Bye-bye playtime
Jan. 11th, 2006 03:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusHi guys,
Feeling a little frazzled here. WG and I have calculated I have about 100-150 pages worth of reading per week, per class. So I'm cramming through about 300-450 pages of fairly difficult text every week. (Also having connection problems. The dial-up through the University and NoCharge is very slow.)
By fairly difficult I mean Shakespeare, and:
Contemporaneous with the conquest of the Sind were the Arab victories over the eastern Turks of Transoxiana by Hajjaj's equally enterprising general Qutayba bin Muslim. In the north Qutayba's armies reached Shash (Tashkend) and in the south-east they penetrated deep into Kashghar, at that time part of the Chinese empire. Arab governors were appointed to administer the conquered provinces. When the Umayyad Caliph Sulayman (715-17) assumed power, Qutayba (like Muhammad bin Qasim) was disgraced, but he rebelled against his recall. He was eventually killed by his own army in 715. Proselytization in Transoxiana was more successful than in Sind. The spearhead of the proselytization movement were the sufi mystics, while the dihqans, hereditary aristocratic landholders who lived in fortified castles, responded to the call of Islam enthusiastically. The revenues remitted to the caliphate from this region were enormous, but from the ninth century their most valued contribution was the supply of Turkic slaves. Armed Turkic slaves supplanted not only the Iranians but also the Arab contingents as bodyguards and crack troops. They were loyal to none but their masters and were transferred by them like any other chattel.
From the ninth century onwards, certain enterprising leaders, backed by the Turkic slaves, began to carve out independent ruling dynasties in the eastern regions of the caliphate, paying only nominal obedience to the 'Abbasid caliphs. In Khurasan (the eastern province of Iran) and Transoxiana, Saman-Khuda, a dihqan in the Balkh district who had been converted to Islam, founded the Samanid dynasty, which ruled from 819 to 1005. Under them, Alptigin, a Turkic slave, rose to the rank of commander-in-chief of the guard (hajibu'l-hujjab) and, in the reign of the Samanid 'Abdu'l-Malik I (954-61), became the governor of Khurasan. When he was dismissed by 'Abdu'l-Malik's successor, he withdrew to Balkh, where he defeated the Samanid army in 963....
And:
Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was dwelling in the city of the King's House (Rajagrha), on Grdhrakuta mountain, together with twelve hundred great bhiksus [mendicant monks]. All were arhants [men enlightened but not Buddhas], their outflows already exhausted, never again subject to anguish (klesa); they had achieved their own advantage and annihilated the bonds of existence, and their minds had achieved self-mastery. Their names were Ajnatakaundinya, Mahaksyapa, Uruvilvakasyapa, Gayakasyapa, Nadikasyapa, Sariputra, Great Maudgalyayana, Mahaktyayana, Aniduddha, Kapphina, Gavampati, Revata, Pilingavatsa (Pilindavatsa), Bakkula, Mahakausthila, Nanda, Sundarananda, Purno Maitrayaniputrah, Subhuti, Ananda, and Rahula -- such great arhants as these, known to the multitude. There were also another two thousand persons, including those who had more to learn and those who had not. There were Mahaprajapati, the bhiksuni [mendicant nun], together with six thousand followers. Rahula's mother Ysodhara, the bhiksuni, was also there together with her follwers. There were eighty-thousand bodhisattva-mahasattvas, all nonbacksliders in anuttarasamyaksambodhi [perfect enlightenment, that of a Buddha], all having mastered the dharanis....
I was feeling fairly smug about taking hard classes. Now it's just dawned on me: I'm taking hard classes. Cue the laugh track.
I'm probably not going to be around much until I learn how to handle the workload (and read very, very fast), or if I am, I shouldn't be.
Insert here: long detailed post about how to create a ritual and mythology from the cobbled together bits and pieces of local superstitions and whatever else you have on hand.
Feeling a little frazzled here. WG and I have calculated I have about 100-150 pages worth of reading per week, per class. So I'm cramming through about 300-450 pages of fairly difficult text every week. (Also having connection problems. The dial-up through the University and NoCharge is very slow.)
By fairly difficult I mean Shakespeare, and:
Contemporaneous with the conquest of the Sind were the Arab victories over the eastern Turks of Transoxiana by Hajjaj's equally enterprising general Qutayba bin Muslim. In the north Qutayba's armies reached Shash (Tashkend) and in the south-east they penetrated deep into Kashghar, at that time part of the Chinese empire. Arab governors were appointed to administer the conquered provinces. When the Umayyad Caliph Sulayman (715-17) assumed power, Qutayba (like Muhammad bin Qasim) was disgraced, but he rebelled against his recall. He was eventually killed by his own army in 715. Proselytization in Transoxiana was more successful than in Sind. The spearhead of the proselytization movement were the sufi mystics, while the dihqans, hereditary aristocratic landholders who lived in fortified castles, responded to the call of Islam enthusiastically. The revenues remitted to the caliphate from this region were enormous, but from the ninth century their most valued contribution was the supply of Turkic slaves. Armed Turkic slaves supplanted not only the Iranians but also the Arab contingents as bodyguards and crack troops. They were loyal to none but their masters and were transferred by them like any other chattel.
From the ninth century onwards, certain enterprising leaders, backed by the Turkic slaves, began to carve out independent ruling dynasties in the eastern regions of the caliphate, paying only nominal obedience to the 'Abbasid caliphs. In Khurasan (the eastern province of Iran) and Transoxiana, Saman-Khuda, a dihqan in the Balkh district who had been converted to Islam, founded the Samanid dynasty, which ruled from 819 to 1005. Under them, Alptigin, a Turkic slave, rose to the rank of commander-in-chief of the guard (hajibu'l-hujjab) and, in the reign of the Samanid 'Abdu'l-Malik I (954-61), became the governor of Khurasan. When he was dismissed by 'Abdu'l-Malik's successor, he withdrew to Balkh, where he defeated the Samanid army in 963....
And:
Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was dwelling in the city of the King's House (Rajagrha), on Grdhrakuta mountain, together with twelve hundred great bhiksus [mendicant monks]. All were arhants [men enlightened but not Buddhas], their outflows already exhausted, never again subject to anguish (klesa); they had achieved their own advantage and annihilated the bonds of existence, and their minds had achieved self-mastery. Their names were Ajnatakaundinya, Mahaksyapa, Uruvilvakasyapa, Gayakasyapa, Nadikasyapa, Sariputra, Great Maudgalyayana, Mahaktyayana, Aniduddha, Kapphina, Gavampati, Revata, Pilingavatsa (Pilindavatsa), Bakkula, Mahakausthila, Nanda, Sundarananda, Purno Maitrayaniputrah, Subhuti, Ananda, and Rahula -- such great arhants as these, known to the multitude. There were also another two thousand persons, including those who had more to learn and those who had not. There were Mahaprajapati, the bhiksuni [mendicant nun], together with six thousand followers. Rahula's mother Ysodhara, the bhiksuni, was also there together with her follwers. There were eighty-thousand bodhisattva-mahasattvas, all nonbacksliders in anuttarasamyaksambodhi [perfect enlightenment, that of a Buddha], all having mastered the dharanis....
I was feeling fairly smug about taking hard classes. Now it's just dawned on me: I'm taking hard classes. Cue the laugh track.
I'm probably not going to be around much until I learn how to handle the workload (and read very, very fast), or if I am, I shouldn't be.
Insert here: long detailed post about how to create a ritual and mythology from the cobbled together bits and pieces of local superstitions and whatever else you have on hand.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-11 08:10 pm (UTC)Yeah. That was about the reading load I had as an undergrad at Berkeley, so it sounds about right. Plus an essay for each course, each week.
You do get to be a faster reader. Also, you learn to retain the gist of it all.
After years of this, you can plough through someone's entire fanfic archive in one sitting, for fun. :-) And you can remember all the plots and details (because they were SO MUCH more interesting than a lot of the RL readings) and use them in meta . . .
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 08:20 am (UTC)But you know, from here on out I'm doing literature, philosophy, language, history. All of these are going to require extensive and thick reading. It's just the nature of the work. :)
Icarus