Religions and Trade Dynamics in the History of Religions

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Religions and Trade Dynamics in the History of Religions Religions and Trade Dynamics in the History of Religions Editors-in-Chief Volkhard Krech Marion Steinicke Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany Advisory Board Jan Assmann – Christopher Beckwith – Rémi Brague José Casanova – Angelos Chaniotis – Peter Skilling Guy Stroumsa – Boudewijn Walraven VOLUME 5 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/dhr Religions and Trade Religious Formation, Transformation and Cross-Cultural Exchange between East and West Edited by Peter Wick and Volker Rabens LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014 Cover illustration: Petroglyph of Chilas II. Source: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Felsbildarchiv. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religions and trade : religious formation, transformation, and cross-cultural exchange between East and West / edited by Peter Wick and Volker Rabens. pages cm. — (Dynamics in the history of religions, 1878–8106 ; VOLUME 5) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-25528-9 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-25530-2 (e-book) 1. Religions. 2. Religions—Relations. 3. Globalization—Religious aspects. 4. Commerce. 5. Business— Religious aspects. I. Wick, Peter, editor of compilation. BL85.R374 2013 201'.7—dc23 2013037416 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1878-8106 ISBN 978-90-04-25528-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-25530-2 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. Despite our efforts we have not been able to trace all rights holders to some copyrighted material. The publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permissions matters. This book is printed on acid-free paper. For Joan Goodnick Westenholz (1.7.1943–18.2.2013) CONTENTS Preface ................................................................................................................ xi List of Contributors ........................................................................................ xiii List of Illustrations .......................................................................................... xvii “Trading Religions”: Foundational and Introductory Matters ........... 1 Peter Wick and Volker Rabens PROGRAMMATIC ESSAY With the Grain Came the Gods from the Orient to Rome: The Example of Serapis and Some Systematic Reflections .......... 19 Christoph Auffarth PART ONE TRADE AND THE TOPOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS SPACE Localizing the Buddha’s Presence at Wayside Shrines in Northern Pakistan ......................................................................................................... 45 Jason Neelis When the Greeks Converted the Buddha: Asymmetrical Transfers of Knowledge in Indo-Greek Cultures ................................................. 65 Georgios T. Halkias The Buddhakṣetra of Bodhgaya: Saṅgha, Exchanges and Trade Networks .......................................................................................... 117 Abhishek Singh Amar viii contents PART TWO TRADE AND RELIGIOUS SYMBOL SYSTEMS “Trading Religions” and “Visible Religion” in the Ancient Near East ....................................................................................................... 141 Izak Cornelius Trading the Symbols of the Goddess Nanaya ........................................ 167 Joan Goodnick Westenholz “Trading Religions” from Bronze Age Iran to Bactria .......................... 199 Sylvia Winkelmann PART THREE TRADE AND RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE From World Religion to World Dominion: Trading, Translation and Institution-building in Tibet .......................................................... 233 Michael Willis Religious Transformation between East and West: Hanukkah in the Babylonian Talmud and Zoroastrianism .................................... 261 Geoffrey Herman Sharing the Concept of God among Trading Prophets: Reading the Poems Attributed to Umayya b. Abī Ṣalt ........................................... 283 Al Makin contents ix PART FOUR TRADE AND RELIGIOUS-ETHICAL WAYS OF LIFE Trading Institutions: The Design of Daoist Monasticism ................... 309 Livia Kohn Philo’s Attractive Ethics on the “Religious Market” of Ancient Alexandria ................................................................................... 333 Volker Rabens Traveling Ethics: The Case of the Household Codes in Ephesians 5:21–6:9 in Cross-Cultural Perspective ............................ 357 Loren T. Stuckenbruck Index ................................................................................................................... 367 PREFACE Religions and Trade is the fruit of the labour of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe,” a trans- disciplinary research consortium at Ruhr University Bochum (Germany) that brings together scholars from different fields studying present and past religions of Europe, Northern Africa, South, East, and Central Asia, and the Middle East. Contact between religions is key to their formation and development. People become aware of their own religious identity through encounter with other religious traditions. This identity is both reinforced and trans- formed as people assimilate elements of different religions into their own religion or demarcate themselves from them. Trade is a prominent generator of intercultural contact and is thus one of the most important triggers of religious contact. Through trade-based interactions, not only is merchandise traded but sooner or later religious goods are also “traded” and interchanged. Phenomena like these that occur in the context of trade have been investigated from different perspectives by an array of international scholars. The results were then presented and discussed at the confer- ence “‘Trading Religions’: Religious Formation, Transformation and Cross- Cultural Exchange between East and West,” which was held January 25–27, 2010 at Ruhr University Bochum. The conference was organized by Volker Rabens who was a postdoctoral researcher at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg from 2009–2013. The conference embodies the work of the 2009–2010 fel- lows of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg’s Research Field 1 (“Formation”) of which Peter Wick is co-chair. It is only through the generous support of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Dynamics in the History of Religions,” which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, that this conference and con- ference volume could be realized. Our warm thanks go to the many peo- ple who contributed to both in one way or another. Here we can mention only a few by name: Volkhard Krech, the Kolleg’s director, for his vision which was a major driving force behind the project; and Marion Steinicke, the co-editor of the series “Dynamics in the History of Religions,” for her competent advice and editorial skill. We are grateful to both of them as well as to the two peer reviewers for their positive feedback and for xii preface welcoming this volume into the series. We also thank Christian Frevel (co-chair of Research Field 1), whose ideas have inspired the thematic ori- entation and title of this conference; Daniel Klinkmann for his enduring and skilful help in copy-editing this volume; and Karen Finney-Kellerhoff for meticulously proof-reading the essays in this book. Moreover, we are grateful to the editorial team at Brill, particularly for Maarten Frieswijk’s valuable and highly professional handling of the many difficult questions connected with layout, image copyright, and suchlike. Finally, we would like to thank all colleagues at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg who participated actively and with great commitment in the broad interdisciplinary process of dialogue and who brought to bear their spe- cialist knowledge in order to investigate the significance of trade for the development of different religious traditions. We dedicate this volume of essays to Joan Goodnick Westenholz, KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2009– 2010, who sadly died before it could be completed. Peter Wick and Volker Rabens Bochum and Jena, June 2013 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Abhishek Singh Amar is assistant professor of South Asian Religions at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, USA. His recent publications include the co-edited volume Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on a Contested Buddhist Site (London: Routledge, 2012, ed. with D. Geary and M.R. Sayers), and an article on inter-religious interactions between Buddhism and Hinduism in pre-modern South Asia in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Christoph Auffarth is professor of the Study of Religion at Bremen University, Germany. His main research areas are the comparative his- tory of religions
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