Journal articles on the topic 'Beijing altars and temples'

It is scientifically illuminated about the Altar, the place of religious ceremonies in the early temples of Bronze Age in Central Asia, and structure of altars of the temples in ancient countries which Margiana and Bactria as well as that in the countries of the Ancient East in this article.

This study explores the ways the symbolic aspects of the consecration of altars are manifested in 17th–21st century Siberian Orthodox churches. I focus on altars of Sophia the Wisdom of the Word of God, and the Holy Great Martyr Barbara of Heliopolis. Sources include diocese registers published in the early 1900s, 17th century documents, works of Old Russian literature, church indexes, and the “Temples of Russia” (temples.ru) database. On the basis of a neurosymbolic approach to completely record reference data, a conclusion is made that the consecrations of altars dedicated to Sophia Wisdom were elitist, whereas altars in the name Holy Great Martyr Barbara were rare, but were re- energized in the late 20th and early 21st century, after this saint had become the patroness of Russia’s strategic missile forces. Specific cults of saints have a chance to re-emerge when biographical or historical events of a local, regional, or state level come to be associated with episodes in the history of Christianity and hagiographic vitae. Everyday life is thereby linked to a religious context, and numerous repetitions account for the fact that consecrations of altars become traditional. Temples become material symbols, and memorial dates relating to saints turn into verbal symbols functioning as mental labels.

Abstract Many studies are proving that learning mathematics with an ethnomathematical approach can improve students’ mathematical skills. Developing and using ethnomathematics concepts are important to raise history and cultural awareness of mathematics. This study aims to analyse the ethnomathematics values of the Temple of Heaven. Temple of Heaven is one of the famous heritage sites in Beijing, China, which bears many ethnomathematics concepts. The researchers applied a qualitative method in this study. The subject of this research is the Temple of Heaven building that is located in Beijing, China. Researchers identified the geometrical concept present in the exterior, interior design, and building structure of the Temple of Heaven building. This research shows the existence of mathematical concepts in the architecture of the Temple of Heaven. This research result can help teachers in making mathematical practice questions with ethnomathematics concepts.

Only a fraction of the Buddhist temples in Beijing that once housed monastics now function as places for religious activity. Some were demolished while others were converted to schools, government buildings, or residences. Several of these former temples have been restored; however, some have not been reopened as official religious sites but rather as fee-charging museums. Other temples have been restored to religious use but remain encircled within fee-charging “parks” that cater mostly to tourists. Lay Buddhists in Beijing are challenging this “museumification” of Buddhist temples by seeking exemption from admission fees and engaging in religious activities at museum/temple sites. Through a close examination of two of these sites, the White Dagoba Temple and the Eight Great Places Park, the author explores how Buddhist laypeople engaged in popular worship practices are slowly transforming museum/temples into social spaces informed by a vital, living Buddhist religion.

The purpose of this article is analysis of the iconographic programs of iconostasis created in the Baroque period in the main church complexes of Ukraine - St. Sophia of Kyiv and Kyiv Pechersk monastery. It found that the iconostasis of the side altars of St. Sophia and Assumption Cathedrals and the iconostasis of other churches located on the territory of the monasteries had thematic iconographic programs related to the dedication. These thematic programs do not include Deisis compositions and other images necessary for the year-round cycle of divine service. Instead, they are intended for a solemn service on the feast day or in memory of the saint to whom the additional altar is dedicated. Such "specialized" iconographic programs were parts of the iconographic program of the iconostasis of the central altar of the main church. In this carefully planned system of images of the iconostasis of the side altars and other monastic temples interacted in real space, expanding the sacred space of the main church beyond its material boundaries. Reconstruction of this spatial phenomenon explains the fundamental differences between the iconography of the iconostasis of additional altars from the iconographic program, which was to be in each iconostasis.

The article discusses the unique cultural and religious phenomenon which was formed and existed for about a century and a half in the Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church of the Rzeczpospolita — altars, included in the iconostasis. To denote these sacred objects in the Uniate records of the 18th century, as it became known from numerous researched historical documents, the Polish-language term «ołtarze namiesne» («local altars») was used. «Local altars» was created with the setting of the throne to the icons of the local (lower) rank of the iconostasis — hence the name. Their occurrence is related to the adoption of Uniate religious practices, which was originally preserved in the Eastern Christian rites, the Western-Christian traditions. «Local altars» is an alternative to the traditional Catholicism of the side wall of the altars. In liturgical practice they were used with the same purpose — they can serve custom-made mass, but in manufacturing it was more simple and budget method: it was necessary only to put the throne to the iconostasis under the local icon. With time, formed a way of creating iconostases originally included in them aedicules — architecturally designed niches for local icons, which visually resembled the traditional architectural retablo altars. With the abolition of the Uniate Church in 1839 temples were converted to Orthodoxy, and all attributes of Catholicism were dismantled. Up to the present time on the territory of Belarus has no surviving full «local altar» with the throne. The study was conducted on the basis of historical documents of the late 17th – early 19th centuries with descriptions of nearly two thousand parish, branch, monastery and Cathedral Greek-Catholic churches in Belarus. It was found that by 1676 the practice of using «local altars» already existed, as evidenced by the revealed date of creation of the only preserved in Belarus, Uniate iconostasis with aedicules from the Church of Assumption monastery in Zhirovichi village, Slonim district of Grodno region. Thus, the «local altars» to the last quarter of the 17th century became the Uniate practice, where it was used until the early 19th century. Due to the complete loss of the artifacts to date, this sacred phenomenon in the Greek-Catholic churches in Belarus was not known.

AbstractThe article offers a survey of temple architecture in the Iranian world before the Macedonian conquest. Despite the observations that ancient Iranians worshipped in the open air, structures of cultic significance have been discovered in some areas of Eastern Iran. While the attribution of the earliest, second millennium temples to the Iranian tribes is still disputable, Iranians definitely had temples before the Achaemenids. The earliest temples found in the Iranian settlements are the ones from Tepe Nush-i Jan (for Western Iran) and Dahān-i Ghulāmān (for the Eastern). However, it seems that the majority of ancient Iranians, including the first Achaemenids, worshiped under the open sky. Given the nomadic background of the ancient Iranians they probably became acquainted with temple architecture once they came into close contact with the highly developed civilisations, which preceded them in some areas of what was later to become the Iranian World. In general it is impossible to speak of one “Iranian culture” or a unified “Iranian cult” in the second and first millennia BCE; instead, temple architecture demonstrates a variety of different regional traditions. More temples have been discovered in Eastern Iran than in Western. The architectural evidence from Eastern Iran in this period also suggests a complex picture of heterogeneous local cults, at least some of which made use of closed temples. Another kind of cultic structure was the open air terraces. There is also some evidence for domestic cults. Iranian cults also share a number of common, dominant features. Special significance was attributed to fire and ashes. Most temple altars (often stepped) were at the centre of the cult and rituals. Another important feature is the absence of cult statues and images. It is remarkable that most of the temples were erected on the highest point of the site or on an artificial elevated platform.

This study analyzes the altar law in Exodus 20, the statement that frames it in Exodus 19, and its application in Exodus 24 as a single narrative that denies the professional configuration of sacrifice as essential to religion and divine blessing. It puts the gift-blessing exchange into the hands of every family, and reverses the basic trope of hosting-visiting and the social poetics that govern hierarchical religion: rather than host at his palace through mediating attendants, Yahweh visits wherever he is invited. The study argues that the narrative attacks an Israelian and Judean ideology in which royal success defines territorial extent, shapes the polity, enshrines divine power in temples, and controls divine blessing. It reconfigures the elements such that territory and nationhood are defined by the divine king, who roams freely throughout the land to bless each of his subjects, so long as they invite him to receive a gift.

Abstract In 1673 the Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobzang Gyatso (Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, 1617–1682) composed The Wish-Fulfilling King (Yid bzhin dbang rgyal), a ritual manual for the worship of the seven buddhas of healing. In the first hundred years after its composition, the Fifth Dalai Lama’s ritual text was published in the original Tibetan in no less than five different woodblock editions. It had also been translated into Mongolian and Chinese and published in several woodblock editions in those languages. Most of these woodblock editions were produced by imperially sponsored Tibetan Buddhist temples in Beijing. The ritual described in the text was performed in monasteries and temples across central Tibet, Mongolia, and in Beijing. This article examines the history of this text, its transmission, and what those tells us about the culture of Tibetan Buddhist books in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly as they relate to the Mayāyāna ‘cult of the book.’

Borysthenes encompasses a small number of sites belonging to the period of Greek colonization of the Black Sea region, where monumental buildings with architectural decoration appeared during the 6th century BC. Specific order details are cut from stone; architectural terracotta, imported from Miletus, was also found. They are connected through their common stylistic identity with the Asia Minor architectural school of the Ionic order. These details are attested mainly as constructive parts of monumental altars, and less so as possible parts of temples and other public buildings. The excavations from the last decades permitted to conclude on the existence of the temenos and the public centre included in the regular city plan from the second half of the 6th century BC at Borysthenes. Correlation of architectural details and monumental buildings is still under discussion.

The religious landscapes of Republican-era urban communities in central and southern Italy were built on complex relationships between the inhabitants and their sacred spaces. The critical need to defend sacred sites such as temples, shrines and altars contributed directly to the shaping of urban centers and the formation of their cultural identities. Many urban centers had a separate citadel where communities protected their sanctuaries behind fortifications. In a reciprocal process the gods protected settlements. Some city gates (e.g., Volterra, Perugia, Falerii Novi) still carry prominent adornments in the form of busts and reliefs that evoke implicit civic and religious associations. The deities' presence implies a complex political and social interaction between the population, protective gods, and fortifications. As tutelary deities, their manipulation whether by a local élite or by a power such as Rome was an important part of the definition and appropriation of local identity.

Abstract In the early 1740s, a set of carved lacquer containers were imperially commissioned in Suzhou to hold Daoist and Buddhist scriptures transcribed by the Qianlong emperor. Decorated with numerous deities in bas-relief, these understudied luxury objects shed new light on Buddhist and Daoist material cultures at the High Qing court and offer a glimpse of the imperial patron’s religious cosmology. Focusing on Qianlong’s two miniature pantheons and tracing the life history of objects in Qing palaces, this article explores the key role played by sacred images in elevating devotional objects of religious significance. As the most important offerings to Daoist and Buddhist deities, the lacquer boxes containing imperially transcribed scriptures were set on altars in different temples in the Forbidden City, even after Qianlong’s death. Characterized by rich religious symbolism, the Daoist and Buddhist icons designed for the containers embody visual efficacy that elevated the concealed scriptures and complemented the sacred spaces where they were enshrined.

The article highlights the peculiarities of the formation of the sacred image of the modern Ternopil region under the influence of the architecture of the Basilian monastery complexes. Active missionary activity of the Order led to the founding, construction and reconstruction of ancient monasteries, which today are the decoration of the settlements of the region. These architectural ensembles are expressive compositional dominants in the historical environment of cities. The most famous monastic complexes in Ternopil include the Holy Dormition Pochayiv Lavra, the main buildings of which were built in the union period, the Basilian Monastery in Buchach, the Uhornytsky (Pidhoryansky) Monastery, and the Basilian Monastery near Strusov. The buildings of monasteries are monuments of sacred art and important objects of national cultural heritage. Innovations that affected the ideological doctrine were reflected in the construction of the church: from a closed space monasteries turned into representative open complexes. In the interior of the temples, low partitions were replaced by wall altars, confessionals appeared, and so on. Some of the surviving altars today are masterpieces of sacred art. The Basilian monasteries reached their peak in the Baroque era under the patronage of wealthy families and with the involvement of leading European and Ukrainian architects. Their architecture forms the historical and cultural appearance of the Ternopil region. Monasteries represented the Western Ukrainian identity, performed sacred, defensive, cultural, functions, became an important part of the planning and figurative structure of cities and still give them an ideological color. The research convinces us of the importance of preserving monastic complexes, which carry the genetic memory of the nation, help to reconnect with our own historical past and complement our knowledge of the history of architecture.

Today’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which came to power in 1949, continues to recognize religion and Christianity as part of the dominant Western culture, and as the means to establish relationships and promote religion and culture. When faced with a moral or ethical dilemma the CCP looks to a Confucian past for traditions just as the Canadian state draws on the Protestant and Catholic cultures of its so-called founding peoples. The Chinese state has additionally attempted to manage religious engagement by propping up select Buddhist temples and working through grassroots personal webs of connection to household religious altars, enshrined deities, and communal practices. In China and in Canada, states claim neutrality but in both cases and for different reasons religion is treated as culture. The paper’s ethno-historical approach draws on over 15 years of fieldwork and historical research throughout the Chinese cultural sphere (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Canada). Looking across histories and nations it traces state governance in China and Canada, webs of connections, and personal interactions that have shaped religious identities and the resurgence of Chinese temple life and select religious cults.

AbstractIn recent years, an on-going project investigating the urban landscape of Naxos has surveyed and produced several new digital reconstructions of the settlement’s simple non-peripteral temples, most with highly decorative roofs. Three Archaic sacred buildings of Sicilian Naxos are used to demonstrate different approaches to recording the remains and reconstructing their architectural features. This work reflects changes in digital strategies over the past ten years. Tempietto H is a small shrine located outside the city’s boundaries and the site is currently inaccessible, so its reconstruction is based on excavation documentation and roof terracottas. The visible half of Tempietto C was documented using three-dimensional line-drawing with total stations and photogrammetry; the back-filled south-western part was surveyed with ground penetrating radar. Temple B is the largest sacred structure in Naxos. A geophysical survey gives new data on the eastern extent of the sanctuary. The area has been recorded with handheld and aerial photography to create a three-dimensional model of the sanctuary. A new orthogonal grid of the city was established circa 470 BCE and a rectangular base was placed in the south-east corner of every crossroad. These bases were the starting point for the plan, and their interpretation as altars converts the entire urban plan into a sacred landscape.

AbstractThis study adopts an osmotic ethnography in order to decolonise the museum as an intellectual institution that was born in the West and informed by a logic of command (arkheion). As in the biological process of osmosis, characterised by an equilibrium between the inner and the outer that shapes its own distinctiveness through its symbiosis, the museum constitutes itself as a space intertwined with external reality. This is particularly true in the case of South Asian museum artefacts: because of the concept ofdarśan(the sensuous relationship between the worshipper and the deity's material embodiment) curators have faced the challenge of coming to terms with visitors’ responses, from colonial to post-colonial times. A direct consequence of this challenge is represented by the reconstructions of religious spaces—shrines, altars, temples—that should evoke the so-called “original context” and be in consonance with local forms of material engagement.By adopting eco-phenomenology as its methodological framework, this article examines colonial sources, in particular the works of Thomas Hendley (1847–1917) and Fanny Parks (1794–1875), and compares them to the ethnographic fieldwork undertaken by the author at the Oriental Museum of the University of Durham in November 2014, as part of doctoral research.

Abstract. As the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties and the current capital, Beijing has a rich historical and cultural heritage. As a carrier of culture, cultural preservation units have significant historical, artistic, and scientific value in their own right. In this paper, we use the mean nearest neighbor, kernel density analysis, and standard deviation ellipse tools in ArcGIS 10.2 software to analyze the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of different types and periods of cultural heritage units in Beijing and their potential seismic and meteorological hazard risks, to provide strong data support for the conservation and use of cultural heritage units in Beijing. The results show that the different types of cultural preservation units in Beijing are unevenly distributed, with the two categories of modern important historical sites and representative buildings and ancient buildings being more numerous and concentrated in Dongcheng District, Xicheng District, and Haidian District in central Beijing, and the three categories of ancient tombs, ancient ruins, cave temples, and stone carvings being less numerous and concentrated in the outer administrative districts of Beijing. In recent years, the relative humidity in Beijing has shown a decreasing trend, while the average temperature has shown an increasing trend, and this dry and hot environment is not conducive to the conservation of cultural preservation units. This dry and hot environment is not conducive to the protection of cultural preservation units and is prone to damage such as cracking, collapse, deformation, and discoloration of bamboo, wood, rocks, and other cultural heritage elements. It is concluded that in terms of specific regions, the number of cultural heritage units in central Beijing is high, the period is late and the risk of seismic hazards is high, while the number of cultural heritage units in the outer administrative regions of Beijing is low, the period is early and the risk of seismic hazards is low. In conclusion, to enhance the conservation and use of cultural heritage units in Beijing, the relevant authorities should strengthen the daily management of the three high-density and high-risk areas of cultural heritage units in Dongcheng District, Xicheng District, and Haidian District, while at the same time not relaxing the emergency disaster prevention and mitigation of the smaller number and earlier period of cultural heritage units in the peripheral administrative districts.

Abstract: The article discusses the use of religious elements (the contrast between the concepts of pietas vs. impietas) in the characterisation of Roman politicians and citizens during the declining years of the Republic. Pietas symbolised people possessing virtues of divine character, which, consequently, ensured their exceptional position. Accusations of impietas covered a number of cases of violation of religious regulations: inter alia, negligence of rites or sacrifices (neglegentia), profanation of worship or a sacred place, encroaching on or destruction of temples (templa, aedes, fana, sacella), places (e.g. groves – luci) or objects (e.g. altars – arae, statues – simulacra) recognised as holy, as well as tombs (violatio), sacrilegium (sacrilege), violation of the principles of divinatio (contra auspicia), as well as waging a war contrary to religious principles (bellum impium).Abstrakt: Artykuł poświęcony jest wykorzystaniu elementów religijnych (zestawienia pojęć: „pietas” - „impietas”) w charakterystyce rzymskich polityków i obywateli epoki schyłku Republiki. Pietas symbolizowała ludzi, którzy skupiali w sobie te cnoty, które miały boski charakter i w związku z tym zapewniały im wyjątkową pozycję. Oskarżenia o impietas obejmowały szereg przypadków naruszenia przepisów religijnych: m.in. zaniedbanie rytuałów bądź ofiar (neglegentia), znieważenie kultu bądź miejsca świętego, naruszenie, bądź zniszczenie: świątyń (templa, aedes, fana, sacella), miejsc (np.gajów – luci) lub rzeczy (np. ołtarze – arae, posągi – simulacra) uznanych za święte, a także grobów (violatio), „sacrilegium” (świętokradztwo), naruszenie zasad „divinatio” ( contra auspicia), a także prowadzenia niezgodnej z zasadami religijnymi wojny (bellum impium).

Recent interest in the contemporary practice of Buddhism in East Asia has led scholars of religion to undertake firsthand fieldwork among religious professionals and lay practitioners. Using three recent studies as examples, this paper argues that scholars of religion and Buddhism sometimes fail to maximize the potential of ethnographic fieldwork due to their focus on updating genealogies of Buddhist institutions. Drawing from a field-based study of lay Buddhists in contemporary Beijing, this paper advocates a “person-centered approach” that examines lay practitioners less as participants within a connected, institutionally-recognized narrative of Buddhism’s evolution in China and more as persons who use the social space of temples to find their place within a rapidly changing world, often in very different ways

In the period 4800-3600 BC. in the eastern part of the Trypillia area arose "giant settlements" or "megasites" / "mega-settlements" (working term of modern archaeologists) with thousands of buildings. In the central parts of these living conglomerates, scientists found special buildings that were recognized as sanctuaries, sacred complexes or temples. In the late period of the Trypillia culture they disappeared. These religious buildings were built with a focus visible processes of celestial bodies and the laws of cyclic rotation of the Earth in space, and included in their internal filling usually cruciform altars, ritual utensils, troughs with graters for the preparation of ritual bread and numerous other ceremonial and religious artifacts. There were also unique finds, such as gold jewelry (an element of prestige) and a perforated clay disk with tockins to it from the space of the Nebelivka Temple. The interior and exterior walls of the Trypillia sacral centers were painted with natural colors with a predominance of red. The wood carving for decoration of elements of a skeleton of a construction was investigated also. The first Temples on the European continent show that even at that time there was a cult of architecture. In general, it is clear that such Trypillia objects of religious worship carried encoded astronomical information in symbolic form. The building itself was oriented with regard to worldsides and designed relative to visible celestial bodies. This indicates that the people of Trypillia had a fairly clear worldview, which allowed them to reach the level of understanding the structure and mechanisms of many natural cyclical processes on Earth. Trypillia cosmology united the celestial and terrestrial spheres, and the Temple was the point of contact of the earth with the visible Universe. In his work, the author traces the existing analogies in the structure of construction of Trypillia and sacred complexes of the ancient Middle East and biblical ideas about the Tabernacle and the House of the Lord in the ancient Jews, given the fact, that the Trypillia temple building is known from 4,000 years BC. and several thousand years older than the Middle Eastern counterparts. There are also significant parallels in the construction of temples in the context of Indo-European religious heritage. It is noted that the Temple was not only a metaphysical reflection of the annual cycle with a focus on the points of the equinoxes and solstices, but also had a higher religious function, which consisted in the combination of the terrestrial sphere with the celestial, the connection of man with the mystery of the cosmos.

Text kanonickej vizitácie sleduje farnosti Užhorod (Ужгород), Vojnatina, Onokovce (Оноківці), Senné, Pavlovce nad Uhom, Ratovce (Ратівці), Jovra (Ёр, dnes Сторожниця) a Ruská.V Užhorode bol chrám zasvätený svätému Jurajovi, ktorý sa nachádzal na soľnej ulici. Vo vnútri chrámu boli umiestnené tri väčšie a dva menšie oltáre. Väčšie oltáre boli zasvätené svätému Ladislavovi, sv. Štefanovi, sv. Jurajovi a sv. Panne Márii. Menšie oltáre boli zasvätené sv. Alžbete, sv. Kataríne a sv. Jánovi Nepomuckému so svätou Rozáliou a Kristom v uprostred.Farnosť Jovra mala farský chrám zasvätený Panne Márii Kráľovnej. Chrám bol murovaný a mal tri oltáre. Prvý bol zasvätený Panne Márii, menšie boli zasvätené sv. Barbore a sv. Šebastiánovi. V Jovre vyučoval učiteľ Michal Kertés, ktorý bol platený v naturáliách a jedným florénom.Farnosť Ratovce mala murovaný chrám v hroznom stave. Chrám sa rekonštruoval v roku 1734 a oltár bol bez obrazu či patrocínia. Správcom farnosti bol Ján Enickej jeho rekatolizačná činnosť bola zameraná na modlenie litánii s umiestnení obyvateľmi v ich jazyk.Farnosť Ruská sa nachádzala v nábožensky zmiešanom regióne. Chrám bol murovaný z tehál nachádzali sa v ňom dva oltáre. Tretí oltár sa začal vyrábať, mal byť zasvätený sv. Krížu. Farnosť spravoval Andrej Moštenský, ktorý sa modlí s miestnymi v ich jazyku modlitby ako Otče náš, ruženec, krédo alebo litánie.Vo farnosti Pavlovce nad Uhom stál murovaný chrám s jedným oltárom. Oltár nemal patrocínium, preto nemôž chrám v minuloti používali kalvíni. Správcom miestnej farnosti bol Mikuláš Berekovič.Farnosť Senné spravoval Ján Ziffian. Miestny chrám bol tehelný a nachádzali sa v ňom tri oltáre. Hlavný bol s titulom Nanebovzatia Panny Márie. Na menšom oltári boli na okrajoch vyobrazenia evanjelistov a v strede sa nachádzali obraz sv. Panny Márie, sv. Juraja a Baránka Božieho. Ako tretí oltár bol zasvätený sv. Jurajovi. Titul chrámu bol sviatok Navštívenia Panny Márie.Onokovská farnosť sa nachádzala severnej od Užhorodu. Chrám v Onokovciach bol drevený, zasvätený Nanebovzatiu Panny Márie. Patrocínium chrámu bolo totožné s titulom chrámu, ďalšie obrazy sa v kostole nenašli. Farnosť spravoval Sebastián Kašaj, ktorý mal 40 rokov. V jeho okolí boli hlavne obyvatelia gréckeho rítu.Najšpecifiskejšou farnosťou bola Vojnatina. Farnosť bola misijným územím, kde pôsobil Ján Patkovič. Medzi Užhrorodom a Michalovcami, bolo veľké množstvo rozbitých alebo zdevastovaných chrámov. Ako prvý bol obnovených chrám vo Vojnatine. Chrám bol tehelný, vo vnútri sa nachádzal len jeden oltár, ktorý bol zasvätený sv. Krížu a bol presunutý z Užhorodu.The canonical visitation focused on parishes Uzhgorod (Ужгород), Vojnatina, Onokovce (Оноківці), Senné, Pavlovce nad Uhom, Ratovce (Ратівці), Jovra (Ёр, today Сторожниця), and Ruská.In Uzhgorod, there was a temple dedicated to Saint George, which was situated on the salt street and inside were three bigger and two smaller altars. The bigger altars were dedicated to Saint Ladislaus and Saint Stephen, Saint George, and Saint Mary the Virgin, while the smaller altars were dedicated to Saint Elisabeth and Saint Catherine, Saint John of Nepomuk with Saint Rosalie, and Christ in the middle.The parish Jovra had a parish temple dedicated to Virgin Mary Queen. The local temple was from brick and had three altars. The first one was dedicated to Virgin Mary, the smaller ones were dedicated to Saint Barbara and Saint Sebastian. In Jovra, there was a teacher named Michal Kertés, who was paid in kind and with one florin.The parish Ratovce had a brick temple in a horrible condition. The temple was being under reconstruction in the year 1734 and there was an altar without a picture or a patron. The administer of the parish was John Enickei, his re-Catholic activity was focused on praying litany with the locals in their language.The parish Ruská was located on a confessionally mixed territory. The temple was made from brick and there were two altars. The third one was being produced, it should have been dedicated to Holy Cross. The parish was administered by Andrej Moštenský, who prayed prayers such as Our Father, Hail Mary, I believe in God, or Litany with the locals in their language.In the parish Pavlovce nad Uhom, there was a brick temple with one altar. The altar did not have a patrocinium since the temple had been used by the Calvinists. The administer of the local parish was Nicolas Berekovič.The parish Senné was administered by John Zaffian. The local temple was made from brick and inside there were three altars. The main was with the title of Assumption of Virgin Mary. The smaller altar had depictions of Evangelists in corners, and in the middle, there was a picture of Virgin Mary, Saint George, and Lamb of God. The third altar depicted John the Baptist. The title of the temple was Visitation of the Virgin Mary’s holiday.Onokov’s parish was located north of Uzhgorod. The temple in Onokovce was made from wood and dedicated to the Assumption of Virgin Mary. The title of the temple was depicted on an altar, other altars or pictures were not found in the church. The parish was administered by Sebastian Kašaj, who was 40 years old. In his surroundings, there were mainly presbyters orientated to Greek ceremony.The most specific parish was Vojnatina. The parish was a mission village where John Patkovič worked. Between Uzhgorod and Michalovce, there was a big amount of broken or devastated temples. As the first one, the temple in Vojnatina was renewed. The temple was from brick and inside there was one altar with the title of Holy Cross brought from Uzhgorod.

Known as “living fossils”, large old trees play an important role in ecology, landscape, and culture and are an important part of ecosystems and human settlements. The aim of this paper is to provide suggestions for the protection of urban large old tree resources and the selection of large old tree backup resources. First, we conducted a statistical analysis on the composition, distribution, and important values of large old tree species in Beijing and used Downtrend correspondence analysis (DCA) to analyze the composition of different types of habitat tree species. Second, we created a 3 km × 3 km grid within the administrative scope of Beijing, extracted the number of large old trees and tree species richness in the grid, and used geographic detectors to determine the driving factors of the spatial distribution of large old trees, as well as tree species richness differences and their interactions. A total of 40,590 large old trees in Beijing were found, belonging to 72 species, 52 genera, and 29 families. Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco was the dominant tree species, with an importance value of 0.51. Among the different habitats, the large old trees were found in parks and temples, and the greatest tree species number of old trees were found in communities and the countryside; meanwhile, microgreen spaces had the lowest number of trees and tree species. The distribution of large old trees and tree species was mainly concentrated in the center of the city and the northwest. The distribution pattern of large old tree resources in Beijing is affected by the interaction of various factors. Social factors were the dominant in the distribution of large old tree resources in Beijing. The spatial distribution of large old trees was mainly affected by the scenic resort and historic site (SRHS), and the SRHS and gross domestic product (GDP) level were the most important factors influencing the richness of large old tree species. In addition, the functional value and characteristics of tree species determined the distribution of large old tree habitats. Therefore, the protection of large old tree resources requires developing scientific management and planning by managers, increasing investment in management and protection, and strengthening ecological culture publicity.

The future emperor Galerius was born in a small village in the province of Dacia Ripensis around A.D. 258. His mother's name was Romula. When he was confirmed as a member of the tetrarchy he undertook a building programme in his native village, transforming it into a monumental fortified palace. To honour his mother he gave it a new name,Felix Romuliana. In 311, before this ambitious programme was complete, he died and was buried and deified there.Romulianahas been securely identified through epigraphic evidence with the impressive remains that exist near modern Gamzigrad (NE Serbia). This fortified palace was built in two phases: first came a fortification wall with 16 small rectangular or octagonal towers, dated in the first five years of the 4th c; then inc.305 this defensive system was partly demolished and a new, bigger fortification wall, strengthened by 20 huge, bastion-like towers (16-, 12- or 10-sided) was erected on the outside, encompassing and enlarging the original plan. This wall has been dated to 306-311. Inside the walls were erected two temples with altars, two palace complexes, a bath, a horreum, and auxiliary buildings. On a low ridge of hills east of the fortified palace two large consecration mounds and two mausolea were excavated in 1993. From the finds as well as the overall nature of the buildings at Romuliana, it was determined that this was where Galerius and his mother were buried and deified in the first years of the 4th c.

It has become a scholarly commonplace to remark that the ancient Roman city had, at least after the time of Augustus, a wide, varied, and almost omni-present regime of writing in public. This regime included texts of many different types, commercial, political, dedicatory; written with charcoal, paint, stylus or chisel; on stone, wood, plaster and mortar; on private houses, public monuments, temples, shops, baths, fountains and tombs. In part, this is due to what has come to be known as the ‘epigraphic habit’, the characteristically Roman practice of recording acts and events on stone. From the late Republic onwards, both public and private individuals who had even marginal means to hire a stonecutter left behind inscriptions—honorific, commemorative, funerary—which document multiple aspects of social life, from birth to death. Many of these texts have direct ties to civic authority: decrees of the Senate or the Emperor; dedicatory texts on buildings by consuls, tribunes or other magistrates; milestones, boundary markers, altars, statue bases and the like, all of which record the names of the officials responsible for their placement. The production of such publicly-readable texts, however, was not simply the purview of the state: wealthy private individuals also could and did erect monumental inscriptions, which often recorded some act of public beneficence like the construction of a building or the presentation of gladiatorial games. Other writing was less formal: thus, in Pompeii, the famouscaue canem(‘beware of the dog’) mosaic which marked the threshold of the House of the Tragic Poet; the bakery which featured a terracotta plaque with a phallus and the perhaps aspirational legendhic habitat felicitas(‘here dwells good fortune’); or the cookshop of Euxinus whose front sign announcesphoenix felix et tu(‘the phoenix is lucky, and so may you be!’). As William Harris once noted, ‘Roman cities…were full of things to read’.

The 1772 cemetery reform of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, resulted in great changes in the cemetery culture of Russia’s Baltic provinces. The ban on burials in churches and the vicinity of churches resulted in the rapid development of cemetery parks outside of settlements. The strong political relations of Estonia’s manor owners with the Russian central government resulted in the nobles being given the privilege to establish burial plots in the churchyards, but in Livonia, this was strictly prohibited. Simultaneously with the parish cemeteries, the owners of private manors established family cemeteries on their manors. The new cemeteries were not only places to bury the dead, but, inspired by contemporary poets, they were seen as family altars, which were visited regularly and which was accessed by path that was attuned to contemplation.The cemetery is complex, which includes a garden, chapel and allée, and if possible, a body of water. Noble trees were planted along the path leading to the cemetery. Oaks were preferred, which due their mighty shape were considered to be the symbol of family and nobility. Influenced by the poetry of the Enlightenment, evergreens – silver firs, thuja trees, and spruces – were called “sad trees”. The French poet Jacques Delille, whose works were popular among the Baltic Germans, sees women as mourners. And many family cemeteries were established at the initiative of women. Examples of Ancient Greek architecture, in the form of temples with porticos or antas, or the small-scale copies of the Pantheon from Ancient Rome, dominated in cemetery architecture. The chapel was comprised of underground burial chambers and above-ground memorials. A so-called memorial altar was located in the end wall of the chapel, which have survived until the present day in a few places. The Barclay de Tolly monument is the most majestic in Estonia.Already in the 1830s, the family chapels became memorials and burials no longer took place there. However, chapels continued to be built until in Estonia until the early 20th century.

Предпринята попытка рассмотреть и, по возможности, предложить объяснение некоторым закономерностям и особенностям, запечатлевшимся в градостроительной структуре города Каргополя – бывшего уездного, а ныне районного центра на юге Архангельской области. Древняя структура города, вытянувшегося по реке Онеге, является полицентрической, фиксируются несколько центров: южные Колобова горка и Старый торг, северный Городок с Красным Посадом, посередине между ними Соборная площадь с древними Ивановской улицей и Каменкой. Картографирование посвящений храмов и их приделов середины XVI – середины XVII в. выявило преобладание Господских храмов с приделами, посвященными новгородским святым, в северо-восточной части города и Богородичных храмов, связанных с московско-суздальской тематикой, – в юго-западной. Естественно предположить, что они отражают устойчивые предпочтения групп населения более раннего времени – периода заселения. Высказывается и обосновывается гипотеза о связи групп посвящений с разными колонизационными потоками, отличавшимися мировоззренческими предпочтениями: новгородским и «низовским». В середине XVI в., в эпоху Ивана Грозного, московское правительство выполнило объединительные функции, создав примерно посередине новый центр (на месте нынешней Соборной площади). An attempt has been made to consider and, if possible, offer an explanation for some of the patterns and features that are imprinted in the urban planning structure of the city of Kargopol – a former county, and now a regional center in the south of the Arkhangelsk region. The ancient structure of the city, stretching along the Onega River, is polycentric, several centers are recorded: the southern Kolobov Gorka and the Old Marketplace, the northern Gorodok with Krasny Posad, in the middle between them is Cathedral Square with the ancient Ivanovskaya Street and Kamenka. Mapping the dedications of temples and their side-altars in the mid-16th – mid-17th centuries. revealed the predominance of dedications to the Lord in the northeastern part of the city and dedications to the Mother of God – in the southwest. It is natural to assume that they reflect the stable preferences of population groups at an earlier time – the period of settlement. A hypothesis is expressed and substantiated about the connection of initiation groups with different colonization streams that differed in ideological preferences: Novgorod and «lower». In the middle of the 16th century, during the era of Ivan the Terrible, the Moscow government performed unifying functions, creating a new center approximately in the middle (on the site of the present Cathedral Square).

An artificial term “pagan” is used to denote someone who believes in his/her authentic religion different from Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There are 400–500 millions of pagans in the world. They are divided into such groups: 1) aboriginal or autochthonous cults are widespread mostly among indigenous peoples of Asia, Africa, America, Australia and Oceania, and have not only deep historical roots, but also have kept the polytheistic religious worldview of their ethnos; 2) representatives of “vernacular” paganism, which combines some elements of ancient beliefs (magic, cult of nature, cult of ancestors, fortune telling etc.) with a specific Abrahamic religion; 3) groups of supporters of healthy lifestyle and living well in the harmony with nature, pagan religions characterized by substantial syncretism with environment-oriented teachings; 4) religious denominations, which combine an autochthonous religion of its people with its current political aims. Overall paganism is one of the least aggressive religions in the world. Ukrainian pagans (Ridnovirs, rodovirs (Slavic Native Faith)) have approximately 120 communities in all regions of Ukraine. The biggest amount of them is concentrated in Vinnytska, Khmelnytska, Zaporizka, Dnipropetrovska, Poltavska, Lvivska oblasts and the city of Kyiv. There are no foreigners among all clerics-pagans, which is unusual for most Ukrainian denominations. Paganism is an indigenous religion of the Ukrainians, which stands up for the authenticity of our society and country. According to our calculations, there are more than 100 pagan sacred places in Ukraine: ancient and functional, more or less preserved and managed, attractive for tourists. Podillia, Podniprovia, the Carpathians, Pollissia are characterized by the greatest concentration of pagan sacred sites - places of worship of anthropogenic and natural origin: sanctuaries, temples, sacrificial altars, caves, cliffs, megaliths (dolmens, cromlechs, menhirs), petroglyphs, burial mounds, trees, idols, springs, pantheons etc. However, most of these places are not widely known or they are known only as natural or historical and cultural objects. In order to make those facts well known, it is necessary to organize an advertising campaign in support of this issue and to stop an adversary, biased attitude of the whole society or some representatives of separate religions towards paganism. In addition, it is important to stop destroying pagan sacred places and to turn them into touristic spots. Multiple highlights of the ethnical religious and cultural significance of Ukrainian pagan sacred sites will augment already known information about them and will add religious tourists and pilgrims to the general flow of travellers. Key words: paganism, Abrahamic religions, organization of religious tourism, paganism in Ukraine, organization of pilgrimage, religious tourism in Ukraine.

A Chinese courtyard house, called in Chinese siheyuan, equipped with a single entrance and with one or more open courtyards encompassed by one-storey buildings, represents traditional house dwelling in China. Throughout Chinese history, courtyard dwelling was the basic architectural pattern used for building governmental (palaces and offices) and family residences, and religious compounds (temples and monasteries). In this short contribution, the author depicts a standard traditional Beijing court house from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) which would normally host an extended family of three and four generations. The physical construction and spatial structure of the traditional Chinese courtyard house were deeply rooted in ancient Chinese philosophical thought. The Chinese used fengshui (wind and water) principles to harmonize themselves with their environment in order to secure prosperity, longevity, and family blessings. From the viewpoint of fengshui, a basic courtyard house compound was not only a dwelling place, but also a structured and complicated vision of the cosmos that should function as an ideal container of qi (life energy). The fundamental north-south axis which rhythmically and continuously guarantee the vital flow of qi and the square shape of a courtyard house which means near to the earth, should promise health, prosperity, and the growth of the family. The fengshui system (nowadays mostly associated with Daoism) in the context of a Chinese courtyard house was intimately combined with China’s strict social and family system (Confucianism). The structure of the Chinese traditional family – and the author calls it “Confucian familism” – i.e., the Confucian conviction of family as a model for the whole state. This rigid and hierarchically structured family system, which had been the basis of Chinese society in imperial China for over two thousand years, has been reflected in courtyard house compounds. At the end of this contribution, the author mentions the efforts of present-day architects to find a way to revive traditional courtyard housing for modern times.

Данная статья посвящена анализу процесса взаимного проникновения архитектурных традиций Китая и Тибета. Этот неоднородный процесс активно шел с XIII по XIX в. С одной стороны, привнесение китайских черт в тибетскую архитектуру и наоборот было тесно связано с политическим контекстом. Неслучайно первые попытки соединения двух стилистик на территории Тибета начали возникать именно во время правления династии Юань, когда глава школы Сакья стал официальным духовным наставником Хубилая. Схожие процессы происходили и при проникновении тибетских черт в китайскую архитектуру, когда по велению императорского двора династии Цин около дворцов в Пекине и Чэндэ возвели целый ряд ламаистских монастырей, в архитектуре которых были напрямую заимствованы композиционные и объемные решения тибетских построек. В то же время шел процесс и естественного проникновения тибетской архитектурной традиции в близлежащие регионы провинций Сычуань, Ганьсу, Внутренняя Монголия и Цинхай, что привело к появлению новых форм монастырских построек, где китайские черты проявились гораздо четче, чем в Тибете. На территории Тибета в архитектуре шли схожие процессы постепенного проникновения китайских традиций, что выразилось как в планировке отдельных монастырей, так и в применении деревянных конструкций и элементов отделки и декора. В данном исследовании сделана попытка обобщить обширный и разнородный архитектурный материал с целью более глубокого понимания стилистического развития архитектуры Тибета и Китая. Анализ взаимодействия тибетской и китайской архитектурных традиций на протяжении XIII-XIX вв. позволяет выявить то, как проходили процессы поиска новых форм и образов, стилизации и переосмысления устоявшихся приемов в новых культурных и географических условиях. This article focuses on the analysis of the process of interaction between the architectural traditions of China and Tibet. This complex process began in the 13th century and lasted until the 19th century. On one side, penetration of Chinese features into Tibetan architecture and vice versa was closely connected with the political context. It is no coincidence that the first attempts of combining two different styles in Tibet started to appear during the reign of Yuan dynasty, when the head of the Sakya Buddhist school became an official spiritual advisor of the Kublai Khan. Similar processes led to Tibetan influence affecting Chinese architecture, when several Lamaist temples and monasteries were built around emperor palaces in Beijing and Chengde by order of the Qing Dynasty court. The compositional and volumetric structure of those buildings was directly borrowed from Tibetan architecture. On the other side, Tibetan architectural traditions were naturally spreading into nearby regions, such as Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia with the expansion of Tibetan Buddhism. It led to the creation of new forms of monastery buildings, where Chinese features exhibited themselves much more clearly than in Tibet. Meanwhile, Chinese architectural traditions in the same time period were equally influencing Tibetan architecture. It may be seen in the evolution of plans, constructions and decorations of buildings. The present article attempts to summarize broad and disparate material with the purpose to better understand the evolution of Tibetan and Chinese architecture. Analysis of interactions between architectural traditions of Tibet and China throughout the 13th-19th centuries allows us to highlight the manner in which the processes of searching for new forms and architectural images in different cultural and geographical conditions have been unfolded..

AbstractAmong the books in the sale catalogue of Pieter Saeraredam's library (Note I) was a virtually forgotten work on pagan mythology, Hcydensche afgoden, belden, tcmpcls en offerhanden, published in Haarlem in 1646 (Note 2). This rare book crops up again in the 1893 catalogue of Frederik Muller's stock, but the only known example appears to be in the Royal Library in Brussels (Note 3). Among the Dutch sources on the subject, most of which continue the tradition of such Renaissance mythologists as Giraldi, Conti and Cartari, the Haarlem work appears to be the least known and most curious (Note 8). It was published anonymously, bul is dedicated to the author's teacher's, the Haarlem Classicist painters Pieter Fransz. de Grebber (Note 15) and Willem de Poorter. In the dedication the author declares that he felt the lack of descriptions in Dutch of pagan temples, altars and images during his apprenticeship and delermined to make it good later, despite his failure to become an artist. The book was inlended for 'Painters, Poets and others'. It consists of two volumes. The first sections are devoled to pagan religion in general, to the idols mentioned in the Old Testament and to each of the antique gods individually. The second, divided up into countries, offers a kind of information that is rather unusual in the 17th century. Not much is known about the pupils of the two painters mentioned (Notes 10, 11), but among the names we do have (certainly not a complete list) that of Pieter Casteleyn is of unusual interest. He certainly did not become a painter, for in 1645, lert years after the beginning of his apprenticeship to De Poorter, he is recorded as apprenticed to his father Vincent, a well-known Haarlem printer, who in fact printed Heydensche afgoden. Pieter Casteleyn became a member of the Haarlem booksellers' guild in 1649 and from 1650 onwards he was to puhlish the famous Hollandsche Mercurius. In 1649 he printed Pieter de Grebber's 'rules of art', possibly as his masterpiece (Note 14). He may have found some consolation for his failure as an artist in the publication of notes on the gods, which would certainly have been of interest to his teachers, and there would have been time enough to gather the material between 1635 and 1646. He belonged to a relatively well-to-do Mennonite milieu, there is evidence to suggest that he and his brother Vincent probably attended the Latin School and the inventory of his estate made in 1676 included no fewer than 43 paintings, mythological scenes among them (Note 19), none of which contrardicts the hypothesis. If Pieter Casteleyn was indeed the author of the book, there would be some excuse for its weakness, as a youthful work by someone who had not yet found his metier. The book is a mishmash of arbitrary information presented in a totally uncritical and often muddle-headed manner. Casteleyn took over much from the 1581 Frenh edition of Cartari, with the great difference that he was not interested in the meaning, but only in the externals of the images he describes. In the case of Fortuna, f or example, Casteleyn gives a completely arbitrary list of attributes, possibly taken from the illustrations in Cartari (Fig. I), including that of Nemesis (Fig. 2), whose 'measure' he may have wrongly construed as the 'telescope' he so strangely refers to. The illustrations in the book, ten small and rathe primitive woodcuts, are not related to those in the French edition of Cartari. Indeed, in the case of that of Janus (Fig.3), it seems that the artist did not know Cartari's illustration (Fig. 4), since the rod shown there has been transformed, through a linguistic mistake, into a bundle of twigs. As, for the other illustrations (Figs. 5-10), some are of subjects not illustrated in Cartari, while the last one is a rendering in reverse of the illustration of the 'Abgott Jodute' in the Sächsisch Chronicon of 1596 (Note 24). In the title-page print (Fig. 11 ), on the other hand, which may be by Casteleyn himself, the statue of Mercury in the left foreground is a direct borrowing from Carlari (Fig. 12). Whether the Heydenschc afgoden was of any practical use to artists or had any influence on Dutch art seems doubtful, but it did have ils roots in the artistic milieu in Haarlem and as such it remains a highly curious phenomenon.

Affirming himself during the postmodern period, it is as if sculptor Kuzma Kovačić never cared about the appearance of the new artistic trend. His oeuvre does not display any inclination, not even a rudimentary interest in postmodern compiling and referencing of historical sources. The age of fragmentary visual models creaed by the idea about the loss of cultural unity which attempted to construct itself on the shards of the broken ‘art-historical vase’ did not seem to touch him at all. On the other hand, Kovačić is not a follower of the preceding modernist period which emphasized the experimental nature of art, formal and analytical models where subject matter was identified with material and technique. It seems that in his case, the call of heritage and stories from the native region had outshone any interest in being part of the chronological succession of trends and generations. Grgo Gamulin once wrote that this sculptor ‘observes and forms the seasons, sea, stations of the Cross, sermons, epistles, evangelists and saints’. It seems that he is not so much looking towards what is new on the artistic horizon as towards what the home region of Hvar, the Mediterranean and Christianity have left imprinted on the millennial physiognomy of landscape and people. Kovačić wants to direct our attention to the context of culture and tradition, but also to the structure of surface, and in this, between the private and collective, the significant and insignificant, the intimate and public, he does not see any obstacle. Equally so, he does not make a difference between the traditional representational materials in sculpture and he extensively uses trivial everyday material: cotton, glass, sponge, resin, paper, cellophane, cardboard, plexi-glass, polyester, silver and gold leaves, sand, soil, polystyrene, nails, quicklime and light. The philosophy of Kovačić’s oeuvre convinces us that nothing in the world is so insignificant so as not to have a particular role in the grand scheme of things. Thus, behind proud structures of human vanity, behind large buildings, imperial residences, triumphal arches, but also in nondescript stones of human modesty one can find the hidden wisdom of eternity. For this reason, even when producing monumental works such as the doors of Hvar Cathedral, Kovačić does not indulge in the ceremonial pomp of the glorious past. Besides, he does not belong to those who reconstruct large building complexes, he is not attracted to the monuments of earthly powers and wonders of the world which aim at the sky which remains always equally distant. On the contrary, he is fond of the scratches on the wall, a clumsy record in stone, which resist the progress of time as if by a miracle, outliving many famous palaces and dilapidated temples by its perpetuity. It can even be said that these frail impressions which defy transience impress him more than the structures envisaged and created to last unchanged forever. The doors he made for Hvar Cathedral are a good example of this. They have nothing in common with the classic Gothic-Renaissance forms. Here, Kovačić seems to address deeper layers of traditional forms, and in compact and robust forms we recognize the early Christian manner, but also that of the folks people’s touching sentimentality (and piety) which did not care for the refined rules of elite culture.Neither did Kovačić lose his head by pleasing the snobbish politicians and the newly converted believers when he worked on the so-called tasks of national sovereignty, following the late 1990s change of government in Croatia. However, it can be noticed that he moved away from the works such as “Velegorki”, “Lo, the Sea is Sweating with Blood” (“Evo se more znoji krvavim znojem”) and “The Description Of the Origins of Croatian Sculpture” (“Opis početaka hrvatskog kiparstva”) to the lyrical realism evident in his depicting of popes, saints, the “Altar of the Homeland”, Christ, The Last Supper, Franjo Tuđman and Gojko Šušak. Of course, this does not mean that he has lost vitality and potency, nor that these works are bad, but simply that he took a turn towards a certain type of realism and depiction of figures, instead of representing them as signs and symbols, as he had done before the “renascence of national sovereignty”.One of the large public projects by Kuzma Kovačić was the “Altar of Croatian Homeland” on Medvedgrad. This project, executed during the presidency of Franjo Tuđman (1994), caused much public dispute, whether concerning the restoration of the feudal burg or the idea that altars without a liturgical purpose should be erected to the Homeland. However, it was generally accepted that Kuzma Kovačić’s sculptural complex was the best that happened to this lay sanctification of the place. In spite of the drawing on the geometry of Croatian chequers, with Medvedgrad Kovačić also showed that he is neither a minimalist nor a reductionist who distils forms into geometric purism. His geometry is narrative, his cubes and glass shapes contain the trace of human hand, stamps of the ages and symbolical signs. However, his projects, connected to state commissions, were criticised by parts of the general public, not because of their insufficient artistic merit and obsequiousness to political establishment and their doubtful taste (in particular that which likes to see itself as generating projects of national sovereignty and veers towards kitsch), but because of the political context which was causing hatred. The same happened to the monumental public statues of Franjo Tuđman and Gojko Šušak which were evaluated mostly in the overheated political sphere of opinions for or against the persons portrayed. Not many, not even the apologeticists of HDZ nomenclature, considered Kovačić’s sculptures and their form. Perhaps the best example is the statue of Dražen Petrović which, unlike those mentioned, had no political context and thus did not cause any controversy. In any case, it is certain that even when working on large public statues or in churches, Kovačić is equally successful in mastering the monumental form, and in the intimistic rendition of the miniature form which represents the majority of his oeuvre (and also the best). In doing so, the dimensions themselves (i.e. large scale) do not mean that Kovačić has given up on sculpture which is inherently intimistic, compact, non-representational and which directs its power towards the core, rather than expanding into external rhetoric.

AbstractThis paper is intended as an overview of different categories of Chinese temples and other institutions in Singapore and their transnational networks, in particularly on Hokkien communiities in Singapore. It focusing on some preliminary research findings related to this Hokkien communities and their religious networks, examines the Minnan (South Fujian) Protector Gods (Regional or Village temple Main Gods) and the Minnan Taoist Altars, as well as their religious networks connecting Fujian, China and the Chinese communities in Singapore. The main argument of this paper is that all the religious networks of the Minnan Main Gods and the Minnan Taoist Altars play a significant role in the transnational movement of resources between Singapore and China, particularly Fujian. These resources include people from all walks of life, various forms of ritual knowledge and innovations, money and materials.

The urban mortuary space is an essential part of the traditional social space of Beijing, revealing the complex modernization process during the period of the Republic of China (1912-1949). The main mortuary space of Beijing comprised Yidi (a traditional Chinese graveyard), mortuary temples, and modern cemeteries. The Beijing government failed to adapt or renovate the traditional mortuary space during this period. The Yidi and mortuary temples were mainly distributed in the outer city of Beijing; both of them were formed hundreds of years ago and provided for the immigrants, the poor, and beggars. The modern cemeteries injected new elements into the mortuary space, which also strengthened social class divisions and spatial segregation due to the price-driven graveyards and services. The traditional mortuary space quickly disappeared in the 1950s with great improvement in public hygiene. The complex process of Beijing’s mortuary space transformation reflects the modernization of Chinese cities.

AbstractPresent day Beijing developed on the urban layout of the Ming capital, founded in 1420 over the former city of Dadu, the Yuan dynasty capital. The planning of Ming Beijing aimed at conveying a key political message, namely that the ruling dynasty was in charge of the Mandate of Heaven, so that Beijing was the true cosmic centre of the world. We explore here, using satellite imagery and palaeomagnetic data analysys, symbolic aspects of the planning of the city related to astronomical alignments and to the feng shui doctrine, both in its “form” and “compass” schools. In particular, we show that orientations of the axes of the “cosmic” temples and of the Forbidden City were most likely magnetic, while astronomy was used in topographical connections between the temples and in the plan of the Forbidden City in itself.

China is an immense nation and highest population on earth with incredible civilization, it kept up its character over millenniums in spite of its different ethnic gatherings and distinctive geographical conditions. The Ancient Chinese architecture and urban planning are fundamental units of the world architecture and well known of their particular character. In addition, they were an extraordinary wellspring of motivation for some neighbouring nations. Several factors were behind the momentous Chinese architecture and urban planning, and among those was the emperor guidance who unified the government and encouraged regularity in many aspect in Chinese architecture including city planning. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of nonphysical factors such as Chinese culture and beliefs in shaping the distinct identity of ancient Chinese cities. This is done by studying; feng shui notion, Yin and Yan forces, the theory of five elements and other Metaphysics philosophies of China. Furthermore, this paper scrutinises a number of Chinese ancient capital cities and temples of heaven in Beijing as case studies to measure to what extent the intangible factors contributed in shaping the identity and layout of Chinese cities and architecture.

China is an immense nation and highest population on earth with incredible civilization, it kept up its character over millenniums in spite of its different ethnic gatherings and distinctive geographical conditions. The Ancient Chinese architecture and urban planning are fundamental units of the world architecture and well known of their particular character. In addition, they were an extraordinary wellspring of motivation for some neighbouring nations. Several factors were behind the momentous Chinese architecture and urban planning, and among those was the emperor guidance who unified the government and encouraged regularity in many aspect in Chinese architecture including city planning. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of nonphysical factors such as Chinese culture and beliefs in shaping the distinct identity of ancient Chinese cities. This is done by studying; feng shui notion, Yin and Yan forces, the theory of five elements and other Metaphysics philosophies of China. Furthermore, this paper scrutinises a number of Chinese ancient capital cities and temples of heaven in Beijing as case studies to measure to what extent the intangible factors contributed in shaping the identity and layout of Chinese cities and architecture.

Although patronage of Tibetan Buddhism by the imperial courts in China has a precedence before the Qing dynasty, the scale and scope of Qing emperors’ investment was unprecedented. Scholars have produced multiple interpretations on the nature of their rule, among which, the most pertinent argument has centered on analyzing the intentions of the emperors. The centrality of this debate has occured at the elision of other historical factors, one of which is infrastructures and institutions that facilitated this patronage. While Qing patronage took multiple forms, such as construction of monasteries or conference of titles to religious hierarchs, this paper focuses on printing activities in specific and illustrates the textual network that began to take shape during Kangxi’s reign (r.1661-1722). The Kangxi Emperor reorganized and significantly expanded the Imperial household department, Neiwufu, which was responsible for manufacture of goods for palace’s use. He also established imperial workshops such as Yangxindian and Wuyingdian that recruited artisans from all over the country and were involved in printing scholarly works. Through the collaborative work of the Imperial household department and the bureaucracy, enormous material and human resources were amassed to implement these printing projects. While the imperial court was involved in printing monumental texts, I have also highlighted the role of monasteries and temples outside of Beijing that were involved in printing smaller texts. I have shown that while the inner Asian printing network was undoubtedly supported by the Qing emperors and spurred by their financial contribution, they were also spaces and layers where smaller local powers could engage in printing activities independently outside the realm of imperial authority.

The author is challenging the Romanian outdated methodology of research of the well-known Dacian citadels from the late Iron Age excavated during the last 70 years. He is stressing the danger for the health of the Romanian society of the so-called “dacomania”, a trend originated from the communiste period which developed and became stronger and stronger. The duty of the academic community is to fight using the correct research methodology, otherwise it will be vulnerable in front of the irrationale propaganda.The first part of the study deals with the architecture of the Dacian citadels from the Șureanu (Sebeșului) Mountains from south-western Transylvania. The focus of the author’s considerations is concentrated on the building technique of the defense stone-walls. As stone walls are rare during the Iron Age on the territory of Romania, the massive fortifications found in the mountains mentioned above are spectacular. This evolution was explained as a consequence of the development of the Dacian political structures till to a state stage during the 1st century BC. Then Burebista, the first king established his residence at Sarmizegetusa and after conquered the Greek cities from the Black Sea shore, used Greek builders for his citadels. The influence of the Hellenistique building technology is obvious. But the structures were named by Romanian researchers in the field “murus Dacicus” a local original type of fortification wall. The main local feature was consider the using of the wood to link the stone blocks of the wall. The wooden beams were fixed in the blocks faces in some special cuts in the shape of dovetail. The author is offering examples from France, where at Mont Saint Odile and at Frankenbourg in Alsace, there are massive fortifications using the same technique of sticking together the stone blocks. Even their chronology is not well established, it is very probable that the technique arrived in northern Gaul from the Southern Greek cities, maybe by Etruscan intermediary. So he rejects the concept of “murus Dacicus”, the original local Dacian contribution being unrecognizable.The second analysis, more extended is dedicated to the so-called Dacian temples from Sarmizegetusa Regia (Grădiștea Muncelului). The author doubts concerning the identification as sanctuaries of the rows of round stone bases uncovered by the archaeologists. His first objection is based on the archaeological inventory recovered. There are only iron nails and iron elements used in assembling the beams of roofs. In prehistory the possibility of identification of a building as a sacred one is based on cult objects, or cultic structures (as ritual altars, hearths etc.), giving as examples the Neolithic sanctuary at Parța, or buildings from the Iron Age at Popești, or Cârlomănești in Southern Romania. In the reconstructions proposed by several architects and archaeologists as Dinu Antonescu, I. H. Crișan, I. Glodariu is starting from the idea of the using of columns on the stone round bases, resulting a roofed “forest of columns”. It is missing the essential element of a temple: cella, the sacred room. There are also missing any traces of rituals, no animal bones, or votive objects deposits being identified.The author is comparing the plan of the structures from Sarmizegetusa Regia with the plan of the earlier wooden structures identified by geophysical surveys at Mont Lassois (France). The conclusion is that the rows of stone bases are nothing but the bases of granaries elevated from the soil on short stone feet to protect the cereals from moisture and mice (so-called “staddle stones” in England). The European prehistoric sites the system was used. The Romans developed it in big buildings in stone, the horrea. In Northern Spain they are still called horreos and are still functioning, being the best analogies for the buildings vanished at Sarmizegetusa Regia. Some Roman, or Greek technical adviser offered this solution for stockpiling supplies at Sarmizegetusa. It seems normal to the author to exist huge public granaries in an Iron Age settlement which became almost a town, because of the geographical position in the mountains at high altitude with no possibility of local agriculture. The subsistence during the winter of the inhabitants was based on the cereals from the Mureș valley, at approximately 50 km away. The central power had the duty of organizing this supplying system for the community. Starting with the first Austrian researches from the 19th century in the area were reported finds of big quantities of burnt cereals.The Dacians used to have buildings on elevated bases, as are illustrated on Trajan’s Column.It cannot be identified at Sarmizegetusa Regia any temple, nor a “sacred area”, as buildings of the same type were identified at other citadels in the area, as at Costești, for example, where their topographical position is diverse (inside the fortification and outside). The interpretation of a Dacian state with a strong theocratic profile and the fanatical religious feelings of the Dacian warriors is rejected as with no documentary support. At the same time the author is rejecting the interpretation of the systematical destruction of the Dacian buildings by the Romans on religious grounds, giving as example the Latin authors’ different statements and attitude towards the Jews and the Dacians: hate for the Jews, sympathy for the Dacians.

The curtain rose. The howling of desert wind filled the performance hall in the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Into the center stage, where a scenic construction of a mountain cliff and a desert landscape was dimly lit, entered the character of the Daoist priest Wang Yuanlu (1849–1931), performed by Chen Yizong. Dressed in a worn and dusty outfit of dark blue cotton, characteristic of Daoist priests, Wang began to sweep the floor. After a few moments, he discovered a hidden chambre sealed inside one of the rock sanctuaries carved into the cliff.Signaled by the quick, crystalline, stirring wave of sound from the chimes, a melodious Chinese ocarina solo joined in slowly from the background. Astonished by thousands of Buddhist sūtra scrolls, wall paintings, and sculptures he had just accidentally discovered in the caves, Priest Wang set his broom aside and began to examine these treasures. Dawn had not yet arrived, and the desert sky was pitch-black. Priest Wang held his oil lamp high, strode rhythmically in excitement, sat crossed-legged in a meditative pose, and unfolded a scroll. The sound of the ocarina became fuller and richer and the texture of the music more complex, as several other instruments joined in.Below is the opening scene of the award-winning, theatrical dance-drama Dunhuang, My Dreamland, created by China’s state-sponsored Lanzhou Song and Dance Theatre in 2000. Figure 1a: Poster Side A of Dunhuang, My Dreamland Figure 1b: Poster Side B of Dunhuang, My DreamlandThe scene locates the dance-drama in the rock sanctuaries that today are known as the Dunhuang Mogao Caves, housing Buddhist art accumulated over a period of a thousand years, one of the best well-known UNESCO heritages on the Silk Road. Historically a frontier metropolis, Dunhuang was a strategic site along the Silk Road in northwestern China, a crossroads of trade, and a locus for religious, cultural, and intellectual influences since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.). Travellers, especially Buddhist monks from India and central Asia, passing through Dunhuang on their way to Chang’an (present day Xi’an), China’s ancient capital, would stop to meditate in the Mogao Caves and consult manuscripts in the monastery's library. At the same time, Chinese pilgrims would travel by foot from China through central Asia to Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, playing a key role in the exchanges between ancient China and the outside world. Travellers from China would stop to acquire provisions at Dunhuang before crossing the Gobi Desert to continue on their long journey abroad. Figure 2: Dunhuang Mogao CavesThis article approaches the idea of “abroad” by examining the present-day imagination of journeys along the Silk Road—specifically, staged performances of the various Silk Road journey-themed dance-dramas sponsored by the Chinese state for enhancing its cultural and foreign policies since the 1970s (Kuang).As ethnomusicologists have demonstrated, musicians, choreographers, and playwrights often utilise historical materials in their performances to construct connections between the past and the present (Bohlman; Herzfeld; Lam; Rees; Shelemay; Tuohy; Wade; Yung: Rawski; Watson). The ancient Silk Road, which linked the Mediterranean coast with central China and beyond, via oasis towns such as Samarkand, has long been associated with the concept of “journeying abroad.” Journeys to distant, foreign lands and encounters of unknown, mysterious cultures along the Silk Road have been documented in historical records, such as A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Faxian) and The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Xuanzang), and illustrated in classical literature, such as The Travels of Marco Polo (Polo) and the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West (Wu). These journeys—coming and going from multiple directions and to different destinations—have inspired contemporary staged performance for audiences around the globe.Home and Abroad: Dunhuang and the Silk RoadDunhuang, My Dreamland (2000), the contemporary dance-drama, staged the journey of a young pilgrim painter travelling from Chang’an to a land of the unfamiliar and beyond borders, in search for the arts that have inspired him. Figure 3: A scene from Dunhuang, My Dreamland showing the young pilgrim painter in the Gobi Desert on the ancient Silk RoadFar from his home, he ended his journey in Dunhuang, historically considered the northwestern periphery of China, well beyond Yangguan and Yumenguan, the bordering passes that separate China and foreign lands. Later scenes in Dunhuang, My Dreamland, portrayed through multiethnic music and dances, the dynamic interactions among merchants, cultural and religious envoys, warriors, and politicians that were making their own journey from abroad to China. The theatrical dance-drama presents a historically inspired, re-imagined vision of both “home” and “abroad” to its audiences as they watch the young painter travel along the Silk Road, across the Gobi Desert, arriving at his own ideal, artistic “homeland”, the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. Since his journey is ultimately a spiritual one, the conceptualisation of travelling “abroad” could also be perceived as “a journey home.”Staged more than four hundred times since it premiered in Beijing in April 2000, Dunhuang, My Dreamland is one of the top ten titles in China’s National Stage Project and one of the most successful theatrical dance-dramas ever produced in China. With revenue of more than thirty million renminbi (RMB), it ranks as the most profitable theatrical dance-drama ever produced in China, with a preproduction cost of six million RMB. The production team receives financial support from China’s Ministry of Culture for its “distinctive ethnic features,” and its “aim to promote traditional Chinese culture,” according to Xu Rong, an official in the Cultural Industry Department of the Ministry. Labeled an outstanding dance-drama of the Chinese nation, it aims to present domestic and international audiences with a vision of China as a historically multifaceted and cosmopolitan nation that has been in close contact with the outside world through the ancient Silk Road. Its production company has been on tour in selected cities throughout China and in countries abroad, including Austria, Spain, and France, literarily making the young pilgrim painter’s “journey along the Silk Road” a new journey abroad, off stage and in reality.Dunhuang, My Dreamland was not the first, nor is it the last, staged performances that portrays the Chinese re-imagination of “journeying abroad” along the ancient Silk Road. It was created as one of many versions of Dunhuang bihua yuewu, a genre of music, dance, and dramatic performances created in the early twentieth century and based primarily on artifacts excavated from the Mogao Caves (Kuang). “The Mogao Caves are the greatest repository of early Chinese art,” states Mimi Gates, who works to increase public awareness of the UNESCO site and raise funds toward its conservation. “Located on the Chinese end of the Silk Road, it also is the place where many cultures of the world intersected with one another, so you have Greek and Roman, Persian and Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese cultures, all interacting. Given the nature of our world today, it is all very relevant” (Pollack). As an expressive art form, this genre has been thriving since the late 1970s contributing to the global imagination of China’s “Silk Road journeys abroad” long before Dunhuang, My Dreamland achieved its domestic and international fame. For instance, in 2004, The Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteśvara—one of the most representative (and well-known) Dunhuang bihua yuewu programs—was staged as a part of the cultural program during the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. This performance, as well as other Dunhuang bihua yuewu dance programs was the perfect embodiment of a foreign religion that arrived in China from abroad and became Sinicized (Kuang). Figure 4: Mural from Dunhuang Mogao Cave No. 45A Brief History of Staging the Silk Road JourneysThe staging of the Silk Road journeys abroad began in the late 1970s. Historically, the Silk Road signifies a multiethnic, cosmopolitan frontier, which underwent incessant conflicts between Chinese sovereigns and nomadic peoples (as well as between other groups), but was strongly imbued with the customs and institutions of central China (Duan, Mair, Shi, Sima). In the twentieth century, when China was no longer an empire, but had become what the early 20th-century reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929) called “a nation among nations,” the long history of the Silk Road and the colourful, legendary journeys abroad became instrumental in the formation of a modern Chinese nation of unified diversity rooted in an ancient cosmopolitan past. The staged Silk Road theme dance-dramas thus participate in this formation of the Chinese imagination of “nation” and “abroad,” as they aestheticise Chinese history and geography. History and geography—aspects commonly considered constituents of a nation as well as our conceptualisations of “abroad”—are “invariably aestheticized to a certain degree” (Bakhtin 208). Diverse historical and cultural elements from along the Silk Road come together in this performance genre, which can be considered the most representative of various possible stagings of the history and culture of the Silk Road journeys.In 1979, the Chinese state officials in Gansu Province commissioned the benchmark dance-drama Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, a spectacular theatrical dance-drama praising the pure and noble friendship which existed between the peoples of China and other countries in the Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.). While its plot also revolves around the Dunhuang Caves and the life of a painter, staged at one of the most critical turning points in modern Chinese history, the work as a whole aims to present the state’s intention of re-establishing diplomatic ties with the outside world after the Cultural Revolution. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, it presents a nation’s journey abroad and home. To accomplish this goal, Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road introduces the fictional character Yunus, a wealthy Persian merchant who provides the audiences a vision of the historical figure of Peroz III, the last Sassanian prince, who after the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 C.E., found refuge in China. By incorporating scenes of ethnic and folk dances, the drama then stages the journey of painter Zhang’s daughter Yingniang to Persia (present-day Iran) and later, Yunus’s journey abroad to the Tang dynasty imperial court as the Persian Empire’s envoy.Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, since its debut at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the first of October 1979 and shortly after at the Theatre La Scala in Milan, has been staged in more than twenty countries and districts, including France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Latvia, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and recently, in 2013, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.“The Road”: Staging the Journey TodayWithin the contemporary context of global interdependencies, performing arts have been used as strategic devices for social mobilisation and as a means to represent and perform modern national histories and foreign policies (Davis, Rees, Tian, Tuohy, Wong, David Y. H. Wu). The Silk Road has been chosen as the basis for these state-sponsored, extravagantly produced, and internationally staged contemporary dance programs. In 2008, the welcoming ceremony and artistic presentation at the Olympic Games in Beijing featured twenty apsara dancers and a Dunhuang bihua yuewu dancer with long ribbons, whose body was suspended in mid-air on a rectangular LED extension held by hundreds of performers; on the giant LED screen was a depiction of the ancient Silk Road.In March 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping introduced the initiatives “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” during his journeys abroad in Kazakhstan and Indonesia. These initiatives are now referred to as “One Belt, One Road.” The State Council lists in details the policies and implementation plans for this initiative on its official web page, www.gov.cn. In April 2013, the China Institute in New York launched a yearlong celebration, starting with "Dunhuang: Buddhist Art and the Gateway of the Silk Road" with a re-creation of one of the caves and a selection of artifacts from the site. In March 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, released a new action plan outlining key details of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Xi Jinping has made the program a centrepiece of both his foreign and domestic economic policies. One of the central economic strategies is to promote cultural industry that could enhance trades along the Silk Road.Encouraged by the “One Belt, One Road” policies, in March 2016, The Silk Princess premiered in Xi’an and was staged at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing the following July. While Dunhuang, My Dreamland and Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road were inspired by the Buddhist art found in Dunhuang, The Silk Princess, based on a story about a princess bringing silk and silkworm-breeding skills to the western regions of China in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) has a different historical origin. The princess's story was portrayed in a woodblock from the Tang Dynasty discovered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, a British archaeologist during his expedition to Xinjiang (now Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region) in the early 19th century, and in a temple mural discovered during a 2002 Chinese-Japanese expedition in the Dandanwulike region. Figure 5: Poster of The Silk PrincessIn January 2016, the Shannxi Provincial Song and Dance Troupe staged The Silk Road, a new theatrical dance-drama. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, the newly staged dance-drama “centers around the ‘road’ and the deepening relationship merchants and travellers developed with it as they traveled along its course,” said Director Yang Wei during an interview with the author. According to her, the show uses seven archetypes—a traveler, a guard, a messenger, and so on—to present the stories that took place along this historic route. Unbounded by specific space or time, each of these archetypes embodies the foreign-travel experience of a different group of individuals, in a manner that may well be related to the social actors of globalised culture and of transnationalism today. Figure 6: Poster of The Silk RoadConclusionAs seen in Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road and Dunhuang, My Dreamland, staging the processes of Silk Road journeys has become a way of connecting the Chinese imagination of “home” with the Chinese imagination of “abroad.” Staging a nation’s heritage abroad on contemporary stages invites a new imagination of homeland, borders, and transnationalism. Once aestheticised through staged performances, such as that of the Dunhuang bihua yuewu, the historical and topological landscape of Dunhuang becomes a performed narrative, embodying the national heritage.The staging of Silk Road journeys continues, and is being developed into various forms, from theatrical dance-drama to digital exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottes at Dunhuang (Stromberg) and the Getty’s Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China's Silk Road (Sivak and Hood). 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