Disability and Deafness, in the Context of Religion, Spirituality, Belief And
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Miles, M. 2007-07. “Disability and Deafness, in the context of Religion, Spirituality, Belief and Morality, in Middle Eastern, South Asian and East Asian Histories and Cultures: annotated bibliography.” Internet publication URLs: http://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200707.html and http://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200707.pdf The bibliography introduces and annotates materials pertinent to disability, mental disorders and deafness, in the context of religious belief and practice in the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia. Disability and Deafness, in the context of Religion, Spirituality, Belief and Morality, in Middle Eastern, South Asian and East Asian Histories and Cultures: annotated bibliography. Original version was published in the Journal of Religion, Disability & Health (2002) vol. 6 (2/3) pp. 149-204; with a supplement in the same journal (2007) vol. 11 (2) 53-111, from Haworth Pastoral Press, http://www.HaworthPress.com. The present Version 3.00 is further revised and extended, in July 2007. Compiled and annotated by M. Miles ABSTRACT. The bibliography lists and annotates modern and historical materials in translation, sometimes with commentary, relevant to disability, mental disorders and deafness, in the context of religious belief and practice in the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia, together with secondary literature. KEYWORDS. Bibliography, disabled, deaf, blind, mental, religion, spirituality, history, law, ethics, morality, East Asia, South Asia, Middle East, Muslim, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist (Taoist). CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTORY NOTES 2. MIDDLE EAST & SOUTH ASIA 3. EAST (& SOUTH EAST) ASIA 1. INTRODUCTORY NOTES The bibliography is in two parts (a few items appear in both): MIDDLE EAST & SOUTH ASIA [c. 341 items] EAST (& SOUTH EAST) ASIA [c. 129 items] Very few of the early Asian and Middle Eastern texts were intentionally focused on disability, and there has been little modern analysis of such texts for disability material, or formulation of the results in a theoretical frame. One has to search for relevant odds and ends and insights amidst a mass of material, so the annotations below serve partly to indicate relevant pages (often omitted or only partially shown in indexes) and may also give some taste of the material. Annotations were made for various purposes over fifteen years, and then revised at different times, so they are not uniform in nature or style. The annotations are focused on matters of disability, deafness, or abnormality, appearing in a religious or moral context within the given region, broadly understood. In some cases the major contents and thrust of a work may be given a few words only, or are understood to be sufficiently indicated by the title, while the small part pertinent to disability is given more description. No disrespect is intended toward the omitted contents, which are often of great value but are not the immediate present concern. Of course, all mention of disability or deafness should be seen in its context; and in much of the history of the Middle East and Asia, the social context and the religious context may be identical or have a large overlap. Within the annotations, square brackets [ ] around a comment usually indicate some kind of alert, i.e. that the enclosed remark is an explanation or interpolation by the annotator, where this might not otherwise be obvious. The assistance of such annotations might seem to encourage a lazy, modern kind of cheating, i.e. digging impairments and disabilities out of their corners and crevices without full study of the context. Condemnation of such idleness appeared already in 1910, when the book-length General Index was compiled for 49 volumes of the Sacred Books of the East series. “There was a time when German scholars scouted the idea of writing or using an Index to learned books. It was thought unworthy of a scholar to look to an Index for reference: he had to read the whole book and all the books on any given subject. But nowadays even German scholars have found out that life is short, and not only art, but in an even greater degree, science is getting very long. It has become impossible to get on without some time-saving machinery.” [!] (M. Winternitz, SBE vol. 50, p. xiii) When even German scholars a century ago were being driven to make excuses, perhaps the humble student of disability and religion may now creep past unpunished. There are some 460 items listed below, ranging from short modern journal papers to the Mahabharata in 2.5 million words of translation. Many entries have been extracted and updated from my longer web bibliographies on disability in Asian and Middle Eastern histories, listed at http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/bibliography/ A few more general items are included on how suffering or affliction has been understood in the major religions and moral teachings; yet it should be kept in mind that very many disabled people prefer to be seen as simply 'living with' their impairment or disability, rather than being in a suffering, afflicted or oppressed state. A few studies are listed on abortion in religious law or ethics, where variations exist from country to country, and one of the grounds for abortion may be 2 some 'deformity' in the foetus. This is an unhappy branch of law in any country or religious context. Yet because it is often a strongly contested area, it is also one that elicits the expression of conflicting views about the prevailing social attitudes and responses to impairment in infants, and the prospects for living a life with disability, and of the modern and ancient religious teaching that may be summoned or reconstructed to address these issues. CAUTIONS It must be emphasised that some modern Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Daoist, Hindu, Jaina, Jewish, Muslim, Parsi or other apologists might wish to assert that the earlier texts, or the ways they were understood in past ages, do not necessarily represent the full teachings of their faith, in the area of disablement. There are some modern interpretations offering disability messages more palatable to modern views, or that bring out nuances neglected in earlier translations. Further, it should be obvious that the items below are not all of equal weight and validity when it comes to understanding the teachings of the various religions or religious philosophies. The annotations given here must not be regarded as a substitute for reading the actual works listed! The views of textual commentators cannot substitute for the original texts on which they are commenting! All translations should be regarded with caution! Omission of material in languages other than English and French (with a few exceptions) is a regrettable result of the compiler's limitations. There are of course many works in other languages that could illuminate the topic. There is also certainly a great deal more in French than is represented here. There are other editions and translations of many of the ancient texts, and new ones appear each year that will be worth consulting, or might become the definitive edition. The present bibliography is a work permanently 'under construction'. It is hard to know where to draw the line, particularly with the growth of inter-religious interest and publications on suffering and on ethical questions that have some disability implications. While updating the original published bibliography between 2005 and 2007, a little more has been added on historical and modern Jewish thought and practice relating to disability. The Christian representation remains small, but this is not intended in an excluding or politically motivated way. There have indeed been many academic studies and commentaries of Christian texts (embracing also particular Jewish texts) that derive from Middle Eastern history, and in which disability and disabled people have some place. There has also been a very long Christian presence across Asia, and some involvement with disability. A considerable quantity exists of reference works, such as lexicons of ancient Middle Eastern languages, or encyclopedias of culture and religion, which have been developed mainly by European scholars and which incidentally contain detailed studies on particular disability-related words. Indexes, bibliographies and databases already exist for locating most of those items in several European languages. A few items from the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament and the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (both in translation from German) have been included in this update (see e.g. Clements; Wächter et al; Bertram; Schrage) simply as tokens of this kind of material; and similarly a few items from Egyptian, Syrian, Ethiopian and Asian church histories (see e.g. Askwith; Aubineau; Bailey; Baumann; Godron; Gregory; Hewlett; Life of Takla Haymanot; London Society; Meinardus; Palladius; Psellus; Ragheb & Roy; Schodde; Stirrat; Vitae Patrum; Wilkinson, Younghak). If a full survey of literature were made, it might triple the size of the bibliography, which would become hard to manage in the present format. The point is that this kind of Christian source material is already 3 known and fairly accessible, to those with an interest in it. (Indeed, some of these scholarly reference tomes have recently become available on CD, making them very rapidly and comprehensively searchable). Equivalent materials from the other major religions and ethical systems of the Middle East and Asia have been much less known, and are less readily accessible. That is why this bibliography principally focuses on them. Many extracts and some full texts of religious scriptures are now accessible on the internet in English translation, e.g. with a Google search. A few sites have some texts that are very carefully translated, presented, annotated and checked, by modern representatives of the particular religion or faith. Other sites have used older translations that are out of copyright, and the scanning has been 99% accurate.