Asia

Romance drama, one of the most important types of Yuan opera, which describes the love of literators and prostitutes, has distinctive meanings and art value. Especially on the point of aesthetic tropism, figures of prostitutes and structure of plots, this kind of plays shows these characteristics-the aesthetic interests of being refined in vulgarism, female images that differ from the preceding dynasties and the close combination between structures and plots.

The Jiangshengben and Guozhengyue Enterprises borrowed the farmlands from the aboriginal's society, and beckoned the pioneers in 1735. Jhenyu Guo (the original name of Guozhenyue) is the earliest ancestor of the Guo clan living in the Yong'an village, Xinwu Township, Taoyuan County. The ancestral home of ' Guo' was the Shengping building in Longxi County, Jhangjhou Fu. The ancestral home of the Jiang families is Da' anxu, Lufong County, Huijhou Fu, and the Jiang famili的 immigrating to Taiwan in 1735-1736. Grounding for the " Fa吋 iang's Pedigree" 'the five Fanjiang brothers' emigrated from the Gongpingxu, Haifong County, Huijhou Fu in 1736-1758, and then taking up their residences in the Daxiqian farm village. According to the class of ethnic or social groups, the Guo clan represents the Jan 包jhou Southern Min social group, the Jiang represents the Hailu Southern Min social group and the Fanjang represents the Hakka ethnic group. The farmlands belonging to the Guozhengyue was very wide, the easternmost: Kaoshanding village, westernmost: the sea, southernmost: the Shezih Creek and the northernmost: Daku Creek. The Jiangshengben and Guozhengyue Enterprises share the Daxiqian farm village out equally in 1744. The Jiangshengben allotted the eatern and the Guozhengyue allotted the western. The " Fanjiang's Pedigree" declare that the ' signet' of Jiangshengben Enterprises belonged to the Fanjiang family. But according to one old contract signed in 1751 , the ' Fanjiang' was one smallholder under Jiangshengben Enterprises, and therefore the ' Fanjiang' wasn't the boss of Jiangshengben Enterprises. How was relationship between the Jiang and Fanjiang? The Daxiqian farm

The Chuanqi Opera in Ming Dynasty is an important link in the chain of ancient Chinese operas. Shiji Opera is one of the themes of Chuanqi Opera in Ming Dynasty. It not only inherited the gene of Shiji, also disseminated the spirit of the times and has distinct characteristics of the times. It is mainly manifested in two aspects: "advocate legendary" and "confrotation of emotion and Neo-Confucianism". It indicates the unique aesthetic style of the Ming Dynasty and characteristics of these times. At the same time, it is also the reflection of ideological and cultural changes in drama art.

The Tang dynasty musical composition, A Parting Tune with a Thrice Repeated Refrain, has been spread for over a thousand years and loved by people all the time. The article analyzes the cause for that of the aspects of its background, literary and artistic charm, emotional identity, material guarantee, singers' word of mouth, and its complete adaptation.

A land grant issued by Raṇasiṃhadeva of the Candrāvatī branch of the Paramāra dynasty in North-West India has recently come to my attention. It contains a genealogy of the Candrāvatī line from Utpalarāja to Raṇasiṃha. This ruler is hitherto known only from one published inscription (the Roheḍā plates), and has been thought to be a usurper who briefly snatched the throne from the legitimate ruler Dhārāvarṣa. The grant, dated 1 November 1161 CE, makes no mention of Dhārāvarṣa, calling for a reinterpretation of some ambiguous lines of the Roheḍā inscription. It is a possibility that Raṇasiṃha was not a usurper, but ruled as a regent during Dhārāvarṣa’s minority and then willingly handed the throne over to him.

Viśākhadatta’s Mudrārākṣasa is somewhat unique among Sanskrit dramas in that its plot is concerned
with political intrigue. Though the occurrence of certain stanzas of the Mudrārākṣasa in
other (non-fiction) works has been noted even by early editors of the play, no attempt has yet been
made to fully explore the textual interconnections of the play. The present paper attempts to sketch
a map of the appearance of Mudrārākṣasa stanzas in anthologies of Sanskrit poetry. Such anthologies
containing hundreds of well-phrased (subhāṣita) stanzas – collected from classical literature,
but detached from their context and usually arranged in thematic chapters – made their appearance
on the literary stage at the end of the 11th century and remain popular to the present day. Out of the
total 175 stanzas of poetry in the Mudrārākṣasa, 18 occur in one or more major subhāṣita anthologies
and other literary works. While 12 of these are probably indeed Viśākhadatta’s own compositions
according to the testimony of the anthologies, the authorship of the remaining 6 is somewhat
dubious, since they are attributed in one or more anthologies to a different source, and/or are found
in texts that may be earlier than the Mudrārākṣasa. The paper argues that stanzas of poetry, mostly
of a gnomic/didactic nature, could freely migrate not only from works of fiction into anthologies
but also in the opposite direction. Widespread quotes that sounded relevant to a specific situation
may well have been inserted into the text of dramas (and other opuses) both by the playwrights
themselves and by subsequent copyists or redactors of their texts.

A pair of copper plates found in Jamkhed and written in cursive box-headed characters witness a donation of land by an anonymous prince or king who says he is the son of Devarāja and grandson of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Bhavanmāna. This paper identifies Bhavanmāna as the king known as Mānāṅka in two previously published inscriptions: the Pāṇḍaraṅgapallī plates of Avidheya and the Uṇḍikavāṭikā plates of Abhimanyu. Altogether four generations of this royal house, sometimes referred to as the Rāṣṭrakūṭas of Mānapura, are known to have ruled successively. The new discovery furnishes no date or previously unknown dynastic information, but confirms that these rulers did indeed call themselves Rāṣṭrakūṭa, and hints that their domain may have extended to the area around Vatsagulma.

This is my PhD thesis, defended in 2015. Don't be put off by the Hungarian on the first two pages - that's the official stuff. The rest is in English. My primary purpose is to examine a Sanskrit drama—the Mudrārākṣasa of Viśākhadatta—as a text that was created and has survived as part of an organic web of other texts. See the separate file Dissertation Abstract for a longer summary, or read the big thing.

Classical Sanskrit metrical verse patterns prescribe obligatory positions for caesurae (yati). The testimony of preserved texts shows that poets painstakingly observed these re-strictions most of the time, yet in a number of instances the rules seem to have been inter-preted with some laxity. This paper demonstrates through a study of yati use in some sam-ples of Sanskrit poetry from dramas and epigraphic texts that the majority of these “abom-inable yatis” actually follow rules of their own. Namely, a caesura masked by vowel sandhi is neither an error (yatibhraṃśa), nor a form of licence that poets resort to in dire straits or for literary effect. Rather, such yatis consistently occur only at specific metrical positions and must thus be occasioned by their metrical context. It also seems that the (regrettably un-derstudied) traditional recitation of Sanskrit verse often involves a prolonged or slurred syllable at these very same positions, which allows the performer to restore hiatus in the text. These two phenomena of the musical and textual tradition may both be linked to an underlying cause. The reason for the presence of unusual caesurae in poetical praxis and of unusual articulation in performance may be sought in the abstract metrical schemata un-derlying the fixed metres of classical Sanskrit verse: both occur in metrical positions where the foot-based schema for the syllable-based classical metre involves catalectic (incomplete) or syncopated (off-beat) feet.

A land grant issued by Raṇasiṃhadeva of the Candrāvatī branch of the Paramāra dynasty in North-West India has recently come to my attention. It contains a genealogy of the Candrāvatī line from Utpalarāja to Raṇasiṃha. This ruler is barely known and has been thought to be a usurper who briefly snatched the throne from the legitimate ruler Dhārāvarṣa. The grant, dated 1 November 1161 CE, makes no mention of Dhārāvarṣa, calling for a reinterpretation of this theory. The paper proposes that Raṇasiṃha was not a usurper, but ruled as a regent during Dhārāvarṣa’s minority and then willingly handed the throne over to him.

This is a reworked and extended version of my 2010 paper on the same topic.