The Birth of Orientalism / Urs App

Includes bibliographical references and index.  Introduction -- Voltaire's Veda -- Ziegenbalg's and La Croze's discoveries -- Diderot's Buddhist Brahmins -- De Guignes's Chinese Vedas -- Ramsay's Ur-tradition -- Holwell's religion of paradise -- Anquetil-Duperron's search for the true Vedas -- Volney's revolutions.

Modern Orientalism is not a brainchild of nineteenth-century European imperialists and colonialists, but, as Urs App demonstrates, was born in the eighteenth century after a very long gestation period defined less by economic or political motives than by religious ideology. Based on sources from a dozen languages, many unavailable in English, The Birth of Orientalism presents a completely new picture of this protracted genesis, its underlying dynamics, and the Western discovery of Asian religions from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. App documents the immense influence of Japan and China and describes how the Near Eastern cradle of civilization moved toward mother India. Moreover, he shows that some of India's purportedly oldest texts were products of eighteenth-century European authors. Though Western engagement with non-Abrahamic Asian religions reaches back to antiquity and can without exaggeration be called the largest-scale religiocultural encounter in history, it has so far received surprisingly little attention--which is why some of its major features and their role in the birth of modern Orientalism are described here for the first time. The study of Asian documents had a profound impact on Europe's intellectual makeup. Suddenly the Bible had much older competitors from China and India, Sanskrit threatened to replace Hebrew as the world's oldest language, and Judeo-Christianity appeared as a local phenomenon on a dramatically expanded, worldwide canvas of religions and mythologies. Orientalists were called upon as arbiters in a clash that involved neither gold and spices nor colonialism and imperialism but, rather, such fundamental questions as where we come from and who we are: questions of identity that demanded new answers as biblical authority dramatically waned. --- Publsher's Description 

The importance of living / Lin Yutang.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I. The awakening -- Approach to life -- A pseudo-scientific formula -- The scamp as ideal -- Part II. Views of mankind -- Christian, Greek and Chinese -- Earth-bound -- Spirit and flesh -- A biological view -- Human life a poem -- Part III. Our animal heritage -- The monkey epic -- In the image of the monkey -- On being mortal -- On having a stomach -- On having strong muscles -- On having a mind -- Part IV. On being human -- On human dignity -- On playful curiosity: the rise of human civilization -- On dreams -- On the sense of humor -- On being wayward and incalculable -- The doctrine of the individual -- Part V. Who can best enjoy life? -- Find thyself: chuangtse -- passion, wisdom and courage: mencius -- Cynicism, folly, and camouflage: laotse -- "Philosophy of half-and-half" Tsesse -- A lover of life: T'ao Yuanming -- Part VI. The feast of life -- The problem of happiness -- Human happiness is sensuous -- Chin's thirty-three happy moments -- Misunderstandings of materialism -- How about mental pleasure? -- Part VII. The importance of loafing -- Man the only working animal -- The Chinese theory of leisure -- The cult of the idle life -- This earth the only heaven -- What is luck? -- Three American vices -- Part VIII. The enjoyment of the home -- On getting biological -- Celibacy a freak of civilization -- On sex appeal -- The Chinese family ideal -- On growing old gracefully -- Part IX.  The enjoyment of living -- On living in bed -- On sitting in chairs -- On conversation -- On tea and friendship -- On smoke and incense -- On drink and wine games -- On food and medicine -- Some curious western customs -- The inhumanity of western dress -- On house and interiors -- Part X. The enjoyment of nature -- Paradise lost? -- On bigness -- Two Chinese ladies -- On rocks and trees -- On flowers and flower arrangements -- The "vase flowers" of Yuan Chunglang -- The epigrams of Chang Chao. -- Part XI. The enjoyment of travel -- On going about and seeing things -- The travels of Mingliaotse -- The reason for the flight -- The way of traveling -- At Austere heights -- Back to humanity -- Philosophy of the flight -- Part XII. The enjoyment of culture -- Good taste in knowledge -- Art as play and personality -- The art of reading -- The art of writing -- Part XIII. Relationship to God -- The restoration of religion -- Why I am a pagan -- Part XIV. The art of thinking -- The need for humanized thinking -- The return to common sense -- Be reasonable.

22nd prt. of 1940.