Arts Picks: Robert Zhao, Burmese artist duo Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu at Singapore Art Week
They are now out of print but some of them are being reprinted by Dover Publications. Teachers of Asian religions tend to look upon general introductions to the religions of the world as useful only for quick reference, and to prefer books dealing with a specific religion, supplemented with readings from original sources. The study of a religion other than one’s own is a modern, and Western, phenomenon. The earliest reference to “the religions of Michaelsaso the world” that Wilfred Cantwell Smith could find after a diligent search (discussed in his recent The Meaning and End of Religion) was in 1508 in Dyalogus Johannis Stamler Augustñ. That was followed a century later, in 1614, by Brerewood’s Enquiries touching the diversity of languages, and religions through the chiefe parts of the world, which ran through some thirteen editions in the seventeenth century, in English, French, and Latin.
From the Arabian Peninsula, where it was founded in the 7th century, Islam spread throughout the Middle East, into Central Asia and parts of South Asia, and across the Bay of Bengal to Malaysia and to Indonesia, which remains predominantly Muslim. The majority of Asian Muslims belong to the orthodox Sunni branch, except in Iran and Iraq, where members of the more esoteric Shiʿi branch are in the majority. Muslims constitute important minority populations in India, the Philippines, and China. Among the other religions that developed in Southwest Asia are Zoroastrianism, an ancient religion that survives in Iran and India and contains both monotheistic and dualistic elements; and Bahāʾī, a universalist faith founded in Persia (Iran) in the mid-19th century. Hinduism is one of the oldest and largest religions in Asia with over a billion followers.
While most people in all three categories say they have burned incense in the past 12 months to honor or take care of their ancestors, this activity is most common among lifelong Buddhists. In Hong Kong, 84% of lifelong Buddhists have burned incense for ancestors in the past year, while 65% of former Buddhists and 59% of the lifelong unaffiliated say they have done so. At the same time, a lot of people who say they have “no religion” nevertheless express some religious beliefs and say they engage in some traditional spiritual behaviors. Given the comparatively low rates of religious affiliation in some parts of East Asia, as well as the complexity of translating the word “religion” into some Asian languages, it is perhaps not surprising that relatively few people in the region say religion is “very important” to them. Rates of religious switching are based on movement between major world religious traditions, not switching within a tradition.
A TIME OF RAPID GROWTH
Sikhism, a monotheistic Indian religion, was founded in the Punjab in the late 15th century ce and has fueled that region’s modern demands for independence. The current Indian state of Punjab has a Sikh majority, with the city of Amritsar in that state as the religion’s spiritual centre. Taoism, being an indigenous religion in China, shares some roots with Shinto, although Taoism is more hermetic while Shinto is more shamanic. Taoism’s influence in Japan has been less profound than that of Japanese Neo-Confucianism. Today, institutional Chinese Taoism is present in the country in the form of some temples; the Seitenkyū was founded in 1995.
Time
The collection originally belonged to the Ethnological Museum of Berlin founded in 1873.3 From 1904 it was known as the “Indian Department”. The Friends of Asian Art brings together patrons and collectors in support of the department. See highlights from the Arts of China, Japan, Korea, the Indian subcontinent, the Himalayas, and Southeast Asia. In the past, with literacy in the old character-based writing systems of Vietnam being restricted to scholars and elites, calligraphy nevertheless still played an important part in Vietnamese life.
Kyosai shows an artist’s workshop with all the paraphernalia of an experienced artist, namely inks, brush, and reams of paper, in this painting, which was most likely created to commemorate the entrance of the Year of the Tiger in 1878. Kyosai was well-known for his representations of creatures, and in this print he shows off his talent by depicting a beautiful tiger on a painted screen, creating an image inside an image. Fan Kuan embodied all that was held in high regard as a real Chinese master painter. He was renowned for being a nature enthusiast who would spend extended periods of time solo in the hills or other natural regions of mainland China. Although there are few further facts regarding Kuan, one may get a good image of him via the numerous artworks he created during the Song Dynasty just after 1000 C.E. This painting comes as a four-part scroll, although regrettably, the original fourth artwork has been lost.