«Живые образы» против «обмирщения»: альтернативные интерпретации стиля японской скульптуры эпохи Камакура

The “Jiaoxiecheng” narrative, compiled on the basis of the Japanese monk Ennin’s experiences in Tang China, began circulating in society from the late Heian period. Continuously evolved and adapted by later generations, it became a famous Buddhist setsuwa (anecdotal tale) in ancient Japan, yet it was not a Japanese original. The compilation and evolution of the “Jiaoxiecheng” narrative were products of Eurasian cultural exchange during the Tang Dynasty. Its ideological origins lie in the excessive alienation of the Huichang Persecution of Buddhism and the constructed image of Emperor Wuzong among certain groups in Central China at that time. Furthermore, the nostalgia for the homeland revealed in the story’s depiction of Ennin’s experiences in Tang China is actually a microcosm of the homesickness felt by Japanese scholars who traveled to Tang for study and Buddhist teachings, set against the broader context of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange. The cross-cultural perspective presented by the “Jiaoxiecheng” narrative provides an important reference for studying the openness of Tang culture and offers new textual evidence and dimensions for contemplating the relationship between ancient China and Eurasian cultures.

On the centennial of the peace treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, Dartmouth College hosted a conference to examine the background and making of that treaty and its long-term implications for international relations. Over forty North American, Japanese, and Russian scholars and practitioners participated in the forum. The Treaty of Portsmouth and Its Legacies presents eight outstanding conference papers, revised for publication, and two additional papers solicited to round out the scholarship. Together these papers illuminate diplomacy before and after the war, the peace process, the political and cultural legacies of Portsmouth, and the treaty's significance for Asia-Pacific relations today.

Amoghavajra (Bukongjin’gang不空金剛; 704/5-774) was a historically significant Buddhist monk who operated in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907). He was a prolific translator and is widely regarded as the founder of an Esoteric or Tantric Buddhist tradition in East Asia. Arriving in China at a young age, Amoghavajra became a monk and practiced under Vajrabodhi (Jin’gangzhi金剛智; 671–741). Following his master’s death, Amoghavajra undertook an ocean voyage to Sri Lanka and southern India. He returned to Tang China in 746/747 with a collection of newly acquired Buddhist texts and training in ritual practices. He was the recipient of patronage and support from members of the ruling elite in Tang China, including a succession of three emperors—Xuanzong 玄宗 (r. 713–756), Suzong 肅宗 (r. 756–762), and Daizong 代宗 (r. 762–779). Amoghavajra served the Tang government with his ritual services and was appointed a minister in the central government bureau charged with overseeing official ritual services for the Tang state. With this support and influence, Amoghavajra translated a vast collection of Buddhist scriptures and authored numerous commentaries, ritual manuals, and compendia, and he effectively established a teaching of Buddhism in China that is generally referred to as “Esoteric Buddhism.” This teaching of Buddhism was subsequently transmitted by Kūkai 空海 (774–835) to Japan, where it became established as the Japanese Shingon school. In Chinese and Japanese Buddhist histories, Amoghavajra is regarded as a patriarch of Tang dynasty Esoteric Buddhism and Japanese Shingon.

Background: This article examines interaction between Buddhism and South Asian folklore exploring the influences of Buddhist traditions over culture, traditions, beliefs and practices of the local people specifically in northern India since the origin of Buddhism in the region. Objective: The objective of the paper is to focus the impacts of the Buddhist principles in various culture, custom and folklore in the South Asian region as the Dhamma gets expanded across South Asia and beyond. Methodology: Interdisciplinary methodology is employed while going through the research work, drawing from historical, textual, ethnographic, and sociological approaches to analyze the relationships between Buddhism, folklore, and contemporary South Asian society. Result: The paper depicts how the states were formed adopting the values of the Dhamma and how it brought a cultural integration becoming a popular religious practice in the region. There were people who preferred monastic life with Spiritual Practices and Meditations under the guidance of core Buddhist Philosophy whereas there were others, the householders, who were much more influenced by Buddhist rituals and local folklore. The role of Buddhist Monks and Nuns in facilitating the laities with ritual practices and Buddhist teachings is highlighted in the article. The article reflects the role of monastic folklorists in transforming folk traditions into an important part of Buddhist Practices by mixing up local deities, spirits and rituals into Buddhist cosmology. Jatakas and Avadanas stories of the Buddha's past lives are highlighted in the paper as the key sources of Teaching Buddhist ethics and doctrines to the common people. Conclusion: The paper investigates how Buddhism, in South Asia, got flourished with its modest engagement with various cultures and traditions in the region with significant influences over the folklore of the contemporary societies

The visit which Śakyamūni paid to His mother in the world of the Gods has been represented in the murals of Pagan in a way not encountered in India: the Buddha is not only depicted as coming back from Mount Meru at Saṃkassa, but he is also depicted ascending towards Meru and actually sitting on the mountain. This topic occupies a complete wall in the Loka-hteik-pan or in the monument 1150, datable to the twelfth or thirteenth century. This scene was preserved in later temples, though in a simplified manner. This representation of the Buddha sitting upon Mount Meru shows him crowning the universe, above the cosmic waters. This vision of the Buddha as ‘master’ of the universe, ruling over the six directions complements the dimension of time which the jātakas introduced. Both subjects, the sermon on the mountain and the jātakas, symbolize the eternal and infinite presence of the Buddha in the universe. This paper claims that a particular mural in Pagan — in the Loka-hteik-pan shrine — should be viewed as making the classical statement about the cosmic status of the Burmese Buddha and the related status of the king. This striking achievement has been overlooked in spite of the fact that, as is shown, the mural profoundly influenced Burmese sacred art from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries. It is also claimed that the painters of the (probably) early twelfth-century Loka-hteik-pan, the temple ‘adorning the top of the world’, closely followed Indian literary sources or an Indian model to capture this cosmology as it was revealed through certain events in the life of the Buddha. In later temples, however, a loss in narrative substance and a tendency towards simplified icons depicting the same events indicate that later painters were probably referring back to Loka-hteik-pan as a model, rather than returning to the Indian sources. Loka-hteik-pan therefore has a special exemplary status in Burmese sacred art. The murals of Pagan include a precise set of iconographic topics, the distribution of which follows a very particular pattern. One of these topics, the most important in fact, is the life of the Buddha, illustrated with the help of seven panels and the central cult image, which together constitute the traditional set of the ‘eight great events’, which was favored in Northeast India from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. Two consecutive ‘great events’ in the set are closely linked, for it was after performing the ‘Great Miracle’ of Sāvatthi (event 4) that Śakyamūni decided to go to Mount Meru in order to preach the Abhidhamma to his mother; three months later, the ‘Descent from Heaven of the 33 Gods’ followed at Saṃkassa (event 5). The representation of these two events conforms to a sequence inherited from India, which is repeated through all the murals of Pagan, and is supremely illustrated in the mural on the eastern wall of the Loka-hteik-pan shrine (Figures 11.1–11.2).1 The two events are separated by the Buddha’s sojourn on Mount Meru, an episode in the biography usually ignored in art historical research. However, these three moments form a unique composition on the eastern wall of Loka-hteik-pan (Figures 11.3–11.8) (Bautze-Picron and Bautze 2003: figs. 50–51). The wall is separated into three superimposed zones. The lower zone shows the encounter of Sumedha and Buddha Dīpaṃkara, and the predication of the Ratana-sutta at Vesāli, two episodes which will be 11 ISEA.indd 142 6/6/08 10:07:02 AM 143 THE SERMON ON MOUNT MERU IN THE MURALS OF PAGAN Fig 11.1 The Great Miracle at Sāvatthi, Loka-hteikpan, south wall. (Reprinted with permission of Joachim K. Bautze) Fig 11.2 The Descent from Mount Meru, Loka-hteikpan, south wall. (Reprinted with permission of Joachim K. Bautze) Fig 11.3 The Sermon on Mount Meru, Loka-hteik-pan, east wall. (Reprinted with permission of Joachim K. Bautze) considered below (not seen on Figure 11.3). The intermediate zone presents the Buddha leaving King Pasenadi and his court at Sāvatthi, and then making his descent at Saṃkassa. The upper zone includes the Sermon of the Buddha to his mother and the assembly of the gods. A deep window recess in the lower part of the wall separates the two ‘great events’ below. The recess also partly intrudes into the intermediate zone, which then becomes unified across the wall above the peaks of the upper range of the seven mountains, i.e. at the level of Meru, which is the seat of the Buddha. Mon and Burmese inscriptions on the walls identify the scenes (see Ba Shin 1962: 119 for their translation). 11 ISEA.indd 143 6/6/08 10:07:11 AM 144 CLAUDINE BAUTZE-PICRON Fig 11.5 Dussa-thūpa, detail of Fig. 11.3. (Reprinted with permission of Joachim K. Bautze) Fig 11.4 Cūl.āman. i-thūpa, detail of Fig. 11.3. (Reprinted with permission of Joachim K. Bautze) 11 ISEA.indd 144 6/6/08 10:07:14 AM 145 THE SERMON ON MOUNT MERU IN THE MURALS OF PAGAN Fig 11.6 The Buddha teaching, detail of Fig. 11.3. (Reprinted with permission of Joachim K. Bautze) Fig 11.7 The Buddha descending from Mount Meru, detail of Fig. 11.3. (Reprinted with permission of Joachim K. Bautze) Fig 11.8 Buddha leaving King Pasenadi and climbing on Mount Meru, detail of Fig. 11.3. (Reprinted with permission of Joachim K. Bautze) 11 ISEA.indd 145 6/6/08 10:07:22 AM 146 CLAUDINE BAUTZE-PICRON

Reviewed by: Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism by Richard M. Jaffe Judith Snodgrass (bio) Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism. By Richard M. Jaffe. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2019. xvi, 309 pages. $97.50, cloth; $32.50, paper; $32.50, E-book. Richard Jaffe's new book is a brilliant addition to the series Buddhism and Modernity, adding a crucial dimension to our knowledge of the formation of Buddhism in modern Japan and, by extension, to the history of modern global Buddhism. It builds on and contributes substantially to earlier work documenting the domestic and East-West imperatives in that formation. While these tended to focus on the journeys to the West undertaken by Japanese Buddhist reformers, Jaffe instead focuses on those who traveled to India, arguing convincingly that the "road to conceptualizing Japanese Buddhism for the twentieth century ran through Colombo, Madras, Calcutta and Bombay as much as it did through Oxford, Cambridge, Paris and Heidelberg" (p. 238). Indeed, for some of the pioneering Japanese scholar priests such as Nanjō Bun'yū and Takakusu Junjirō, travel between Oxford and Japan took them through India, where the facility with Indic languages gained in Europe enabled them to study texts and work with South Asian scholars directly. And, it should not be forgotten, many of the Indian pandits with whom Japanese scholars studied, Indian scholars who would lead the Buddhist revival in South Asia, had previously worked with and been trained by British scholars. They studied in British colonial institutions. The Buddhist pilgrimage sites they visited had been reinserted into Indian memory and heritage by the colonial archaeological surveys. The Western factor is not denied, just resituated and complimented by Jaffe's Asia-centric perspective. Most of the Japanese Buddhists in this study, however, traveled directly to South Asia. Among the earliest of these was Zen Abbot Shaku Sōen, more familiar in Western scholarship for the time he would later spend in the United States. While much has been written of him, Jaffe's account, based on Sōen's diary of his journey to Ceylon and resulting publication on Southern Buddhism, greatly expands English-language knowledge of his life and work. Sōen studied Pāli, working with Theravāda scholars—Asian and European—including leaders of the Buddhist reform movement taking place in Ceylon and Siam at the time, the activity documented in Anne Blackburn's Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (Princeton University Press, 2001). A major contribution of the book is the way it links with earlier studies and fills gaps between them. Jaffe's Asia-centric focus also contributes significantly to research on modern Japanese Buddhism, introducing a number of important figures previously [End Page 132] unknown to English-language readers, people who should be more widely known. Among these are Kawaguchi Ekai, Akegarasu Haya, and Kimura Ryūkan. Their stories add much to our knowledge of twentiethcentury Japanese Buddhism and to intra-Asian relations in the early twentieth century. The chapters covering their journeys range from the early twentieth century to the 1930s, several decades of rapid and tumultuous change in both countries and in the relationship between them. But more of this below. The book is clearly the culmination of years of research. The diaries and personal publications of more than 20 Japanese Buddhist priests who spent substantial periods in South Asia provide a core archive (see list on p. 115). As well as revealing their observations and responses to South Asian and Southeast Asian Buddhism (Jaffe translates extensive passages on this material), the author identifies the places they visited and the people they met, studied with, and learned from. This evidence is contextualized and expanded on with reference to a comprehensive array of additional primary and secondary sources (including temple records, private papers, photographs, interviews, and a note on a business card) to reveal the networks and the historical contexts that conditioned their experiences. The result is an impressive compendium of erudite research. As the records show, the factors motivating and enabling the journeys varied greatly, but the travelers were united in seeking knowledge of the origins...

Assyrian Text is witnessed that women used veil for face covering with an additional piece of cloth about 13 centuries before the Christ. Then history of mankind displays veil in Egyptian society that was transparent and normally white in color. We found a handful evidences in Greek literature regarding veiling of face. History travels to Anglo-Saxon age and witnessed that women used veil to cover their hair of head. The head covering shows a biological reasoning also. Roman culture was the culture of fantasy, the veils were full of colorful, and multi designed veil arranged by flowers and different beautiful substantial. In Roman, veil developed from only head covering to shoulder covering and then from head to back covering. British regime also enrich the history of veil. There was beautiful designed, decorated with net clothes and covered with beautiful embroidery. The veil was empowered by elite community in England. Later it was popularized as a fashion in colonial communities. Through this thorough historic discussion, it is approved that veil used by women has a long history as the human history. In religious context, Hinduism is understood as the oldest religion on globe, it is found that in Harappan times about 2500 BC, Aryan women used to wear full body covering single cloth from head covering to foot, which was preached in Hindu religious book Vedas also, later the single cloth was known as Sari. And after the introduction of Christianity, Veil was introduced as a compulsory symbol of religion. Veil of whole body with strict rules can be seen in the form of Christian nun. Later, Islam explained veil of women in public as an obligatory sign. Islam is the youngest religion on earth, it was published rapidly and the implication of its rules are practiced prominently. After a thorough historic and religious discussion, it if proved in this article that veil was a compulsory part of human society and religions before Islam had also preached for veiling.

This chapter explores outcast and marginalized people in late classical and medieval Japan, focusing on such issues as status, stigma, organization, and control. One theory on origins links late classical and medieval outcasts to craftsmen subordinated to government bureaus in the Chinese-style ritsuryō state. The work performed by outcasts might not have seemed terribly desirable but it was absolutely necessary to the functioning of society. Groups such as hinin formed their own mini-societies that interacted in various ways with the larger social system. The position of shirabyōshi and other female entertainers in the Kamakura period, like that of hinin, has been debated by Japanese scholars. The chapter examines the scholarly debates, concentrating on postwar and contemporary historical analyses. The debate focuses on the early medieval period, since most scholars agree that from the late thirteenth century, discrimination against such occupational groups intensified and was applied to additional groups as well.

The glossary On Institutions is a trace of the conference “Testing Institutions” which took place from November 14-16, 2014 at the Kulturcampus “Domäne Marienburg” of the Stiftung University Hildesheim/Germany. Organized by the Junge Akademie and the Institute for Media, Theatre and Popular Culture at University Hildesheim the conference discussed the challenges and possibilities, perspectives and methods to talk about and investigate (primarily cultural) institutions. Contributors were speakers from academic disciplines such as sociology of culture, art history, theatre studies, philosophy and anthropology as well as curators and artists from the fields of theatre, performance and visual arts.During the conference an extensive glossary was compiled that includes those terms that seemed to be the most relevant ones for the participants regarding the concepts of and processes within institutions. The co-authored glossary edited by Pirkko Husemann hardly contains any of the notions that are frequently used in sociological or art historical discourse about institutions and their critique (such as acknowledgement, expectation, orientation, habit, power, definition). Instead it consists of notions that hint at a performative and processual turn in the debate. A small, random selection of entries that is directly related to some of the speaker's lectures was chosen in order to be published: Affect, authorisation, historiography, hospitality, infrastructure, narration, reflexivity, rhythm, subvention.These entries deal with the modality, conditions and critique of institutions and they vary in perspective and style according to the respective author. Their heterogeneity shows that the endeavour to exchange about concepts of ‘institution’ and processes of institutionalization was partly an act of translation between perspectives (art/theory) and methods (inductive/deductive). But it proved to bridge the gap between hardly interrelated discourses and thus led to new ideas and collaborations, particularly between sociology, arts and curating.

Book synopsis: Anyone who examines the history of Western art must be struck by the prevalence of images of the female body. More than any other subject, the female nude connotes `art'. The framed image of a female body, hung on the walls of an art gallery, is an icon of Western culture, a symbol of civilization and accomplishment. But how and why did the female nude acquire this status? The Female Nude brings together, in an entirely new way, analysis of the historical tradition of the female nude and discussion of recent feminist art, and by exploring the ways in which acceptable and unacceptable images of the female body are produced and maintained, renews recent debates on high culture and pornography. The Female Nude represents the first feminist survey of the most significant subject in Western art. It reveals how the female nude is now both at the centre and at the margins of high culture. At the centre, and within art historical discourse, the female nude is seen as the visual culmination of enlightenment aesthetics; at the edge, it risks losing its repectability and spilling over into the obscene.

From origins in art historical discourse, the modernising tendency has been adopted in the interpretation of many other aspects of antiquity. The trumpeting of antique modernity could be defined as neoclassicism soaked in Christianity and ethnic pluralism. The expansionism of antiquity has occurred peacefully, without intellectual and academic reactions, thus undercutting the old adage that centuries are the fiefdoms of professors. At the other end of the periodisation, the formulation of a 'long' antiquity, one that far outlasted the fall of the Western Roman empire, has remained closely connected throughout the twentieth century with the name of Henri Pirenne, whose role in the construction of the concept of antiquity has frequently been underlined. With the rise of Islamist movements in the Middle East and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Soviet Union, historians have furthermore begun to deal with populations for whom late antiquity has become, once again, 'contemporary history'.

Reviewed by: Dissimulation and Deceit in Early Modern Europe ed. by Miriam Eliav-Feldon and Tamar Herzig Benedek Láng Keywords Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Tamar Herzig, Benedek Láng, deception, Early Modern Magic, demoniac, deceit in magic, trickery miriam eliav-feldon and tamar herzig, eds. Dissimulation and Deceit in Early Modern Europe. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, Pp. 250. Imposture, pretense, dissimulation, deceit, lying, and forgery have increasingly become the foci of scholarly publications in the last decades. Natalie-Zemon Davis' famous analysis of the story of Martin Guerre, Carlo Ginsburg's book on Nicodemism, Anthony Grafton's overview on forgery, Jon Snyder's monograph on dissimulation and secrecy, Stephen Greenblatt's investigation of bluffing travel book authors, and Perez Zagorin's Way of Lying concentrate on various aspects of false identity and issues of questioned authenticity in the early modern period. The volume under review groups eleven studies, most of which were originally presented as contributions to an international conference held at Tel Aviv University in 2012. Many of the chapters are case studies. However, [End Page 127] they are consistently focused around three types of problems: religious dis-simulation (problems around converts), links to the supernatural (problems surrounding discernment of spirits), and travel liars (problems connected to self-appointed ambassadors and a false cosmographer). As the Introduction by Miriam Eliav-Feldon argues, "The fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries were the heyday of religious dissimulation and the authorities' preoccupation with unmasking it" (3). While lying has always been a sin in Christianity (and elsewhere), differentiation between various types of lies and relativization of the value of truth started very early in history. Michael Bailey documents in his systematic analysis—which is one of the pieces in the volume that is not a case study—the history of how church authorities offered more and more sophisticated taxonomies of falsehood and developed categories of lying. Categorization depended not so much on the action of deceit, but rather on its end and the motivation behind it. Augustine, and Aquinas following him, tolerantly allowed space to harmless—as opposed to harmful—lies, and unintentional—as opposed to intentional—deceit. In a parallel way, difference between true religion and superstition was also gradually "internalized," so that less emphasis was put on external behavior and more on internal convictions. Dissimulation became a particularly vexed issue when the condemnation of (clerical) necromancers was at stake, inasmuch as necromancy used the ceremonial forms and institutional values of true Christian worship but misdirected them. Documenting the growing concern on religious falsity, superstition, and diabolical witchcraft, Bailey arrives at the time of reformation, from which the following chapters depart. One of the first theorists of international law, Alberico Gentili's classification of mendacium (as is documented by Vincenzo Lavenia) marks a further step in accepting "useful" lies. With the rise of the protestant churches, it became possible for intellectuals banned from one confession to follow new and complicated strategies to become accepted in another. Their arrival in a new religious context and their sometimes repeated change of confession genuinely raised the problem of dissimulation. The stories of intellectuals such as Francesco Pucci (examined in the article by Giorgio Caravale) and common people (such as those men and women presented in the study of Monica Martinat), show that leaving one church and getting accepted to a new one was—in spite of the huge doctrinal differences—far from being final; occasionally a complex maneuvering was possible for example between the competing churches in the "silk-triangle" of Geneva, Lyon, and Milano. The motives for conversions and reconversions might have been intellectual [End Page 128] and theological, but could also be purely financial (for example, to score an improvement in one's social position). Several studies focus primarily on fluid, unstable, and attributed identity issues. The figure of the "Marrano" (a term for a Christianized Jew or Muslim in medieval Spain, especially one whose Christian identity might have been simulated), was quite "well known" and widespread in Italy, as we learn from Stefania Pastore, while the image of the recidivist baptized Jew, who lived as a professional itinerant beggar, was not only a simple literary anti-Semitic stereotype, but also had...

Among the works of the Japanese Buddhist teacher Kūkai (774–835), not only treatises deserve attention, but also small works written on the occasion of vari­ous rites. In them, the basic provisions of Tantrism (mikkyō) are applied to ex­plain the meaning of the ritual and its significance for the community. The article considers one of such works: Ganmon at the offering-pūjā of ten thousand lamps on Mount Takano (Takano no yama mantōe no ganmon, 832). At the beginning, Kukai speaks here about the universal law of causality, arguing that both suffer­ing and liberation have a cause, after which he praises the Buddha Mahā­vairochana, whose light is able to dispel all obstacles on the path to enlighten­ment. Then the ritual itself is described – the offering of ten thousand lamps and flowers. Kūkai also talks about plans for the future: to regularly perform the cer­emony once a year and follow their vows until all living beings are freed from the cycle of rebirth. This is followed by a good wish – Kūkai hopes for the effec­tiveness of the rite and wishes all living things to achieve liberation, after which he says that his benefactors are all living beings. Thus, he performs parinama (“direction of merit”), turning the beneficial effects of the ritual to the benefit of all living things.

China and Japan have always been two countries with much in common in the East Asian cultural circle, and their economic, political and cultural exchanges have been of great importance, whether in ancient times or in modern times. In the history of cultural exchanges between China and Japan, the Chinese Buddhist thought is the most important. Japanese Buddhist thought learned from China has flourished in its native land, and has gone through all kinds of localization with Japanese national characteristics, and in this historical process, Japanese native national culture has also had a great influence on Chinese Buddhism. which was mainly reflected in the combination with Japanese Shinto religious thought. In the cultural exchanges, Shinto absorbed the Taoism of Buddhism, and Buddhism was popularized in Japan through the momentum of Shinto. Through the research of this thesis, it is concluded that Shinto perfected its own teachings through the spread of Buddhism, and Buddhism relied on Shinto to spread through myths among the ruling class and the common people of Japan. After the Meiji Restoration, Shinto gradually overshadowed Buddhism due to the belief in the cult of the Emperor, and the development of Chinese Buddhism in Japan gradually lost its original characteristics due to the ruling classs policy towards Shinto.

This article attempts to analyse the memory of people through recollections of the everyday life of people in Soviet times in the Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. By using extensive interviews with seventy-five elderly people in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan regarding their Soviet-time experiences, this article argues that the public view of history in post-Soviet Central Asia often falls in between Soviet historiography advocating advances of Soviet past and post-Soviet historical discourses rejecting the Soviet past. Public perceptions of history in Central Asia are mostly shaped by and related to the everyday needs, experiences, identifications and mentality of people as opposed to the ideologies and political doctrines of the time. They often reflect not only the perceptions of people regarding their past but also their perceptions regarding their present.