Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Buddhism has different threads of traits to be explored and scrutinized. One of the important aspects is to know role and status of women in Buddhism through their visual representations in religious ceremonies, donations of the images, etc. The role, rank and implications of their participation in religious ceremonies is matter of inquiry. In particular, it is quite stimulating to know that their engagement in religious activities are egalitarian or highly gendered. Sārnāthwas intentionally chosen by the Buddha as the place of his first sermon and its importance in Buddhism became unforgettable till it was finally destroyed in the medieval period. The role of women in religious activities started in the age of the Buddha.This sacred complex shows the gender variances in ritualistic participation and donations. Here, the influence of Buddhism on women's autonomy in spiritual/sacredengrossment is a subject of contemplation.

Indo-African relations in KwaZulu-Natal are about competition and rivalry for limited resources and privileges not only between these two segments, but by all four categories1 that make up South African society. It has been conditioned by White hegemony and the politics of divide-and-rule among the four classified racial groups who were stratified along a line of differentiated privileges. With Whites always on the top, Coloureds and Indians oscillated between 2nd and 3rd positions according to imputed criteria for the purposes of analysis by researchers, and Africans were always considered the least privileged. Ever since their arrival in 1860, Indians moved from being most welcomed and appreciated to most detested and unwanted among their White forbears. The reasons for this lay in the juxtaposition of their labour significantly and appreciatively boosting productivity in the colonial economy within a short space of time, and the unwanted challenges that post-indentured Indians provided to the nascent White entrepreneurial class who struggled to keep pace with their competence in petty trading. Similar situations of unwelcome politics of competition have bedevilled Indo-African relations in the 20th century and have filtered into the 21st century in ways that do require constructive analysis to contemporary conditions. This paper analyses three periods of anti-Indianism since 1860 viz. the latter period of the 19th century when Whites turned against Indians, the 1949 African-Indian clashes, and recent anti-Indian sentiments by a small segment of Africans in KwaZulu- Natal. This paper argues that if South Africans do not rise to challenge such sentiments, they will rise to dangerously engulf us.

This reflexive paper is based on research that was carried out between November 2006 and January 2007 among people of Indian origin now living in Durban-a metropolis situated on the east coast of South Africa. Its intention is to compare the evidence that was gathered during this period with research that was done during the decades of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s on attitudes towards family and household living arrangements among Indians in this city. Against the various sets of information that are discussed here, I arrive at the conclusion that much of the research on the attitudes towards Indian joint and extended families over the last three decades has failed to produce a convincing perspective about this aspect. Their problem lay with two issues viz. the adoption of the social evolution and westernization perspectives inherent in the development paradigms of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as their reliance on either the impersonal methods of data gathering or upon minimal information derived from a small number of interviews. Such approaches fail to grasp relevant socio-religious, philosophical and personalized positions on the issue of attitudes towards these forms of living arrangements. On the contrary, the research that was done between November 2006 and January 2007 provides information, albeit implicit, on the interconnectedness among these factors and demonstrates an overwhelming prevalence of positive attitudes towards joint and extended families.