Originally published in 1957 and forming a companion volume to The Balavariani, this volume provides valuable research into the biography of Gautama Buddha and its influence on medieval Christian thought. This work, the romance of Barlaam and Josaphat, was included by Caxton in The Golden Legend and inspired the episode of the Caskets in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice; its heroes were venerated as Saints. Over a century ago, however, the legend was finally identified as an adaptation of episodes from the life and ministry of the Buddha. The first part of the book is devoted to tracing the development and migration of the Barlaam and Josaphat legend from its original Buddhist environment to the West. The second part is a translation of the Georgian text – the first published in any Western European language. The volume therefore gives one of the oldest Near Eastern versions of the story.
With the exception of the life of St. Nino, none of the biographies here had been previously translated into English when this book was originally published in 1956. The lives of the Georgian saints are rich and many-sided, not dry chronicles of monkish trivialities. They contain vivid descriptions of life in the Caucasus, Byzantium and Palestine. They give the reader insight into the history and aspirations of an important branch of the Eastern Church and into its relationships with Zoroastrian Persia, the Arab Caliphate, the Imperial Court of Constantinople and the whole world of mediaeval Christendom.
When this was originally published in 1959 it was the first full-length biography of Alexander Radishchev published outside Russia and was based on hitherto unpublished material, memoir literature and Radishchev’s own writings. Radishchev occupies a notable position in the history of European social thought, as the first writer to apply the criteria of the Western Age of Reason to conditions in Tsarist Russia. Sentenced to death on the orders of Catherine the Great and subsequently exiled in Siberia, Radishchev stands out as the first great figure of the Russian radical intelligentsia and the first literary victim of Tsarist official intolerance.
Originally published in 1966, the full Georgian text of the oldest version of this Christian version of this matchless classic of Oriental wisdom literature is made accessible to a wider readership in an English translation. Based on a unique manuscript preserved in the Greek Patriarchate at Jerusalem, this rendering should appeal to those interested in comparative religion, Buddhism, medieval Christianity, the history of monasticism and in the literature of the Georgians and other ancient nations of the former Soviet Union.
The Hidden Holocaust: During the course of the First World War considerably over a million Armenians were slaughtered in one of the most horrific but least known genocides of recent history. The then government of Ottoman Turkey made a decision to liquidate their Armenian Christian subjects as a people. Armenian conscripts in the Ottoman armies were starved, beaten and machine gunned. Armenian intellectuals were murdered. In Armenian villages men were taken away and shot, while their women and children were rounded up and forced to walk southwards into the deserts, where many collapsed and died of hunger and exhaustion. The survivors were then incarcerated in open-air concentration camps, from which few emerged alive. All of this has been recorded in documents and individual memoirs. There can be no doubt that the genocide took place with full government knowledge and approval. But even today the present Turkish government denies the reality of the Armenian genocide and has erased it from official Turkish history. Yet for the Armenian people it is essential that the facts of their sufferings are recognized and their claims acknowledged. The Armenians is one of the few accessible accounts of this little known episode. But more than this, it gives an overview of past Armenian history and culture, the present situation of the Armenian diaspora around the world and prospects for the future. Written by David M. Lang and Christopher J. Walker, two leading writers on the Armenian situation, this new edition of this classic report also refers to the acute contemporary problems for Armenians in Lebanon and Iran as well as continuing repression in Turkey. An important report on an exceptional and cohesive minority group, which should be read by all those concerned with human rights and history as well as the Armenian people, wherever they live.
For years, Kim Marshall and Jenn David-Lang have been considered "designated readers," curating ideas and research for busy frontline educators. Kim's weekly Marshall Memo summarizes the best articles from more than sixty magazines and journals.
The Georgians... have a civilization stretching back over more than 3000 years, an extensive literary and artisitic heritage, and a rapidly developing industrial and agricultural economy. As the native country of Stalin, Georgia is assured of a place in the modern political history of the world - from Chapter One: The Land and The People The former Soviet republic of Georgia is both the birthplace of the USSR's prime architects, Stalin and Beria, as well as the Land of the Golden Fleece which Jason and the Argonauts sought. With the height of the Cold War at the end of the 1950s as its cut-off point, this sometimes controversial but always insightful work charts the events in a volatile history that led to the creation of the modern state. A particular focus is the unique way in which Georgia absorbed the culture and politics of successive invaders from prehistoric times to the Arabs, Seljuks, and Mongols, to the occupation by Tsarist Russia and the Soviets. Already regarded as a classic, this book creates vivid portraits of time and place. ILLUSTRATED.
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