Classical aphoristic work with commentary on Jaina philosophy.

1. Shizen -- 2. Chisei -- 3. Chitsujo -- 4. Jikan -- 5. Bi.

Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participants, independent predictors of higher scores (...) were younger age and female sex in the United States, and male sex in Mali. Scores in the United States were higher than in Mali (P = 0.005). Despite this difference participants at both sites were well informed overall. Although interpretation must be qualified because questionnaires were not intended as research tools and were not standardized among sites, these results do not support concerns about systematic low understanding among research participants in developing versus developed countries. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an exceptional document preserved at the Louvre Museum under the mark MAO 2098. The manuscript is a calligraphic genealogical scroll relating to the Ḫwāğas, members of a Sufi Naqšbandi lineage of East Turkestan which was extremely powerful during the 17th and the 18th centuries. Striving to join the dots literally as well as figuratively, I propose to read the šağara in several different ways. Most obviously, the text provides some limited new information (...) on members of the Āfāqi branch of the Ḫwāğa family. At the same time, we can read the text as a communicative device serving to advance two intertwined social practices: family strategies and the construction of power. Produced within a forum of competition with other aristocratic households, prestigious Sufi lineages in particular, the scroll serves to highlight both the Šarīfian origin of the family and the hereditary succession of its spiritual leaders. At the same time, the manuscript’s remarkable aesthetic qualities served to impress upon those who saw in it the numinous force of the Ḫwāğas’ supernatural authority. (shrink)

Sāṃkhya and yoga are normally discussed either as topics in philosophy or as subjects of historical and philological inquiry. In this paper, I will attempt to demonstrate that, before separate developments appeared in the areas of both sāṃkhya and yoga, at least some brahmins seemed to have espoused the idea that any physical exertion or harnessing to a specific task had to be preceded by an intellectual approach to reality and possibly by a thorough enumeration of its principles. I come (...) at this question from three different angles. I first analyze Kapila’s actions in the Sagara episode. The double presence of a yogācārya and a sāṃkhyācārya in certain cosmogonies provides a second approach to the question. The third angle will be a study of the significance of a coordinated emphasis on kratu and dakṣa in the Vedic context. These apparently disconnected themes actually point in a single direction, and they contribute to an understanding of sāṃkhya and yoga as linked together as a binary pair of complementary attitudes. (shrink)