Sanskrit scholars and pandits of the old school: The Benares Sanskrit College and the constitution of authority in the late nineteenth century

Sociology of religion in the West is a field of knowledge with at least 100 years of history. As a science and as a discipline, the sociology of religion has been developing in most Western universities since the late nineteenth century, having established traditions, forming well-known schools, areas related to the names of famous scholars. The total number of researchers of religion abroad has never been counted, but there are more than a thousand different centers, universities, colleges where religion is taught and studied. If we assume that each of them has an average of 10 religious scholars, theologians, then the army of scholars of religion is amazing. Most of them are united in representative associations of researchers of religion, which have a clear sociological color. Among them are the most famous International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) and the Society for Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR).

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John Lloyd Williams (1854–1945): profile of a Snowdonian botanist

Archives of Natural History ◽

10.3366/anh.2006.33.1.1 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

pp. 1-17

Author(s):

Dewi Jones

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Plant Physiology ◽

Marine Algae ◽

Plant Distribution ◽

The Arctic ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

Major Study ◽

The Subject ◽

Late Nineteenth

John Lloyd Williams was an authority on the arctic-alpine flora of Snowdonia during the late nineteenth century when plant collecting was at its height, but unlike other botanists and plant collectors he did not fully pursue the fashionable trend of forming a complete herbarium. His diligent plant-hunting in a comparatively little explored part of Snowdonia led to his discovering a new site for the rare Killarney fern (Trichomanes speciosum), a feat which was considered a major achievement at the time. For most part of the nineteenth century plant distribution, classification and forming herbaria, had been paramount in the learning of botany in Britain resulting in little attention being made to other aspects of the subject. However, towards the end of the century many botanists turned their attention to studying plant physiology, a subject which had advanced significantly in German laboratories. Rivalry between botanists working on similar projects became inevitable in the race to be first in print as Lloyd Williams soon realized when undertaking his major study on the cytology of marine algae.

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Illustrated Media, the Built Environment and Identity Politics in Fin-de-siècle Catalonia: Printing Images, Making the Nation

Cultural History ◽

10.3366/cult.2015.0090 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 113-135

Author(s):

Lucila Mallart

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Built Environment ◽

Identity Politics ◽

Nation Building ◽

Constitutive Relationship ◽

Fin De Siecle ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

Fin De Siècle ◽

Late Nineteenth

This article explores the role of visuality in the identity politics of fin-de-siècle Catalonia. It engages with the recent reevaluation of the visual, both as a source for the history of modern nation-building, and as a constitutive element in the emergence of civic identities in the liberal urban environment. In doing so, it offers a reading of the mutually constitutive relationship of the built environment and the print media in late-nineteenth century Catalonia, and explores the role of this relation as the mechanism by which the so-called ‘imagined communities’ come to exist. Engaging with debates on urban planning and educational policies, it challenges established views on the interplay between tradition and modernity in modern nation-building, and reveals long-term connections between late-nineteenth-century imaginaries and early-twentieth-century beliefs and practices.

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Translating the Scribe: Lithographic Print and Vernacularization in Colonial India, 1857–1915

Comparative Critical Studies ◽

10.3366/ccs.2019.0331 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 16 (2-3) ◽

pp. 281-300

Author(s):

Amanda Lanzillo

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

South Asia ◽

Indian Subcontinent ◽

North India ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

Book Production ◽

Manuscript Culture ◽

Arabic Script ◽

Literary Cultures ◽

Late Nineteenth

Focusing on the lithographic print revolution in North India, this article analyses the role played by scribes working in Perso-Arabic script in the consolidation of late nineteenth-century vernacular literary cultures. In South Asia, the rise of lithographic printing for Perso-Arabic script languages and the slow shift from classical Persian to vernacular Urdu as a literary register took place roughly contemporaneously. This article interrogates the positionality of scribes within these transitions. Because print in North India relied on lithography, not movable type, scribes remained an important part of book production on the Indian subcontinent through the early twentieth century. It analyses the education and models of employment of late nineteenth-century scribes. New scribal classes emerged during the transition to print and vernacular literary culture, in part due to the intervention of lithographic publishers into scribal education. The patronage of Urdu-language scribal manuals by lithographic printers reveals that scribal education in Urdu was directly informed by the demands of the print economy. Ultimately, using an analysis of scribal manuals, the article contributes to our knowledge of the social positioning of book producers in South Asia and demonstrates the vitality of certain practices associated with manuscript culture in the era of print.

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Siren canora: the mermaid and the mythical in late nineteenth-century science

Archives of Natural History ◽

10.3366/e0260954108000041 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 1-14 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

H. BRINK-ROBY

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Evolutionary Theory ◽

Focus Of Attention ◽

British Association ◽

Social Boundaries ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

Darwinian Theory ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

Century Science

This paper argues that, for a number of naturalists and lay commentators in the second half of the nineteenth century, evolutionary – especially Darwinian – theory gave new authority to mythical creatures. These writers drew on specific elements of evolutionary theory to assert the existence of mermaids, dragons and other fabulous beasts. But mythological creatures also performed a second, often contrapositive, argumentative function; commentators who rejected evolution regularly did so by dismissing these creatures. Such critics agreed that Darwin's theory legitimized the mythological animal, but they employed this legitimization to undermine the theory itself. The mermaid, in particular, was a focus of attention in this mytho-evolutionary debate, which ranged from the pages of Punch to the lecture halls of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Crossing social boundaries and taking advantage of a range of venues, this debate arose in response to the indeterminate challenge of evolutionary theory. In its discussions of mermaids and dragons, centaurs and satyrs, this discourse helped define that challenge, construing and constructing the meanings and implications of evolutionary theory in the decades following Darwin's publication.

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Disruptions of the Local, Eruptions of the Feminine: Local Reportage and National Anxieties in Egypt’s 1890s

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474430616.003.0003 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Marilyn Booth

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Gender Roles ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

Female Images ◽

The Feminine ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

Advocacy Role ◽

Representations Of Women ◽

Gendered Expectations

This chapter demonstrates that inscriptions of female images in Cairo’s late nineteenth-century nationalist press were part of a discursive economy shaping debates on how gender roles and gendered expectations should shift as Egyptians struggled for independence. The chapter investigates content and placement of ‘news from the street’ in al-Mu’ayyad in the 1890s, examining how these terse local reports – equivalent to faits divers in the French press – contributed to the construction of an ideal national political trajectory with representations of women serving as the primary example in shaping a politics of newspaper intervention on the national scene. In this, an emerging advocacy role of newspaper correspondents makes the newspaper a mediator in the construction of activist reader-citizens.

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