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Ashoka | Relationship with Buddhism | Relationship with Buddhism
thumb|The word Upāsaka (𑀉𑀧𑀸𑀲𑀓, "Buddhist lay follower", in the Brahmi script), used by Ashoka in his Minor Rock Edict No.1 to describe his affiliation to Buddhism ().
The Buddhist legends state that Ashoka converted to Buddhism, although this has been debated by a section of scholars. The Minor Rock Edict 1 leaves no doubt that Ashoka was a follower of Buddhism. In this edict, he calls himself an upasaka (a lay follower of Buddhism) and a sakya (i.e. Buddhist, after Gautama Buddha's title Shakya-Muni). This and several other edicts are evidence of his Buddhist affiliation:
In his Minor Rock Edict 1, Ashoka adds that he did not make much progress for a year after becoming an upasaka, but then, he "went to" the Sangha, and made more progress. It is not certain what "going to" the Sangha means – the Buddhist tradition that he lived with monks may be an exaggeration, but it clearly means that Ashoka was drawn closer to Buddhism.
In his Minor Rock Edict 3, he calls himself an upasaka, and records his faith in the Buddha and the Sangha.
In the Major Rock Edict 8, he records his visit to Sambodhi (the sacred Bodhi Tree at Bodh Gaya), ten years after his coronation.
In the Lumbini (Rumminidei) inscription, he records his visit to the Buddha's birthplace, and declares his reverence for the Buddha and the sangha.
In the Nigalisagar inscription, he records his doubling in size of a stupa dedicated to a former Buddha, and his visit to the site for worship.
Some of his inscriptions reflect his interest in maintaining the Buddhist sangha.
The Saru Maru inscription states that Ashoka dispatched the message while travelling to Upunita-vihara in Manema-desha. Although the identity of the destination is not certain, it was obviously a Buddhist monastery (vihara). |
Ashoka | Other religions | Other religions
A legend in the Buddhist text Vamsatthapakasini states that an Ajivika ascetic invited to interpret a dream of Ashoka's mother had predicted that he would patronise Buddhism and destroy 96 heretical sects. However, such assertions are directly contradicted by Ashoka's own inscriptions. Ashoka's edicts, such as the Rock Edicts 6, 7, and 12, emphasise tolerance of all sects. Similarly, in his Rock Edict 12, Ashoka honours people of all faiths. In his inscriptions, Ashoka dedicates caves to non-Buddhist ascetics, and repeatedly states that both Brahmins and shramanas deserved respect. He also tells people "not to denigrate other sects, but to inform themselves about them".
In fact, there is no evidence that Buddhism was a state religion under Ashoka. None of Ashoka's extant edicts record his direct donations to the Buddhists. One inscription records donations by his Queen Karuvaki, while the emperor is known to have donated the Barabar Caves to the Ajivikas. There are some indirect references to his donations to Buddhists. For example, the Nigalisagar Pillar inscription records his enlargement of the Konakamana stupa. Similarly, the Lumbini (Rumminidei) inscription states that he exempted the village of Buddha's birth from the land tax, and reduced the revenue tax to one-eighth.
Ashoka appointed the dhamma-mahamatta officers, whose duties included the welfare of various religious sects, including the Buddhist sangha, Brahmins, Ajivikas, and Nirgranthas. The Rock Edicts 8 and 12, and the Pillar Edict 7, mandate donations to all religious sects.
Ashoka's Minor Rock Edict 1 contains the phrase "amissā devā". According to one interpretation, the term "amissā" derives from the word "amṛṣa" ("false"), and thus, the phrase is a reference to Ashoka's belief in "true" and "false" gods. However, it is more likely that the term derives from the word "amiśra" ("not mingled"), and the phrase refers to celestial beings who did not mingle with humans. The inscription claims that the righteousness generated by adoption of dhamma by the humans attracted even the celestial gods who did not mingle with humans. |
Ashoka | Dharma | Dharma
Ashoka's various inscriptions suggest that he devoted himself to the propagation of "Dharma" (Pali: Dhamma), a term that refers to the teachings of Gautama Buddha in the Buddhist circles. However, Ashoka's own inscriptions do not mention Buddhist doctrines such as the Four Noble Truths or Nirvana. The word "Dharma" has various connotations in the Indian religions, and can be generally translated as "law, duty, or righteousness". In the Kandahar inscriptions of Ashoka, the word "Dharma" has been translated as eusebeia (Greek) and qsyt (Aramaic), which further suggests that his "Dharma" meant something more generic than Buddhism.
The inscriptions suggest that for Ashoka, Dharma meant "a moral polity of active social concern, religious tolerance, ecological awareness, the observance of common ethical precepts, and the renunciation of war." For example:
Abolition of the death penalty (Pillar Edict IV)
Plantation of banyan trees and mango groves, and construction of resthouses and wells, every along the roads. (Pillar Edict 7).
Restriction on killing of animals in the imperial kitchen (Rock Edict 1); the number of animals killed was limited to two peacocks and a deer daily, and in future, even these animals were not to be killed.
Provision of medical facilities for humans and animals (Rock Edict 2).
Encouragement of obedience to parents, "generosity toward priests and ascetics, and frugality in spending" (Rock Edict 3).
He "commissions officers to work for the welfare and happiness of the poor and aged" (Rock Edict 5)
Promotion of "the welfare of all beings so as to pay off his debt to living creatures and to work for their happiness in this world and the next." (Rock Edict 6)
Modern scholars have variously understood this dhamma as a Buddhist lay ethic, a set of politico-moral ideas, a "sort of universal religion", or as an Ashokan innovation. On the other hand, it has also been interpreted as an essentially political ideology that sought to knit together a vast and diverse empire.
Ashoka instituted a new category of officers called the dhamma-mahamattas, who were tasked with the welfare of the aged, the infirm, the women and children, and various religious sects. They were also sent on diplomatic missions to the Hellenistic kingdoms of west Asia, in order to propagate the dhamma.
Historically, the image of Ashoka in the global Buddhist circles was based on legends (such as those mentioned in the Ashokavadana) rather than his rock edicts. This was because the Brahmi script in which these edicts were written was forgotten soon and remained undeciphered until its study by James Prinsep in the 19th century. The writings of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims such as Faxian and Xuanzang suggest that Ashoka's inscriptions mark the important sites associated with Gautama Buddha. These writers attribute Buddhism-related content to Ashoka's edicts, but this content does not match with the actual text of the inscriptions as determined by modern scholars after the decipherment of the Brahmi script. It is likely that the script was forgotten by the time of Faxian, who probably relied on local guides; these guides may have made up some Buddhism-related interpretations to gratify him, or may have themselves relied on faulty translations based on oral traditions. Xuanzang may have encountered a similar situation, or may have taken the supposed content of the inscriptions from Faxian's writings. This theory is corroborated by the fact that some Brahmin scholars are known to have similarly come up with a fanciful interpretation of Ashoka pillar inscriptions, when requested to decipher them by the 14th century Muslim Tughlaq emperor Firuz Shah Tughlaq. According to Shams-i Siraj's Tarikh-i Firoz Shahi, after the king had these pillar transported from Topra and Mirat to Delhi as war trophies, these Brahmins told him that the inscriptions prophesied that nobody would be able to remove the pillars except a king named Firuz. Moreover, by this time, there were local traditions that attributed the erection of these pillars to the legendary hero Bhima.
According to scholars such as Richard Gombrich, Ashoka's dharma shows Buddhist influence. For example, the Kalinga Separate Edict I seems to be inspired by Buddha's Advice to Sigala and his other sermons. |
Ashoka | Animal welfare | Animal welfare
Ashoka's rock edicts declare that injuring living things is not good, and no animal should be slaughtered for sacrifice. However, he did not prohibit common cattle slaughter or beef eating.
He imposed a ban on killing of "all four-footed creatures that are neither useful nor edible", and of specific animal species including several birds, certain types of fish and bulls among others. He also banned killing of female goats, sheep and pigs that were nursing their young; as well as their young up to the age of six months. He also banned killing of all fish and castration of animals during certain periods such as Chaturmasa and Uposatha.
Ashoka also abolished the imperial hunting of animals and restricted the slaying of animals for food in the imperial residence. Because he banned hunting, created many veterinary clinics and eliminated meat eating on many holidays, the Mauryan Empire under Ashoka has been described as "one of the very few instances in world history of a government treating its animals as citizens who are as deserving of its protection as the human residents".
As Ashoka's edicts forbade both the killing of wild animals and the destruction of forests, he is seen by some modern environmental historians as an early embodiment of that environmental ethos. : "Following the Buddha’s message, he banned Brahminic Vedic animal sacrifices in his capital (although he evidently lacked the administrative control to stop them outside of it). Overall, Ashoka’s edicts proclaim his compassion for animals, perhaps motivated by an environmental ethic (in addition to his revenue or administrative goals). Consequently, today many environmentalists evoke Ashoka as an ancient Indian exemplar." |
Ashoka | Foreign relations | Foreign relations
thumb|Territories "conquered by the Dhamma" according to Major Rock Edict No.13 of Ashoka (260–218 BCE).Thomas Mc Evilly "The shape of ancient thought", Allworth Press, New York, 2002, p.368
It is well known that Ashoka sent dütas or emissaries to convey messages or letters, written or oral (rather both), to various people. The VIth Rock Edict about "oral orders" reveals this. It was later confirmed that it was not unusual to add oral messages to written ones, and the content of Ashoka's messages can be inferred likewise from the XIIIth Rock Edict: They were meant to spread his dhammavijaya, which he considered the highest victory and which he wished to propagate everywhere (including far beyond India). There is obvious and undeniable trace of cultural contact through the adoption of the Kharosthi script, and the idea of installing inscriptions might have travelled with this script, as Achaemenid influence is seen in some of the formulations used by Ashoka in his inscriptions. This indicates to us that Ashoka was indeed in contact with other cultures, and was an active part in mingling and spreading new cultural ideas beyond his own immediate walls. |
Ashoka | Hellenistic world | Hellenistic world
In his rock edicts, Ashoka states that he had encouraged the transmission of Buddhism to the Hellenistic kingdoms to the west and that the Greeks in his dominion were converts to Buddhism and recipients of his envoys:
It is possible, but not certain, that Ashoka received letters from Greek rulers and was acquainted with the Hellenistic royal orders in the same way as he perhaps knew of the inscriptions of the Achaemenid kings, given the presence of ambassadors of Hellenistic kings in India (as well as the dütas sent by Ashoka himself). Dionysius is reported to have been such a Greek ambassador at the court of Ashoka, sent by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who himself is mentioned in the Edicts of Ashoka as a recipient of the Buddhist proselytism of Ashoka. Some Hellenistic philosophers, such as Hegesias of Cyrene, who probably lived under the rule of King Magas, one of the supposed recipients of Buddhist emissaries from Ashoka, are sometimes thought to have been influenced by Buddhist teachings.
The Greeks in India even seem to have played an active role in the propagation of Buddhism, as some of the emissaries of Ashoka, such as Dharmaraksita, are described in Pali sources as leading Greek (Yona) Buddhist monks, active in spreading Buddhism (the Mahavamsa, XII).Full text of the Mahavamsa Click chapter XII
Some Greeks (Yavana) may have played an administrative role in the territories ruled by Ashoka. The Girnar inscription of Rudradaman records that during the rule of Ashoka, a Yavana Governor was in charge in the area of Girnar, Gujarat, mentioning his role in the construction of a water reservoir.The Idea of Ancient India: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Archaeology by Upinder Singh p.18
It is thought that Ashoka's palace at Patna was modelled after the Achaemenid palace of Persepolis. |
Ashoka | Legends about past lives | Legends about past lives
upright|thumb|Statue of the emperor Ashoka the Great at Rangkut Banasram Pilgrimage Monastery in Ramu, Cox's Bazar District, Bangladesh
Buddhist legends mention stories about Ashoka's past lives. According to a Mahavamsa story, Ashoka, Nigrodha and Devnampiya Tissa were brothers in a previous life. In that life, a pratyekabuddha was looking for honey to cure another, sick pratyekabuddha. A woman directed him to a honey shop owned by the three brothers. Ashoka generously donated honey to the pratyekabuddha, and wished to become the sovereign ruler of Jambudvipa for this act of merit. The woman wished to become his queen, and was reborn as Ashoka's wife Asandhamitta. Later Pali texts credit her with an additional act of merit: she gifted the pratyekabuddha a piece of cloth made by her. These texts include the Dasavatthuppakarana, the so-called Cambodian or Extended Mahavamsa (possibly from 9th–10th centuries), and the Trai Bhumi Katha (15th century).
According to an Ashokavadana story, Ashoka was born as Jaya in a prominent family of Rajagriha. When he was a little boy, he gave the Gautama Buddha dirt imagining it to be food. The Buddha approved of the donation, and Jaya declared that he would become a king by this act of merit. The text also state that Jaya's companion Vijaya was reborn as Ashoka's prime-minister Radhagupta. In the later life, the Buddhist monk Upagupta tells Ashoka that his rough skin was caused by the impure gift of dirt in the previous life. Some later texts repeat this story, without mentioning the negative implications of gifting dirt; these texts include Kumaralata's Kalpana-manditika, Aryashura's Jataka-mala, and the Maha-karma-vibhaga. The Chinese writer Pao Ch'eng's Shih chia ju lai ying hua lu asserts that an insignificant act like gifting dirt could not have been meritorious enough to cause Ashoka's future greatness. Instead, the text claims that in another past life, Ashoka commissioned a large number of Buddha statues as a king, and this act of merit caused him to become a great emperor in the next life.
The 14th century Pali-language fairy tale Dasavatthuppakarana (possibly from ) combines the stories about the merchant's gift of honey, and the boy's gift of dirt. It narrates a slightly different version of the Mahavamsa story, stating that it took place before the birth of the Gautama Buddha. It then states that the merchant was reborn as the boy who gifted dirt to the Buddha; however, in this case, the Buddha gave the dirt to Ānanda, his attendant, to create plaster from the dirt, which was used repair cracks in the monastery walls. |
Ashoka | Last years | Last years |
Ashoka | Tissarakkha as the empress | Tissarakkha as the empress
Ashoka's last dated inscription - the Pillar Edict 4 is from his 26th regnal year. The only source of information about Ashoka's later years are the Buddhist legends. The Sri Lankan tradition states that Ashoka's empress Asandhamitta died during his 29th regnal year, and in his 32nd regnal year, his wife Tissarakkha was given the title of empress.
Both Mahavamsa and Ashokavadana state that Ashoka extended favours and attention to the Bodhi Tree, and a jealous Tissarakkha mistook "Bodhi" to be a mistress of Ashoka. She then used black magic to make the tree wither. According to the Ashokavadana, she hired a sorceress to do the job, and when Ashoka explained that "Bodhi" was the name of a tree, she had the sorceress heal the tree. According to the Mahavamsa, she completely destroyed the tree, during Ashoka's 34th regnal year.
The Ashokavadana states that Tissarakkha (called "Tishyarakshita" here) made sexual advances towards Ashoka's son Kunala, but Kunala rejected her. Subsequently, Ashoka granted Tissarakkha emperorship for seven days, and during this period, she tortured and blinded Kunala. Ashoka then threatened to "tear out her eyes, rip open her body with sharp rakes, impale her alive on a spit, cut off her nose with a saw, cut out her tongue with a razor." Kunala regained his eyesight miraculously, and pleaded for mercy for the empress, but Ashoka had her executed anyway. Kshemendra's Avadana-kalpa-lata also narrates this legend, but seeks to improve Ashoka's image by stating that he forgave the empress after Kunala regained his eyesight. |
Ashoka | Death | Death
According to the Sri Lankan tradition, Ashoka died during his 37th regnal year, which suggests that he died around 232 BCE.
According to the Ashokavadana, the emperor fell severely ill during his last days. He started using state funds to make donations to the Buddhist sangha, prompting his ministers to deny him access to the state treasury. Ashoka then started donating his personal possessions, but was similarly restricted from doing so. On his deathbed, his only possession was the half of a myrobalan fruit, which he offered to the sangha as his final donation. Such legends encourage generous donations to the sangha and highlight the role of the emperorship in supporting the Buddhist faith.
Legend states that during his cremation, his body burned for seven days and nights. |
Ashoka | Archaeological remains | Archaeological remains |
Ashoka | Architecture | Architecture
Besides the various stupas attributed to Ashoka, the pillars erected by him survive at various places in the Indian subcontinent.
Ashoka is often credited with the beginning of stone architecture in India, dedicated to Buddhism, possibly following the introduction of stone-building techniques by the Greeks after Alexander the Great.Introduction to Indian Architecture Bindia Thapar, Tuttle Publishing, 2012, p.21 "Ashoka used the knowledge of stone craft to begin the tradition of stone architecture in India, dedicated to Buddhism." Before Ashoka's time, buildings were probably built in non-permanent material, such as wood, bamboo or thatch. Ashoka may have rebuilt his palace in Pataliputra by replacing wooden material by stone, and may also have used the help of foreign craftmen."Ashoka was known to be a great builder who may have even imported craftsmen from abroad to build royal monuments." Monuments, Power and Poverty in India: From Ashoka to the Raj, A. S. Bhalla, I.B.Tauris, 2015 p.18 Ashoka also innovated by using the permanent qualities of stone for his written edicts, as well as his pillars with Buddhist symbolism. |
Ashoka | Symbols | Symbols
Ashokan capitals were highly realistic and used a characteristic polished finish, Mauryan polish, giving a shiny appearance to the stone surface. Lion Capital of Ashoka, the capital of one of the pillars erected by Ashoka features a carving of a spoked wheel, known as the Ashoka Chakra. This wheel represents the wheel of Dhamma set in motion by the Gautama Buddha, and appears on the flag of modern India. This capital also features sculptures of lions, which appear on the seal of India. |
Ashoka | Inscriptions and rock-edicts | Inscriptions and rock-edicts
thumb|Distribution of the Edicts of Ashoka, and location of the contemporary Greek city of Ai-Khanoum.Reference: "India: The Ancient Past" p.113, Burjor Avari, Routledge,
thumb|The Kandahar Edict of Ashoka, a bilingual inscription (in Greek and Aramaic) by King Ashoka, discovered at Kandahar ().
The edicts of Ashoka are a collection of 33 inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, issued during his reign. These inscriptions are dispersed throughout modern-day Pakistan and India, and represent the first tangible evidence of Buddhism. The edicts describe in detail the first wide expansion of Buddhism through the sponsorship of one of the most powerful kings of Indian history, offering more information about Ashoka's proselytism, moral precepts, religious precepts, and his notions of social and animal welfare.
Before Ashoka, the royal communications appear to have been written on perishable materials such as palm leaves, birch barks, cotton cloth, and possibly wooden boards. While Ashoka's administration would have continued to use these materials, Ashoka also had his messages inscribed on rock edicts. Ashoka probably got the idea of putting up these inscriptions from the neighbouring Achaemenid empire. It is likely that Ashoka's messages were also inscribed on more perishable materials, such as wood, and sent to various parts of the empire. None of these records survive now.
Scholars are still attempting to analyse both the expressed and implied political ideas of the Edicts (particularly in regard to imperial vision), and make inferences pertaining to how that vision was grappling with problems and political realities of a "virtually subcontinental, and culturally and economically highly variegated, 3rd century BCE Indian empire. Nonetheless, it remains clear that Ashoka's Inscriptions represent the earliest corpus of royal inscriptions in the Indian subcontinent, and therefore prove to be a very important innovation in royal practices."
Most of Ashoka's inscriptions are written in a mixture of various Prakrit dialects, in the Brahmi script.
Several of Ashoka's inscriptions appear to have been set up near towns, on important routes, and at places of religious significance. Many of the inscriptions have been discovered in hills, rock shelters, and places of local significance. Various theories have been put forward about why Ashoka or his officials chose such places, including that they were centres of megalithic cultures, were regarded as sacred spots in Ashoka's time, or that their physical grandeur may be symbolic of spiritual dominance. Ashoka's inscriptions have not been found at major cities of the Maurya empire, such as Pataliputra, Vidisha, Ujjayini, and Taxila.
It is possible that many of these inscriptions are lost; the 7th century Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang refers to some of Ashoka's pillar edicts, which have not been discovered by modern researchers.
It appears that Ashoka dispatched every message to his provincial governors, who in turn, relayed it to various officials in their territory. For example, the Minor Rock Edict 1 appears in several versions at multiple places: all the versions state that Ashoka issued the proclamation while on a tour, having spent 256 days on tour. The number 256 indicates that the message was dispatched simultaneously to various places. Three versions of a message, found at edicts in the neighbouring places in Karnataka (Brahmagiri, Siddapura, and Jatinga-Rameshwara), were sent from the southern province's capital Suvarnagiri to various places. All three versions contain the same message, preceded by an initial greeting from the arya-putra (presumably Ashoka's son and the provincial governor) and the mahamatras (officials) in Suvarnagiri. |
Ashoka | Coinage | Coinage
The caduceus appears as a symbol of the punch-marked coins of the Maurya Empire in India, in the 3rd–2nd century BCE. Numismatic research suggests that this symbol was the symbol of Emperor Ashoka, his personal "Mudra".Indian Numismatics, Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi, Orient Blackswan, 1981, p.73 This symbol was not used on the pre-Mauryan punch-marked coins, but only on coins of the Maurya period, together with the three arched-hill symbol, the "peacock on the hill", the triskelis and the Taxila mark.Malwa Through the Ages, from the Earliest Times to 1305 A.D, Kailash Chand Jain, Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1972, p.134 |
Ashoka | Modern scholarship | Modern scholarship |
Ashoka | Rediscovery | Rediscovery
Ashoka had almost been forgotten, but in the 19th century James Prinsep contributed in the revelation of historical sources. After deciphering the Brahmi script, Prinsep had originally identified the "Priyadasi" of the inscriptions he found with the King of Ceylon Devanampiya Tissa. However, in 1837, George Turnour discovered an important Sri Lankan manuscript (Dipavamsa, or "Island Chronicle" ) associating Piyadasi with Ashoka:
thumb|The Minor Rock Edict of Maski mentions the author as "Devanampriya Asoka", definitively linking both names, and confirming Ashoka as the author of the famous Edicts.
Since then, the association of "Devanampriya Priyadarsin" with Ashoka was confirmed through various inscriptions, and especially confirmed in the Minor Rock Edict inscription discovered in Maski, directly associating Ashoka with his regnal title Devanampriya ("Beloved-of-the-Gods"):
Another important historian was British archaeologist John Hubert Marshall, who was director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India. His main interests were Sanchi and Sarnath, in addition to Harappa and Mohenjodaro. Sir Alexander Cunningham, a British archaeologist and army engineer, and often known as the father of the Archaeological Survey of India, unveiled heritage sites like the Bharhut Stupa, Sarnath, Sanchi, and the Mahabodhi Temple. Mortimer Wheeler, a British archaeologist, also exposed Ashokan historical sources, especially the Taxila. |
Ashoka | Perceptions and historiography | Perceptions and historiography
The use of Buddhist sources in reconstructing the life of Ashoka has had a strong influence on perceptions of Ashoka, as well as the interpretations of his Edicts. Building on traditional accounts, early scholars regarded Ashoka as a primarily Buddhist monarch who underwent a conversion from the Vedic religion to Buddhism and was actively engaged in sponsoring and supporting the Buddhist monastic institution. Some scholars have tended to question this assessment. Thapar writes about Ashoka that "We need to see him both as a statesman in the context of inheriting and sustaining an empire in a particular historical period, and as a person with a strong commitment to changing society through what might be called the propagation of social ethics." The only source of information not attributable to Buddhist sources are the Ashokan Edicts, and these do not explicitly state that Ashoka was a Buddhist. In his edicts, Ashoka expresses support for all the major religions of his time: Buddhism, Brahmanism, Jainism, and Ajivikaism, and his edicts addressed to the population at large (there are some addressed specifically to Buddhists; this is not the case for the other religions) generally focus on moral themes members of all the religions would accept. For example, Amartya Sen writes, "The Indian Emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE presented many political inscriptions in favor of tolerance and individual freedom, both as a part of state policy and in the relation of different people to each other".
However, the edicts alone strongly indicate that he was a Buddhist. In one edict he belittles rituals, and he banned Vedic animal sacrifices; these strongly suggest that he at least did not look to the Vedic tradition for guidance. Furthermore, many edicts are expressed to Buddhists alone; in one, Ashoka declares himself to be an "upasaka", and in another he demonstrates a close familiarity with Buddhist texts. He erected rock pillars at Buddhist holy sites, but did not do so for the sites of other religions. He also used the word "dhamma" to refer to qualities of the heart that underlie moral action; this was an exclusively Buddhist use of the word. However, he used the word more in the spirit than as a strict code of conduct. Thapar writes, "His dhamma did not derive from divine inspiration, even if its observance promised heaven. It was more in keeping with the ethic conditioned by the logic of given situations. His logic of Dhamma was intended to influence the conduct of categories of people, in relation to each other. Especially where they involved unequal relationships." Finally, he promotes ideals that correspond to the first three steps of the Buddha's graduated discourse.Richard Robinson, Willard Johnson, and Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Buddhist Religions, fifth ed., Wadsworth 2005, page 59.
Much of the knowledge about Ashoka comes from the several inscriptions that he had carved on pillars and rocks throughout the empire. All his inscriptions present him as compassionate and loving. In the Kalinga rock edits, he addresses his people as his "children" and mentions that as a father he desires their good.The Edicts of King Ashoka , English translation (1993) by Ven. S. Dhammika. . Retrieved 21 February 2009 |
Ashoka | Impact of pacifism | Impact of pacifism
After Ashoka's death, the Maurya dynasty declined rapidly. The various Puranas provide different details about Ashoka's successors, but all agree that they had relatively short reigns. The empire seems to have weakened, fragmented, and suffered an invasion from the Bactrian Greeks.
Some historians, such as H. C. Raychaudhuri, have argued that Ashoka's pacifism undermined the "military backbone" of the Maurya empire. Others, such as Romila Thapar, have suggested that the extent and impact of his pacifism have been "grossly exaggerated". |
Ashoka | In art, film and literature | In art, film and literature
thumb|A painting by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951) depicting Ashoka's empress standing in front of the railings of the Buddhist monument at Sanchi (Raisen district, Madhya Pradesh)
Ashoka the Great is a fictional biography of the emperor, which was originally written in Dutch in the form of a trilogy by Wytze Keuning in 1937–1947.
Jaishankar Prasad composed Ashoka ki Chinta (Ashoka's Anxiety), a poem that portrays Ashoka's feelings during the war on Kalinga.
Ashoka, a 1922 Indian silent historical film about the emperor produced by Madan Theatres.
The Nine Unknown, a 1923 novel by Talbot Mundy about the "Nine Unknown Men", a fictional secret society founded by Ashoka.
Samrat Ashok, a 1928 Indian silent film by Bhagwati Prasad Mishra.
Ashok Kumar is a 1941 Indian Tamil-language film directed by Raja Chandrasekhar. The film stars V. Nagayya as Ashoka.
Samrat Ashok is a 1947 Indian Hindi-language film by K.B. Lall.
Uttar-Priyadarshi (The Final Beatitude), a verse-play written by poet Agyeya depicting his redemption, was adapted to stage in 1996 by theatre director, Ratan Thiyam and has since been performed in many parts of the world.
In 1973, Amar Chitra Katha released a graphic novel based on the life of Ashoka.
In Piers Anthony's series of space opera novels, the main character mentions Ashoka as a model for administrators to strive for.
Samrat Ashok is a 1992 Indian Telugu-language film about the emperor by N. T. Rama Rao with Rao also playing the titular role.
Aśoka is a 2001 epic Indian historical drama film directed and co-written by Santosh Sivan. The film stars Shah Rukh Khan as Ashoka.
In 2002, Mason Jennings released the song "Emperor Ashoka" on his Living in the Moment EP. It is based on the life of Ashoka.
In 2013, Christopher C. Doyle released his debut novel, The Mahabharata Secret, in which he wrote about Ashoka hiding a dangerous secret for the well-being of India.
2014's The Emperor's Riddles, a fiction mystery thriller novel by Satyarth Nayak, traces the evolution of Ashoka and his esoteric legend of the Nine Unknown Men.
In 2015, Chakravartin Ashoka Samrat, a television serial by Ashok Banker, based on the life of Ashoka, began airing on Colors TV where Siddharth Nigam and Mohit Raina played the role of Ashoka.
Bharatvarsh is an Indian television historical documentary series, hosted by actor-director Anupam Kher on Hindi news channel ABP News. The series stars Aham Sharma as Ashoka.
In 2024, Pracchand Ashok, a television serial by Ekta Kapoor, based on the love life of the Ashoka, began airing on Colors TV where Adnan Khan played the role of Ashoka.Adnan Khan and Mallika Singh to play Samrat Ashok & Kaurawkee in Ekta Kapoor's new historical drama series 'Pracchand Ashok'
Civilization features Ashoka as a playable leader for India, being replaced by Gandhi in later iterations of the series. |
Ashoka | See also | See also
List of people known as the Great |
Ashoka | Notes | Notes |
Ashoka | References | References |
Ashoka | Works cited | Works cited
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Ashoka | Further reading | Further reading
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Ashoka | External links | External links
BBC Radio 4: Sunil Khilnani, Incarnations: Ashoka.
BBC Radio 4: Melvyn Bragg with Richard Gombrich et al., In Our Time, Ashoka the Great.
Edicts of AshokaRegnal yearsof AshokaType of Edict(and location of the inscriptions)Geographical location Year 8End of the Kalinga War and conversion to the "Dharma"Year 10Minor Rock EdictsRelated events:Visit to the Bodhi tree in Bodh GayaConstruction of the Mahabodhi Temple and Diamond throne in Bodh GayaPredication throughout India.Dissenssions in the SanghaThird Buddhist CouncilIn Indian language: Sohgaura inscriptionErection of the Pillars of AshokaKandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription(in Greek and Aramaic, Kandahar)Minor Rock Edicts in Aramaic:Laghman Inscription, Taxila inscription Year 11 and laterMinor Rock Edicts (n°1, n°2 and n°3)(Panguraria, Maski, Palkigundu and Gavimath, Bahapur/Srinivaspuri, Bairat, Ahraura, Gujarra, Sasaram, Rajula Mandagiri, Yerragudi, Udegolam, Nittur, Brahmagiri, Siddapur, Jatinga-Rameshwara)Year 12 and laterBarabar Caves inscriptionsMajor Rock EdictsMinor Pillar EdictsMajor Rock Edicts in Greek: Edicts n°12-13 (Kandahar)Major Rock Edicts in Indian language:Edicts No.1 ~ No.14(in Kharoshthi script: Shahbazgarhi, Mansehra Edicts)(in the Brahmi script: Kalsi, Girnar, Sopara, Sannati, Yerragudi, Delhi Edicts)Major Rock Edicts 1–10, 14, Separate Edicts 1&2:(Dhauli, Jaugada)Schism Edict, Queen's Edict(Sarnath Sanchi Allahabad)Lumbini inscription, Nigali Sagar inscriptionYear 26, 27and laterMajor Pillar EdictsIn Indian language:Major Pillar Edicts No.1 ~ No.7(Allahabad pillar Delhi-Meerut Delhi-Topra Rampurva Lauria Nandangarh Lauriya-Araraj Amaravati)
Derived inscriptions in Aramaic, on rock:
Kandahar, Edict No.7 and Pul-i-Darunteh, Edict No.5 or No.7
Category:Emperors of Magadha
Category:Mauryan dynasty
Category:3rd-century BC deaths
Category:3rd-century BC Indian monarchs
Category:3rd-century Buddhism
Category:Ancient history of Afghanistan
Category:Ancient history of Pakistan
Category:Buddhist pacifists
Category:Indian Buddhist monarchs
Category:Indian pacifists
Category:People from Patna
Category:Ancient India
Category:Indian monarchs
Category:Indian warriors
Category:History of Buddhism in India
Category:Indian Buddhist missionaries
Category:Indian Buddhists
Category:Converts to Buddhism
Category:3rd-century BC Buddhists |
Ashoka | Table of Content | Short description, Sources of information, Inscriptions, Buddhist legends, Other sources, Alternative interpretation of the epigraphic evidence, Names and titles, Date, Ancestry, As a prince, Rebellion at Taxila, Viceroy of Ujjain, Ascension to the throne, Date of ascension, Reign before Buddhist influence, Kalinga war and conversion to Buddhism, Kalinga war, First contact with Buddhism, Reign after Buddhist influence, Construction of stupas and temples, Propagation of Dharma, Third Buddhist Council, Buddhist missions, Violence after conversion, Family, Consorts, Sons, Daughters, Brothers, Imperial extent, Religion and philosophy, Relationship with Buddhism, Other religions, Dharma, Animal welfare, Foreign relations, Hellenistic world, Legends about past lives, Last years, Tissarakkha as the empress, Death, Archaeological remains, Architecture, Symbols, Inscriptions and rock-edicts, Coinage, Modern scholarship, Rediscovery, Perceptions and historiography, Impact of pacifism, In art, film and literature, See also, Notes, References, Works cited, Further reading, External links |
American (word) | Short description | The meaning of the word American in the English language varies according to the historical, geographical, and political context in which it is used. American is derived from America, a term originally denoting all of the Americas (also called the Western Hemisphere), ultimately derived from the name of the Florentine explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (1451–1512). In some expressions, it retains this Pan-American sense, but its usage has evolved over time and, for various historical reasons, the word came to denote people or things specifically from the United States of America.
In contemporary English, American generally refers to persons or things related to the United States of America; among native English speakers this usage is almost universal, with any other use of the term requiring specification. View at Bartleby However, in the past some have argued that "American" should be widened to also include people or things from anywhere in the American continents.
The word can be used as either an adjective or a noun (viz. a demonym). In adjectival use, it means "of or relating to the United States"; for example, "Elvis Presley was an American singer" or "the man prefers American English". In its noun form, the word generally means a resident or citizen of the U.S., but is also used for someone whose ethnic identity is simply "American". The noun is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States when intending a geographical meaning. When used with a grammatical qualifier, the adjective American can mean "of or relating to the Americas", as in Latin American or Indigenous American. Less frequently, the adjective can take this meaning without a qualifier, as in "American Spanish dialects and pronunciation differ by country" or the names of the Organization of American States and the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). A third use of the term pertains specifically to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, for instance, "In the 16th century, many Americans died from imported diseases during the European conquest", though this usage is rare, as "indigenous", "First Nations" or "Amerindian" are considered less confusing and generally more appropriate.
Compound constructions which indicate a minority ethnic group, such as "African Americans" likewise refer exclusively to people in or from the United States of America, as does the prefix "Americo-". For instance, the Americo-Liberians and their language Merico derive their name from the fact that they are descended from African-American settlers, i.e. Blacks who were formerly enslaved in the United States of America. |
American (word) | Other languages | Other languages
French, German, Italian, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian speakers may use cognates of American to refer to inhabitants of the Americas or to U.S. nationals. They generally have other terms specific to U.S. nationals, such as the German , French , Japanese , and Italian . These specific terms may be less common than the term American.
In French, , or , from ("United States of America"), is a rarely used word that distinguishes U.S. things and persons from the adjective , which denotes persons and things from the United States, but may also refer to "the Americas".
Likewise, German's use of and observe this cultural distinction, solely denoting U.S. things and people. In normal parlance, the adjective "American" and its direct cognates are usually used if the context renders the nationality of the person clear. This differentiation is prevalent in German-speaking countries, as indicated by the style manual of the (one of the leading German-language newspapers in Switzerland) which dismisses the term as both 'unnecessary' and 'artificial' and recommends replacing it with amerikanisch.Vademecum. Der sprachlich-technische Leitfaden der «Neuen Zürcher Zeitung», 13th edition. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zürich 2013, p. 102, s. v. US-amerikanisch. The respective guidelines of the foreign ministries of Austria, Germany and Switzerland all prescribe Amerikaner and amerikanisch in reference to the United States for official usage, making no mention of or .Eidgenössisches Departement für auswärtige Angelegenheiten: „Liste der Staatenbezeichnungen“ ; Bundesministerium für europäische und internationale Angelegenheiten: „Liste der Staatennamen und deren Ableitungen in den vom Bundesministerium für europäische und internationale Angelegenheiten verwendeten Formen“ ; Auswärtiges Amt: „Verzeichnis der Staatennamen für den amtlichen Gebrauch in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland“
Portuguese has , denoting both a person or thing from the Americas and a U.S. national. For referring specifically to a U.S. national and things, some words used are (also spelled , "United States person"), from , and ("Yankee")—both usages exist in Brazil (although "americano" is more frequent), but are uncommon in Portugal—but the term most often used, and the only one in Portugal, is , even though it could, as with its Spanish equivalent, apply to Canadians and Mexicans as well.
In Spanish, denotes geographic and cultural origin in the New World, as well as (infrequently) a U.S. citizen; the more common term is ("United States person"), which derives from ("United States of America"). The Spanish term ("North American") is frequently used to refer things and persons from the United States, but this term can also denote people and things from Canada and Mexico. Among Spanish-speakers, North America generally does not include Central America or the Caribbean.
Conversely, in Czech, there is no possibility for disambiguation. Američan (m.) and američanka (f.) can refer to persons from the United States or from the continents of the Americas, and there is no specific word capable of distinguishing the two meanings. For this reason, the latter meaning is very rarely used, and word is used almost exclusively to refer to persons from the United States. The usage is exactly parallel to the English word.
In other languages, however, there is no possibility for confusion. For example, the Chinese word for "U.S. national" is () is derived from a word for the United States, , where is an abbreviation for Yàměilìjiā ("America") and is "country". The name for the American continents is , from plus ("continent"). Thus, a is an American in the continent sense, and a is an American in the U.S. sense.
Korean and Vietnamese also use unambiguous terms, with Korean having () for the country versus () for the continents, and Vietnamese having for the country versus for the continents. Japanese has such terms as well ( [ versus []), but they are found more in newspaper headlines than in speech, where predominates.
In Swahili, means specifically the United States, and is a U.S. national, whereas the international form refers to the continents, and would be an inhabitant thereof. Likewise, the Esperanto word refers to the continents. For the country there is the term . Thus, a citizen of the United States is an , whereas an is an inhabitant of the Americas. |
American (word) | History | History
thumb|America is named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
The name America was coined by Martin Waldseemüller from Americus Vesputius, the Latinized version of the name of Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512), the Florentine explorer who mapped South America's east coast and the Caribbean Sea in the early 16th century. Later, Vespucci's published letters were the basis of Waldseemüller's 1507 map, which is the first usage of America. The adjective American subsequently denoted the New World.
In the 16th century, European usage of American denoted the native inhabitants of the New World. The earliest recorded use of this term in English is in Thomas Hacket's 1568 translation of André Thévet's book France Antarctique; Thévet himself had referred to the natives as Ameriques. In the following century, the term was extended to European settlers and their descendants in the Americas. The earliest recorded use of "English-American" dates to 1648, in Thomas Gage's The English-American his travail by sea and land: or, a new survey of the West India's.
In English, American was used especially for people in British America. Samuel Johnson, the leading English lexicographer, wrote in 1775, before the United States declared independence: "That the Americans are able to bear taxation is indubitable." The Declaration of Independence of July 1776 refers to "[the] unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" adopted by the "Representatives of the united States of America" on July 4, 1776. The official name of the country was reaffirmed on November 15, 1777, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first of which says, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'". The Articles further state:
thumb|300px|left|British map of the Americas in 1744
Thomas Jefferson, newly elected president in May 1801 wrote, "I am sure the measures I mean to pursue are such as would in their nature be approved by every American who can emerge from preconceived prejudices; as for those who cannot, we must take care of them as of the sick in our hospitals. The medicine of time and fact may cure some of them."Letter TJ to Theodore Foster, May 1801, in Paul Leicester Ford ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson (1905) 8:50.
In The Federalist Papers (1787–88), Alexander Hamilton and James Madison used the adjective American with two different meanings: one political and one geographic; "the American republic" in Federalist No. 51 and in Federalist No. 70, and, in Federalist No. 24, Hamilton used American to denote the lands beyond the U.S.'s political borders.
Early official U.S. documents show inconsistent usage; the 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France used "the United States of North America" in the first sentence, then "the said united States" afterwards; "the United States of America" and "the United States of North America" derive from "the United Colonies of America" and "the United Colonies of North America". The Treaty of Peace and Amity of September 5, 1795, between the United States and the Barbary States contains the usages "the United States of North America", "citizens of the United States", and "American Citizens".
thumb|Washington's Farewell Address (1796)
U.S. President George Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address, declaimed that "The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation."wikisource:Washington's Farewell Address Political scientist Virginia L. Arbery notes that, in his Farewell Address: "...Washington invites his fellow citizens to view themselves now as Americans who, out of their love for the truth of liberty, have replaced their maiden names (Virginians, South Carolinians, New Yorkers, etc.) with that of “American”. Get rid of, he urges, “any appellation derived from local discriminations.” By defining himself as an American rather than as a Virginian, Washington set the national standard for all citizens. "Over and over, Washington said that America must be something set apart. As he put it to Patrick Henry, 'In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others.'"Arbery, Virginia L. (1999), "Washington's Farewell Address and the Form of the American Regime"; In: Gary L. Gregg II and Matthew Spalding, Patriot Sage: George Washington and the American Political Tradition, pp. 204, 206. As the historian Garry Wills has noted: "This was a theme dear to Washington. He wrote to Timothy Pickering that the nation 'must never forget that we are Americans; the remembrance of which will convince us we ought not to be French or English'."Wills, Garry (1984), Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment, pp. 92-93. Washington's countrymen subsequently embraced his exhortation with notable enthusiasm.
This semantic divergence among North American anglophones, however, remained largely unknown in the Spanish-American colonies. In 1801, the document titled Letter to American Spaniards—published in French (1799), in Spanish (1801), and in English (1808)—might have influenced Venezuela's Act of Independence and its 1811 constitution.
The Latter-day Saints' Articles of Faith refer to the American continents as where they are to build Zion.
Common short forms and abbreviations are the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., and America; colloquial versions include the U.S. of A. and the States. The term Columbia (from the Columbus surname) was a popular name for the U.S. and for the entire geographic Americas; its usage is present today in the District of Columbia's name. Moreover, the womanly personification of Columbia appears in some official documents, including editions of the U.S. dollar. |
American (word) | Usage at the United Nations | Usage at the United Nations
Use of the term American for U.S. nationals is common at the United Nations, and financial markets in the United States are referred to as "American financial markets".
American Samoa, an unincorporated territory of the United States, is a recognized territorial name at the United Nations. |
American (word) | Cultural views | Cultural views |
American (word) | Canada | Canada
Modern Canadians typically refer to people from the United States as Americans, though they seldom refer to the United States as America; in English they use the terms the United States, the U.S., or (informally) the States instead. Because of anti-American sentiment or simply national pride, Canadians never apply the term American to themselves. Not being an "American" is a part of Canadian identity, with many Canadians resenting being referred to as Americans or mistaken for U.S. citizens. This is often due to others' inability, particularly overseas, to distinguish English-speaking Canadians from Americans, by their accent or other cultural attributes. Some Canadians have protested the use of American as a national demonym. People of American origin in Canada are categorized as "Other North American origins" by Statistics Canada for purposes of census counts. |
American (word) | Spain and Hispanic America | Spain and Hispanic America
The use of American as a national demonym for U.S. nationals is challenged, primarily by Hispanic Americans. Spanish speakers in Spain and Hispanic America use the term to refer to people and things from the United States (from ), while refers to the continents as a whole (from América). [Original:] "1. adj. Natural de los Estados Unidos de América." The term is also accepted in many parts of Hispanic America to refer to a person or something from the United States; [Original:] "3. adj. Bol., Chile, Col., Cuba, Ec., El Salv., Hond., Nic., Par., Perú, Ur. y Ven. estadounidense." however, this term may be ambiguous in certain parts. Up to and including the 1992 edition, the , published by the Real Academia Española, did not include the United States definition in the entry for ; this was added in the 2001 edition. To access, click the magnifying glass in the upper left-hand corner. In the field titled "Lema", type "americano"; for the "Resultados" radio buttons, select "Diccionario"; in the field in the selection field for "Diccionarios", make sure that "1992 Academica Usual" is selected. Then click "Buscar". The Real Academia Española advised against using exclusively for U.S. nationals: |
American (word) | Portugal and Brazil | Portugal and Brazil
Generally, denotes "U.S. citizen" in Portugal. Usage of to exclusively denote people and things of the U.S. is discouraged by the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, because the specific word (also ) clearly denotes a person from the United States. The adjective currently used by the Portuguese press is .
In Brazil, the term is used to address both that which pertains to the Americas and that which pertains to the U.S.; the particular meaning is deduced from context. Alternatively, the term ("North American") is also used in more informal contexts, while (of the U.S.) is the preferred form in academia. Use of the three terms is common in schools, government, and media. The term is used exclusively for the whole continent, and the U.S. is called ("United States") or ("United States of America"), often abbreviated . |
American (word) | In other contexts | In other contexts
"American" in the 1994 Associated Press Stylebook was defined as, "An acceptable description for a resident of the United States. It also may be applied to any resident or citizen of nations in North or South America." Elsewhere, the AP Stylebook indicates that "United States" must "be spelled out when used as a noun. Use U.S. (no space) only as an adjective."
The entry for "America" in The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage from 1999 reads:
Media releases from the Pope and Holy See frequently use "America" to refer to the United States, and "American" to denote something or someone from the United States. |
American (word) | International law | International law
At least one international law uses U.S. citizen in defining a citizen of the United States rather than American citizen; for example, the English version of the North American Free Trade Agreement includes:
Many international treaties use the terms American and American citizen:
1796 – The treaty between the United States and the Dey of the Regency of Algiers on March 7, 1796, protected "American citizens".
1806 – The Louisiana Purchase Treaty between France and United States referred to "American citizens".
1825 – The treaty between the United States and the Cheyenne tribe refers to "American citizens".
1848 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo between Mexico and the U.S. uses "American Government" to refer to the United States, and "American tribunals" to refer to U.S. courts.
1858 – The Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the United States and Japan protected "American citizens" and also used "American" in other contexts.
1898 – The Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish–American War, known in Spanish as the ("Spain–United States War") uses "American" in reference to United States troops.
1966 – The United States–Thailand Treaty of Amity protects "Americans" and "American corporations". |
American (word) | U.S. commercial regulation | U.S. commercial regulation
Products that are labeled, advertised, and marketed in the U.S. as "Made in the USA" must be, as set by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), "all or virtually all made in the U.S." The FTC, to prevent deception of customers and unfair competition, considers an unqualified claim of "American Made" to expressly claim exclusive manufacture in the U.S: "The FTC Act gives the Commission the power to bring law enforcement actions against false or misleading claims that a product is of U.S. origin." |
American (word) | Alternatives | Alternatives
There are a number of alternatives to the demonym American as a citizen of the United States that do not simultaneously mean any inhabitant of the Americas. One uncommon alternative is Usonian, which usually describes a certain style of residential architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Other alternatives have also surfaced, but most have fallen into disuse and obscurity. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage says:
Nevertheless, no alternative to American is common. |
American (word) | See also | See also
Americas (terminology)
Hyphenated Americans
Names of the United States
Naming of the Americas
Totum pro parte |
American (word) | Notes | Notes |
American (word) | References | References |
American (word) | Works cited | Works cited
|
American (word) | External links | External links
Category:Culture of the United States
Category:English words
Category:Geographical naming disputes
Category:Definitions |
American (word) | Table of Content | Short description, Other languages, History, Usage at the United Nations, Cultural views, Canada, Spain and Hispanic America, Portugal and Brazil, In other contexts, International law, U.S. commercial regulation, Alternatives, See also, Notes, References, Works cited, External links |
Ada (programming language) | short description | Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, and object-oriented high-level programming language, inspired by Pascal and other languages. It has built-in language support for design by contract (DbC), extremely strong typing, explicit concurrency, tasks, synchronous message passing, protected objects, and non-determinism. Ada improves code safety and maintainability by using the compiler to find errors in favor of runtime errors. Ada is an international technical standard, jointly defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). , the standard, ISO/IEC 8652:2023, is called Ada 2022 informally.
Ada was originally designed by a team led by French computer scientist Jean Ichbiah of Honeywell under contract to the United States Department of Defense (DoD) from 1977 to 1983 to supersede over 450 programming languages then used by the DoD. Ada was named after Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), who has been credited as the first computer programmer. |
Ada (programming language) | Features | Features
Ada was originally designed for embedded and real-time systems. The Ada 95 revision, designed by S. Tucker Taft of Intermetrics between 1992 and 1995, improved support for systems, numerical, financial, and object-oriented programming (OOP).
Features of Ada include: strong typing, modular programming mechanisms (packages), run-time checking, parallel processing (tasks, synchronous message passing, protected objects, and nondeterministic select statements), exception handling, and generics. Ada 95 added support for object-oriented programming, including dynamic dispatch.
The syntax of Ada minimizes choices of ways to perform basic operations, and prefers English keywords (such as and ) to symbols (such as and ). Ada uses the basic arithmetical operators , , , and , but avoids using other symbols. Code blocks are delimited by words such as 'declare', 'begin', and 'end', where the 'end' (in most cases) is followed by the keyword of the block that it closes (e.g., ... , ... ). In the case of conditional blocks this avoids a dangling else that could pair with the wrong nested 'if'-expression in other languages such as C or Java.
Ada is designed for developing very large software systems. Ada packages can be compiled separately. Ada package specifications (the package interface) can also be compiled separately without the implementation to check for consistency. This makes it possible to detect problems early during the design phase, before implementation starts.
A large number of compile-time checks are supported to help avoid bugs that would not be detectable until run-time in some other languages or would require explicit checks to be added to the source code. For example, the syntax requires explicitly named closing of blocks to prevent errors due to mismatched end tokens. The adherence to strong typing allows detecting many common software errors (wrong parameters, range violations, invalid references, mismatched types, etc.) either during compile-time, or otherwise during run-time. As concurrency is part of the language specification, the compiler can in some cases detect potential deadlocks. Compilers also commonly check for misspelled identifiers, visibility of packages, redundant declarations, etc. and can provide warnings and useful suggestions on how to fix the error.
Ada also supports run-time checks to protect against access to unallocated memory, buffer overflow errors, range violations, off-by-one errors, array access errors, and other detectable bugs. These checks can be disabled in the interest of runtime efficiency, but can often be compiled efficiently. It also includes facilities to help program verification. For these reasons, Ada is sometimes used in critical systems, where any anomaly might lead to very serious consequences, e.g., accidental death, injury or severe financial loss. Examples of systems where Ada is used include avionics, air traffic control, railways, banking, military and space technology.
Ada's dynamic memory management is high-level and type-safe. Ada has no generic or untyped pointers; nor does it implicitly declare any pointer type. Instead, all dynamic memory allocation and deallocation must occur via explicitly declared access types. Each access type has an associated storage pool that handles the low-level details of memory management; the programmer can either use the default storage pool or define new ones (this is particularly relevant for Non-Uniform Memory Access). It is even possible to declare several different access types that all designate the same type but use different storage pools. Also, the language provides for accessibility checks, both at compile time and at run time, that ensures that an access value cannot outlive the type of the object it points to.no safe dynamic memory management in ADA, in: Writing Linux Kernel Modules in Safe Rust – Geoffrey Thomas & Alex Gaynor, The Linux Foundation, 2019-10-02
Though the semantics of the language allow automatic garbage collection of inaccessible objects, most implementations do not support it by default, as it would cause unpredictable behaviour in real-time systems. Ada supports a limited form of region-based memory management, and in Ada, destroying a storage pool also destroys all the objects in the pool.
A double-dash (), resembling an em dash, denotes comment text. Comments stop at end of line; there is intentionally no way to make a comment span multiple lines, to prevent unclosed comments from accidentally voiding whole sections of source code. Disabling a whole block of code therefore requires the prefixing of each line (or column) individually with . While this clearly denotes disabled code by creating a column of repeated '--' down the page, it also renders the experimental dis/re-enablement of large blocks a more drawn-out process in editors without block commenting support.
The semicolon () is a statement terminator, and the null or no-operation statement is . A single without a statement to terminate is not allowed.
Unlike most ISO standards, the Ada language definition (known as the Ada Reference Manual or ARM, or sometimes the Language Reference Manual or LRM) is free content. Thus, it is a common reference for Ada programmers, not only programmers implementing Ada compilers. Apart from the reference manual, there is also an extensive rationale document which explains the language design and the use of various language constructs. This document is also widely used by programmers. When the language was revised, a new rationale document was written.
One notable free software tool that is used by many Ada programmers to aid them in writing Ada source code is the GNAT Programming Studio, and GNAT which is part of the GNU Compiler Collection.
Alire is a package and toolchain management tool for Ada. |
Ada (programming language) | History | History
In the 1970s the US Department of Defense (DoD) became concerned by the number of different programming languages being used for its embedded computer system projects, many of which were obsolete or hardware-dependent, and none of which supported safe modular programming. In 1975, a working group, the High Order Language Working Group (HOLWG), was formed with the intent to reduce this number by finding or creating a programming language generally suitable for the department's and the UK Ministry of Defence's requirements. After many iterations beginning with an original straw-man proposal the eventual programming language was named Ada. The total number of high-level programming languages in use for such projects fell from over 450 in 1983 to 37 by 1996.
HOLWG crafted the Steelman language requirements , a series of documents stating the requirements they felt a programming language should satisfy. Many existing languages were formally reviewed, but the team concluded in 1977 that no existing language met the specifications. The requirements were created by the United States Department of Defense in The Department of Defense Common High Order Language program in 1978. The predecessors of this document were called, in order, "Strawman", "Woodenman", "Tinman" and "Ironman".Department of Defense (June 1978), Requirements for High Order Computer Programming Languages: "Steelman" The requirements focused on the needs of embedded computer applications, and emphasised reliability, maintainability, and efficiency. Notably, they included exception handling facilities, run-time checking, and parallel computing.
It was concluded that no existing language met these criteria to a sufficient extent,SoftTech Inc. (1976), "Evaluation of ALGOL 68, Jovial J3B, Pascal, Simula 67, and TACPOL Versus TINMAN - Requirements for a Common High Order Programming Language." - See also: ALGOL 68, JOVIAL J3B, Pascal, Simula 67, and TACPOL (Defense Technical Information Center - DTIC ADA037637, Report Number 1021-14) so a contest was called to create a language that would be closer to fulfilling them. The design that won this contest became the Ada programming language. The resulting language followed the Steelman requirements closely, though not exactly.
thumb|225x225px|Watercolour painting of Ada Lovelace
Requests for proposals for a new programming language were issued and four contractors were hired to develop their proposals under the names of Red (Intermetrics led by Benjamin Brosgol), Green (Honeywell, led by Jean Ichbiah), Blue (SofTech, led by John Goodenough) and Yellow (SRI International, led by Jay Spitzen). In April 1978, after public scrutiny, the Red and Green proposals passed to the next phase. In May 1979, the Green proposal, designed by Jean Ichbiah at Honeywell, was chosen and given the name Ada—after Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, usually known as Ada Lovelace. This proposal was influenced by the language LIS that Ichbiah and his group had developed in the 1970s. The preliminary Ada reference manual was published in ACM SIGPLAN Notices in June 1979. The Military Standard reference manual was approved on December 10, 1980 (Ada Lovelace's birthday), and given the number MIL-STD-1815 in honor of Ada Lovelace's birth year. In 1981, Tony Hoare took advantage of his Turing Award speech to criticize Ada for being overly complex and hence unreliable, but subsequently seemed to recant in the foreword he wrote for an Ada textbook.
Ada attracted much attention from the programming community as a whole during its early days. Its backers and others predicted that it might become a dominant language for general purpose programming and not only defense-related work. Ichbiah publicly stated that within ten years, only two programming languages would remain: Ada and Lisp. Early Ada compilers struggled to implement the large, complex language, and both compile-time and run-time performance tended to be slow and tools primitive. Compiler vendors expended most of their efforts in passing the massive, language-conformance-testing, government-required Ada Compiler Validation Capability (ACVC) validation suite that was required in another novel feature of the Ada language effort.
The first validated Ada implementation was the NYU Ada/Ed translator, certified on April 11, 1983. NYU Ada/Ed is implemented in the high-level set language SETL. Several commercial companies began offering Ada compilers and associated development tools, including Alsys, TeleSoft, DDC-I, Advanced Computer Techniques, Tartan Laboratories, Irvine Compiler, TLD Systems, and Verdix. Computer manufacturers who had a significant business in the defense, aerospace, or related industries, also offered Ada compilers and tools on their platforms; these included Concurrent Computer Corporation, Cray Research, Inc., Digital Equipment Corporation, Harris Computer Systems, and Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG.
In 1991, the US Department of Defense began to require the use of Ada (the Ada mandate) for all software, though exceptions to this rule were often granted. The Department of Defense Ada mandate was effectively removed in 1997, as the DoD began to embrace commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology. Similar requirements existed in other NATO countries: Ada was required for NATO systems involving command and control and other functions, and Ada was the mandated or preferred language for defense-related applications in countries such as Sweden, Germany, and Canada.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ada compilers had improved in performance, but there were still barriers to fully exploiting Ada's abilities, including a tasking model that was different from what most real-time programmers were used to.
Because of Ada's safety-critical support features, it is now used not only for military applications, but also in commercial projects where a software bug can have severe consequences, e.g., avionics and air traffic control, commercial rockets such as the Ariane 4 and 5, satellites and other space systems, railway transport and banking.
For example, the Primary Flight Control System, the fly-by-wire system software in the Boeing 777, was written in Ada, as were the fly-by-wire systems for the aerodynamically unstable Eurofighter Typhoon, Saab Gripen, Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and the DFCS replacement flight control system for the Grumman F-14 Tomcat. The Canadian Automated Air Traffic System was written in 1 million lines of Ada (SLOC count). It featured advanced distributed processing, a distributed Ada database, and object-oriented design. Ada is also used in other air traffic systems, e.g., the UK's next-generation Interim Future Area Control Tools Support () air traffic control system is designed and implemented using SPARK Ada.
It is also used in the French TVM in-cab signalling system on the TGV high-speed rail system, and the metro suburban trains in Paris, London, Hong Kong and New York City.
The Ada 95 revision of the language went beyond the Steelman requirements, targeting general-purpose systems in addition to embedded ones, and adding features supporting object-oriented programming.David A. Wheeler (1997), "Ada, C, C++, and Java vs. The Steelman". Originally published in Ada Letters July/August 1997 |
Ada (programming language) | Standardization | Standardization
+Timeline of Ada language Year Informal name Official Standard 1980 Ada ANSI MIL-STD 1815 1983 Ada 83/87 ANSI MIL-STD 1815AISO/IEC 8652:1987 1995 Ada 95 ISO/IEC 8652:1995 2007 Ada 2005 ISO/IEC 8652:1995/Amd 1:2007 2012 Ada 2012 ISO/IEC 8652:2012 2023 Ada 2022 ISO/IEC 8652:2023
Preliminary Ada can be found in ACM Sigplan Notices Vol 14, No 6, June 1979
Ada was first published in 1980 as an ANSI standard ANSI/MIL-STD 1815. As this very first version held many errors and inconsistencies , the revised edition was published in 1983 as ANSI/MIL-STD 1815A. Without any further changes, it became an ISO standard in 1987. This version of the language is commonly known as Ada 83, from the date of its adoption by ANSI, but is sometimes referred to also as Ada 87, from the date of its adoption by ISO. There is also a French translation; DIN translated it into German as DIN 66268 in 1988.
Ada 95, the joint ISO/IEC/ANSI standard ISO/IEC 8652:1995 was published in February 1995, making it the first ISO standard object-oriented programming language. To help with the standard revision and future acceptance, the US Air Force funded the development of the GNAT Compiler. Presently, the GNAT Compiler is part of the GNU Compiler Collection.
Work has continued on improving and updating the technical content of the Ada language. A Technical Corrigendum to Ada 95 was published in October 2001,ISO/IEC 8652:1995/Corr 1:2001Ada 95 RM with TC 1 and a major Amendment, ISO/IEC 8652:1995/Amd 1:2007 was published on March 9, 2007, commonly known as Ada 2005 because work on the new standard was finished that year.
At the Ada-Europe 2012 conference in Stockholm, the Ada Resource Association (ARA) and Ada-Europe announced the completion of the design of the latest version of the Ada language and the submission of the reference manual to the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 9 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) for approval. ISO/IEC 8652:2012(see Ada 2012 RM) was published in December 2012, known as Ada 2012. A technical corrigendum, ISO/IEC 8652:2012/COR 1:2016, was published (see RM 2012 with TC 1).
On May 2, 2023, the Ada community saw the formal approval of publication of the Ada 2022 edition of the programming language standard.
Despite the names Ada 83, 95 etc., legally there is only one Ada standard, the one of the last ISO/IEC standard: with the acceptance of a new standard version, the previous one becomes withdrawn. The other names are just informal ones referencing a certain edition.
Other related standards include ISO/IEC 8651-3:1988 Information processing systems—Computer graphics—Graphical Kernel System (GKS) language bindings—Part 3: Ada. |
Ada (programming language) | Language constructs | Language constructs
Ada is an ALGOL-like programming language featuring control structures with reserved words such as if, then, else, while, for, and so on. However, Ada also has many data structuring facilities and other abstractions which were not included in the original ALGOL 60, such as type definitions, records, pointers, enumerations. Such constructs were in part inherited from or inspired by Pascal. |
Ada (programming language) | "Hello, world!" in Ada | "Hello, world!" in Ada
A common example of a language's syntax is the "Hello, World!" program:
(hello.adb)
with Ada.Text_IO;
procedure Hello is
begin
Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line ("Hello, world!");
end Hello;
This program can be compiled by using the freely available open source compiler GNAT, by executing
gnatmake hello.adb |
Ada (programming language) | Data types | Data types
Ada's type system is not based on a set of predefined primitive types but allows users to declare their own types. This declaration in turn is not based on the internal representation of the type but on describing the goal which should be achieved. This allows the compiler to determine a suitable memory size for the type, and to check for violations of the type definition at compile time and run time (i.e., range violations, buffer overruns, type consistency, etc.). Ada supports numerical types defined by a range, modulo types, aggregate types (records and arrays), and enumeration types. Access types define a reference to an instance of a specified type; untyped pointers are not permitted.
Special types provided by the language are task types and protected types.
For example, a date might be represented as:
type Day_type is range 1 .. 31;
type Month_type is range 1 .. 12;
type Year_type is range 1800 .. 2100;
type Hours is mod 24;
type Weekday is (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday);
type Date is
record
Day : Day_type;
Month : Month_type;
Year : Year_type;
end record;
Important to note: Day_type, Month_type, Year_type, Hours are incompatible types, meaning that for instance the following expression is illegal:
Today: Day_type := 4;
Current_Month: Month_type := 10;
... Today + Current_Month ... -- illegal
The predefined plus-operator can only add values of the same type, so the expression is illegal.
Types can be refined by declaring subtypes:
subtype Working_Hours is Hours range 0 .. 12; -- at most 12 Hours to work a day
subtype Working_Day is Weekday range Monday .. Friday; -- Days to work
Work_Load: constant array(Working_Day) of Working_Hours -- implicit type declaration
:= (Friday => 6, Monday => 4, others => 10); -- lookup table for working hours with initialization
Types can have modifiers such as limited, abstract, private etc. Private types do not show their inner structure; objects of limited types cannot be copied. Ada 95 adds further features for object-oriented extension of types. |
Ada (programming language) | Control structures | Control structures
Ada is a structured programming language, meaning that the flow of control is structured into standard statements. All standard constructs and deep-level early exit are supported, so the use of the also supported "go to" commands is seldom needed.
-- while a is not equal to b, loop.
while a /= b loop
Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line ("Waiting");
end loop;
if a > b then
Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line ("Condition met");
else
Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line ("Condition not met");
end if;
for i in 1 .. 10 loop
Ada.Text_IO.Put ("Iteration: ");
Ada.Text_IO.Put (i);
Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line;
end loop;
loop
a := a + 1;
exit when a = 10;
end loop;
case i is
when 0 => Ada.Text_IO.Put ("zero");
when 1 => Ada.Text_IO.Put ("one");
when 2 => Ada.Text_IO.Put ("two");
-- case statements have to cover all possible cases:
when others => Ada.Text_IO.Put ("none of the above");
end case;
for aWeekday in Weekday'Range loop -- loop over an enumeration
Put_Line ( Weekday'Image(aWeekday) ); -- output string representation of an enumeration
if aWeekday in Working_Day then -- check of a subtype of an enumeration
Put_Line ( " to work for " &
Working_Hours'Image (Work_Load(aWeekday)) ); -- access into a lookup table
end if;
end loop; |
Ada (programming language) | Packages, procedures and functions | Packages, procedures and functions
Among the parts of an Ada program are packages, procedures and functions.
Functions differ from procedures in that they must return a value. Function calls cannot be used "as a statement", and their result must be assigned to a variable. However, since Ada 2012, functions are not required to be pure and may mutate their suitably declared parameters or the global state.
Example:
Package specification (example.ads)
package Example is
type Number is range 1 .. 11;
procedure Print_and_Increment (j: in out Number);
end Example;
Package body (example.adb)
with Ada.Text_IO;
package body Example is
i : Number := Number'First;
procedure Print_and_Increment (j: in out Number) is
function Next (k: in Number) return Number is
begin
return k + 1;
end Next;
begin
Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line ( "The total is: " & Number'Image(j) );
j := Next (j);
end Print_and_Increment;
-- package initialization executed when the package is elaborated
begin
while i < Number'Last loop
Print_and_Increment (i);
end loop;
end Example;
This program can be compiled, e.g., by using the freely available open-source compiler GNAT, by executing
gnatmake -z example.adb
Packages, procedures and functions can nest to any depth, and each can also be the logical outermost block.
Each package, procedure or function can have its own declarations of constants, types, variables, and other procedures, functions and packages, which can be declared in any order. |
Ada (programming language) | Pragmas | Pragmas
A pragma is a compiler directive that conveys information to the compiler to allow specific manipulating of compiled output. Certain pragmas are built into the language, while others are implementation-specific.
Examples of common usage of compiler pragmas would be to disable certain features, such as run-time type checking or array subscript boundary checking, or to instruct the compiler to insert object code instead of a function call (as C/C++ does with inline functions). |
Ada (programming language) | Generics | Generics |
Ada (programming language) | See also | See also
Ada compilers
|
Ada (programming language) | Notes | Notes |
Ada (programming language) | References | References |
Ada (programming language) | International standards | International standards
ISO/IEC 8652: Information technology—Programming languages—Ada
ISO/IEC 15291: Information technology—Programming languages—Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS)
ISO/IEC 18009: Information technology—Programming languages—Ada: Conformity assessment of a language processor (ACATS)
IEEE Standard 1003.5b-1996, the POSIX Ada binding
Ada Language Mapping Specification, the CORBA interface description language (IDL) to Ada mapping |
Ada (programming language) | Rationale | Rationale
These documents have been published in various forms, including print.
Also available apps.dtic.mil, pdf
|
Ada (programming language) | Books | Books
795 pages. |
Ada (programming language) | Further reading | Further reading |
Ada (programming language) | External links | External links
Ada Resource Association
DOD Ada programming language (ANSI/MIL STD 1815A-1983) specification
JTC1/SC22/WG9 ISO home of Ada Standards
Ada Programming Language Materials, 1981–1990. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.
Department of Defense (June 1978), Requirements for High Order Computer Programming Languages: "Steelman"
David A. Wheeler (1996), Introduction to Steelman On-Line (version 1.2).
SoftTech Inc. (1976), "Evaluation of ALGOL 68, JOVIAL J3B, Pascal, Simula 67, and TACPOL Versus TINMAN - Requirements for a Common High Order Programming Language." - See also: ALGOL 68, JOVIAL J3B, Pascal, Simula 67, and TACPOL (Defense Technical Information Center - DTIC ADA037637, Report Number 1021-14).
David A. Wheeler (1997), "Ada, C, C++, and Java vs. The Steelman". Originally published in Ada Letters July/August 1997.
Category:Programming languages
Category:.NET programming languages
Category:Avionics programming languages
Category:High Integrity Programming Language
Category:Multi-paradigm programming languages
Category:Programming language standards
Category:Programming languages created in 1980
Category:Programming languages with an ISO standard
Category:Statically typed programming languages
Category:Systems programming languages
Category:1980 software
Category:High-level programming languages
Category:Ada Lovelace
Category:Articles with example Ada code |
Ada (programming language) | Table of Content | short description, Features, History, Standardization, Language constructs, "Hello, world!" in Ada, Data types, Control structures, Packages, procedures and functions, Pragmas, Generics, See also, Notes, References, International standards, Rationale, Books, Further reading, External links |
Alfonso Aráu | # | Redirect Alfonso Arau |
Alfonso Aráu | Table of Content | # |
Alfonso Cuarón | short description | Alfonso Cuarón Orozco ( ; ; born 28 November 1961) is a Mexican filmmaker. His accolades include four Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and seven BAFTA Awards.
Cuarón made his feature film debut with the romantic comedy Sólo con tu pareja (1991), and directed the film adaptations A Little Princess (1995), and Great Expectations (1998). His breakthrough came with the coming-of-age film Y tu mamá también (2001) which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He gained greater prominence for directing the fantasy film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), the dystopian drama Children of Men (2006), the science fiction drama Gravity (2013), and the semi-autobiographical drama Roma (2018). The latter two won him Academy Awards for Best Director. He also won Best Film Editing for Gravity and Best Cinematography for Roma. |
Alfonso Cuarón | Early life and education | Early life and education
Cuarón was born in Mexico City, the son of Alfredo Cuarón, a doctor specializing in nuclear medicine, and Cristina Orozco, a pharmaceutical biochemist. He has a sister Christina, and two brothers; Carlos, also a filmmaker, and Alfredo, a conservation biologist. Cuarón studied philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and filmmaking at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, a school within the same university. There he met the director Carlos Marcovich and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and they made what would be his first short film, Vengeance Is Mine. |
Alfonso Cuarón | Career | Career |
Alfonso Cuarón | 1990–1999: Rise to prominence | 1990–1999: Rise to prominence
thumb|left|250px|Cuarón at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in 1998.
Cuarón began working on television in Mexico, first as a technician and then as a director. His television work led to assignments as an assistant director for several film productions including La Gran Fiesta (1985), Gaby: A True Story (1987) and Romero (1989). In 1991 he landed his first big-screen directorial assignment, Sólo con tu pareja, a sex comedy about a womanizing businessman (played by Daniel Giménez Cacho) who, after having sex with an attractive nurse, is fooled into believing he's contracted AIDS. In addition to writing, producing and directing, Cuarón co-edited the film with Luis Patlán. The film, which also starred cabaret singer Astrid Hadad and model/actress Claudia Ramírez (with whom Cuarón was linked between 1989 and 1993) was a big hit in Mexico. After this success, director Sydney Pollack hired Cuarón to direct an episode of Fallen Angels, a series of neo-noir stories produced for the Showtime premium cable network in 1993; other directors who worked on the series included Steven Soderbergh, Jonathan Kaplan, Peter Bogdanovich, and Tom Hanks. The episode was entitled, "Murder, Obliquely" (1993) starring Laura Dern, Alan Rickman, and Diane Lane.
In 1995, Cuarón released his first feature film produced in the United States, A Little Princess, an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic 1905 novel of the same name. The film received critical acclaim with Janet Maslin of The New York Times declaring, "[the film] is a bright, beautiful and enchantingly childlike vision", one that "draw[s] its audience into the wittily heightened reality of a fairy tale" and "takes enough liberties to re-invent rather than embalm Miss Burnett's assiduously beloved story". The film went on to receive two Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography and Best Production Design. Cuarón's next feature was also a literary adaptation, a modernized version of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations starring Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robert De Niro. The film received mixed reviews to negative reviews. Russell Smith of The Austin Chronicle did however praise the film writing, ". What's truly intriguing about this film, though, is the stylishness with which Cuaron (A Little Princess) reinvents Dickens' hoary, often-remade tale. This Great Expectations has a seductive, enchanting feel that has nothing to do with sweet, gauzy sentiments or calculatedly “magical” Hollywood imagery". |
Alfonso Cuarón | 2000–2009: Career breakthrough and success | 2000–2009: Career breakthrough and success
right|thumb|250px|Cuarón and Clive Owen, who worked together on Children of Men.
In 2001, Cuarón found himself returning to Mexico with a Spanish-speaking cast to film Y tu mamá también, starring Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Maribel Verdú. It was a provocative and controversial road comedy about two sexually obsessed teenagers who take an extended road trip with an attractive married woman who is much older than they. The film's open portrayal of sexuality and frequent rude humor, as well as the politically and socially relevant asides, made the film an international hit and a major success with critics. The film was distributed through IFC in America allowing the film to collect $13.8 million in the United States, unparalleled at the time for Latin American films.Alvaray, Luisela. 2008. "National, Regional, and Global: New Waves of Latin American Cinema." Cinema Journal 47 (3): 48-65. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.0.0002. Critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "It is clear Cuaron is a gifted director, and here he does his best work to date." Cuarón shared an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay with co-writer and brother Carlos Cuarón.
In 2004, Cuarón directed the third film in the successful Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Cuarón faced criticism at the time from some Harry Potter fans for his approach to the film, notably its tendency to take more creative liberties with the source material than its predecessors. However, author J. K. Rowling, who had seen and loved Cuarón's film Y tu mamá también, said that it was her personal favorite from the series so far.J.K. Rowling Accessed 17 January 2007. Critically, the film was also better received than the first two installments, with some critics remarking its new tone and for being the first Harry Potter film to truly capture the essence of the novels. It has been subsequently rated by audience polls and critics as the best of the movie franchise series. The film earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Score for John Williams.
In 2006, Cuarón's feature Children of Men, an adaptation of the P. D. James novel starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine, received wide critical acclaim including three Academy Award nominations. Cuarón himself received two nominations for his work on the film, in Best Film Editing (with Alex Rodríguez) and Best Adapted Screenplay (with several collaborators).
He created the production and distribution company Esperanto Filmoj ("Esperanto Films", named because of his support for the international language EsperantoInterview by Sam Green with Cuarón.), which has credits in the films Duck Season, Pan's Labyrinth, and Gravity. Cuarón also directed the controversial public service announcement I Am Autism (2009) for Autism Speaks that was criticized by disability rights groups for its negative portrayal of autism. |
Alfonso Cuarón | 2010–present: Awards recognition | 2010–present: Awards recognition
thumb|250px|left|Cuaron at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival
In 2010, Cuarón began to develop the film Gravity, a drama set in space. He was joined by producer David Heyman, with whom Cuarón worked on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, the film opened the 70th Venice International Film Festival in August. The film was then released in America in October 2013. The film became a financial success, earning 723.2 million at the box office against a budget of 130 million. The film also received many awards nominations. For the film, he received the Golden Globe Award in the category of Best Director. The film received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Cuarón won for Best Directing, becoming the first Latin American to win the award, while he and Mark Sanger received the award for Best Film Editing.
thumb|right|Cuarón in 2013
In 2013, Cuarón created Believe, a science fiction/fantasy/adventure series that was broadcast as part of the 2013–14 United States network television schedule on NBC as a mid-season entry. The series was created by Cuarón for Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television. In 2014, Time placed him in its list of "100 Most Influential People in the World" – Pioneers.
In May 2015, Cuarón was announced as the president of the jury for the 72nd Venice International Film Festival.
Production began in fall 2016 for Cuarón's eighth film, Roma, a tale of a housekeeper for a middle class Mexican family in 1970s Mexico City, based on the life of his family's longtime maid, Liboria Rodríguez. The project was produced by Cuarón, Gabriela Rodríguez and Nicolás Celis and starred Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira both of whom received Oscar nominations. The film debuted at the 75th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion, and was distributed to select Mexican and American theaters before its online release on Netflix. Roma was highly acclaimed upon release; among its accolades are two Golden Globes (Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Director for Cuarón) and three Academy Awards (Best Director, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Cinematography for Cuarón) out of a leading ten nominations.
In 2019, Cuaron signed an overall TV deal at Apple. His first series for Apple was the psychological thriller Disclaimer, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Louis Partridge and Sasha Baron Cohen; it is based on the eponymous novel by Renée Knight, with Cuaron writing and directing every episode. |
Alfonso Cuarón | Style | Style
Cuaron's style is a mix of several mainstream Hollywood conventions while breaking from that dominant influence by taking an unorthodox approach that uses voiceover narration and by unconventionally lengthy shots. These longer cuts, narration, and often, moving cameras are more typical of documentary film.
In his first feature film the average shot length is around six seconds, and ten years later for Y Tu Mama Tambien the average increased to 19.6 seconds. The Prisoner of Azkaban had an average of seconds, while the subsequent Children of Men had an extraordinary average of 16 seconds between cuts. A typical Hollywood movie cuts every two seconds.Udden, James. 2009. "Child of the Long Take: Alfonso Cuaron's Film Aesthetics in the Shadow of Globalization." Style (University Park,PA) 43 (1): 26-44. Cuarón's career shows mainstream Hollywood influences, which has spilled over to less mainstream films made outside of Hollywood. Children of Men was influenced by disaster and science fiction movie conventions. The Prisoner of Azkaban was a continuation of Cuarón's take on the coming-of-age genre after Y, Tu Mama Tambien.Baer, Hester, and Ryan Long. "Transnational Cinema and the Mexican State in Alfonso Cuarón's 'Y Tu Mamá También." South Central Review 21, no. 3 (2004): 150-68. That film is in the form of an American road movie, along with teen movie elements.Tierney, Dolores, "From Hollywood and Back: Alfonso Cuarón Adventures in Genre," in New Transnationalisms in Contemporary Latin America Cinemas (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 76. Voice-over narration adds a documentary feel. The narration, interjected by a non-diagetic voice not belonging to any character, highlights the socioeconomic state of not only the main characters, but also minor characters who otherwise seem irrelevant to the overall narrative. |
Alfonso Cuarón | Themes | Themes
As mentioned above, the voice-over narration in Y Tu Mama Tambien contains political messages. In the aforementioned film Cuarón tackles Mexican identity and sovereignty. With the backdrop of the 1990s and the advent of NAFTA and neoliberalism in Mexico, Cuarón critiques Mexico for the path they are heading towards a globalized economy and world.Saldaña-Portillo, Maria Josefina. "In the Shadow of NAFTA: Y Tu Mamá También Revisits the National Allegory of Mexican Sovereignty." American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2005): 751-77. Cuarón also addresses Mexican history such as colonialism and the long unfulfilled promises of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Using the same film as an example the narrator states that a new political party is in power, but hints that no real change will come about. This is also supported with one of the main characters, Julio, sharing a last name with the Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, yet the name does not push Julio into action or in other words he lacks the initiative and interest in the country.Hind, Emily “"Provincia in Recent Mexican Cinema, 1989-2004," Discourse 26, no. 1 & 2 (2004): 26. These same themes of identity and history, particularly of Mexico, were first addressed in his first feature film Solo con tu pareja. In both films Cuarón uses allegory that ties into a national identity and/or history. On top of these themes he also tackles class, but that can be considered a subcategory of economics or politics in which he already grapples with. |
Alfonso Cuarón | Personal life | Personal life
Cuarón's first marriage was to Mariana Elizondo with whom he has a son, Jonás Cuarón, born in 1981. Jonás is also a film director, known for Year of the Nail and Desierto. Alfonso's second marriage, from 2001 to 2008, was to Italian actress and freelance journalist Annalisa Bugliani, with whom he has two children.
He has publicly shown his fascination for the Esperanto language and his support for the Esperanto movement. He called his production company Esperanto Filmoj. In October 2023, Cuarón signed an open letter from artists to US President Joe Biden calling for a ceasefire of Israeli bombardment in Gaza.
Cuarón is a vegetarian and has been living in London since 2000.Baftas 2014: Alfonso Cuarón wins best director for Gravity | Film . theguardian.com. Retrieved on 2014-05-22. |
Alfonso Cuarón | Filmography | Filmography
+Directed features Year Title Distributor 1991 Sólo con tu pareja Warner Bros. 1995 A Little Princess 1998 Great Expectations 20th Century Fox 2001 Y tu mamá también IFC Films 2004 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Warner Bros. Pictures 2006 Children of Men Universal Pictures 2013 Gravity Warner Bros. Pictures 2018 Roma Netflix |
Alfonso Cuarón | Awards and nominations | Awards and nominations
+ Awards and nominations received by Cuaron's films Year Title Academy Awards BAFTA Awards Golden Globe Awards Nominations Wins Nominations Wins Nominations Wins1995A Little Princess22001Y tu mamá también1212004Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban242006Children of Men3322013Gravity107116412018Roma1037432Total2810271283 |
Alfonso Cuarón | See also | See also
Esperanto Filmoj
Cha Cha Cha Films
Cinema of Mexico
List of Academy Award records |
Alfonso Cuarón | References | References |
Alfonso Cuarón | External links | External links
Alfonso Cuarón: A Life in Pictures, BAFTA webcast, 27 July 2007
Category:1961 births
Category:Living people
Category:Best Cinematographer Academy Award winners
Category:Best Cinematography BAFTA Award winners
Category:Best Directing Academy Award winners
Category:Best Director AACTA International Award winners
Category:Best Director BAFTA Award winners
Category:Best Director Golden Globe winners
Category:Best Film Editing Academy Award winners
Category:Directors Guild of America Award winners
Category:Directors of Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winners
Category:Directors of Golden Lion winners
Category:English-language film directors
Category:Fantasy film directors
Category:Filmmakers who won the Best Film BAFTA Award
Category:Filmmakers who won the Best Foreign Language Film BAFTA Award
Category:Film directors from Mexico City
Category:Hugo Award–winning writers
Category:Mexican cinematographers
Category:Mexican Esperantists
Category:Mexican expatriates in the United Kingdom
Category:Mexican film producers
Category:Mexican film directors
Category:Mexican people of Spanish descent
Category:Mexican screenwriters
Category:Mexican television directors
Category:Mexican television producers
Category:Mexican television writers
Category:National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni
Category:Nebula Award winners
Category:Science fiction film directors
Category:Spanish-language film directors
Category:Writers from Mexico City |
Alfonso Cuarón | Table of Content | short description, Early life and education, Career, 1990–1999: Rise to prominence, 2000–2009: Career breakthrough and success, 2010–present: Awards recognition, Style, Themes, Personal life, Filmography, Awards and nominations, See also, References, External links |
Arianism | Short description | Arianism (, ) is a Christological doctrine which rejects the traditional notion of the Trinity and considers Jesus to be a creation of God, and therefore distinct from God. It is named after its major proponent, Arius (). It is considered heretical by most modern mainstream branches of Christianity. It is held by a minority of modern denominations, although some of these denominations hold related doctrines such as Socinianism, and some shy away from use of the term Arian due to the term's historically negative connotations. Modern mainstream denominations sometimes connected to the teaching include Jehovah's Witnesses, some individual churches within the Churches of Christ (including the movement's founder Barton W. Stone), as well as some Hebrew Roots Christians and Messianic Jews (although many Messianic Jews also follow Nicene Christianity).
It is first attributed to Arius (), a Christian presbyter who preached and studied in Alexandria, Egypt, although it developed out of various pre-existing strands of Christianity which differed from later Nicene Christianity in their view of Christology. Arian theology holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was begotten by God the Father with the difference that the Son of God did not always exist but was begotten/made before time by God the Father; therefore, Jesus was not coeternal with God the Father, but nonetheless Jesus began to exist outside time.
Arius' trinitarian theology, later given an extreme form by Aetius and his disciple Eunomius and called anomoean ('dissimilar'), asserts a total dissimilarity between the Son and the Father. Arianism holds that the Son is distinct from the Father and therefore subordinate to him. The term Arian is derived from the name Arius; it was not what the followers of Arius' teachings called themselves, but rather a term used by outsiders. The nature of Arius's and his supporters' teachings were opposed to the theological doctrines held by Homoousian Christians regarding the nature of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. Homoousianism and Arianism were contending interpretations of Jesus's divinity, both based upon the trinitarian theological orthodoxy of the time.
Homoousianism was formally affirmed by the first two ecumenical councils; since then, Arianism has been condemned as "the heresy or sect of Arius". Trinitarian (Homoousian) doctrines were vigorously upheld by Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria, who insisted that Jesus (God the Son) was "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father. Arius dissented: "If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not." The ecumenical First Council of Nicaea of 325 declared Arianism to be a heresy. According to Everett Ferguson, "The great majority of Christians had no clear views about the nature of the Trinity and they did not understand what was at stake in the issues that surrounded it."
Arianism is also used to refer to other nontrinitarian theological systems of the 4th century, which regarded Jesus Christ—the Son of God, the Logos—as either a begotten creature of a similar or different substance to that of the Father, but not identical (as Homoiousian and Anomoeanism) or as neither uncreated nor created in the sense other beings are created (as in semi-Arianism). |
Arianism | Origin | Origin
Some early Christians whose beliefs would have fallen under 'orthodoxy' in the third and fourth centuries denied the eternal generation of the Son; they viewed the Son as having been begotten in time. These include Tertullian and Justin Martyr. Tertullian is considered a pre-Arian. Among the other church fathers, Origen was accused of Arianism for using terms like "second God", and Patriarch Dionysius of Alexandria was denounced at Rome for saying that Son is a work and creature of God (i.e., a created being). However, the subordinationism of Origen is not identical to Arianism, and it has been generally viewed as closer to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan view of the Trinity.
Controversy over Arianism arose in the late 3rd century and persisted throughout most of the 4th century. It involved most church members—from simple believers, priests, and monks to bishops, emperors, and members of Rome's imperial family. Two Roman emperors, Constantius II and Valens, became Arians or semi-Arians, as did prominent Gothic, Vandal, and Lombard warlords both before and after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The antipopes Felix II and Ursinus were Arian, and Pope Liberius was forced to sign the Arian Creed of Sirmium of 357—though the letter says he willingly agreed with Arianism. Such a deep controversy within the early Church during this period could not have materialized without significant historical influences providing a basis for the Arian doctrines.
thumb|250px|An imagined portrait of Arius. Detail of a Cretan School icon, c. 1591, depicting the First Council of Nicaea
Arius had been a pupil of Lucian of Antioch at Lucian's private academy in Antioch and inherited from him a modified form of the teachings of Paul of Samosata. Arius taught that God the Father and the Son of God did not always exist together eternally. |
Arianism | Beliefs | Beliefs
Little of Arius's own work survives except in quotations selected for polemical purposes by his opponents, and there is no certainty about what theological and philosophical traditions formed his thought. The influence from the One of Neoplatonism was widespread throughout the Eastern Roman Empire, and this influenced Arius.
Arius's basic premise is that only God is independent of existing. Since the Son is dependent, he must, therefore, be called a creature. Arians put forward a question for their belief: "Has God birthed Jesus willingly or unwillingly?" This question was used to argue that Jesus is dependent for his existence since Jesus exists only because God wants him to be.
Arianism taught that the Logos was a divine being created by God the Father before the world's creation, serving as the medium for creation, and that the Son of God is subordinate to the Father. The concept of the Logos refers to an inner attribute of God associated with wisdom. Jesus is identified as the Logos due to a supposed resemblance to this inner aspect of God’s nature.
A verse from Proverbs was used, according to Arianism, the creation of the Son by God, "The Lord created me at the beginning of his work." Therefore, they posited, the Son was rather the very first and the most perfect of God's creatures, and he was called "God" only by the Father's permission and power. The term "Son" is ambiguous, as Arians use adoptionist theology to support the belief that Jesus was created ex nihilo by the Father.
Arians do not believe in the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. The letter of the Arian bishop Auxentius of Durostorum regarding the Arian missionary Ulfilas (–383) gives an overview of Arian beliefs. Ulfilas, ordained by Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, became a missionary to the Goths and believed that God the Father, the "unbegotten" Almighty, is the only true God. According to Auxentius, Ulfilas believed the Son of God, Jesus, the "only-begotten god", was begotten before time began., , The Holy Spirit, he wrote, is the illuminating and sanctifying power of God. Using 1 Corinthians 8:5–6 as a proof text:
The creed of Ulfilas, which concludes the letter mentioned above, distinguishes God the Father ("unbegotten"), who is the only true God, from the Son of God ("only-begotten") and the Holy Spirit, the illuminating and sanctifying power, which is neither God the Father nor the God the Son:
A letter from Arius to the Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia (died 341) states the core beliefs of the Arians:
Principally, the dispute between Trinitarianism and Arianism was about two questions:
has the Son always existed eternally with the Father, or was the Son begotten at a certain time in the past?
is the Son equal to the Father or subordinate to the Father?
For Constantine, these were minor theological points that stood in the way of uniting the Empire, but for the theologians, it was of huge importance; for them, it was a matter of salvation.
For the theologians of the 19th century, it was already obvious that, in fact, Arius and Alexander/Athanasius did not have much to quarrel about; the difference between their views was very small, and the end of the fight was by no means clear during their quarrel, both Arius and Athanasius suffering a great deal for their own views. Arius was the father of Homoiousianism, and Alexander was the father of Homoousianism, which Athanasius championed. For those theologians, it was clear that Arius, Alexander, and Athanasius were far from a true doctrine of the Trinity, which developed later, historically speaking.
Guido M. Berndt and Roland Steinacher state clearly that the beliefs of Arius were acceptable ("not especially unusual") to a huge number of orthodox clergy; this is the reason why such a major conflict was able to develop inside the Church since Arius's theology received widespread sympathy (or at least was not considered to be overly controversial) and could not be dismissed outright as individual heresy. |
Arianism | Homoian Arianism | Homoian Arianism
Arianism had several different variants, including Eunomianism and Homoian Arianism. Homoian Arianism is associated with Acacius and Eudoxius. Homoian Arianism avoided the use of the word ousia to describe the relation of Father to Son, and described these as "like" each other. Hanson lists twelve creeds that reflect the Homoian faith:
The Second Sirmian Creed of 357
The Creed of Nice (Constantinople) 360
The creed put forward by Acacius at Seleucia, 359
The Rule of Faith of Ulfilas
The creed uttered by Ulfilas on his deathbed, 383
The creed attributed to Eudoxius
The Creed of Auxentius of Milan, 364
The Creed of Germinius professed in correspondence with Ursacius of Singidunum and Valens of Mursa
Palladius's rule of faith
Three credal statements found in fragments, subordinating the Son to the Father |
Arianism | Struggles with orthodoxy | Struggles with orthodoxy |
Arianism | First Council of Nicaea | First Council of Nicaea
thumb|upright=1.1|Constantine burning Arian books, illustration from a compendium of canon law,
In 321, Arius was denounced by a synod at Alexandria for teaching a heterodox view of the relationship of Jesus to God the Father. Because Arius and his followers had great influence in the schools of Alexandria—counterparts to modern universities or seminaries—their theological views spread, especially in the eastern Mediterranean.
By 325, the controversy had become significant enough that the Emperor Constantine called an assembly of bishops, the First Council of Nicaea, which condemned Arius's doctrine and formulated the original Nicene Creed of 325. The Nicene Creed's central term, used to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son, is Homoousios (), or Consubstantiality, meaning "of the same substance" or "of one being". The Athanasian Creed is less often used but is a more overtly anti-Arian statement on the Trinity.
The focus of the Council of Nicaea was the nature of the Son of God and his precise relationship to God the Father. (See Paul of Samosata and the Synods of Antioch.) Arius taught that Jesus Christ was divine or holy and was sent to Earth for the salvation of mankind, but that Jesus Christ was not equal to God the Father (infinite, primordial origin) in rank, and that God the Father and the Son of God were not equal to the Holy Spirit. Under Arianism, Christ was instead not consubstantial with God the Father since both the Father and the Son under Arius were made of "like" essence or being (see homoiousia) but not of the same essence or being (see homoousia).
In the Arian view, God the Father is a deity and is divine; the Son of God is not a deity, but is still divine. God the Father sent Jesus to earth for salvation of mankind. Ousia is essence or being, in Eastern Christianity, and is the aspect of God that is completely incomprehensible to mankind and human perception. It is all that subsists by itself and which has not its being in another, God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit all being uncreated.
According to the teaching of Arius, the preexistent Logos and thus the incarnate Jesus Christ was a begotten being; only the Son was directly begotten by God the Father, before ages, but was of a distinct, though similar, essence or substance from the Creator. His opponents argued that this would make Jesus less than God and that this was heretical. Much of the distinction between the differing factions was over the phrasing that Christ expressed in the New Testament to express submission to God the Father. The theological term for this submission is kenosis. This ecumenical council declared that Jesus Christ was true God, co-eternal and consubstantial (i.e., of the same substance) with God the Father.
Constantine is believed to have exiled those who refused to accept the Nicaean Creed—Arius himself, the deacon Euzoios, and the Libyan bishops Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais, along with the bishops who signed the creed but refused to join in condemnation of Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea. The emperor also ordered all copies of the Thalia, the book in which Arius had expressed his teachings, to be burned. However, there is no evidence that his son and ultimate successor, Constantius II, a Semi-Arian Christian, was exiled.
Although he was committed to maintaining what the Great Church had defined at Nicaea, Constantine was also bent on pacifying the situation and eventually became more lenient toward those condemned and exiled at the council. First, he allowed Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was a protégé of his sister, and Theognis to return once they had signed an ambiguous statement of faith. The two, and other friends of Arius, worked for Arius's rehabilitation.
At the First Synod of Tyre in AD 335, they brought accusations against Athanasius, now bishop of Alexandria, the primary opponent of Arius. After this, Constantine had Athanasius banished since he considered him an impediment to reconciliation. In the same year, the Synod of Jerusalem under Constantine's direction readmitted Arius to communion in 336. Arius died on the way to this event in Constantinople. Some scholars suggest that Arius may have been poisoned by his opponents. Eusebius and Theognis remained in the Emperor's favor; when Constantine -who had been a catechumen much of his adult life- accepted baptism on his deathbed, it was from Eusebius of Nicomedia. |
Arianism | Condemnation by the Council of Nicaea | Condemnation by the Council of Nicaea
Emperor Constantine the Great summoned the First Council of Nicaea, which defined the dogmatic fundaments of Christianity; these definitions served to rebut the questions posed by Arians. Since Arius was not a bishop, he was not allowed to sit on the council, and it was Eusebius of Nicomedia who spoke for him and the position he represented. All the bishops who were there were in agreement with the major theological points of the proto-orthodoxy, since at that time all other forms of Christianity "had by this time already been displaced, suppressed, reformed, or destroyed".
Although the proto-orthodox won the previous disputes, due to the more precise defining of orthodoxy, they were vanquished with their own weapons, ultimately being declared heretics, not because they would have fought against ideas regarded as theologically correct, but because their positions lacked the precision and refinement needed by the fusion of several contradictory theses accepted at the same time by later orthodox theologians.
Of the roughly 300 bishops in attendance at the Council of Nicaea, two bishops did not sign the Nicene Creed that condemned Arianism. Constantine the Great also ordered a penalty of death for those who refused to surrender the Arian writings:
Ten years after the Council of Nicaea, Constantine the Great, who was himself later baptized by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia in 337 AD, convened another gathering of church leaders at the regional First Synod of Tyre in 335, attended by 310 bishops, to address various charges mounted against Athanasius by his detractors, such as "murder, illegal taxation, sorcery, and treason", following his refusal to readmit Arius into fellowship. Athanasius was exiled to Trier (in modern Germany) following his conviction at Tyre of conspiracy, and Arius was, effectively, exonerated.Socrates of Constantinople, Church History, book 1, chapter 33. Anthony F. Beavers, Chronology of the Arian Controversy.
Athanasius eventually returned to Alexandria in 346, after the deaths of both Arius and Constantine. Though Arianism had spread, Athanasius and other Nicene Christian church leaders crusaded against Arian theology, and Arius was anathemised and condemned as a heretic once more at the ecumenical First Council of Constantinople of 381, attended by 150 bishops. The Roman Emperors Constantius II (337–361) and Valens (364–378) were Arians or Semi-Arians, as was the first King of Italy, Odoacer (433?–493), and the Lombards were also Arians or Semi-Arians until the 7th century. The ruling elite of Visigothic Spain was Arian until 589. Many Goths adopted Arian beliefs upon their conversion to Christianity. The Vandals actively spread Arianism in North Africa. |
Arianism | Aftermath of Nicaea | Aftermath of Nicaea
thumb|Once the orthodox Trinitarians succeeded in defeating Arianism, they censored any signs that the perceived heresy left behind. This mosaic in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna has had images of the Arian king, Theoderic, and his court removed. On some columns their hands remain.
The First Council of Nicaea did not end the controversy, as many bishops of the Eastern provinces disputed the homoousios, the central term of the Nicene Creed, as it had been used by Paul of Samosata, who had advocated a monarchianist Christology. Both the man and his teaching, including the term homoousios, had been condemned by the Synods of Antioch in 269.
Hence, after Constantine's death in 337, open dispute resumed again. Constantine's son Constantius II, who had become emperor of the eastern part of the Roman Empire, actually encouraged the Arians and set out to reverse the Nicene Creed. His advisor in these affairs was Eusebius of Nicomedia, who had already at the Council of Nicaea been the head of the Arian party, and was made the bishop of Constantinople.
Constantius used his power to exile bishops adhering to the Nicene Creed, especially St Athanasius of Alexandria, who fled to Rome. In 355 Constantius became the sole Roman emperor and extended his pro-Arian policy toward the western provinces, frequently using force to push through his creed, even exiling Pope Liberius and installing Antipope Felix II.
The Third Council of Sirmium in 357 was the high point of Arianism. The Seventh Arian Confession (Second Sirmium Confession) held that both homoousios (of one substance) and homoiousios (of similar substance) were unbiblical and that the Father is greater than the Son. This confession was later known as the Blasphemy of Sirmium.
But since many persons are disturbed by questions concerning what is called in Latin substantia, but in Greek ousia, that is, to make it understood more exactly, as to 'coessential,' or what is called, 'like-in-essence,' there ought to be no mention of any of these at all, nor exposition of them in the Church, for this reason and for this consideration, that in divine Scripture nothing is written about them, and that they are above men's knowledge and above men's understanding;
As debates raged in an attempt to come up with a new formula, three camps evolved among the opponents of the Nicene Creed. The first group mainly opposed the Nicene terminology and preferred the term homoiousios (alike in substance) to the Nicene homoousios, while they rejected Arius and his teaching and accepted the equality and co-eternality of the persons of the Trinity. Because of this centrist position, and despite their rejection of Arius, they were called "Semi-Arians" by their opponents.
The second group also avoided invoking the name of Arius, but in large part followed Arius's teachings and, in another attempted compromise wording, described the Son as being like (homoios) the Father. A third group explicitly called upon Arius and described the Son as unlike (anhomoios) the Father. Constantius wavered in his support between the first and the second party, while harshly persecuting the third.
Epiphanius of Salamis labeled the party of Basil of Ancyra in 358 "Semi-Arianism". This is considered unfair by Kelly who states that some members of the group were virtually orthodox from the start but disliked the adjective homoousios while others had moved in that direction after the out-and-out Arians had come into the open.
The debates among these groups resulted in numerous synods, among them the Council of Serdica in 343, the Fourth Council of Sirmium in 358 and the double Council of Rimini and Seleucia in 359, and no fewer than fourteen further creed formulas between 340 and 360. This lead the pagan observer Ammianus Marcellinus to comment sarcastically: "The highways were covered with galloping bishops." None of these attempts was acceptable to the defenders of Nicene orthodoxy. Writing about the latter councils, Saint Jerome remarked that the world "awoke with a groan to find itself Arian."
After Constantius's death in 361, his successor Julian, a devotee of Rome's pagan gods, declared that he would no longer attempt to favor one church faction over another, and allowed all exiled bishops to return. This increased dissension among Nicene Christians. The emperor Valens, however, revived Constantius's policy and supported the "Homoian" party, exiling bishops and often using force. During this persecution many bishops were exiled to the other ends of the Roman Empire, e.g., Saint Hilary of Poitiers to the eastern provinces. These contacts and their common plight led to a rapprochement between the western supporters of the Nicene Creed and the homoousios and the eastern Semi-Arians. |
Arianism | Council of Constantinople | Council of Constantinople
It was not until the co-reigns of Gratian and Theodosius that Arianism was effectively wiped out among the ruling class and elite of the Eastern Empire. Valens died in the Battle of Adrianople in 378 and was succeeded by Theodosius I, who adhered to the Nicene Creed. This allowed for settling the dispute. Theodosius's wife St Flacilla was instrumental in his campaign to end Arianism.
Two days after Theodosius arrived in Constantinople, 24 November 380, he expelled the Arian bishop, Demophilus of Constantinople, and surrendered the churches of that city to Gregory of Nazianzus, the Homoiousian leader of the rather small Nicene community there, an act which provoked rioting. Theodosius had just been baptized, by bishop Acholius of Thessalonica, during a severe illness, as was common in the early Christian world. In February he and Gratian had published an edict that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith), or be handed over for punishment for not doing so.
Although much of the church hierarchy in the East had opposed the Nicene Creed in the decades leading up to Theodosius's accession, he managed to achieve unity on the basis of the Nicene Creed. In 381, at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, a group of mainly Eastern bishops assembled and accepted the Nicene Creed of 381,The text of this version of the Nicene Creed is available at which was supplemented in regard to the Holy Spirit, as well as some other changes: see Comparison of Nicene Creeds of 325 and 381. This is generally considered the end of the dispute about the Trinity and the end of Arianism among the Roman, non-Germanic peoples. |
Arianism | Among medieval Germanic tribes | Among medieval Germanic tribes
thumb|250px|The ceiling mosaic of the Arian Baptistery, built in Ravenna by the Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great.
During the time of Arianism's flowering in Constantinople, the Gothic convert and Arian bishop Ulfilas (later the subject of the letter of Auxentius cited above) was sent as a missionary to the Gothic tribes across the Danube, a mission favored for political reasons by the Emperor Constantius II. The Homoians in the Danubian provinces played a major role in the conversion of the Goths to Arianism.
Ulfilas's translation of the Bible into Gothic language and his initial success in converting the Goths to Arianism was strengthened by later events. The conversion of Goths led to a widespread diffusion of Arianism among other Germanic tribes as well, the Vandals, Langobards, Svevi, and Burgundians. When the Germanic peoples entered the provinces of the Western Roman Empire and began founding their own kingdoms there, most of them were Arian Christians.
The conflict in the 4th century had seen Arian and Nicene factions struggling for control of Western Europe. In contrast, among the Arian German kingdoms established in the collapsing Western Empire in the 5th century, there existed entirely separate Arian and Nicene Churches with parallel hierarchies, each serving different sets of believers. The Germanic elites were Arians, and the Romance-majority population was Nicene.
The Arian Germanic tribes were generally tolerant towards Nicene Christians and other religious minorities, including the Jews.
The apparent resurgence of Arianism after Nicaea was more an anti-Nicene reaction exploited by Arian sympathizers than a pro-Arian development. By the end of the 4th century it had surrendered its remaining ground to Trinitarianism. In Western Europe, Arianism, which had been taught by Ulfilas, the Arian missionary to the Germanic tribes, was dominant among the Goths, Langobards and Vandals. By the 8th century, it had ceased to be the tribes' mainstream belief as the tribal rulers gradually came to adopt Nicene orthodoxy. This trend began in 496 with Clovis I of the Franks, then Reccared I of the Visigoths in 587 and Aripert I of the Lombards in 653.
The Franks and the Anglo-Saxons were unlike the other Germanic peoples in that they entered the Western Roman Empire as Pagans and were converted to Chalcedonian Christianity, led by their kings, Clovis I of the Franks, and Æthelberht of Kent and others in Britain. See also Christianity in Gaul and Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England.Frassetto, Michael, Encyclopedia of barbarian Europe, (ABC-Clio, 2003), p. 128.
The remaining tribes – the Vandals and the Ostrogoths – did not convert as a people nor did they maintain territorial cohesion. Having been militarily defeated by the armies of Emperor Justinian I, the remnants were dispersed to the fringes of the empire and became lost to history. The Vandalic War of 533–534 dispersed the defeated Vandals.Procopius, Secret Histories, Chapter 11, 18 Following their final defeat at the Battle of Mons Lactarius in 553, the Ostrogoths went back north and re-settled in south Austria. |
Arianism | From the 5th to the 7th century | From the 5th to the 7th century
thumb|upright=1.4|Arian and Chalcedonian kingdoms in 495
Much of south-eastern Europe and central Europe, including many of the Goths and Vandals respectively, had embraced Arianism (the Visigoths converted to Arian Christianity in 376 through their bishop Wulfila), which led to Arianism being a religious factor in various wars in the Roman Empire.
In the west, organized Arianism survived in North Africa, in Hispania, and parts of Italy until it was suppressed in the 6th and 7th centuries. Visigothic Spain converted to Nicene Christianity through their king Reccared I at the Third Council of Toledo in 589. Grimoald, King of the Lombards (662–671), and his young son and successor Garibald (671), were the last Arian kings in Europe. |
Arianism | From the 16th to the 19th century | From the 16th to the 19th century
Following the Protestant Reformation from 1517, it did not take long for Arian and other nontrinitarian views to resurface. The first recorded English antitrinitarian was John Assheton, who was forced to recant before Thomas Cranmer in 1548. At the Anabaptist Council of Venice 1550, the early Italian instigators of the Radical Reformation committed to the views of Michael Servetus,-who was burned alive by the orders of John Calvin in 1553- were promulgated by Giorgio Biandrata and others into Poland and Transylvania.Roland Bainton, Hunted Heretic. The Life and Death of Michael Servetus
The anti trinitarian wing of the Polish Reformation separated from the Calvinist ecclesia maior to form the ecclesia minor or Polish Brethren. These were commonly referred to as "Arians" due to their rejection of the Trinity, though in fact the Socinians, as they were later known, went further than Arius to the position of Photinus. The epithet "Arian" was also applied to the early Unitarians such as John Biddle; though in denial of the pre-existence of Christ they were again largely Socinians, not Arians.George Huntston Williams. The Radical Reformation, 3rd edition. Volume 15 of Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies. Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Brothers, 1992
In 1683, when Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, lay dying in Amsterdam—driven into exile by his outspoken opposition to King Charles II—he spoke to the minister Robert Ferguson, and professed himself an Arian.
In the 18th century the "dominant trend" in Britain, particularly in Latitudinarianism, was toward Arianism, with which Samuel Clarke, Benjamin Hoadly, William Whiston and Isaac Newton are associated.William Gibson, Robert G. Ingram Religious identities in Britain, 1660–1832 p. 92 To quote the Encyclopædia Britannica article on Arianism: "In modern times some Unitarians are virtually Arians in that they are unwilling either to reduce Christ to a mere human being or to attribute to him a divine nature identical with that of the Father.""Arianism." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Deluxe Edition. Chicago: 2007. |
Arianism | Today | Today
The teachings of the first two ecumenical councils that entirely reject Arianism include: the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East; almost all historic Protestant churches including Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, Continental Reformed, Congregationalist, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, and Free Evangelical; all entirely reject the teachings associated with Arianism.
Modern groups that currently appear to embrace some of the principles of Arianism include Unitarians and Jehovah's Witnesses. Although the origins of their beliefs are not necessarily attributed to the teachings of Arius, many of the core beliefs of Unitarians and Jehovah's Witnesses are very similar to them. |
Arianism | Jehovah's Witnesses | Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses are often referred to as "modern-day Arians",Institute for Metaphysical Studies – The Arian Christian Bible – Metaphysical Institute, 2010. p. 209. Retrieved 10 June 2014.Adam Bourque – Ten Things You Didn't Know about Jehovah's Witnesses. Michigan Skeptics Association. Retrieved 10 June 2014. usually by their opponents, although Jehovah's Witnesses themselves have denied these claims. Significant similarities in doctrine include the identification of the Father as the only true God and of Jesus Christ as the first creation of God and the intermediate agent in the creation of all other things. They also deny the personhood of the Holy Spirit, which some Arians historically affirmed. Jehovah's Witnesses exclusively worship and pray to God the Father, or Jehovah, only through Jesus (the Son) as a mediator. |
Arianism | Iglesia ni Cristo | Iglesia ni Cristo
Iglesia ni Cristo's Christology has parallels with Arianism in that it affirms that the Father is the only true God, but it denies the preexistence of Christ. Thus, Iglesia ni Cristo is Socinian rather than Arian in its Christology. |
Arianism | Other Socinian groups | Other Socinian groups
Other Biblical Unitarians such as the ChristadelphiansPearce F. Jesus: God the Son or Son of God? CMPA and Church of God General Conference are also typically Socinian rather than Arian in their Christology. |
Arianism | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) teaches a nontrinitarian theology concerning the nature of the Godhead. Similarities between LDS doctrines and Arianism were alleged as early as 1846.Mattison, Hiram. A Scriptural Defence of the Doctrine of the Trinity: Or a Check to Modern Arianism as Taught by Campbellites, Hicksites, New Lights, Universalists and Mormons, and Especially by a Sect Calling Themselves "Christians". L. Colby, 1846. There are a number of key differences between Arianism and Latter-day Saint theology. Whereas Arianism is a unitarian Christian form of classical theism, Latter-day Saint theology is a non-trinitarian (but not unitarian) form of Christianity outside of classical theism. Arianism also teaches that God is eternal, was never a man, and could not incarnate as a man; in contrast, the LDS Church teaches that "God Himself is an exalted man, perfected, enthroned, and supreme."
Whereas Arianism denies that humans can become gods, the LDS Church affirms that humans can become gods through exaltation. Whereas Arianism teaches that the Son was created, the LDS Church also teaches that the Son was procreated as a literal spirit child of the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Mother and denies any form of creation ex nihilo; the creation of Christ ex nihilo is, in contrast, a fundamental premise of Arianism.
The LDS church, in contrast to the Arian teaching that God is incorporeal, also teaches that God has a tangible body: "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us." Arianism traditionally taught that God is incomprehensible even to the Son. In contrast, the LDS Church rejects the doctrine that God is incomprehensible. Though Arianism teaches that Christ is ontologically inferior and subordinate to the Father, the LDS Church teaches that Christ is equal in power and glory with the Father.
The LDS Church teaches that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate beings united in purpose: "the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost)[...] are three physically separate beings, but fully one in love, purpose and will", as illustrated in Jesus' Farewell Prayer, his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist, his transfiguration, and the martyrdom of Stephen. Thus, the church's first Article of Faith states: "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost."
Latter-day Saints believe that the three are collectively "one eternal God" but reject the Nicene definition of the Trinity, that the three are consubstantial. In some respects, Latter-day Saint theology is more similar to social trinitarianism than to Arianism. |
Arianism | Spiritism | Spiritism
According to the reincarnationist religion of Spiritism started by French educator Allan Kardec in the 19th century, Jesus is the highest-order of spirit that has ever incarnated on Earth and is distinct from God, by whom he was created. Jesus is not considered God or part of God as in Nicene Christianity, but is nonetheless the ultimate model of human love, intelligence, and forgiveness, often cited as the governor of Earth. |
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