HIS 111
Book/Document Background Notes
 
 
Ramayana Confucius De Las Casas
Quiché Ibn Battuta Mongols
 
 
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The Ramayana is one of South Asia's oldest epic poems.  The work--transmitted and transformed orally for centuries before being written down and attributed to the poet Valmiki in the fourth century--is a mix of politics, history, myth, religion and adventure that tells the story of Rama and Sita.  The poem also very much resembles Homer's The Odyssey and Iliad in its structure and form; but unlike Homer's work, the Ramayana has continued to undergo transformation and further development since its origin.  The version used in this course is by R. K. Narayan and based on an eleventh-century Tamil edition of the epic.
 
 
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Confucius (K'ung fu-tzu, 551-479 bce) was one of the world's most important philosophers.  His teaching provided an ethical system that formed the background of Chinese government and society for centuries.  Ousted from government service at an earl y age, Confucius turned to teaching and reflections.  The Analects (Lun Yü) contain some of his sayings and conversations as recorded by his disciples.
 
 
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The Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies written by Bartolomé De Las Casas (1484-1576) in 1542 and published in 1552 is a clear and stunning indictment of Spanish policies in the New World in the sixteenth century.  De Las Casas, "the defender and apostle to the Indians," was appalled at what he saw first hand of Spanish treatment of the Indians, and he vehemently argued for a more "Christian" policy towards these peoples.  His account is one of the most important surviving sources about the early history of the New World.
 
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The Popol Vuh is the Mayan account of the creation of the earth and man.  A long oral epic, probably first written in Mayan pictographs centuries ago, the epic disappeared during the Spanish conquest of Central America.  The Spanish, as Christians, burned all Mayan books that they could find.  In the late sixteenth century, an unknown Mayan transcribed the Popol Vuh into the Quiché language.  Then, about two centuries later, a local priest, Father Francisco Ximenez, found that transcription in his church in Chichicastenango, Guatemala.  Again, there was a time lapse as the translation done by Father Ximenez into Spanish was lost--it is now in the Newberry Library in Chicago.
 
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The Mongols were a group of nomadic tribes occupying roughly what is now Mongolia.  In the thirteenth century these tribes that united under the leadership of Genghis Khan (1162-1227).  Mongol armies quickly swept south into China and west into Russia and the Near East, smashing anyone who dared to resist.  By about 1300, the Mongols had erected a huge empire, divided into several smaller "pieces."
 
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Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn 'Abdallah ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Lawati ibn Battuta, or "ibn Battuta" for short, (1304-1368) was a Muslim legal scholar and traveler of the fourteenth century.  His Rihla, or book of travels, which Ross Dunn has loosely translated and adapted as The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, was his version of those journeys from North Africa to China and from the south Russian steppe to sub-Saharan Africa.  His book remains one of the most important historical sources about the nature and scope of Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam) in the fourteenth century.
 
 
 

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