And the semester begins...

[icarus]

Against all advice and the urging of wildernessguru, I've started up again with sanskritsanskritsanskrit.

I couldn't resist. The professor is one of the country's top experts on ancient Buddhist Prakrit texts. He's also marvelous. You give him linguistic puzzle he's not sure about -- and he lights up. "Oh. Could be." Then he thinks about it, giving his careful attention, weighing the possibility.

I know the class is hard. I know it's really beyond what I can do easily and I may kill my grades. I. Can't. Resist. Plus! He's given me resources to read about the early Indian time period where Buddhism was developing and changing and sweeping India... and climbing over the mountains to Tibet. And this class has someone else in it who is terribly interested in Tibetan Buddhism.

My other class is early Chinese history to 1276. You got it. We're going to cover the period when Buddhism swept across China. *rubs hands together* Yessir. I'm happy. History, I love it. I picked the right teacher, too. She's not insisting that Tibet is part of China, thank god.

(And it's the same period I'm trying to learn about for India.)

The third class is my English tutoring class. I want to learn how to teach. This is giving me a start. I'll also be an official employee of the University of Washington, which will have to look good on Ye Olde Resume.

*glee, glee, glee*

Of course, now that I'm busy, Out Of Bounds is starting to pick up again.

Comments

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

Oh, go for the sanskritsanskritsanskrit. I don't think you've posted that excited about school in ages.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, good point. You're right.

We'll see how I am in a few weeks.

[sarka.livejournal.com]

This whole thing sounds exciting! And your teachers sound amazing. Sometimes, even despite the fact that you're taking incredibly work-intensive classes, it's worth it if the teacher is good enough. I'm just pondering the same problem, myself: Do I take literature as a source of fiction, knowing that the teacher is amazing, despite the fact that it will kill any hope of free time?

[rabidfan.livejournal.com]

Sanskrit? Way over my head...but more "Out Of Bounds"? Yeah!! (I'm proving that I don't have a studious bone in my body, but am easily distracted by smut. ::sigh::)

[harveywallbang.livejournal.com]

i love how you call it sanskritsanskritsanskrit :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Heh. Aren't we all?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It's how it feels when you start working on it. You put your head down and just chug away.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

He's great. He went on about the Indus Valley script saying that it may be unprovable as to whether or not it's even a writing system. It may just be pictograms. Or if it is a writing system, it may be uncrackable.

What happened in that early, early, early culture is very unusual. If the Indus Valley script is indeed a writing system, then writing was created there, then it died out. Then an entirely new script developed a thousand years later. Even if a writing system was created that early we may have no clues, no stepping stones, no Rosetta stone, to decipher it.

Icarus

[cyanne]

Ohh, that all sounds awesome. Yay, you, and I hope it stays awesome because you deserve fun and exciting things.

[enname.livejournal.com]

*eyes you*

I'd say unhand the crack, but considering what I am going to be asking in the second half of this comment I am not sure that I could get away with ticking you off for succumbing to the urge to do sanskrit.

If you have a spare second, could you send me a booklist for that course on early *snort* Chinese history (as long as it is not all in chinese of course), and any of the (in english) things that the professor recommends you? Presuming their are any of course.

Darn, they teach you how to tutor? Fie, where is the old 'throwing head first into hot water' teaching method that I got? Pfft.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that she definitely seems to avoid the communist China spin. Which on the one hand is a good thing, given how they are rewriting history to suit themselves with little regard for historical accuracy, inclusiveness of perspectives, and lack of bias (I mean, there's not even a pretense).

But. The result is that the readings are almost entirely by western scholars. There's a problem in that, I think.

The textbook is:

A Brief History of Chinese Civilization, Conrad Schirokauer and Miranda Brown, (c) 2006.

The readings (which we are asked to examine in terms of historiography, so many are ones that the prof picked for us to challenge):

Keightley, "Early Civilization in China: Reflections on How It Became Chinese." Heritage of China, University of California Press, (c)1990, 15-54. This article in my opinion is total crap.

Thorp and Vinograd, "The Late Bronze Age: Eastern Zhou." Chinese Art and Culture, Abrams, (c)2001, 89-117. Much more informative, if some valorization of China and totally ignoring - as usual - the perspective of the common people.

Sources of Chinese Tradition, Columbia Univeristy Press (c)1999. Primary source texts.

Hawaii Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture, University of Hawaii Press (c)2005.

A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao. (c)1989, pp 170-234.

Lothar Ledderose, "A Magic Army for the Emperor." Ten Thousand Things, Princeton University Press (c)2000, 51-73.

Michael Loewe, Imperial China. Praeger (c)1966, George Allen and Unwin (c)1965, pp 150-85.

Barfield, Perilous Frontier. Blackwell (c)1989, pp 1-84.

Grant Hardy, Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian's Conquest of History. Columbia University Press (c)1999, xi-60.

T. H. Barrett, "religious Traditions in Chinese Civilization: Buddhism and Taoism." Heritage of China, University of California Press (c)1990, pp 138-63.

"The Earliest Tales of the Bodhisattva Guanshiyin." Religions of China in Practice, Princeton University Press (c)1996, pp 82-96.

Albert Dien, "Yen Chih=t'ui (531-591+): A Buddho-Confucian." Confucian Personalities, Standford University Press (c)1962.

The Family Instructions for the Yen Clan, translation Teng Ssu-yu, Leiden: Brill (c)1968.

David A. Graff, Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900. Routledge (c)2000.

Denis Twitchett, "Merchants, Trade and Government in Late T'ang." Asia Major N. S. 14.1 (c)1968: pp 63-95.

Robert Hartwell, "A REvolution in the Chinese Iron and Coal Industries in the Northern Sung, 960-1126 AD." Journal of Asian Studies 21.1 (c)1962: pp 153-62.

"Recollections of the Northern Song Capital." Hawaii Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture, Univeristy of Hawaii Press (c)2005, pp 405-22.

James T. C. Liu, "An Early Sung Reformer: Fan Chung-yen." Chinese Thought and Institutions, University of Chicago (c)1957, pp 105-31.

Chaffii, Thorny Gates of learning. Cambridge Univeristy Press (c)1985, pp 3-65.

Patricia Ebrey, "Women, Money, and Class: Sima Guang and Song Neo-Confucian Views on Women." Women and the Family in Chinese History, Routledge (c)1992, pp 10-38.

Charles Hartman, "Peotry and Politics in 1079: The Crow Terrace Poetry Case of the Su Shih." CLEAR 12 (c)1990: pp 15-44.

Wing-tsit Chan, "Chu Hsi's Completion of Neo-Confucianism." Chu Hsi: Life and Thought, Chinese University Press (c)1987, pp 103-38.

Daniel Gardner, The Four Books. Hackett (c)2007, pp 107-29.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I am keeping in mind that this quarter and part of next will be entirely review. So that should help, and give me a very firm foundation in the hardest aspect of Sanskrit: its dizzying grammar. My main effort will be in the remembering and re-memorization of what I did last year.

I think I won't be in real trouble until part-way through next quarter. *cringing grin*

WG says it's my pride and stubborness (and stupidity), and yes, that's part of it. But really, its my desire to actually be able to use it and to pick his brain on Ancient Indian history (which is also Buddhist history), something no one else can talk to me about. He's the only one on the entire faculty who's specialized in it and they haven't offered the class in nearly three years. If he doesn't teach it, no one does.

He says that the main problem is that we don't have a lot of information on that time period. It's just available. So we have to scrape, scrape, scrape for scraps. Here's what he's recommended for me so far:

History of Early India, Romila Thapar (c)2003.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm a fool, but I'm a happy fool.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

That should be: "It's just not available." *g*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Edit: Chaffee, Thorny Gates of learning. Cambridge Univeristy Press (c)1985, pp 3-65.

And my professor is Patricia Ebrey, so this is hers:

Patricia Ebrey, "Women, Money, and Class: Sima Guang and Song Neo-Confucian Views on Women." Women and the Family in Chinese History, Routledge (c)1992, pp 10-38.

[enname.livejournal.com]

True, and as long as you don't have any truly hampering personal crises like you did last year, it should positively light going with the not getting so behind that you just can't catch up. You also have a lot of the method you will need for study down and under your belt this time around and so don't have to learn that the hard way too. Hopefully, it should be a little smoother sailing.

He sounds like a fascinating person, truly, and if you have the chance to study with him.. well sometimes that is much more important than the old mark scramble.

You speak to someone who is rather used to the idea of having no information on the time period or people within the time period. It is like doing a lot of history on civilisations that are no longer existing and were wiped out by violence. Very little to go on and a lot of creativity. *notes down book* Thank you for the reference.

[enname.livejournal.com]

Thank you for these, I am most obliged. Reading in any new field is a nightmare but it is even worse fumbling around without a starting book list. I am woefully ignorant of this period in Chinese history and it really must be remedied.... well that and it is fascinating.

Ah. There is something wrong with it all being western writers. I wonder, it would be interesting to read what pre-communist chinese wrote as their own history actually, and how it was created. Even a comparison would be rather fascinating. Unfortunately I think perhaps one of the only real ways around this is to be looking directly at the source material, or finding writers who are not writing within China and thus subject to the pressures of those who are. Tricky debate.

I look forward to a nice long session with the library over summer me thinks.