Blog Entry #4: Group Topic

Readings like this weeks remind me of why I love the academic study of religion so much. The term 'religion' in itself packs a large punch that effects many other areas of study, such as philosophy, sociology, psychology and anthropology. "Religious phenomena had been analyzed from the perspectives of various anthropological schools; historicist, functionalist, psychological, structuralist, ecological, cross-cultural, cognitive and symbolic" (pg 1094). Each of these fields have their own take on what religion refers to, and many theorists who have been attempting to perfectly define 'religion' for years and years.

I love the idea, and completely agree with, that the author portrays of religion being a cultural universal. I believe that a culture is not complete without some sort of religious significance within in, whether it be conceptions of the sacred, rituals, religious experience, and conceptions about death and dying. Religion can be accepted and studied from many different angles and points of view. I find anthropolical and sociological definitions of religion most entriguing so I will speak to them in further detail.

Anhropology attempts to define religion in terms of how it has evolved within society over time. Evolutionary models of religion depict a model in which "primitive" religion that used magic (animism) developed into a more complex, but still incorrect polytheism, and then one step further into modern monotheism. Tylor's model gets widely discredited because of his claim that not only the use of magic is primitive, but in the termonology of primitive itself. His theory is highly Western, thus stating that monotheism is the correct form of religious belief. Tylor also states that "religion is as old as humanity" (pg 1093), which feeds back to my previous point that culture does not exist without religion. Wherever there are people, there is religion.

Sociological attempts focus on finding the meaning of religious belief within society. Functionalist theories, such as Emile Durkheim's theories of the sacred, are most interesting to me. Durkheim saw totemism as the most basic form of religion, and placed emphasis on the relationship between the individual and the community as mirroring the relationship between religion and the individual. He saw religion as a mechanism that protected a threatened social order and acts as a glue which holds society together. Sociological theories of religion, define religion as explanation or comfort of the human condition; sactioning social, economical, and political norms; unifying groups of people.

Blog Entry #3

The Sogdian letters play a very important role in the history of the Silk Road, specifically the east end. Not only did they document history of Sogdian diaspora, they contain information regarding major events, such as the destruction of Yeh and Louyang, two important Chinese cities, contained in letter #2. From this article, I found it most interesting that the Sogdians were among the translators of the Buddhist scriptures in China, which I would assume, helped Buddhism make its mark in China, making Buddhist scriptures accessable to the Chinese. I found it quite humourous that Stein (how am I not surprised) discovered the letters.
Naturally, with my linguistics minor, I was curious to see what type of writing system/language the Sogdians used. I found this website about Sogdian script quite interesting;
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sogdian.htm

Blog Entry #2

One would assume that historical texts hold significant historical facts, and for this fact I do believe that I would classify the Hou Hanshu texts as historical texts. Since it does outline dates, events, and important historical figures (kings and lords) with great accuracy and detail. A historical text should give the reader a general understanding of historical events at a glance, which is what I got from this text, however the way the author went about doing it was all but intriguing.

Usually I would find reading about wars, beheadings and battles, that occured in the Eastern Han Dynasty, extremely interesting BUT this text was dry to say the least. The author seemed to be mainly concerned with dates, names and geography, which is what is required for a historical work, but does not give the reader an understanding of the significance that any important events had on the people, or Chinese culture as a whole, which I think, is needed in order to grasp the ideas that the text/author are trying to portray.

For this reason, this text is very ethnographic. It deals with describing the individual culture of China using a scientific means (dates, places, names and events) solely. To be honest, I wasn't even able to fully grasp many events described, in order to understand fully what the author was trying to relay, I had to explore many of the battles on my own.

The above picture is one that i stumbled upon while researching the Hou Hanshu. It is a pottery figurine, painted, of a soldier (missing his weapon) from the Eastern Han dynasty. I thought it was cute and thought it was interesting how the soldiers are depicted with no special armour, or weaponry, just regular guys.