At the heart of the Khmer city stands the palace of the gods, a replica on earth of the heavenly world. Built of stone and brick, these monumental temples were erected throughout Thailand between the 7th and 14th centuries to link man magically to the gods. Today, the harmony of these microcosms remains for the visitor following the footsteps of the ancient Khmer.
The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD) is the single major reference work on the gods, angels, demons, spirits, and semidivine heroes whose names occur in the biblical books. Book jacket.
Beholders of Divine Secrets provides a fascinating exploration of the enigmatic Hekhalot and Merkavah literature, the Jewish mystical writings of late antiquity. Vita Daphna Arbel delves into the unique nature of the mystical teachings, experiences, revelations, and spiritual exegesis presented in this literature. While previous scholarship has demonstrated the connection between Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism and parallel traditions in Rabbinical writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls, apocalyptic, early Christian, and Gnostic sources, this work points out additional mythological traditions that resonate in this literature. Arbel suggests that mythological patterns of expression, as well as themes and models rooted in Near Eastern mythological traditions are employed, in a spiritualized fashion, to communicate mystical content. The possible cultural and social context of the Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism and its composers is discussed.
An in-depth survey of Indian palaces. It contains photographs to display the beauty and atmosphere of these buildings, and George Michell evokes life within the palaces and describes their many elements: halls, courtyards, temples, mosques, private apartments and service quarters.
This volume strikes a new note in the study of Indian epics-the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. In it, for the first time, mythology is dissociated from the running threads of both the epic texts. The mythology of the two epics of India represents in general the belief of the people of Northern India along the lower Ganges within a few centuries of the Christian era. For the Mahabharata, the time from 300 B.C. to 400 A.D. The Mahabharata as a whole is later than the Ramayana, which is metrically more advanced and the work of one author. The rougher epic form of the Mahabharata, represents a life less rude than depicted in the Ramayana, and work of many hands and of different times. Epic mythology is, however, is fairly consistent. There is no great discrepancy between the character of any one god in the Mahabharata and that of the same god in Ramayana. Nor is the character of gods very different in different parts of the Mahabharata, save for the sectarian tendency to invert the positions of the three highest gods in favour of the sect.