Oxford Index Search Results

Agriculture   Reference library

The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World

...of the agricultural sectors in the Tropical Asian countries, particularly in Bangladesh and Indonesia, where huge increases in population have created enormous economic and nutritional pressures. The specter of mass hunger caused by insufficient land resources has been dispelled by the so-called Green Revolution brought about by new, higher-yielding rice technologies. Rice yields indeed increased in Bangladesh by 47 percent per hectare between 1961–1965 and 1987–1991 , and in the same period by 133 percent in Indonesia. In both countries the area of...

♂ Běi Dǎo (1949)   Reference library

Dian LI

Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography (Volume 4)

...Bei Dao recalls, is an accident that happened to him. He would not have become a poet if not for his experience with bricks and cement. Young and restless, yet stuck in a back-breaking job that taxed his body and soul, Bei Dao found writing down lines of words a convenient way to dispel the feelings of boredom and despair. The lines of words accumulated to become poems, soon to be shared with a few poetry-loving friends from his high school days. The circle of friends grew and formed a sort of “underground poetry club” that included aspiring young poets such as...

Indonesian and Malaysian mythology   Reference library

The Oxford Companion to World Mythology

...feeds her family by magic, placing one grain of rice in the pot each day, which produces more than ample food, but she does so only on condition that her husband not look in the pot. Of course, when she is away one day he does look into the pot, and the magic is immediately dispelled, making it necessary for the family to use rice supplies like everyone else. Disappointed in her husband, the bidadari finds her winged garment and flies off to the other world. In another folk myth, of the central Celebes in Indonesia, the people of Poso tell how the ...

Mithra (West Asia)   Quick reference

A Dictionary of World Mythology

... West Asia Of all the celestial beings ruling over the earth he was the most popular with the Persians, who represented him as the son of Ahura Mazdah. He was the light that preceded the sun when it rose, the one who dispelled darkness; and from his penetrating gaze could nothing be hidden. Mithra was aware of every happening, no matter how insignificant each might appear. In pre-Zoroastrian times Mithra and Ahura were most likely twin sky gods, looked upon as payu-thworeshtara , ‘the two creator-preservers’ of the cosmic order. Later theological...

Russian American Food   Reference library

Darra Goldstein

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (2 ed.)

...of a bland, heavy diet, the result of seventy years of Soviet rule when food was scarce and cooking rudimentary. Americans who traveled to Russia during the Soviet era invariably returned with stories of bad food and even worse service, and this impression has not easily been dispelled. Even so, Americans continue to enjoy the borscht, blini, caviar, and vodka with which Russian cuisine is still most closely identified in this country. [ See also Cabbage ; Jewish American Food ; Vodka .] Bibliography Goldstein, Darra . A Taste of Russia , 2d ed. Montpelier,...

Women and Islam   Reference library

The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World

...The hue of illegitimacy has been cast over the very aspects of Islamic religious life that have traditionally been most open to women. In his book The Emancipation of Women ( 1899 ), the Egyptian judge Qāsim Amīn ( d. 1908 ) urged that women be educated in order to dispel the myths and superstitions they supposedly perpetuate among the young, and the Syrian-born writer Rashīd Riḍā ( d. 1935 ) urged in his journal, Al-manār , that women be integrated into orthodox religious life, as they were in the days of the Prophet. Throughout the twentieth...

Xǔ Shèn   Reference library

Françoise BOTTÉRO

The Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography

...). According to his biography, Xu first wrote Different Meanings of the Five Classics because he was worried by the fact that all sorts of explanations—good and bad—were circulating on the Classics. The book confronted different data from the Classics. Xu’s goal was to dispel contradictions and clarify the meaning of the ancient texts by choosing the best interpretation rather than following a particular school of thought. But he was then confronted with another problem: characters or written words were often given ad hoc or folkloric interpretations...

Zhāng Héng (78–139 ce)   Reference library

Ian W. FRASER

The Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography

...of fish.” Another of his well-known fu is “ Fu on Pondering the Mystery,” a poem in the style of Qu Yuan’s famed “Encountering Sorrow” (“Lísāo” 离骚 ‎), where Zhang breaks the mold of traditional sao -style authors and proclaims his faith in the universe’s moral order, dispelling his melancholy and doubt and allowing him to go on in his life’s work. Zhang’s final composition, “ Fu on Returning to the Fields” (“Gūitián fù” 归田赋 ‎), written in 138 ce , describes his happiness at finally retiring from government service and returning to his country...

Zhuāngzǐ (369–c. 268 bce)   Reference library

Steve COUTINHO

The Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography

...recluses who live outside the social realm to conform to the regulations by which ordinary people are bound. These narratives indicate, at the very least, the self-understanding of the reception of the text by its contemporaries. This seems to be confirmed to some extent in “Dispelling Obsessions,” an essay by the Confucian philosopher Xúnzǐ 荀子 ‎ (c. 312–c. 230 bce ), in which he criticizes Zhuangzi for his one-sided obsession with the cosmic perspective of tian (the heavens, or the natural world) at the expense of the human, which Xunzi understood as...