Facts and Fiction: The Myth of Suvaṇṇabhūmi Through the Thai and Burmese Looking Glass

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Revire
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Extensive Region ◽  
Looking Glass ◽  
Central Thailand ◽  
Locus Classicus

AbstractMost scholars think that the generic name ‘Golden Land’ (Sanskrit, Suvarṇabhūmi; Pali, Suvaṇṇabhūmi) was first used by Indian traders as a vague designation for an extensive region beyond the subcontinent, presumably in Southeast Asia. Some Pali sources specifically link Suvaṇṇabhūmi with the introduction of Buddhism to the region. The locus classicus is the Sri Lankan Mahāvaṃsa chronicle (fifth century AD) which states that two monks, Soṇa and Uttara, were sent there for missionary activities in the time of King Asoka (third century BC). However, no Southeast Asian textual or epigraphic sources refer to this legend or to the Pali term Suvaṇṇabhūmi before the second millennium AD. Conversely, one may ask, what hard archaeological evidence is there for the advent of Buddhism in mainland Southeast Asia? This article re-examines the appropriation of the name Suvaṇṇabhūmi in Thailand and Burma for political and nationalist purposes and deconstructs the connotation of the term and what it has meant to whom, where, and when. It also carefully confronts the Buddhist literary evidence and earliest epigraphic and archaeological data, distinguishing material discoveries from legendary accounts, with special reference to the ancient Mon countries of Rāmaññadesa (lower Burma) and Dvāravatī(central Thailand).

Dating Corinna

1990 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 553-557
Author(s):  
M. L. West
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
To Come

In CQ 20 (1970), 277–87, 1 argued for dating Corinna to the third century B.C. In my Greek Metre (1982), p. 141, I continued to assume this date, observing that not everyone accepted it but that I knew of no attempt to answer my arguments. I must confess to having overlooked at least one such attempt, by A. Allen in CJ 68 (1972/3), 26–8; and now M. Davies has mounted another in SIFC 81 (1988), 186–94, largely repeating Allen's points but with some new touches. Allen upholds the traditional fifth-century date. Davies has yet to come to a decision, but meanwhile he is eager to discredit what he regards as an unsatisfactory case for a Hellenistic dating.

Danebury, Hampshire: Second Interim Report on the Excavations 1971–5

1976 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Cunliffe
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Interim Report ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Hill ◽  
Religious Nature ◽  
Continuous Strip

SummaryThe results of five seasons of excavation (1971–5) are summarized. A continuous strip 30–40 m. wide extending across the centre of the fort from one side to the other was completely excavated revealing pits, gullies, circular stake-built houses, rectangular buildings, and 2-, 4-, and 6-post structures, belonging to the period from the sixth to the end of the second century B.C. The types of structures are discussed. A sequence of development, based largely upon the stratification preserved behind the ramparts, is presented: in the sixth–fifth century the hill was occupied by small four-post ‘granaries’ possibly enclosed by a palisade. The first hill-fort rampart was built in the fifth century protecting houses, an area of storage pits, and a zone of 4-and 6-post buildings laid out in rows along streets. The rampart was heightened in the third century, after which pits continued to be dug and rows of circular houses were built. About 100 B.C. rectangular buildings, possibly of a religious nature, were erected, after which the site was virtually abandoned. Social and economic matters are considered. The excavation will continue.

The Buddhist Repertoire, Part 1

2020 ◽  
pp. 269-294
Author(s):  
Andrew Chittick
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
The Third ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Political Legitimation

Chapter 10, “The Buddhist Repertoire, Part 1: The Era of Pluralist Patronage,” is the first half of the third study of various repertoires of political legitimation. This chapter focuses on the development of Buddhist institutions and historiography in the fifth century, a period of pluralist patronage under the banner of Sinitic universalism. The Buddhist repertoire in maritime diplomatic relations with South Seas regimes proved an important staging ground for the ruler’s performance as a cakravartin, or Buddhist universal ruler, as well as a conduit for Buddhist expertise. By the end of the fifth century, Jiankang elites had developed Buddhist legends and practices that asserted that the Jiankang regime’s legitimacy derived, not from the Han Empire, but from its direct inheritance of legitimacy from the cakravartin Asoka, who had ruled in northern India in the third century BCE. This set the stage for the striking developments of the sixth century.

Equatorial Weather. With Special Reference to Southeast Asia

1957 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
L. C. W. Bonacina ◽  
J. E. M. Watts
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Special Reference

scholarly journals THE EARLY RECEPTION OF PLINY THE YOUNGER IN TERTULLIAN OF CARTHAGE AND EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA

2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Corke-Webster
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Pliny The Younger ◽  
The Third ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
Eusebius Of Caesarea ◽  
Sidonius Apollinaris

In 1967 Alan Cameron published a landmark article in this journal, ‘The fate of Pliny'sLettersin the late Empire’. Opposing the traditional thesis that the letters of Pliny the Younger were only rediscovered in the mid to late fifth century by Sidonius Apollinaris, Cameron proposed that closer attention be paid to the faint but clear traces of the letters in the third and fourth centuries. On the basis of well-observed intertextual correspondences, Cameron proposed that Pliny's letters were being read by the end of the fourth century at the latest. That article now seems the vanguard of a rise in scholarly interest in Pliny's late-antique reception. But Cameron also noted the explicit attention given to the letters by two earlier commentators—Tertullian of Carthage, in the late second to early third century, and Eusebius of Caesarea, in the early fourth. The use of Pliny in these two earliest commentators, in stark contrast to their later successors, has received almost no subsequent attention.

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