensations, experience, or intuitive insights is of no use in the discovery of the object of study since such things are always external to the structure or system. As Lévi-Strauss once said, sensations, emotions, and intuitions cannot be the foundation of an explanation but rather are that which must be explained. Accordingly, structuralism rejects such notions as the sui generis nature of religion, or the converse idea, that religion is the mere satisfaction of bodily needs. The second principle asserts that understanding cultural phenomena requires a kind of analysis, revealing the relations which constitute a particular system, whether ritual, myth, or RELIG IO U S BELIEF . This principle rejects the contention that the significance of a myth or ritual or religious symbol is to be found in an analysis of the elements of the myth or ritual. A symbol or an element in a myth—a goddess for example—has significance only in the relations that constitute this element in the system. Elements, symbols, and signs in themselves are held to be meaningless and arbitrary. A third principle states that system and practice must be distinguished. Saussure made this distinction in linguistics when he separated language from speech, asserting that the proper object of linguistics is language. Speech is the practice, the actual speech acts of a language, which exists as an abstraction. A similar distinction may be made between religion as a system or structure and the practice or performance of religion or religious acts. From a structuralist point of view one cannot arrive at language, or the meaning of religion, by an examination of speech or religious acts. Lévi-Strauss insisted upon the importance of these principles for the establishment of a new anthropology and the study of myth, KINSHIP , and TOTEM ISM . He was fully aware of the Saussurian axiom that knowledge of the history of a symbol would not yield its structure, syntax, or semantics. Lévi-Strauss held, for example, that totemism, which was once viewed as the ORIGIN OF RELIGION , never in fact existed as an institution but can be understood as an element in a wider system of classifications. Work done in religion from a structuralist perspective includes the work of Louis Dumont who has shown that the notion of CASTE may be explained as a relation between the contraries pure–impure, which are ritual categories. Stanley Tambiah has demonstrated that the rituals of TH ERA V EDA BUDDHISM are more adequately explained as elements within a larger system constituted by the set of relations that might be indicated as householder/renouncer. JeanPierre Vernant has used structuralist principles for explicating the myths of classical Greece.

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© 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

STUDY OF RELIGION

T

he study of religion is an attempt to understand the nature and various aspects of religion through the use of established intellectual disciplines. Broadly speaking, it comprehends two aspects: gathering information and systematically interpreting it. The first aspect involves the psychological and historical study of religious life, whereas the second involves the attempt to understand the structure, nature, and dynamics of RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. An acceptable DEFINITION OF RELIGION is difficult to attain. Attempts have been made to find an essential ingredient in all religions (e.g., the numinous, or spiritual, experience; the contrast between the sacred and the profane; belief in gods or in God) so that an “essence” of religion might be described. But it has become evident that, because of the rich variety of religions, it is always possible to find counterexamples—an element suggested as essential is found in some religions to be peripheral. A more promising method might be to list elements that are typical of religions, though they may not be universal. The fact that the possibility of finding an essence of religion is disputed means that there is likewise a problem in speaking too generally of the study of religion or of religions themselves. In practice, a religion is a particular system or set of systems in which doctrines, myths, rituals, sentiments, institutions, and other similar elements are interconnected. In order to understand a given belief as it occurs in such a system, it is necessary to look at its particular context—that is, at the other beliefs held in the system, at rituals, and at the other elements. Every religion has its unique properties, and attempts to make comparisons between religions may obscure these unique aspects. Most students of religion agree, however, that valid comparisons are possible, though they are difficult to make. Indeed, since comparison also includes contrast, one may be able to illuminate the very uniqueness of a religion through such comparison. In modern times there is an emphasis on neutral description—i.e., description of RELIGIOUS BELIEFS and practices that does not reflect any judgment of whether they are valuable or harmful, true or false. To some extent this emphasis arises as a reaction against committed accounts of religion, which were long the norm and still exist. Conflict sometimes arises because the committed point of view is like-

Portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls on display in the Shrine of the Book, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem © Dave Bartruff/Corbis

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STUDY OF RELIGION ly to begin with a conservative stance—e.g., to accept at face value a scriptural account of events—whereas the secular historian may be more skeptical, especially of records of miraculous events. There are, however, questions about how possible or even desirable the qualities of neutrality and objectivity are in the study of religion. It may be asked, for example, whether we can understand a faith without holding it. One of the challenges to the student of religion is the problem of evoking its inner, individual side, which is not observable in any straightforward way. The scholar is concerned also with communal responses. The adherent of a faith is no doubt authoritative as to his own experience, but he is not necessarily so in regard to the communal significance of the rites and institutions in which he participates. Thus, the effort to understand the inner side of a religion involves a dialectic between observation of and dialogical (interpersonal) relationship with the adherents of the faith. Consequently, the study of religion has strong similarities to, and indeed overlaps with, anthropology. The study of religion can be broadly divided between descriptive and historical inquiries and normative inquiries. The latter primarily concern the truth of religious claims, the acceptability of religious values, and other such aspects; the former are primarily concerned with its history, structure, and similar observable elements. The distinction is not an absolute one, for descriptions of religion may sometimes be shaped by theories that imply something about the truth or other normative aspects of some or all religions. Conversely, theological claims may imply something about the history of a religion. The study of religion may thus be characterized as being concerned with human religious behavior in relation to its object (the transcendent God or gods or whatever is regarded as sacred or holy) and as a study that attempts to be faithful to both the outer and inner facts. Its present-day concern is predominantly descriptive and explanatory and hence embraces such disciplines as history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and archaeology.

HISTORY

Young pupils studying in a Buddhist monastery S.E. Hedin—Ostman Agency

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OF THE STUDY OF RELIGION

Some qualities that characterize the modern study of religion have their roots in classical Greek thought. The rise of speculative philosophy in ancient Greece led to a critical and somewhat rationalistic treatment of religion and the gods. The 4th-century-) philosopher Plato was strongly critical of the older poets’ (e.g., Homer’s) accounts of the gods and substituted a form of belief in a single creator, the DEMIURGE, or supreme craftsman. This line of thought was developed by Aristotle in his conception of a supreme intelligence that is the unmoved mover. Criticism of the ancient tradition was reinforced by the reports of travelers who carried Greek culture into other cultures. The historian Herodotus (5th century )) attempted to solve the problem of the plurality of cults by identifying foreign deities with Greek deities (e.g., the Egyptian AMON with ZEUS). Among the later Greek thinkers, EUHEMERUS (c. 330–c. 260 )) gave his name to the doctrine called EUHEMERISM, which held that the gods are divinized men. In the early Roman Empire, Euhemerism became fashionable among the Christian CHURCH FATHERS as an account of paganism. Christianity’s own contribution to theories of the genesis of POLYTHEISM was through the doctrine of the fall of man, by which the truth of MONOTHEISM was believed to have become overlaid by demonic cults of false gods. In this view there

STUDY OF RELIGION is the germ of an evolutionary account of religion. During the Middle Ages, ISLAMIC theology had an impact on Western CHRISTIANITY through the promotion of the values of reason and revelation. The reports of European travelers brought Westerners some knowledge of Asian religions, which opened the way toward a more informed consideration of other religions. With the Renaissance and the Protestant REFORMATION there arose a new respect for the Greek and Roman classics, which lessened the force of antipagan Christian polemics. A new tendency developed among some PROTESTANT authors to compare the Roman church to preChristian Rome, which brought the idea of a comparative study of religion into focus; meanwhile the popularity of compilations of mythological and other material gave Europe a vivid sense of the richness and variety of human customs and histories. Attempts at a developmental account of religion were undertaken in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1774) suggested that GREEK RELIGION passed through various stages: the divinization of nature, then of those powers that man had come at least partly to control (such as fire and crops), then of institutions (such as marriage); the final step was the process of humanizing the gods, as in the works of Homer. For English philosopher David Hume (1711–76), original polytheism was the result of a naive ANTHROPOMORPHISM (conceiving the divine in human form) in the assignment of causes to natural events. The intensification of propitiatory and other forms of worship, he believed, led ultimately to the exaltation of one infinite divine Being (see also RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY OF). In the meantime, the beginning of Oriental studies, ethnology, and anthropology were making available more data about religion. The French scholar Charles de Brosses (1709–77) attempted to explain Greek polytheism partly through the fetishism (belief in the magical powers of certain objects) found in West Africa. This foreshadowed later endeavors in the comparative study of religion. The French abbé Bergier (1718–90) explained early religions by means of a belief in spirits arising from a variety of psychological causes, which thus was a precursor of ANIMISM (a belief in souls in persons or certain natural objects). The French social philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857), from a positivistic and materialistic point of view, devised an evolutionary scheme in which there are three stages of human history: the theological, in which the supernatural is important; the metaphysical, in which the explanatory concepts become more abstract; and the positivistic—i.e., the empirical. A rather different positivism was expressed by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), in which religion has a place beside science in attempting to refer to the unknown and unknowable Absolute. Attempts to produce evolutionary accounts of religion were much encouraged in the latter part of the 19th century by the success of the new theory of biological evolution, and they left a marked effect on the history of both religion and anthropology. These movements were supplemented by the progress of scientific history, archaeology, anthropology, and other sciences, which increased comparative knowledge of civilizations and cultures.

Muslim students in India learning the Qur#an Mimi Forsyth—Monkmeyer

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STUPA STUPA \ 9stb-h‘ \ , string of Muslim PRAYER BEADS whose units (100, 25, or 33) represent the names of God. As the beads (made of wood, bone, or precious stones) are touched one by one, Muslims may recite any of numerous formulas, the most common being “Glory to ALL E H .” But because prayer may also be recited in the secret of one’s heart, a person can multiply his praises of God by merely moving the beads through his fingers. Sufi orders make use of the subga in reciting their litanies.

SUBUD \9srt \, also called Taurt, or Thoueris, goddess of ancient Egypt, protector of fertility and childbirth, associated also with the nursing of infants. She was depicted as

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having the head of a hippopotamus (sometimes with the breasts of a woman), the tail of a crocodile, and the claws of a lion. Her image often appeared in household shrines and on AMULETS. Taweret was connected in particular with the goddess HATHOR. She was also strongly associated with the inundation of the Nile and received particular worship at Jabal alSilsila, where rituals were performed for the inundation. TAWGJD \ta>-9h%d \ (Arabic), also spelled tauhid (“making one,” “asserting oneness”), in ISLAM, the oneness of God, in the sense that he is one and there is no god but he, as stated in the SHAHEDA (“witness”) formula: “There is no god but God; MUHAMMAD is the prophet of God.” Tawgjd declares of God that he is a unity, not composed, not made up of parts, but simple and uncompounded. The doctrine of the unity of God and the issues that it raises, such as the question of the relation between the essence and the attributes of God, reappear throughout most of Islamic history. In the terminology of Sufi mystics, however, tawgjd has a pantheistic sense: all essences are divine, and there is no absolute existence besides that of God. To the majority of Muslim scholars, the science of tawgjd is the systematic theology through which a better knowledge of God may be reached; to the Sufis, however, knowledge of God can be achieved only through RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE and through direct vision. See also ALLEH; KALEM; MONOTHEISM; SUFISM; IBN !ABD AL-WAHHAB, MUHAMMAD. TE \9d‘ \, Pinyin de (Chinese: “virtue,” or “power”), in Chinese TAOISM, potentiality of the mysterious TAO, or Way, the undefinable, transcendent reality that produces all things. In contrast, CONFUCIANISM views te as the virtue of internal goodness and proper behavior toward others. As the activity of Tao, te occurs in all things and is a manifestation of the invisible Tao. In the TAO-TE CHING, te is described as the unconscious functioning of the physical self. Whoever is attuned to this inner process will live in harmony with the irresistible forces of nature. Personal te flourishes when one abandons ambition and the spirit of contention for a life of “naturalness” (TZU-JAN), which allows for awareness of the underlying principle of unity within the universe and encourages others in the community to adopt a similar way of life.

TEGH B AHEDUR \ 9t@g-9b‘-h!-d‘r, -b‘-9h!-d>r \ (b. 1621, Amritsar, Punjab, India—d. Nov. 11, 1675, Delhi), ninth Sikh GUR J (1664–75). His name literally means “brave swordsman,” a title believed to have been given to him by his father Gurj HARGOBIND (Gurj from 1606 to 1644) after seeing him participate in the skirmishes with the Mughals. At the time of his father’s death, Tegh Bahadur was not considered for Gurjship. He left Kiratpur, the central Sikh seat, living first in Bebe Bakele, his mother’s native place, and then traveling extensively. When he did become Gurj, he established a new and thriving seat at Anandpur (“city of ecstasy”). His hymns, which were among the last to be included in the EDI GRANTH, sing of the need for courage to resist tyranny. His visit to the Melwe region toward the end of his Gurjship attracted large crowds, which put him at loggerheads with the Mughal administration. He was arrested and executed in Delhi in 1675, becoming the second martyr-Gurj (after Gurj ARJAN). TEILHARD DE C HARDIN , P IERRE \ t@-0y#r-d‘-sh#r-9de/ \ (b. May 1, 1881, Sarcenat, France—d. April 10, 1955, New

TEMPLAR York, N.Y., U.S.), French JESUIT, philosopher, and paleontologist known for his theory that man is evolving, mentally and socially, toward a final spiritual unity. When he was 18, Teilhard joined the Jesuit novitiate at Aix-en-Provence, France. At 24 he began a three-year professorship at the Jesuit college in Cairo. Although ordained a priest in 1911, Teilhard chose to be a stretcher bearer rather than a CHAPLAIN in World War I; his courage on the battle lines earned him a military medal and the Legion of Honor. In 1923, after teaching at the Catholic Institute of Paris, he made the first of his paleontological and geologic missions to China, where he was involved in the discovery (1929) of Peking man’s skull. Teilhard enlarged the field of knowledge on Asia’s sedimentary deposits and stratigraphic correlations and on the dates of its fossils. Teilhard returned to France in 1946. Frustrated in his desire to teach at the Collège de France and publish philosophy (all his major works were published posthumously), he moved to the United States, spending the last years of his life at the Wenner-Gren Foundation, New York City, for which he made two paleontological and archaeological expeditions to South Africa. Teilhard wrote his two major philosophical works, Le Milieu divin (1957; The Divine Milieu) and Le Phénomène humain (1955; The Phenomenon of Man), in the 1920s and ’30s, but their publication was forbidden by the Jesuit order during his lifetime. He aimed at a metaphysic of evolution, holding that it was a process converging toward a final unity that he called the Omega point. He attempted to show that what is of permanent value in traditional philosophical thought can be maintained and even integrated with a modern scientific outlook if one accepts that the tendencies of material things are directed, either wholly or in part, beyond the things themselves toward the production of higher, more complex, more perfectly unified beings. A parallel process, the socialization of mankind, would follow an evolutionary development towards a convergence in a single human society. Teilhard saw the process of organic evolution as a sequence of progressive syntheses whose ultimate convergence point is that of God. When humanity and the material world have reached their final state of evolution and exhausted all potential for further development, a new convergence between them and the supernatural order would be initiated by the Parousia, or SECOND COMING of Christ. Teilhard asserted that the work of Christ is primarily to lead the material world to this cosmic redemption, while the conquest of evil is only secondary to his purpose.

TELAKHON , English Fruit of Wisdom, one of the oldest Buddhist-influenced prophet movements among the Karen hill peoples of Myanmar (Burma). In their mythology, the restoration of their lost Golden Book by their white younger brothers heralds the MILLENNIUM . Ywa, a withdrawn HIGH GOD (see DEUS OTIOSUS ) whose offer of the book to their ancestors was ignored, would then return to deliver the Karen from oppression by the Burmans or the British. The movement was founded in the mid-19th century by Con Yu. It banned traditional animal sacrifice, practiced a strict ethic, and maintained Karen culture. In 1962–65 the movement’s seventh successive head, the Phu Chaik (“Elder of the Faith”), was presented with vernacular BIBLES by American missionaries. Expectations rose on both sides, and membership (mostly in eastern Myanmar) increased to 10,000, but the Bible was rejected as not revealing the mysteries of Western knowledge. Renewed opposition to the

Burmese led to armed clashes and the removal and death of the Phu Chaik in 1967. A similar movement, the Leke (founded 1860), is still in existence but others have become Christian churches or have declined.

TELEGONUS \ t‘-9le-g‘-n‘s \, in Greek mythology, son of ODYSSEUS by CIRCE. According to one story, Telegonus went to Ithaca in search of his father, whom he killed unwittingly. His spear had been tipped with the point of a stingray, thus fulfilling the PROPHECY in the Odyssey that death would come to Odysseus “from the sea.” Telegonus then married PENELOPE, Odysseus’ widow.

Nestor and Telemachus depicted on a red-figured bowl from southern Italy; 4th century ) Erich Lessing—Art Resource

TELEMACHUS \t‘-9le-m‘-k‘s \, in Greek mythology, son of and PENELOPE. When Telemachus reached manhood, he visited Pylos and Sparta in search of his wandering father. On his return, he found that Odysseus had reached home before him. Then father and son slew Penelope’s suitors. According to later tradition, Telemachus married CIRCE (or CALYPSO) after Odysseus’ death. ODYSSEUS

TELLUS \9te-l‘s \ (Latin: “ground, earth”), also called Terra Mater \9ter-‘-9m@-t‘r, -9m!- \, Roman earth goddess. Probably of great antiquity, she was concerned with the productivity of the earth and was later identified with CYBELE. Her temple on the Esquiline Hill dated from about 268 ). She was honored in the Fordicidia and Sementivae festivals, both of which centered on fertility and good crops.

TEMPLAR \9tem-pl‘r \, also called Knight Templar, member of Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, a religious military order of knighthood established at the time of the Crusades. It was founded during the early years of the kingdom of Jerusalem, when the Crusaders controlled only a few strongholds in the Holy Land, and pilgrims to the holy places were often endangered by groups of Muslim warriors. Pitying the plight of such pilgrims, eight or nine French knights, led by Hugues de Payens, vowed in late 1119 or early 1120 to devote themselves to their protection and to form a religious community for that pur-

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TEMPLE the terms “church,” “synagogue,” and “mosque” may have pose. Baldwin II, king of Jerusalem, gave them quarters in a equivalent meaning. wing of the royal palace in the area of the former Jewish Because of ritual requirements, temple architecture varTemple, and from this they derived their name. The Templars were divided into four classes: knights, ies widely between one religion and another. The ZIGGURATS of the Mesopotamian culture were elaborately desergeants, CHAPLAINS, and servants. Only the knights wore the Templars’ distinctive regalia, a white surcoat marked signed and decorated, and their “stair-step” style ascended with a red cross. Each individual Templar took vows of to a point where a god or gods could dwell and where only poverty and chastity. special priests were allowed. Ancient Egypt had temples to The Templars performed courageous service in the Holy gods, but because the primary concern of its religion was Land, and their numbers increased rapidly, partly because the afterlife of souls, its pyramidal tombs became its priof the propagandistic writing of ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, mary shrines and most familiar architectural heritage. who also wrote their rule of life. They soon became vital in In the ancient GREEK RELIGION the gods were the most important focus, and Classical Greek temple architecture the defense of the Christian Crusader states of the Holy created structures that emphasized that focus. An inner, Land, and they garrisoned every town of any size there. At windowless room housed an image of a god, and an altar their height the Templars numbered about 20,000 knights. stood outside the temple. Most Greek temples were built of The Templars also acquired considerable wealth. By the marble or other stone, richly mid-12th centur y they owned carved and polychromed, and were properties scattered throughout on a hill or stepped platform. The western Europe, the Mediterra- The Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi design and decoration of Greek nean, and the Holy Land, and their Arabia temples had a profound effect on military strength enabled them to Nabeel Turner—Stone/Getty Images architecture of later eras in the safely collect, store, and transport West, beginning with the Roman. bullion to and from Europe and the During the 3rd and 2nd centuries Holy Land. Their network of trea), temples of the ROMAN RELI sure storehouses and their effiGION began to evince Greek influcient transport organization caused ence, using the Greek decorative them to be used as bankers both by style but placing the altar within kings and by pilgrims to the Holy the temple and eventually creating Land. Thus, the order grew to wield entire forums, or meeting places, of great financial power. which the temple was the center. By 1304 rumors (probably false) In Roman temples, the columns of irreligious practices and blasphesoon became engaged rather than mies committed by the Templars freestanding, and circular as well as during their secret rites of initiarectangular temples were built. tion had begun to circulate. At this Byzantine and Western church arjuncture, King Philip IV of France chitecture developed from these had every Templar in France arbases in the Hellenistic styles. rested on Oct. 13, 1307, and seMuslim temples are usually questered all the Templars’ propdomed structures decorated with erty in France. Philip accused the colored tiles on the outside and covTemplars of HERESY and immorality and had many of them tortured ering a large central SANCTUARY and in order to secure false confessions arcaded courtyards within. The ASCETICISM and rich symbolism of to these charges. Pope Clement V, JAINISM is reflected in that religion’s himself a Frenchman, came under beautifully decorated monasterystrong pressure from Philip, and in like structures in India, both above response the pope ordered the arthe ground in simple cloisters and rest of the Templars in every counbelow the ground in caves. Hindu try in November 1307. Philip eventemples, which vary regionally in tually succeeded in his efforts to style, usually consist of a towering have the pope suppress the order (March 22, 1312), and the Templars’ property throughout shrine symbolizing the cosmic MOUNT MERU and a columned hall surrounded by an elaborate wall marking the Europe was transferred to the rival Hospitaler order or confour cardinal points of the cosmos. Buddhist temples range fiscated by the state. Many Templars were either executed or imprisoned, and in 1314 the last grand master of the or- from half-buried sanctuaries with richly carved entrances to single, carved towers or statues. The Chinese (and later, Japder, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake. anese) version of the Buddhist temple tends to be a one-story The question of the guilt of the Templars has been a matbuilding of richly carved, painted, or tiled timber conter of fierce controversy for centuries, but modern opinion structed around an atrium used for worship. By contrast, the inclines to the idea that the Templars were victims of a SHINTJ temples of Japan are simple and rustic in design. highly unjust and opportunistic persecution. In the Americas, Incan and Mayan temples were conTEMPLE , edifice constructed for ritual activity. The En- structed of stone and were often highly carved. In general, glish word is borrowed from the Latin templum, which they were stair-stepped PYRAMIDS, with the shrine at the first denoted the ritual space (in the sky or on the ground) top. Chichén Itzá, the ruins of which remain in the delimited by a Roman augur, and later the shrine built Yucatán Peninsula, has excellent examples of this type of within such a space. Depending on the religious tradition, pre-Columbian temple architecture.

1082 © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

TEN LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s. ◆

Temple of the Tooth, Kandy, Sri Lanka Hubertus Kanus—Photo Researchers, Inc.

TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH, also known as Dalada Maligawa \9d!-l‘-d‘-0m‘-l%-9g!-w‘ \, Buddhist temple in Kandy, central Sri Lanka (Ceylon). Here a sacred relic, supposed to be the BUDDHA GOTAMA’S left canine tooth, is preserved. This relic is the center of the well-known annual Esala Perahera, a torchlight procession of dancers, dignitaries, and richly decorated elephants. TEN C OMMANDMENTS , also called Decalogue (Greek: deka logoi, “10 utterances”), list of religious precepts that, according to various passages in EXODUS (20:2–17) and Deuteronomy (5:6–21), were divinely revealed to MOSES on MOUNT SINAI and were engraved on two tablets of stone. The rendering in Exodus (Revised Standard Version) appears as follows: ◆

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Some scholars propose a date for the Ten Commandments between the 16th and 13th centuries ) because Exodus and Deuteronomy connect the Commandments with Moses and the Sinai COVENANT between YAHWEH and ISRAEL. For those who regard the Ten Commandments as an epitome of prophetic teachings, the date would be some time after AMOS and HOSEA (after 750 )). If the Ten Commandments are simply a summary of the legal and priestly traditions of Israel, they belong to an even later period. The Ten Commandments had no particular importance in Christian tradition until the 13th century, when they were incorporated into a manual of instruction for those coming to confess their SINS. With the rise of Protestant churches, new manuals of instruction in the faith were made available and the Ten Commandments were incorporated into CATECHISMS as a fundamental part of religious training, especially of the young.

TEN DAYS OF PENITENCE: see ASERET YEME TESHUVA. TENGU \ 9te=-0g> \, in Japanese FOLKLORE, mischievous supernatural being, sometimes the reincarnated spirit of one who was proud and arrogant in life. Tengu live in trees in mountainous areas. A group of tengu is headed by a chief, who is dressed in red robes and carries a feather fan. He is served by a group of retainers called koppa tengu (“leaflet” tengu), who act as his messengers. In popular art they are shown as smaller winged creatures with long red noses or beaklike mouths.

TEN LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL, ten of the original 12 Hebrew tribes, which, under the leadership of JOSHUA, took possession of CANAAN after the death of MOSES. They were named ASHER , DAN , EPHRAIM , GAD , ISSACHAR , MANASSEH , N A P H T A L I , R E U B E N , S I M E O N , and Z E B U L U N —all sons or grandsons of JACOB (GENESIS 29:31–30:24; 41:50–52). In 930 ) the 10 tribes formed the independent Kingdom of Israel in the north and the 2 other tribes, JUDAH and BENJAMIN, set up the Kingdom of Judah in the south (1 Kings 12:20–21). Following the conquest of the northern kingdom by the Assyrians in 721 ), the 10 tribes were gradually assimilated by other peoples and thus disappeared from history. Peoples who at various times were said to be descendants of the lost tribes include the NESTORIANS, the MORMONS, the Afghans, 1083

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TENRIKYJ the FALASHAS of Ethiopia, the American Indians, and the Japanese. Among the immigrants to the state of Israel were a few who likewise claimed to be remnants of the Ten Lost Tribes. See also SAMBATIAN.

the post-World War II period. It was founded by Kitamura Sayo (1900–67), of Yamaguchi Prefecture, whose charismatic preaching took the form of rhythmic singing and dancing. She had a revelation in 1945 that she was possessed by a SHINTJ deity, Tenshj-Kjtaijin (another name for the Shintj sun goddess AMATERASU Jmikami). She won followers in Europe and the Americas. Her eccentric behavior and her condemnation of organized institutions of religion and government won her an enthusiastic following, estimated at about 300,000 shortly after her death.

TENRIKYJ \ 9ten-r%-0ky+ \ (Japanese: “Religion of Divine Wisdom”), largest of the modern SHINTJ sects in Japan. Tenrikyj originated with Nakayama Miki (1798–1887), a peasant from Yamato Province (modern Nara Prefecture), who claimed she became possessed by a god called Tenri J no Mikoto (“Lord of Divine Wisdom”) TEREFAH \ t‘-r@-9f!, t‘-9r@when she was 40 years old. f‘ \ (from Hebrew: earaf, “to She developed a worship tear”), also spelled terefa, characterized by ecstatic tref \ 9tr@f \, or trefa \ 9tr@-f‘ \, dancing and shamanistic any food, food product, or practices, and a doctrine utensil that, according to (based on the oracles transJewish dietary laws mitted through her) empha( KASHRUTH ), is not ritually sizing CHARITY and the healing of disease through clean or is not prepared acmental acts of faith. The cording to law and is thus sect became popular, unfit for Jewish use. The though it was often persebroad connotation of terefah cuted by state authorities. derives from a more specifHer writings and her deeds ic prohibition against the were considered divine eating of meat that has been models, and she was widely “tor n” by a wild animal venerated during her life(e.g., EXODUS 22:31). Food may be terefah for time and since. She was sucseveral reasons. Shellfish, ceeded by Master Iburi (d. pork, malformed and sick 1907); since his death, the animals, and those which leader of the sect has always have been improperly been a member of the Naslaughtered are forbidden. kayama family. Tenrikyj was first considTE R E S A , BLESSED ered a branch of the Yoshida M O T H E R \ t‘-9r%-s‘, -9r@sect of Shintj. In 1880 it z‘ \ in full Blessed Mother changed its affiliation to Teresa of Calcutta, original B U D D H I S M and from 1908 name Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhas been recognized as one hiu (b. Aug. 27, 1910, Üsküp, of the 13 groups that comKosovo Vilayet, Ottoman pose K Y J H A S H I N T J . Tenrikyj was one of the most Empire [now Skopje, Repubpowerful religious move- A flight of tengu rescuing Tametomo from the attack of a lic of Macedonia]—d. Sept. 5, ments in Japan immediately giant fish, 19th-century woodblock print by Utagawa 1997, Calcutta, India; beatiKuniyoshi before World War II and has fied Oct. 19, 2003), founder By courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London retained a large following. In of the Order of the Missionthe early 21st century its aries of Charity, a Roman membership was about Catholic congregation of 1,750,000. women dedicated to the poor. She was the recipient of nuThe goal of Tenrikyj is a happy life free from disease and merous honours, including the 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace. suffering. The center of religious activity is the jiba, a saThe daughter of an ethnic Albanian grocer, she went to cred recess in the SANCTUARY of the main temple in Tenri Ireland in 1928 to join the Sisters of Loretto; six weeks later city (Nara Prefecture). The world is said to have been creatshe sailed to India to become a teacher. In 1946 she experied here, and from the jiba salvation will be extended to the enced a call to devote herself to the care of the sick and the world. Every member of Tenrikyj is expected to carry on poor. She founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity missionary work. More than 200 churches have been estabin 1948 at a pilgrim hostel near the temple of KALI. In 1950 the order received canonical sanction from Pope PIUS XII, lished worldwide; they serve mainly Japanese living abroad. and in 1965 it became a pontifical congregation (subject TENSHJ K JTAI J INGJ - KYJ \ 9ten-0sh+-9k+-0t&-9j%=-g