Editing paper required Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Editing paper required - Essay Example The goal of the class is majorly teaching and developing basic swimming skills, strategies, and sportsmanship in all students. Therefore, the teachers focus on the students’ physical activity and encourage them to interact and cooperate with one another in their individual and group activities. Not every student has in born swimming skills. So the teachers make them perform such activities that inculcate good swimming skills in them. The students are taught how to raise their comfort level in the water, control breath, and how to keep safe in the water. These are all part of the primary skills. The teachers also tell the students how to use things that are the school property in the swimming pool and respect the rights of other students.It is good to know that in a very short period, most of the children have learned how to perform freestyle stroke, kick, and breathe perfectly, although they are too young to learn all that. They are too good at swimming for their age. The teac hers have done a great job. Their approach is rational and is systematically structured to facilitate planning the lessons, conducting them, and evaluating the students’ performance. The instructors customize the course to meet students’ needs, demonstrate the required skills at an acceptable level of performance, and develop a strategy to keep help the class achieve its goals. In order to develop students’ activity, the teachers carefully monitor their practice and provide instant feedback and encouragement. There are a couple of teaching methods that I would like to point out in the class. While the teachers were teaching the students in the swimming pool, I was surprised to see that no one was trying to get into the swimming lane and teach the swimming act correctly. Although it might be hard for the teachers to practically

Leadership Must Be Empowerment To Empower Its Teams Management Essay

Leadership Must Be Empowerment To Empower Its Teams Management Essay Goleman (1998) argued that during the last decade interpersonal skills have focused on effective leadership. Where the leaders controlled, planned and inspected the organizations operation, in recent more service oriented industries, leaderships responsibilities include motivate employees, promote positive attitudes in workplace, and make a sense of participation among employees (Hogan et al., 1994). Most researchers analyze leadership effectiveness regarding to the result of the leaders performance for employees and companys stakeholders, but the consequence variables of each researchers have been different from the others. The principals of these variables are depend on how immediate they are and whether they have subjective or objective measures. These consequences which are negatively correlated, are very difficult because of the complex trade-offs among them. In order to analyze the effectiveness of leadership many criteria should be taken in to the account to handle these complexities and variation between stakeholders preferences (Yuki, 1998). Researchers have stressed that the relationship between managers and employees has an important role in effective leadership. Qualified relationship and open interaction motivate and empower employees (Boyd and Taylor, 1998; Brower, Schoorman, and Tan, 2000). Drinks (1995) and Nonaka (1988) believed that the type of leaders interaction may lead them to take advantage from their difference and learn from each other. Ensley et al. (2003) argued that conventional view of a single leadership is based on the concept that leadership is a specialized role that cannot be shared with group. This perspective is stood for more hierarchical leadership in which the leaders supervise and control all activities. In the other hand, in shared leadership all members of the team are empowered to share the tasks and responsibilities of leadership. Yuki (1998, p.3) who view leadership as shared process cited that important decisions about what to do and how to do it are made through the use of an interac tive process that involves many different people who influence each other, not by a single person. Managers have different relationships with their employees and as Boyd and Taylor (1998) argued the quality of these relations may have influence on their success. When they improve the quality of their relationship, employees can be more productive on their task and more encouraged to contribute in organizational activities. Argyris and Schon (1978, 1996) have claimed that supportive interaction is the basis of effective leadership. Such interaction can be a strong motivation for organizational learning (Drinks, 1995; Nonakd, 1998). Bandura (1974) emphasized that successful leaders have capacity to motivate, encourage and empower their employees. Empowerment improves employees task innovation and continuation. Empowered employees make more contributions, they accept more difficult situations, and perform more confidently. They make more effort on their given task. According to Hofstede (2001) in organizations, such as any other social units, it may be found some inequality of employees capacities and powers, or unequal distribution of power over the employees. Cotta (1976) believes that power inequality is necessary in organization, and Hofstede (2001) claimed that the distribution of power in most organizations is formed in hierarchies, and the foundation of these hierarchies is the relationship between the managers and employees. Power distance is a measure of the interpersonal power or influence (P.83) between managers and employees. The acceptance and supporting of power distance by social environment is strongly related to the national culture. The culture determines the level of correlation among managers and employees. He expressed that the effect of employees participation on the outcome variables of organizational contribution, job satisfaction and efficacy was altered by particular level of power distance. Employee empowerment or participative decision making is not a simple or new concept of management. More than 50 years of research has approved that employee contribution is a complex management tool, that if apply properly, it can improve the performance, productivity and job satisfaction (Nykodym, Simonetti, Nielsen and Welling, 1994). Cohen, Chang and Ledford (1997) argued that employee must be engaged if they comprehend the necessity of creativity and if they are interested in changing their behaviors in work in improved way. He believes that the most significant concept of organizational effectiveness and positive employee perceptions is the employees involvement. One type of employees involvement in workplace is their participation in decision making (PDM). Nykodym, Simonetti and Welling (1994) have presented four areas for employees participation. The first area is goal setting. Employees can participate in setting up a goal for their task, planning a job and the appropriate time for job execution. In the second area employees can contribute in making choice between alternative series of tasks such as: working hours, placement of supplies or options among alternatives to perform an ordinary task. Next, employees can participate in problems solving that include clarifying the subject and determining the alternative series of activities. Finally, participation may include organizational changes, such as setting company policies that may involve hiring, layoffs, profit sharing or investments. Companies can take part in any or all of these areas in any time. The first three methods of participation can be used for all areas of contribution. Employees can participate individually to make decision and determine their own target, or they may get together with a manager to make decision making team. All employees may take part in decision making group with their coworkers or managers. This participation may be formal as in quality circle or informal as a group of employees declaring their opinions to gain the general agreement. Employees contribution in decision making can be directly or indirectly through a representative elected to express the groups ideas. There are some conditions that influence the success of participative leadership, and if these conditions do not manage properly, the efforts for participative management will fail. One of the most important set of these conditions is include the values, attitudes and expectations of an organizations employees. If employees do not want to take part in decision making, any attempt to force them would fail. For successful participation an organization must have a corporate culture that express the participative leadership. Another condition is the design of current task that must be done. If the workers task depends on each other to be complete, it can encourage the independent individual participation. If employees do not trust their managers, the participation in group decision making of employees and managers may not be successful. The last set of conditions is related to the environment. According to the rapidly changing technology, governmental laws, and strong competition, employ ees participation in decision making cannot be effective unless the members have the essential technical skills. These groups must also be capable to work with each other effectively in order to make a proper decision (Nykodym, Simonetti, Nielsen and Welling, 1994). Yuki (1998) believes that shared leadership is expected to occur self-managed teams, because of the employees are independent in developing group processes. In self-managed teams employees have more authority and responsibility to make decisions which related to their tasks (Katzenbach Smith, 1993; S.G Cohen, 1991). Self-managed teams are able to make decisions, determine goals, assign work, set schedule, and so on (Yuki, 1998). However the necessity of leadership in not questioning as the team is self-managed. Barry (1991) stressed that the role of leadership in self-managed teams is more important than traditional teams. He declared that in addition to needing task-based leadership such as project definition, scheduling, and resource gathering; self-managed teams require leadership around group development processes (developing cohesiveness, establishing effective communication patterns, and so forth) (p.32). Braford (1976) suggested that the teams members with shared leadership a re more satisfied with their teams, and Katzenbach and Smith (1993) claimed that teams involved in shared leadership are more effective and productive in regard to performance. In addition Perry, Pearce and Sims (1999) argued that shared leadership improves the interpretation of teams requirements. Recently many researchers have become interested in the concept of self-managed group (Stewart and Manz,1995; Cohen and Ledford, 1994; Mohrman et al., 1995; Manz, 1986, 1992; Manz and Sims, 1980,1990). According to the idea of socio-technical systems developed by Emery and Trist (1969), during the recent years, the self-managed work groups are used as a form of work system, specifically as pressures of high educated workforce for more responsibility and empowerment through group based shared management are exerted on organizations (Pearce and Manz, 2005). Also, there is another pressure that applied for organization to become more responsive to the recent competitive environment and global economy (Wriston, 1991; Druskat and Wheeler, 2003). Self-managed teams are independent to make important decision that related to their team processes (Katzenbach Smith, 1993; S.G. Cohen, 1991; Yuki, 1998). Murry et al. (2002) emphasized that leadership is a key in team process, without leadership team members may not be able to identify with team goals. Self-managed teams as Barry (1991) argued need more leadership than traditional teams in both task-related and team development problems. There are some attributes for self-managed work teams. Under the Wall and Clegg (1986) presentation, self-managed team build of a small group of individuals who are responsible for making the unit of task, executing a variety of works and using various skills that the group possesses. Job feedback is important for work team so the difference from goal achievement can be supervised by group member in specified task area boundary. Several case studies proved the advantages of the implementation of self-managed work teams such as increased employee satisfaction, heightened socialization in the work place, increased autonomy, opportunity to learn new skills, and some other benefits include reduced absenteeism and increased performance and motivation (Cohen and Ledford, 1994; Wall and Clegg, 1986; Pearce and Ravlin, 1987). However some researchers believes that self-managed work teams have some disadvantages in actual work (Versepey, 1990; Mohrman et al., 1995). Some case study in the USA has demonstrated that one of the most important factors in self-managed work teams failure is the reluctance of the manager to transfer the power and control to the team member (Hackman, 1989; Manz and Sims, 1987). So the role of leadership in self-managed work teams is critical. Elloy (n.d.) argued that the leadership in self-managed work team has an important role that has received little attention during past years for they often they supposed that role of external leader is redundant. There are few researches on external leader and its influence on groups operations. The fundamental opinion of self-managed work teams declares that the group members have control over their work environment and responsibility for all their duties in the team. However, research by Manz and Sims (1984, 1986, 1987, and 1990) revealed that leadership exit from traditional form of supervision and control to highly facilitative form of management, less direct but necessary for the productivity and effectiveness of the group. Many authors cited Kanter (1979) as the source of knowledge about the efficacy of employee empowerment. Kanter (1979) believes that shared management and empowered employee can increase the organizational power. The power of the leader in such situation not only reduces but also may enhance especially if the organization performs better. He also mentioned that employees, who are equipped with tools, information, and support, can make better decision. Bowen and Lawler (1995) declared that empowerment lead to more satisfied customers and employees. They also provided additional evidence, considerable research unpracticed such as gain sharing, communication programs, work teams, job enrichment, skill based pay, and so on, has shown the results of these practices are consistence and positive (p.75). Randolph (1995) indicates that employee empowerment can is improved trust in the organization. In such organization employee respond positively and they will set challenging goals which when they achieve those goals they will define the goals at higher level. In the other hand managing participation does not come without potential problems in the case of initiation, structure and management, choice of issue, team work, and evaluation. When organizations begin the participation program, the managements who are at higher level direct employees to contribute in establishing task forces and teams. In addition, managers who are handled to accomplish this activity will be assessed on the success of their teams. Another problem of participation is how the organization declares the program to the employees. Managers sometime present contribution in decision-making as a luxury rather than a result oriented tool. Furthermore, if management explains clearly what they want to obtain from concept of participation, employees can accept it more rapidly. The next problem is concern with employees who are involved in participation practices. If participation depends on volunteers, it is not representative, if it does not; it is compelling (Nykodym, Simone tti, Nielsen and Welling, 1994). Fox (1998) believes the most important problem in empowerment program as that may affect profitability of the organization is managements fear of letting employees make decisions. Even Kanter (1979) who is cited as providing evidence of the effectiveness of empowerment indicates: One might wonder why more organizations do not adopt such empowering strategies. These are standard answers, that giving up control is threatening to people who have fought for every shred of it; that managers fear losing their own place and special privileges in the system, and so on forth. But I would also pot skepticism about employee abilities high on the list. (p.74) In addition, Nykodym et al. (1994) mentioned that some problems in participations are related to the structure and management. An effective empowerment needs an obvious structure. It is essential to establish all basis rules and limitation boundaries from the beginning of the program. In the other word, empowerment program requires an effective leader who can motivate the employee and set constraints. Another problem with structure and management is that managers must engage to arrange activities, support employees and reconsider the consequences. A manager cannot assign the tasks to a team without monitoring them. They must also find and manage the time needed for participation. Middle managers often oppose to employee empowerment as they think that the program will remove their power, which Blanchard and Bowles (1998) called it hazing theory of management. He believes that managers must modify the control over the employees. The reason that initiation programs and hazing are still a part of fraternal companies is that the employees want the chance to act as was acted to them. These changes are performed through training. Managers must understand that they still have a position even the authority being shared with employees. Their new role includes mentoring, coaching, and facilitating. Proper training improves managers skill of coaching and mentoring, because empower employee are often leaded in to self-managing teams need someone to facilitate their discussion until their skills are improved. This facilitating is the role of manager in self-managed team. Many managers need training in order to increase their capacity for facilitating discussions (Fox, 1998 ). Next dilemma that Nykodym, Simonetti, Nielsen and Welling (1994) referred is the issue of choice that is concerned which issue is included in participative decision making. Researchers have demonstrated that employees prefer to take part in problems that are related to their primary job operation, or their quotidian problems. But it is important not to make presumption about what problems are most significant to employees, they should be asked. As the participation has passed its experimental stage, employees may request compensation or recognition for their time and ideas. Employees must feel that they profit from participation in the effectiveness of the company. Bowen and Lawler (1992) note some management objections such as: higher required investment in selection and training, greater labor costs, incompatible service deliveries which are resulted by these changes. Other management objections mentioned by Conger and Kanungo (1988) are empowerment may lead to overconfidence and misjudgment on the followers. Appropriate training may defeat some of these objections, but not all of them. However, Fox (1998) believes that the advantage of employee empowerment exceed the disadvantages. In the other hand, employees are often opposed to empowerment program. Aeppel (1997) argued that one of the objections by Eaton employees is the responsibility of the group for each employee. He believes that when everyone mentoring everyone else it seems that having a hundred bosses. Another employee complaint that declared by Fox (1998), is that they dont want extra task than their ordinary responsibilities. He considers that employee with such objection is not motivated and he/she is not aware of the benefit of his/her task for the organization. Eurotec Company is a subsidiary of the Schott Group which is a large German glass manufacturer. According to the rapid production expansion, the company faced a number of problems, and in order to moderate these issues, the company decided to implement empowerment program. The references revealed the successful use of empowered autonomous work team to remove the problems (Sykes et al., 1997). As argued in the article, the staffs are now motivated to come along with challenges. Employees are trained to increase their technical and communication skills and they feel more involved. In conclusion, although the implementation empowerment is the biggest challenge of any organization in terms of its initiation, structure, and evaluation and so on, it is profitable for team progress, because there are more leaders to mentor teams performance, and employees motivate each other. In such environment employees are more satisfied about their job and as a result the productivity, performance and task innovation will be improved. For achieving these goals, managers have a key role to lead the organizations effectively and motivate employees to participate in decision making.

Business Cycle Theory :: essays research papers

The Sticky-Wage Model In this model, economists pursue the sluggish adjustment of nominal wages path to explain why it is that the short-run aggregate supply curve is upward sloping. For sticky nominal wages, an increase in the price level lowers the real wage therefore making labor cheaper for firms. Cheaper labor means that firms will hire more labor, and the increased labor will in turn produce more output. The time period where the nominal wage cannot adjust to the changes in price level and output signifies the positive sloping aggregate supply curve. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The nominal wage is set by the workers and the firms based on the target real wage, which may or may not be the labor supply & demand equilibrium, and on price level expectation. W =   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ãƒ ¹   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   *   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Pe Nominal Wage = Target Real Wage * Expected Price Level After the nominal wage has been set but before any hiring, firms learn the actual price level (P). From this the real wage is derived W/P = à ¹ * Pe/P Real Wage = Target Real Wage * Expected Price Level/Actual Price Level From the equation, real wage = target real wage when expected price level = actual price level real wage > target real wage when expected price level < actual price level real wage < target real wage when expected price level > actual price level The bargaining between workers and firms determine the nominal wage rate but not the actual level of employment. This is determined by the firms’ hiring decisions and the labor demand function L = Ld(W/P) Output is determined by the production function, Y = F(L). The aggregate supply curve, under the sticky-wage model, summarizes the two functions and the relationship between the price level and output. Any unexpected changes in the price level cause a deviation in the real wage, which in turn, affects the amount of labor and output. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The major weakness of the sticky-wage model however, is that in any model with an unchanging labor demand curve, unemployment falls when the real wage falls. Under this model the opposite happens, which means that the real wage should be countercyclical. Economic data over the past decades in the U.S. shows that the real wage in fact tends to rise along with output. This is evidence contrary to Keynes predictions in the General Theory. The Imperfect-Information Model Characteristics: †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Assumes that the market is clear – all wages and prices are free to adjust in order to balance supply and demand – and that differences in the short-run and long-run aggregate supply curves are from misperceptions about prices

A New Kind of Dreaming – Summary

Anthony Eaton’s a new Kind of Dreaming helps the reader to recognise the various challenges and conflicts that cause the characters to change and grow. Anthony Eaton best expresses Jamie as an outsider that is trying to find his place in the world, while uncovering the secrets of Port Barren’s shady past. This changes Jamie from an adolescent delinquent to a responsible and admirable person. Jaime develops friendships that lead him to trusting and sympathetic qualities that are unusual for him in his past of crime. Jamie faces a challenge to build a stronger relationship with Cameron, but this is an obstacle for Cameron as he tries to understand Jamie and tries to push the stereotypes of him away. Early in Jamie’s arrival in Port Barren, he evolves different relationships and forms a close bond with Cameron that challenges him to trust and care. His mentor and guide in this story is Archie, who challenges Jamie with a dreamtime story called ‘The Wanderers and the Lost Ones’ which makes him really think about where he lays. While Jamie was traveling through the desert with Cameron, he is challenged to take on new qualities and discover a new person. The challenges and conflicts that Jamie faces, turns him into a new and more preferable individual. Body Paragraph 1: As Jamie begins to strengthen his relationship with Cameron he becomes a different and greater character. Jamie discovers more admirable qualities from Cameron such as trust and loyalty. Cameron was the one person that didn’t judge Jamie by his reputation or personality and stood by him the whole entire journey, this was the beginning of their long lasting relationship. This experience was new to Jamie as he spent of lot of his life changing foster homes. He valued Cameron for his down to earth character. This example is shown to the reader from the novel when Cameron says, â€Å"I was out for my morning run when I noticed you lying here, you sure you’re okay? † [Page 53] this shows that Cameron really cares about Jamie and for his welfare even through everyone were judging him for his criminal records and stereotypes of him were soon spreading across the community. Having Cameron in his life changed Jamie and challenged him to become a more preferable person. Body Paragraph 2: A challenge that Jamie has to face and overcome is when he tries to have some sense of belonging to the community of Port Barren. Archie, his guardian throughout the novel, tells him his version of a dreamtime story called ‘The wanderers and the lost ones’. This story challenges Jamie to think whether he is lost or a wanderer. This makes him feel responsible for finding out who is disturbing the balance and it is up to him to try and restore it. This is shown to the reader when Jamie thinks, â€Å"It was weird, no beginning, no middle, no end, no plot. And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something important behind the strange words. He pondered it but couldn’t make anything of it† [page 126]. The story makes Jamie wonder who he is and how he belongs in the community. This challenges him to think more about himself and what he needs to do to change and become a better person. This also made him change the way he thought about himself, it made him to thrive to do the best he can. Conclusion: Jamie faces many conflicts and challenges throughout the novel and they all have an effect that makes him change in character. Jamie’s close relationship with Cameron helps him to thrive to be more confident about himself. This also gives him the good qualities to trust people and give them respect that they deserve. Archie’s story ‘The wonderers and the Lost ones’ challenges Jamie to look for the answer and made him change the way he though about himself, the story left him wanting him to have some sense of belonging in his life. Trekking through the desert has changed Jamie as a person and the way he looks at life. Jamie experiences countless challenges and conflicts through the novel, a new kind of dreaming, and all lead him to growth and change in the way he lives.

Laughter is the best medicine Essay

Laughter is the Best Medicine.† What do you think of this old saying? To me, it means that a cheerful frame of mind will not cure you, but it will make you think less about your ailments. Did you know that there are a lot of health benefits just from one simple laughter? First, just by laughing, you can reduce the level of stress drastically. Secondly, it helps to create a stronger bond between you and the people around you. Not only that, laughter helps to lower the chance of getting health problems. Last but not least, laughter helps to make an individual looks younger, cheerful and attractive. I reckon, sometimes we take life way too seriously. As we grow up, we tend to run through our lives with such a speed that we have no time left to laugh. â€Å"Is this what you want your life to be like to grow old without happiness but diseases?† If you are feeling down, laughing aloud may seem impossible. When you see people laughing out loud, you might be thinking â€Å"Dude, stop being so inconsiderate and annoying.† But if you are the one that is laughing out loud, you wouldn’t think that’s the case because you enjoy laughing too much. Although you probably can’t laugh off depression, one of the many benefits of laughter is that they buffer you against the negatives of life that could lead to depression. Laughter comes to be handy especially when you are in the senior years in high school. Take me as an example, 5 internals in a week can really kill my mood. That week was as awful as hell. However, I didn’t sit around being all upset over this instead I looked on a bright side and cheered myself up by laughing at the same humour with my friends. Research has proven that people that use humour to get rid of depression will feel less lonely and more positive about themselves. If there is a free natural antidote in front of you right now, why don’t you simply give it a try? It may help you to ride out of the tough times and other hurdles.

How Businesses in Puerto Rico Are Using Social Networks Essay Essays

How Businesses in Puerto Rico Are Using Social Networks Essay Essays How Businesses in Puerto Rico Are Using Social Networks Essay Essay How Businesses in Puerto Rico Are Using Social Networks Essay Essay Social Media Gives Industrial Companies Competitive Advantage. Says Thomas Industrial Network Report March 29. 2012 New York. NY Industrial companies that hesitate to encompass societal media. believing that rivals are non utilizing these platforms. are in danger of losing concern chances. harmonizing to recent research from Thomas Industrial Network. In fact. seven out of 10 little and midsize providers ( 68 per centum ) are already prosecuting with chances through these channels. deriving a competitory advantage over those who have yet to get down. More than 3. 000 respondents to Thomas studies say that they routinely use societal media to market their merchandises and services. generate leads. reply inquiries. behavior research. and derive new concern. Thomas studied the behaviours of providers ( i. e. . makers and distributers ) through its Industrial Marketer study. and purchasers through its Industrial Purchasing Barometer ( IPB ) . The research focused on their usage of platforms such as LinkedIn. YouTube. Twitter. Facebook. industry forums. and web logs. The responses paint a image of an industrial sector that has made societal networking a mainstream concern pattern. Buyers on a regular basis rely on societal media to carry on research on companies. and to seek others sentiments on peculiar providers. Indeed. 56 per centum of purchasers now recommend that all providers set up a societal media presence if they want to make concern with them. In response. providers are leaping onto the societal media bandwagon to supply information on their offerings ( 41 per centum ) . happen new chances ( 27 per centum ) . and larn what clients have to state about their companies ( 20 per centum ) . The industrial sector is rousing to the fact that societal media isn T merely a ephemeral consumer illusion. but an indispensable portion of any stigmatization and selling plan. said Susan Orr. Senior Director. Strategic Marketing. Thomas Industrial Network. Savvy providers besides understand that the most effectual societal media plans need changeless attention and eating. To act upon prospective purchasers. providers need to continually update their societal media content. and to be actively prosecuting in and initiating conversations. But for many industrial providers. giving the resources and holding the in-house expertness to pull off societal media is a challenge. In response. Thomas Industrial Network late launched a new. cost effectual plan to assist them take advantage of this of import new channel. The Social Media Program helps providers reach chances who are seeking information and advice for their concerns through channels such as LinkedIn. Twitter. Blogs. Facebook and Google+ . Thomas takes the work off their custodies. managing everything from scheme Sessionss and end scene. to composing and posting alone content for each company. We re thrilled to offer a turn-key and low-cost plan that leverages Thomas 115 old ages of experience conveying purchasers and providers of industrial merchandises and services together. said Phil Paranicas. Director of Digital Media. Thomas Industrial Network. We have made it easy for any provider to take part in societal networking. and to get down making and act uponing those chances who regularly use these platforms. For more information on Thomas Social Media Program. delight contact Mr. Paranicas at 212- 629-2134 or [ electronic mail protected ]/*Thomas has besides merely published a new. free white paper. Why industrial concerns need to hold a societal media presence and how to acquire started. which includes extra consequences of its studies. and provides societal media best patterns. To download a complimentary transcript. please visit: hypertext transfer protocol: //promoteyourbusiness. thomasnet. com/white-papers/ . About Thomas Industrial Network ® Thomas Industrial Network is an advanced information and engineering company that helps industrial concerns to link. collaborate and grow. We help companies to develop a complete web scheme. enabling them to portion merchandise informations through all of their gross revenues channels. As a consequence. we help industrial companies to increase gross revenues. better client relationships and spread out into new markets. One of our cardinal offerings is ThomasNet. com. the premier web site for merchandise sourcing and provider find and choice. We besides provide strategic web site development. tools and engineering for industrial concerns to pull off and portion merchandise and service informations internally and externally. They include WebCAD publication. and syndication of elaborate merchandise informations to impart spouses. Custom SPEC was designed for the alone demands of usage makers. Additionally. we offer societal media plans and hunt engine optimisation services to assist these concerns build trade name consciousness and generate leads. Our Sailing master Platform is the hub through which we help our clients to pull off their information. Our focal point on the industrial sector for more than a century gives Thomas Industrial Network a alone position to expect and present new solutions that help industrial concerns grow. Visit us today to larn more. Home Supplier Search Product Search Product News CAD Drawings About Us SiteMaps Categories Featured Companies Featured Categories Featured Merchandises Community Log In to MyThomas Sign Up for MyThomas Contact ThomasNet Provide Feedback Forums Careers Extra Resources Guides | White Papers Resources Press Room Testimonials FAQs Tools A ; Gadgets Job Board Deal of the Day Promote Your Business Free Listing Advertising Services Log In to Client Center  © 2013 Thomas Publishing Company. All rights reserved. See Footings and Conditionss or Privacy Statement. Website Last Modified January 31. 2013. Thomas Register ® and Thomas Regional ® are portion of ThomasNet. com. ThomasNet Is A Registered Trademark Of Thomas Publishing Company. hypertext transfer protocol: //www. thomasnet. com/print/pressroom/news/social-media-gives-industrial-companies†¦ 1/31/2013

Macbeth Tragic Hero Or A Dead Butcher English Literature Essay Essay Example

Macbeth Tragic Hero Or A Dead Butcher English Literature Essay Essay Example Macbeth Tragic Hero Or A Dead Butcher English Literature Essay Paper Macbeth Tragic Hero Or A Dead Butcher English Literature Essay Paper In my sentiment, Macbeth is represented as a tragic hero. Macbeth s characger is a authoritative illustration of a Shakespearian tragic hero. In many of Shakespeare s calamities, the chief character starts off as a really courageous, epic individual whom everyone praises. However as clip moves on, the character loses repute because he has to confront a moral quandary and fatal defect. In Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 2, we know that Macbeth is the chief character, because of his brave actions in the conflict. A tragic hero s exceeding nature by and large raises him above the mean degree of humanity. Macbeth s instance the fatal defect, katharsis was his aspiration. Macbeth s gallantry can be seen by the manner Macbeth rejects fortune that is personified as a glorious warrior. Macbeth is described as Brave Macbeth and besides as a retainer of the God Valour ; he is Valour s minion . The godMacbeth s violent nature supports his place as a hero contending for Scotland. Macbeth is seen to hold unseamed him from the nave to the chops. Shakespeare creates a violent imagination of Macbeth viciously killing Macdonwald. Clearly this is violent but besides adept. The usage of unseamed is a metaphor from vesture that shows his preciseness and expertness. Macbeth can be seen as a heroic warrior as he is contending for Scotland. He is represented as a valorous character who hunts down Scotland s enemies. Carved out his transition boulder clay he faced the slave We can see Macbeth s accomplishment as he carves like an expert. He is an complete violent death machine, but because he serves Scotland he is non a meatman even though he has the accomplishments of a meatman. When Macbeth and Banquo returned to Scotland, Macbeth was greeted by 3 enchantresss with 3 different salutations. The three enchantresss say, All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Glamis! All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor! All hail Macbeth that shalt be king afterlife. ( Act 1 Scene 3 Line 48 ) Macbeth did non believe the enchantresss prognostications at first, but after Ross informs Macbeth that the male monarch has merely gave him the place of Thane of Cawdor he starts to believe that they are true. When the prognostication of being the thane of Cawdor, he thinks that it is obvious that the other prognostication of going the male monarch will come true every bit good. This declines his aristocracy by thought of being a male monarch, which means that he would hold to interrupt the concatenation of being. The concatenation of being is the position of God, Jesus, angels, male monarchs and etc. and the King is God s appointed representative so Macbeth can non be King. Besides, Macbeth knows that if Duncan dies for some ground, it would be the princes who d be the male monarchs afterwards. Macbeth becomes confused about how he d be a male monarch when he was nowhere near the throne line but he still tries to believe about how to go the male monarch as he is influenced by his fatal defect ; aspiration. In Act 1 Scene 5, Lady Macbeth knows about the enchantresss prognostications. Lady Macbeth truly wants to go the queen of Scotland, hence she starts promoting Macbeth to slay King Duncan. Lady Macbeth puts an tremendous impact on Macbeth of slaying Duncan. At first, he denied Lady Macbeth s suggestion, but in the terminal he does slay Duncan which is his moral quandary. I ll travel no more ; I am afraid to believe what I have done ; Look I wo nt once more I dare non. ( Act 2, scene 2, line 51 ) This quotation mark is when Macbeth came back after slaying Duncan and Tells Lady Macbeth that he would neer make such thing once more. This shows that Macbeth is scared about the title he has done. Lady Macbeth so takes control of this state of affairs, where Macbeth is excessively frightened to make anything. This quotation mark is when Lady Macbeth says that this H2O will clean their bloody custodies and wipe out their wickedness. a small H2O clears us of this title. ( Act 2, Scene 2, line 67 ) . The 3rd prognostication comes true after Malcolm and Donalbein runs off from Scotland, scared for their lives and Macbeth becomes the King of Scotland. However, now he is eager to make anything to maintain on being the male monarch of Scotland. Therefore, he hired bravos to kill Banquo because he knows about the prognostication and Banquo has started to surmise Macbeth. At this point, Macbeth s place declines even more than when it was when Macbeth had murdered King Duncan. Killing your best friend to stay as a male monarch is non really heroic. He besides, wanted Banquo s boies to be killed, because the prognostication said that Banquo s boies would be male monarchs. This means that Banquo s boy, Fleance would be a menace to Macbeth or his posterities. However, Fleance flights and Macbeth becomes irritated. He says, Then comes my fit once more ; I had else been perfect. Whole as the marble, founded a the stone, as wide and general as the casing air, but now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, edge in to saucy uncertainties and frights. But Banquo s safe? ( Act 3 Scene 4 lines 21 ) Macbeth s diminution in position is really clear now. Macbeth is a whole different character since the beginning of the drama. He was loyal to the male monarch in the beginning, but now he is non afraid of anything. He thought of nil of killing neither Duncan nor Banquo. He was non afraid of the effects of his actions even though he knew precisely what they would be. This is besides another portion of Aristotle s theory on tragic heroes. After this at Act 4 Scene 1, Macbeth visits the enchantresss to cognize more about what would go on to him in the hereafter. When Macbeth arrived the enchantresss were fixing the charming caldron. Macbeth demands the enchantresss to reply his inquiries when Hecate says that all is ready to be done. Macbeth drinks the caldron the enchantresss give him and the first phantom appears and warns to Macbeth that he should be cognizant of Macduff. In my sentiment, Macbeth is a tragic hero in this Shakespeare drama. The Aristotle theory about tragic heroes backs the drama up. Harmonizing to Aristotle s theory about tragic heroes, the character must be at a high position in the beginning, have some virtuousnesss, have a tragic defect, and attain readers understanding in the terminal of the narrative. Macbeth fits into all the demands as a tragic hero. Therefore he is a tragic hero.

Laissez-faire Versus Government Intervention

Laissez-faire Versus Government Intervention Historically, the U.S. government policy toward business was summed up by the French term laissez-faire leave it alone. The concept came from the economic theories of Adam Smith, the 18th-century Scot whose writings greatly influenced the growth of American capitalism. Smith believed that private interests should have a free rein. As long as markets were free and competitive, he said, the actions of private individuals, motivated by self-interest, would work together for the greater good of society. Smith did favor some forms of government intervention, mainly to establish the ground rules for free enterprise. But it was his advocacy of laissez-faire practices that earned him favor in America, a country built on faith in the individual and distrust of authority. Laissez-faire practices have not prevented private interests from turning to the government for help on numerous occasions, however. Railroad companies accepted grants of land and public subsidies in the 19th century. Industries facing strong competition from abroad have long appealed for protections through trade policy. American agriculture, almost totally in private hands, has benefited from government assistance. Many other industries also have sought and received aid ranging from tax breaks to outright subsidies from the government. Government regulation of private industry can be divided into two categories economic regulation and social regulation. Economic regulation seeks, primarily, to control prices. Designed in theory to protect consumers and certain companies (usually small businesses) from more powerful companies, it often is justified on the grounds that fully competitive market conditions do not exist and therefore cannot provide such protections themselves. In many cases, however, economic regulations were developed to protect companies from what they described as destructive competition with each other. Social regulation, on the other hand, promotes objectives that are not economic such as safer workplaces or a cleaner environment. Social regulations seek to discourage or prohibit harmful corporate behavior or to encourage behavior deemed socially desirable. The government controls smokestack emissions from factories, for instance, and it provides tax breaks to companies that offer their employees health and retirement benefits that meet certain standards. American history has seen the pendulum swing repeatedly between laissez-faire principles and demands for government regulation of both types. For the last 25 years, liberals and conservatives alike have sought to reduce or eliminate some categories of economic regulation, agreeing that the regulations wrongly protected companies from competition at the expense of consumers. Political leaders have had much sharper differences over social regulation, however. Liberals have been much more likely to favor government intervention that promotes a variety of non-economic objectives, while conservatives have been more likely to see it as an intrusion that makes businesses less competitive and less efficient. - Next Article: Growth of Government Intervention in the Economy This article is adapted from the book Outline of the U.S. Economy by Conte and Carr and has been adapted with permission from the U.S. Department of State.

History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 25

History - Essay Example In order to coordinate government efforts the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands ("Freedmens Bureau") was created on 4 March, 1865. The purpose of the new body was to help millions of just emancipated slaves with recourses and education means. The Bureau was responsible for distribution for food, fuel and clothing to impoverished freedmen and for supervision of â€Å"all the subjects relating to their condition† (Howard, 10) in former Confederation states. Nevertheless in spite of all its accomplishments, the Bureau is also notorious for its corruption and lack of efficiency. The agents often abused their authority to wring money out of those whom they were supposed to help. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands existed officially for a year. Lacking both manpower and funding, affected by corruption it failed to complete what was a really tremendous task the Bureau nevertheless did really much to provide just emancipated former slaves with access to education, fair practices in labor and equal

Ryle's criticisms of Cartesian Dualism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Ryle's criticisms of Cartesian Dualism - Essay Example This extends to existence as having two separate planes, a material existence and a mental existence, with the two planes diametrically opposed to each other and separated profoundly, having no link of causation between the two. In the physical world, people can communicate, but the mental conscious world is completely hidden from view and unknowable by others. To the question of what kind of knowledge can be obtained by the mind's workings, the Cartesian dualist perspective asserts that consciousness is able to get a good grasp of the present workings of one's mind, which cannot be shaken as unreal, in spite of inputs by Freud with regard to some unconscious, subconscious impulses that can also govern the conscious processes. The data is presented within the immediate time frame, available to the consciousness or mind. Together with this data are the fruits of one person’s going into himself, introspectively, to examine his mind's contents as a kind of self-observation. The o ther, meanwhile, is not privy and is completely shut out of this immediate consciousness experience. Even language is said to reflect this view of consciousness as something innate and to which the external actions in the environment register and make impressions. Ryle calls this whole infrastructure of thought the ghost in the machine dogmatic formulation. He contests this dogma on several grounds and objects to its validity. Ryle testifies that the whole ghost in the machine infrastructure or theory of mind is completely false (Ryle, 1949, pp. 11-16) â€Å"I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as ‘the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine’. I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a category mistake (Ryle, Descartes' myth, 1949, pp. 15-16, Paragraph #2) The core of the objection is with re gard to the Cartesian view of the dualism of mind and body as a category mistake and a myth of the philosopher, meaning that in essence those mental processes are miscategorized and made to fit a category to which they do not belong. Ryle gives the example of the University tour given to someone who after being shown the facilities asks where the university is as if the university was in the same category as the buildings and the grounds, rather than constituting the entire of it. He cites another example of a first-time cricket game watcher, who mistakes team spirit as being in the same category of the different players and the positions that they occupy, rather than being constituted by the cooperation and camaraderie of the players in the team. These are examples of category mistakes, to which the philosophers subscribing to the Cartesian dualist frame of mind likewise succumb to. In the examples, Ryle notes that the problem lay with the perceivers having difficulty in grasping t he nuances of language and the limitations of their vocabulary. It is the same with an ignorant man perceiving the constitution as something magical and ethereal, or the fictitious John Doe in the same magical and ghostly terms, because that ignorant man is unable to get away from using the categories of thought that he is familiar with when dealing with physical presences concerning the idea of the constitution and of John Doe. In

Managing people in team Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Managing people in team - Essay Example Problem-solving skills are essential in this case since the team is made up of individuals with different views and interests thus bound to conflict. One question though that lingers on most organisations is how to manage a teams performance. Who should be credited for team’s success, is it the manager or the workers? This is an issue that has received considerable debate over the years. Adam Smith considered managers as ‘principle clerks’ thus assuming away any role for managers (Berri, Leeds, Leeds & Mondello, 2009). The workers were believed to be the ones contributing to success. Early researchers differentiated managers from entrepreneurs and viewed entrepreneurs as more active in ensuring productivity. However, recent studies have started acknowledging the role played by managers in improving productivity and ensuring workers are always motivated. Another crucial role is that of team leaders. These are entrusted with leading the group to success and as such have a big role to play in ensuring team effectiveness. The aim of this report is to evaluate the role of managers in overseeing performance as well as the importance of leadership role in team performance. This will entail interviewing managers of two organisations to find out their views on how they manage and lead their teams in eliciting excellent performance. Marks and Spencer is one of UK’s leading retailers of clothing, food, home products and financial services. It has an employee base of 78,000 employees in the UK and abroad and serves 21 million customers. It has more than 700 UK stores and a turnover of  £8 billion. It is committed to offering superior quality products to its customers at attractive prices (Corporate.marksandspencer.com, 2013). This is enhanced by its various teams which are headed by sectional managers as well as retail managers. Bluebird Garments is a textile company situated in the UK. It has a total of 2000 employees who are involved in

Entrepreneurship Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words - 1

Entrepreneurship - Essay Example The behemoths of Information Technology industry like. Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, the IT giants, are all results of ‘entrepreneurial vision’ of their founders. Who is an entrepreneur? What are the chief causes for the success of entrepreneurs? What are the attributes required for being an entrepreneur? What makes entrepreneurship different from regular business? How does an entrepreneur with very little resources create wealth and value? We will study ‘the entrepreneur’ along with the special strategies; he makes use of, by researching contemporary literature on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the business idea, the set of practices adopted by an entrepreneur for value enhancement and wealth creation. Entrepreneurship is a break from the past; conception and creation of a unique venture through novel means, and a synergy of strategy, technology, material, and human resources. Entrepreneurship involves a high risk factor as it can’t be forecast with certainty whether a particular entrepreneurship idea would succeed or fail. The results often vary between and extreme success and abject failure. Nevertheless, the entrepreneur, by his inherent nature, keeps on experimenting taking risks, losses and failures in his stride, till he hits upon an idea that clicks. Entrepreneurship has been differently viewed, and hence interpreted differently, over a period of time. In the earlier times entrepreneurship was related to buying and selling of commodities, whereupon a trader took upon himself the buying of a product at a certain price, and selling it for an uncertain price (Di-Masi n.d.). One of the earliest definitions of entrepreneur offered by JS Mill (1848) (quoted by Brockhaus, Sr 2000) as â€Å"one who undertakes to start and conduct an enterprise or business, assuming full control and risks† may have held to be

Impact of iTunes and Other Online Services on Music Industry Research Paper

Impact of iTunes and Other Online Services on Music Industry - Research Paper Example Furthermore, the study indicates that the drop in the number of revenues is a result of two main factors; an apparent increase in piracy related issues and the ability of the potential buyers to pick and choose particular songs rather than buying the entire albums instead. Though iTunes has proved to be a dynamic and a powerful medium having the potential to revolutionize the music industry, but the drop in revenues has turned out to be a huge drawback which overpowers the apparent advantages of the medium of the industry. Impact of iTunes and other online services on music industry Introduction iTunes is like a music jukebox which is used to manage, purchase and download the music online. It is an online music library with an added feature that allows the online purchase of music. However, in contrast to the tradition purchase of music albums iTunes allow the customers to cherry-pick the particular songs instead of buying the entire albums. This in turn has various implications whic h will be addressed further on in the paper. iTunes was launched in 2003 which was a product conceived by Macintosh replaced Napster; therefore it is important to analyze and track the impacts of Napster on the industry to contrast the results with iTunes for a more credible result. The decade after Napster was replaced saw a drastic decrease in the revenues of music industry in the U.S. In contrast when Napster was first introduced in the market, the U.S music industry saw a rapid increase in the profits. According to the statistics, the U.S shipments for recorded music were increase from $5.8 billion to $12.8 billion between 1975 to 1990`s. This is a positive indicator as the recorded shipments almost doubled. However, between 1990`s to 2007, the records again dropped back to $5.5 billion. (Waldfogel 2011). The same trend was observed worldwide indicating the strong impact of iTunes in the market. Though many researches indicated that iTunes have paved way for piracy and illegal c opying of music, but iTunes was constituted in such a way that it minimizes the risks of piracy related issues. With iTunes, music can be shared in two ways, i.e. either by sharing an entire library or by sharing specific playlists. iTunes doesn`t support illegal copying of music over the internet as the music is only available to the host system where iTunes is located. Also, the music can only be retrieved by the person using the iTunes, he shuts down the system the music is no longer available for anyone to be listened. (Waldfogel 2011). iTunes protects the content by two ways, i.e. firstly by incorporating copyrights laws and secondly via contracts. However, different countries have now come up with different jailbreaks and unlocking software which allows copying of music online onto iTunes for free. Though the laws are considerably strict in U.S, but in Europe and other places the laws can be molded which results in music piracy via iTunes elsewhere. Thus, these two factors i.e . pick and choose which music to purchase, and unlocking software leading to music piracy leads towards the apparent decrease in revenues. However, according to a review by Berkeley University, the impact of peer-to peer music

Personal statemsent Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Personal statemsent - Essay Example Therefore, my intended goal is to pursue my professional career objectives of being a lawyer at SOAS; thus I intend to approach every situation with a positive attitude in order to create a better living environment. Since law course is appealing and offers real-life experiences in the society, I therefore, apply to join the Intermediate certificate course at SOAS because I want to increase my knowledge on law related issues. I took challenging subjects while in high school such as advanced placement physics, chemistry but I enjoyed art subjects too. However, I have always dreamt of accomplishing my future goals of attaining my professional carrier in the field of law in order to become a lawyer in the future. My future dream of attaining better law skills in order to become a successful lawyer can be traced from the case that arose in the society where two people involved in the criminal act but there was no better justice that was done. This inspired me that one day I will become a lawyer and provide justice where it is necessary and ensure that fairness or justice is always applied in the society. I know there are always challenges and it is not easy to handle some court cases; however, I wil l work hard in order to ensure that I fulfill the demanding needs of people in the society. SOAS ICC is a good learning environment especially for the international students who want to study for any undergraduate program. SOAS is good place to enable me achieve my academic goals because it offers better learning services for students who want to achieve their future dreams. Moreover, the combination of academic and language studies, which are directly connected to the materials covered in varied academic subjects, will enable me to achieve my intended academic objectives successfully. Studying in this institution will benefit me in diverse ways, hence, enabling me to achieve my objectives successfully; One

Impact of iTunes and Other Online Services on Music Industry Research Paper

Impact of iTunes and Other Online Services on Music Industry - Research Paper Example Furthermore, the study indicates that the drop in the number of revenues is a result of two main factors; an apparent increase in piracy related issues and the ability of the potential buyers to pick and choose particular songs rather than buying the entire albums instead. Though iTunes has proved to be a dynamic and a powerful medium having the potential to revolutionize the music industry, but the drop in revenues has turned out to be a huge drawback which overpowers the apparent advantages of the medium of the industry. Impact of iTunes and other online services on music industry Introduction iTunes is like a music jukebox which is used to manage, purchase and download the music online. It is an online music library with an added feature that allows the online purchase of music. However, in contrast to the tradition purchase of music albums iTunes allow the customers to cherry-pick the particular songs instead of buying the entire albums. This in turn has various implications whic h will be addressed further on in the paper. iTunes was launched in 2003 which was a product conceived by Macintosh replaced Napster; therefore it is important to analyze and track the impacts of Napster on the industry to contrast the results with iTunes for a more credible result. The decade after Napster was replaced saw a drastic decrease in the revenues of music industry in the U.S. In contrast when Napster was first introduced in the market, the U.S music industry saw a rapid increase in the profits. According to the statistics, the U.S shipments for recorded music were increase from $5.8 billion to $12.8 billion between 1975 to 1990`s. This is a positive indicator as the recorded shipments almost doubled. However, between 1990`s to 2007, the records again dropped back to $5.5 billion. (Waldfogel 2011). The same trend was observed worldwide indicating the strong impact of iTunes in the market. Though many researches indicated that iTunes have paved way for piracy and illegal c opying of music, but iTunes was constituted in such a way that it minimizes the risks of piracy related issues. With iTunes, music can be shared in two ways, i.e. either by sharing an entire library or by sharing specific playlists. iTunes doesn`t support illegal copying of music over the internet as the music is only available to the host system where iTunes is located. Also, the music can only be retrieved by the person using the iTunes, he shuts down the system the music is no longer available for anyone to be listened. (Waldfogel 2011). iTunes protects the content by two ways, i.e. firstly by incorporating copyrights laws and secondly via contracts. However, different countries have now come up with different jailbreaks and unlocking software which allows copying of music online onto iTunes for free. Though the laws are considerably strict in U.S, but in Europe and other places the laws can be molded which results in music piracy via iTunes elsewhere. Thus, these two factors i.e . pick and choose which music to purchase, and unlocking software leading to music piracy leads towards the apparent decrease in revenues. However, according to a review by Berkeley University, the impact of peer-to peer music

Neuroscience and Spirituality Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 12750 words

Neuroscience and Spirituality - Dissertation Example In recent years however, there is a growing interest in how spirituality or religion may play a role in managing mental and physical health and this interest has led to the exploration of the changes that spirituality or meditative practice may bring about in the human mind. This chapter contains a review and critical analysis of the available literature and research on the topic of neuroscience and spirituality. The aim of the chapter is to present and evaluate the evidence that backs the linkages between spirituality or meditation and brain activity using scientific empirical methods. There is a growing field of neuroscience that aims to understand the specific impacts of spirituality, religiosity and meditation on the brain functions and correspondingly on the mental and the physical health of the human beings. The current review is an attempt to collate and critically assess the available research in terms of the validity of the findings and claims and the validity of the methodo logy that has been employed by the numerous scholars. This niche field is still in a growing stage and most of the research undertaken is exploratory in nature, and hence a review of the available work in the area is expected to provide an understanding of what is already known and what potential future research may hold for the topic. This chapter is divided into sections that follow a logical structure from an overview of the methods, tools and techniques that are being employed and the approaches or hypothesis used in recent meditation studies. Next, the review focuses on the changes that occur in the brain during spiritual experience or among people who are high on religiosity. Finally, the literature review delves deeply into the analysis and evaluation of available research that are aimed at specific impacts of meditation, namely, attention and arousal, immunity, self-regulation and emotions, and pain management. 2.2 Meditation Studies There has been a large number of scholars who have aimed to assess the impact of meditation on the human brain and hence on the body functions. The studies are methodologically designed to assess autoimmune indicators like the blood pressure or the heart rate, hormonal indicators or immunity markers, and more recently, electroencephalographic (EEG) and brain scanning techniques to directly view the changes in the neural reactions. Meditation is the technique of focusing on the breath and proactively ignoring the thoughts. It is said to lead to physiological changes that are found to produce a body relaxation response (Newberg and Iversen, 2003). Several researchers have found that the physiological indicators of blood pressure and heart rate are decreased during a mediation phase. Early research conducted by Banquet (1973) had already established that the EEG patterns for people doing meditation are different from those people not doing meditation. In addition, it has also been found that sleep EEG patterns are different f rom the meditation EEG patterns, indicating that meditation involves a more powerful neural activity that is not seen during sleep. There are studies that have found that an increased alpha-wave activity in the frontal area associated with meditation (Al-Kandari), a change in heart rate and blood pressure (Koeing et al, 1998) and cortisol levels (Sudsuang et al., 1991). Most of the studies mentioned above have been done from an earlier era where neuroimaging was not available. However, with the advent of technologies like functional imaging

American Cultures Impact On The Media Cultural Studies Essay

American Cultures Impact On The Media Cultural Studies Essay None cultures are the same every nation has their own distinct and values. The American and American cultures have very vast differentiation between them. While the culture of America is a mixture of different cultures, the Bangladeshi culture is unique and has its own values and customs. One of the major differences that can be seen between American and Bangladeshi culture is in family relations. While the Bangladeshi are very much family and religious oriented, the Americans are individual oriented. In Bangladeshi culture, the family values are given more prominence than the individual values. Bangladeshi respect family and religious values. On the other hand, in American culture the individual value gets prominence than the family values. Indians are more committed to their family where as the Americans are more committed to themselves only (Difference Between, 2010). The United States is a dynamic country, covering the breadth of a continent. Many cultural currents exist and coexist within American life. The sections that follow do not attempt to cover every aspect of American culture, but instead zero in on some phenomena, like television, films and American music, that newcomers can study in order to learn more about American life. American values have developed over several centuries, affecting (and often being enriched by) successive waves of immigrants. The best way to look at it is to realize that while Americans are often open to new ways of thinking, they have a deep culture, and a deep sense of being American, one that is not always that easy to describe (Life in the USA,2010). Bangladesh has a rich, diverse culture. Its deeply rooted heritage is thoroughly reflected in its architecture, dance, literature, music, painting and clothing. The three primary religions of Bangladesh (Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam) have had a great influence on its culture and history. The people of Bangladesh have a rich fictional legacy, with the first available form of literature being over a thousand years old. Bengali literature developed considerably during the medieval period with the rise of popular poets such as Chandi Das, Daulat Kazi an Alaol (Bangladesh.com, 2010). Although, local music is still popular in Bangladeshi culture, the younger generation is influenced by the western songs. Youth of America is inspired by American artists, movies, and musical bands are becoming more popular in Bangladesh. Coca Cola and Michael Jackson are popular now in Bangladesh. Fast food, a product of American culture, is available but only in major cities and hotels. Most of the people prefer local foods and deserts. Literacy rate in Bangladesh is high compared with other developing countries. For males, it is 54% and literacy rates among Bangladeshi women are 41.4% (CIA the World Factbook, 2010). Main Body Impact of American Culture on Bangladeshi Culture, Media, and Language Culture: Culture can be described as the exclusive system of shared values, customs, beliefs, artifacts, and behaviors that the society members use to confront with their world and also with one another. Moreover, they are transmitted from one generation to another through learning. Culture also refers to the overall cumulative deposit of experience, beliefs, knowledge, values, meanings, attitudes, hierarchies, notions of time, religion, spatial relations, themes of the universe, and possessions acquired by a specific group of people during generations through group and individual striving (Bhabha, 2004). Significant differences are found between cultures of Bangladesh and America. Bangladeshi culture is a sophisticated blend of eastern culture and Islamic traditions. American culture, on the other hand, is a typical example of westernization with distinctive traditions, customs, attitudes and beliefs. It is pertinent to mention that culture is dynamic in nature. Cultures do change over time accepting new traditions while rejecting older ones (refà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦). Bangladeshi culture is increasingly becoming influenced by American culture even though the rate of transformation is considerably low compared with other neighboring countries like India and Pakistan. For example, the tradition of celebrating New Year is common feature of American culture. In Bangladesh, the upper-middle and upper class have embraced this ritual arranging functions to enjoy the events. The New Year celebrations are, however, different from those in American society. Drinks are non-alcoholic and food is prepared as per Islamic traditions. The Asian culture is evident in marriages and social gatherings. Night clubs and lounges are becoming popular in the major cities only especially in Dhaka- the capital city. These night clubs are, however, operated only in the main hotels and mostly open to the tourists. The concept of nightlife being a common feature of American culture is also experienced in the large hotels. The middle and lower class along with those living in rural areas are still hesitant and refuse to accept the westernization of culture. Media: Despite numerous symposia Media has become a significant part of daily life in Bangladesh. Fifty years ago, only radio and newspapers represented the media. Today, media plays a significant and dominant role at every level. Similar to American media, all forms including radio, the newspaper, internet, and television are playing their role. The process of change in the style of media is also not high. In America, number of channels is in hundreds if not thousands. Bangladesh Television is the main channel being government-controlled and government-owned medium (ref). Influenced by the aggression of American TV channels and the powerful role played by media to form public opinion, some satellite channels have been established in Bangladesh (Bangladesh.com2010). More than hundred and thousand different not only America they are spreading all over the world but if we think about Hollywood which utterly affecting every corner of the world. World are made about Hollywood move especi ally young star are crazy to see Hollywood movie. Globalisation demands market liberalization and the liberalization of media also. For that, though the government always heavily controlled the state owned radio and television channels but, in the early 90s, they gave permission to broadcast commercially the satellite channels. Before that, the government even started relaying the news of BBC and CNN through the state owned channel Bangladesh Television. As a result Bangladeshi audience were flooded by Immense of foreign channels. Languages: With over 1 billion speakers globally, modern English is the worlds dominant international language for business, science, medicine, communications, media, entertainment, culture, diplomacy, and countless other fields. For many, the ability to communicate smoothly and naturally in English is the first step to securing a better future for themselves and their families for generations to come (ESLA, 2010). Nowadays, English is considered the worlds most widespread second language; it is used in areas as diverse as the internet, television and radio, and international aviation. The success of English throughout the world stems from two major causes: the far reaching influence of the British Empire, and the 20th century (and continuing) dominance of the United States in the fields of business and entertainment. English is used as a second language mostly in upper and middle class of Bangladesh. The mother tongue and national language is Bangla but due to impact of American cul ture inspired from movies, music, and culture, many words of English language have entered the native language. English words like telephone, television, radio, video, and computer do not have a Bengali term and, as such, used commonly by the citizens of Bangladesh regardless of social class (Brady Bashar,2004). Of course, there are positive moments in the influence of American culture, because it is a step forward to receiving the help from the global community to develop the country, to make it more democratic, to open borders and develop society. All above mentioned processes are constructive, but there also exists the negative impact. Bangladesh may lose it cultural peculiarities, original traditions and genuine mentality. It may be a disadvantage for keeping the country really Bangladeshi; it may become American with some elements of Bangladeshi culture. As a matter of fact due to globalization American culture is influencing Bangladesh through the media, lifestyle, culture and languages and will be influencing more and more. Media shows the American style of life with its pros and cons and people may accept them. English language is absorbed by the national language, Bangla words are being replaced by the American ones. This may lead to American acquisition of the Bangladeshi society. Conclusion: American culture are historically encompasses with their traditions, customs, beliefs ideals, values, arts, history, languages and different innovation of modern technologies which adopted by domestically and globally via colonization. American formed around the world largest immigrants who extremely influence by multicultural society and world cultures are integrated through different nationalities. In the earliest 19th century, America experienced massive immigration different part of the world which is one of the important futures of American history and it has given to raise multiculturalism America. Reference/ Bibliography: Bhabha, H, 2004. The Location of Culture, Routledge Haggett, Peter (2002). The Indian Subcontinent. Encyclopedia of World Geography. New York: Marshall Cavendish. Wood, Geoffrey D. (1994). Bangladesh: Whose ideas, whose interests?. Intermediate Technology Publications Lifeintheusa (2010) http://www.lifeintheusa.com/culture/index.html[accese on 06-12-10] Bangladesh (2010) http://www.bangladesh.com/culture/[Accessed on 06-12-10] Metrolingu (2010) http://www.metrolingua.com/tips.htm/[Accessed on 06-12-10] Difference Between (2010) Difference between American and Indian culture | Difference Between | American vs Indian culture http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-american-and-indian-culture/#ixzz17GpIsu7L[Accese on line 05-12-2010] Weekly holiday (2010)http://www.weeklyholiday.net/2008/261208/anniv08/11.html[Accesed on 01-12-2010] English as a Second Language Academy (2010)http://www.eslacademy.com/[ACCESED ON 28-11-10] Nathan Gardels and Nathan Mike Medavoy (2009) American Idol after Iraq: Competing for Hearts and Minds in the Global Media Age [1st Ed.] Maryanne Kearny Datesman, JoAnn Crandall and Edward N. Kearny (2005) American Ways: An Introduction to American Culture (3rd Edition) Douglas Kellner (1995) Media Culture, Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the postmodern. What is Culture (2010) available at http://anthro.palomar.edu/culture/culture_1.htm[accesed on 30-11-10]

Free Argumentative Essays: Euthanasia :: Physician Assisted Suicide

Euthanasia Euthanasia means gentle or easy death for those who are incurably ill and in pain. So should a person have the right to take another person's life or his own when he/she is incurably ill and in pain. That is what whole of Australia is trying to decide. The N.T all ready has passed a law that legalise euthanasia in that state. Now other government leaders and members are in support of this are pushing for an Australian euthanasia law. Christian Groups and Anti-Euthanasia have seen euthanasia as a sin and a choice that no-body should make. Some doctors have taken ill patients life's as a request from the patient should this now be openly done.    On the 18/06/96, The head of the NT chapter of the Australia Medical Association, Dr.Chris Wake, and Aboriginal leader Rev.Djiniynni Gondarra   put   forward the NT euthanasia law .But was dismissed by the NT Supreme Court. After appealing and with the support of three major party leaders the law was passed.   Prime Minister John Howard disapproved with the Law and saying that he has no problem reconciling his views on federalism with his views on life and death by voting to over turn the law. Also   Kevin Andrews was strongly not in favour and with Howard's support he  Ã‚   introduced a bill overriding the N.T laws. But still in the end the law was still standing. If our leaders are divided we could say that the citizens of Australia would have been divided on this Issue. Maybe a referendum would have been appropriate, but still euthanasia would still occur illegal and secrecy.    Christian groups and Christian have strongly supported their view on euthanasia , they have seen it as a sin. For a Christian his life is not just his because his life is part of god's. In the Bible, chapter of (Romans 14:18) it states "If we live ,we are responsible to the Lord and when we die we are responsible to the Lord. Both in life and death we belong to the lord. Christian view the death of a human person as their turn to meet god." As Christian Rights groups and Anti- euthanasia believe in   these views they have protested in a number of occasions

Hamlet †its Universality :: The Tragedy of Hamlet Essays

Hamlet – its Universality  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   Shakespeare’s tragic play Hamlet is an excellent example, perhaps the best in English literature, of a work that has universal appeal. This essay will analyze the incredible universality of this drama, with the input of literary critics.    Robert B. Heilman in â€Å"The Role We Give Shakespeare† relates the universality of Shakespeare to the â€Å"innumerableness of the parts†:    But the Shakespeare completeness appears graspable and possessable to many men at odds with each other, because of the innumerableness of the parts: these parts we may consider incompletenesses, partial perspectives, and as such they correspond to the imperfect (but not necessarily invalid) modes of seeing and understanding practiced by imperfect (but not necessarily wrongheaded) interpreters and theorists of different camps. Each interpreter sees some part of the whole that does, we may say, mirror him, and he then proceeds to enlarge the mirror until it becomes the work as a whole (10).    Indeed, the reader finds a wide variety of â€Å"parts† from beginning to end of Hamlet. This is seen in the fact of over 20 characters with speaking roles; and in their variety of   occupations from king to grave-digger; and in the 20 different scene changes; and in the differentiation in speech, actions, etc. between every single individual character. Observe the countless parts in the opening scenes: The play begins with the changing of the sentinels on a guard platform of the wall of the castle of Elsinore. Recently the spectral likeness of dead King Hamlet has appeared to the sentinels. Tonight the ghost appears again to Barnardo, Marcellus and Horatio, a very close friend of Hamlet. Horatio and Marcellus exit the ramparts of Elsinore intending to enlist the aid of Hamlet, who is home from school, dejected by the â€Å"o’erhasty marriage† of his mother to his uncle. There is a gathering of the court, where Claudius pays tribute to the memory of his decease d brother, the former king, and then conducts some items of business. Hamlet is there dressed in black, the color of mourning, for his deceased father. His first words say that Claudius is "A little more than kin and less than kind," indicating a dissimilarity in values between the new king and himself. Heilmann’s â€Å"innumerableness of the parts† is abundantly testified to in just the first two scenes described in this paragraph. The 18 remaining scenes are similarly full of variety.

Achilles and the Embassy Book Ix of the Iliad

Achilles’ Decision on the Embassy An extremely large problem in the world today and in Homeric times as well, is people not knowing how to set their pride aside and clean up their own messes. In Book IX of The Iliad, we see Agamemnon’s struggle with war and Achilles personal war in his own head. Achilles is not a door mat for Agamemnon, nor should he be; Achilles is a great warrior. Book IX truly illustrates what kind of men they both are. Achilles is right to refuse the embassy in Book IX because he keeps his honor as a man and a warrior intact.Agamemnon is a man of terrible character and he does not understand what honor is at all. Sending others to do his dirty work is morally wrong. He has shamefully treated Achilles as if he is a second-class citizen, and he always has. Agamemnon barely makes an attempt to win Achilles, the greatest warrior Homeric times have ever known, over. He offers Achilles many women and gifts, including â€Å"the one he took away at first, Briseus’ daughter, and he [swears] a solemn, binding oath in the bargain he never mounted her bed† (332-334).Agamemnon offers everything in the book to Achilles begging him to come back, but what really shows his character is that he sent others to propose the deal. Even worse, he says if Achilles accepts he can come back if Achilles would â€Å"bow down to [Agamemnon] I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim-the greater man† (192-193). Achilles is a remarkable warrior and an honorable man. He has been treated as second-rate to Agamemnon for a long time. Agamemnon needs Achilles on his side if he wants any hope of defeating the Trojans and even he admits it through Odysseus in multiple pages of Book IX.If he honestly thought winning the war without Achilles leading the Achaean troops he would not have even bothered sending Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix. Agamemnon may be a better king and war strategist than Achilles would be, but he is not the warrior th at Achilles is, he could never achieve the same status. Achilles gives the Achaean soldiers hope and drive that Agamemnon cannot provide. Achilles has dealt with the way he has been treated for long enough. He just wants to go home and live his life instead of risking it for someone who thinks he is better than Achilles.He retains more of his honor going home and living a full life than if he would accept the bribe that has been placed in front of him. At least that way Achilles is not telling the world that he can be bought. Agamemnon needs to personally go to Achilles and ask for forgiveness. Not accepting the embassy is definitely the most appropriate choice that Achilles can make. By rejecting Agamemnon’s feeble pleas to return to battle he is more likely to live a long, happy life. Achilles shows the world that he cannot be purchased by anyone and that he is not a spineless door mat who is okay with being treated in such a terrible manner constantly.In the defining momen ts of Book IX we see how completely opposite Achilles and Agamemnon are of each other. Achilles is the hope of an entire army and Agamemnon can clearly not get his act together. Agamemnon should have gone to Achilles himself instead of sending others, to ask him to come back. If he knew what he was doing Agamemnon would have approached him and spoken to him as a true equal and apologized for all of his wrong-doings. Refusing the embassy is the right thing for Achilles to do; it keeps his honor undamaged as a warrior and a man.

Taj Mahal

128 ebba koch EBBA KOCH THE TAJ MAHAL: ARCHITECTURE, SYMBOLISM, AND URBAN SIGNIFICANCE Much has been written on the Taj Mahal, but little has been said about its architecture. There has been only one interpretation of the symbolism of the mausoleum,1 and the urban situation of the monument in the city of Agra has been almost entirely neglected. In brief form, this essay presents the main results of a recently completed monograph in which I address these issues. 2 The Taj Mahal is the Mughals’ great contribution to world architecture, and, as the contemporary sources reveal, it was conceived as such from the very beginning (? . 1). In the words of Shah Jahan’s early historian Muhammad Amin Qazwini, writing in the 1630s: And a dome of high foundation and a building of great magni? cence was founded—a similar and equal to it the eye of the Age has not seen under these nine vaults of the enamel-blue sky, and of anything resembling it the ear of Time has not heard in any of the past ages†¦it will be the masterpiece of the days to come, and that which adds to the astonishment of humanity at large. 3 Not only was the monument to be a magni? cent burial place for Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan’s beloved wife (d. 631), but also—and this is explicitly pointed out by the emperor’s main historian {Abd al-Hamid Lahawri—it was to testify to the power and glory of Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58) and Mughal rule: They laid the plan for a magni? cent building and a dome of high foundation which for its loftiness will until the Day of Resurrection remain a memorial to the sky-reaching ambition of His Majesty, the Sahib Qiran-Thani (Second Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction of the Planets Jupiter and Venus), and its strength will represent the ? rmness of the intentions of its builder. In other words, the Taj Mahal was built with posterity in mind, and we the viewers are part of its concept. I came to study the Taj Mahal in the conte xt of a survey of the palaces and gardens of Shah Jahan that I have been conducting since 1976 as part of a larger survey of Mughal architecture. With the assistance of Dr. Yunus Jaffery from Dr. Zakir Hussain College in Delhi,5 I have established from the Persian sources a corpus of thirty-? ve Shahjahani palaces (sing. dawlatkh? na) and garden residences (sing. b? gh), of which twenty-four proved upon ? ld investigation to exist in varying sizes and states of preservation. In the whole of Islamic architecture, this is the largest extant body of palaces built by a single patron. Entirely new measured drawings of seventeen palaces were prepared by the Indian architect Richard A. Barraud, who drew them on the basis of measurements he and I made during extensive ? eldwork,6 which I undertook because many of these complexes are hardly or not at all recorded. Altogether, Mughal architecture, like the Islamic architecture of India in general, is not well documented.The art historian cann ot rely on measured drawings to the same extent possible for the better-documented areas of Islamic architecture or for Western historical architecture in general. The pioneering surveys of the Archaeological Survey of India from the end of the nineteenth and the ? rst half of the twentieth centuries included several Mughal sites, but only a few—such as the monographs of Edmund W. Smith on Fatehpur Sikri and on Akbar’s Tomb at Sikandra—were published. 7 More often than not, when one wants to have an exact plan of a building one has to go and measure it.On the other hand, while establishing this basic documentation, the art historian is confronted by all the questions the discipline has developed in the span of its existence, during which the approach has moved from formal assessment and analysis towards contextual studies. I began my survey of the palaces at Agra and, during the 1980s, spent months in the Red Fort, measuring and photographing its buildings. From here the Taj Mahal was always before my eyes at a distance across the river Yamuna, popularly called Jamna (? g. 2), and one of these views eventually became the cover image of my book Mughal Architecture (1991), in which he taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance 129 Fig. 1. Agra, Taj Mahal (1632–43), mausoleum and flanking buildings seen from the upper level of the gate. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1996) I dealt with the Taj Mahal for the ? rst time, albeit only brie? y. 8 I felt overwhelmed by its perfection, splendor, and sheer size. Eventually I realized that as a scholar I was not alone in my awe of the famous building. The vast literature on the Taj Mahal comprises surprisingly few serious scholarly studies and, as I pointed out at the beginning, there is as yet no monograph or modern analytical treatise dedicated to its architecture. At the same time I came to realize that many answers to my questions about Shah Jahan’s palaces and gardens lay in the Taj Mahal as the ultimate project of his architectural patronage. The ? nal incentive to study it in detail came in 1994, when the editors of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam asked me to write the article on the building. 10 This started my project of newly documenting and analyzing the entire mausoleum complex; I am the ? rst Western scholar since India gained independence in 1947 to have received permission for such an undertaking, through the generosity of the Archaeological Sur- ey of India. With Richard Barraud I have been measuring and photographing the buildings of the complex in intermittent expeditions during the last ten years. 11 The survey has brought me into the remotest corners of the Taj Mahal, and this close encounter with the architecture has revealed the contribution of the anonymous workmen who inscribed their mason marks on the stones. 12 I began my analysis by looking at the entire complex of the Taj Mahal and at its urban situation. I could not help noticing that the Taj Mahal invites an approach that coincides with what since the 1970s might be termed a â€Å"deconstructive reading. According to Jaques Derrida, the main propagator of this method of disassembling and questioning established notions, all Western thought is based on the idea of centers—Origin, Truth, Ideal Form, Fixed Point, Immovable Mover, Essence, God, and Presence—that guarantee all meaning. The problem with these centers is that they attempt to exclude. In doing so they ignore, repress, or marginalize others. 13 Even those 130 ebba koch Fig. 2. Taj Mahal, mausoleum flanked by mosque (right) and Mihman Khana (left), seen across the river Jamna. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1985) ho are tiring of deconstruction will see that the idea of center-and-margin illustrates the perception of the Taj too tellingly not to be included in this discussion. Traditionally, the white building of the mausoleum takes the position of the center in the conception of th e beholder, who hardly notices the large complex at the end of which it stands. Due to the prominence of the tomb, its surrounding architecture has received very little attention—in other words, it has been marginalized. It thus seems important ? rst to consider the entire complex, especially its subsidiary courtyards, which emerge as integral components of its design.In addition, I have extended the investigation of the surroundings of the Taj to its larger environment, to its relationship to the city of Agra. ANALYSIS OF THE COMPLEX The mausoleum is set at the northern end of the main axis of a vast oblong walled-in complex that mea- sures 896. 10 x 300. 84 m (? g. 3), which works out to 1112. 5 x 374 Shahjahani gaz. Of this complex, the tomb garden and its forecourt are fully preserved; we measured it as 561. 20 x 300. 84 (300) m, that is, 696 x 374 (373) gaz (? g. 4). 14 The Shahjahani linear yard, called gaz or zir? , corresponds to about 81–82 cm, or 32 inches; o ur ? eld studies have shown that it was not an exact unit but a relative, proportionally used one, the length of which could vary slightly, even within one and the same building complex. For the overall length of the Taj complex, the average gaz ? gure comes to 80. 55 cm. The tomb garden consists of two main components: a cross-axial, four-fold garden—in the form of a classical ch? rb? gh (? g. 3: B)—and, towards the river, a raised terrace on which are placed the mausoleum and its ? anking buildings (? g. 3: A).In this, the Taj Mahal garden follows the form of the typical garden of Mughal Agra, the waterfront garden. As I have shown elsewhere, this is a speci? c form of the ch? rb? gh developed by the Mughals in response to the the taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance geographic conditions of the Indo-Gangetic plain, and more speci? cally for the riverfront situation at Agra. Here the water source was not a lively spring on a mountain slope, as i n the Mughals’ native Central Asia, but a large, slow-? owing river, from which the desired running water had to be brought into the garden by means of water lifts.Accordingly, the Mughals conceived a garden type to take advantage of this waterfront situation; the main building was not placed in the center of the garden, as in the classical Mughal ch? rb? gh, but rather on an oblong terrace (kurs? ) running along the riverfront. The garden component was on the landward side of the terrace. This shift towards the riverfront provided the main garden pavilions with the climatic advantages of running water and presented a carefully composed front to viewers on a boat or across the river (? g. 2). From the garden itself, the buildings presented an equally satisfying backdrop (? . 1). 15 URBAN CONTEXT Mughal Agra consisted of two bands of such riverfront gardens lining the Jamna, of which only a few survive today. The key to my reconstruction of this riverfront scheme, which formed the urban context of the Taj, is a plan of Agra dating from the 1720s, in the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum in the City Palace in Jaipur; to my knowledge it is the earliest plan of the city (? g. 5). 16 It shows forty-four garden complexes (including the Agra Fort) along the river and gives their names, which are usually those of their owners, in Devanagari script. 7 Information about these gardens can also be pieced together from the Mughal histories and eulogistic descriptions of Agra, in which gardens of members of the imperial family and of nobles are occasionally mentioned, especially in the context of an imperial visit. Another source is topographical descriptions of Agra written in Persian by local informants for British administrators after the British took Agra in 1803. In his Tafr? h al-{im? r? t (1825–26), Sil Chand describes the gardens of Agra by the same names as feature on the Jaipur plan. 8 The main owners of the riverfront gardens of Agra were the emper ors Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, members of their imperial family, and their nobility the amirs and man? abd? rs. Even Mumtaz Mahal had a garden at Agra, which she bequeathed to her daughter Jahanara; what is left of this Bagh-i Jahanara is now known by the corrupted name Zahara Bagh and lies south of the 131 Ram Bagh, originally Nur Jahan’s Bagh-i Nur Afshan (? g. 5: 3 and 4; ? g. 6). 19 The evidence indicates that most of these gardens followed the riverfront design, with the main building on a terrace overlooking the river and a ch? rb? gh on the landward side. 0 ANALYSIS OF THE COMPLEX RESUMED The design of the Taj garden thus introduces an established Mughal residential garden type into the context of a monumental imperial mausoleum. The waterfront scheme not only determines the shape of the funerary garden of the Taj, it is also a key element in the planning of the entire Taj complex. At the part of it to the south of the garden is a large rectangle (? g. 3: C) whose centr al square forms the Taj forecourt, called jilawkh? na by Shah Jahan’s chroniclers, the of? cially appointed court historian {Abd al-Hamid Lahawri and Muhammad Salih Kanbu, who wrote on his own account.Both provide us with almost identical detailed descriptions of the entire Taj Mahal complex, on the occasion of its of? cial completion on 17 Dhu ’l-Qa{da 1052 (February 6, 1643). 21 Both historians are remarkably consistent in their use of architectural terms; I follow their terminology. The jilawkh? na square (? g. 3: 11) is framed on both of its shorter sides by two smaller courtyard enclosures. An open bazaar street (? g. 3: 12a, 12b) divides these courtyards and provides the main access to the jilawkh? na and, beyond that, through a monumental gateway (? g. 3: 9), to the tomb garden.The northern pair of courtyards contained the residential quarters for the tomb attendants, the khaw p? ras (? g. 3: 10a, 10b). The southern pair contained subsidiary tomb gardens of less er wives of Shah Jahan, whose identity is still under debate (? g. 3: 13a, 13b). These tomb enclosures echoed the design of the main tomb garden on a smaller scale because they followed the characteristic waterfront scheme of a cross-axial ch? rb? gh combined with an oblong terrace on which stood the tomb structure and its ? anking buildings. (These buildings, with one exception, are no longer preserved. On the outside of the Taj complex are three buildings, two to the west (? g. 3: 20, 21) and one to the east; the latter represents another subsidiary tomb complex of this type (? g. 3: 13c). The waterfront scheme is thus transferred to a landlocked situation in these miniature replicas of the main garden. Not only that, but the waterfront garden is also used as the ordering scheme for the entire sub- 132 ebba koch Fig. 3. Site plan of the Taj Mahal with terms derived from the Persian descriptions by Lahawri and Kanbu of 1643: A. riverfront terrace (kurs? ), B. tomb garden (b? gh), C . omplex of the forecourt (jilawkh? na), D. complex with cross-shaped (ch? r s? ) bazaar and four caravanserais (sar? }? ), 1. mausoleum (raw ¬a), 2. mosque (masjid), 3. assembly hall (mihm? n kh? na), 4a–f. wall towers (burj), 5. pool (haw ¬), 6. first temporary burial site of Mumtaz Mahal, 7a, b. garden wall pavilions ({im? rat) popularly called Naubat Khana (Drum House), 8. double arcaded galleries to the south of the garden (? w? n dar ? w? n), 9. gate (darw? za), 10a, b. quarters for tomb attendants (khaw p? ra), 11. forecourt (jilawkh? na), 12a–f. bazaar streets (b? z? r), 13a–c. ubsidiary tombs (maqbara) all popularly called Saheli Burj (Tower of the Female Friend), 14. gates (darw? za): 14a. popularly called Fatehpuri Gate, 14b. popularly called Fatehabad Gate, 15. gate (darw? za) popularly called Sirhi Darwaza, 16. caravan> the taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance 133 Fig. 4. Plan of the preserved complex. (Drawing: Richard A. Barraud and Ebba Koch) serai (sar? }? ) known since the eighteenth century as: 16a Katra (Market) Omar Khan, 16b. Katra Fulel (Market of Perfumes), 16c. Katra Resham (Silk Market), 16d. Katra Jogidas, 17. entral square (chawk), 18a, b. west and east gates of the bazaar and caravanserai complex, 19. south gate of the bazaar and caravanserai complex popularly called Dakhnay Darwaza, 20. outer western tomb, 21. mosque popularly called Fatehpuri Masjid. (Drawing: Richard A. Barraud and Ebba Koch) 134 ebba koch Fig. 5. Plan of Agra, drawn with added numbering after a plan painted on cloth datable to the 1720s, 294 x 272 cm, in the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, City Palace, Jaipur (cat. no. 126): 3. Ram Bagh (Bagh-i Nur Afshan), 4. Zahara Bagh (Bagh-i Jahanara), 9. Tomb of I{timad al-Dawla, 17.Mahtab Bagh, 20. Taj Mahal, 28. Agra Fort. (Drawing: Richard A. Barraud and Ebba Koch) sidiary complex of the Taj. In order to understand the complete design, we must turn to contemporary desc ription and look at eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury plans (compare ? gs. 3 and 7). 22 From these it becomes apparent that south of the jilawkh? na there was another courtyard complex with a cross-axial arrangement (? g. 3: D). It was formed by open, intersecting bazaar streets (? g. 3: 12c, 12d, 12e, 12f), which corresponded to the walkways of the garden, and four squarish sar? }? , that is, caravanserais or inns (? g. 3: 16a, 16b, 16c, 16d), taking the place of the four gar- den plots. We meet here with a unique and highly creative transfer of a ch? rb? gh design onto a complex of utilitarian civic architecture. Hence the con? guration of the rectangular unit containing the jilawkh? na and the cross-axial unit to its south echoed the waterfront scheme of the Taj garden. The entire complex of the Taj Mahal thus consisted formally of two units following the waterfront design—that of the Taj garden, a true waterfront garden, and that of the landlocked variant of the subsidiar y units.The tomb garden and the subsidiary complex were the taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance 135 Fig. 6. Plan of preserved and reconstructible building substance of the so-called Zahara Bagh, identified as Bagh-i Jahanara (late 1620s to 1630s), Agra. (Drawing: Richard A. Barraud and Ebba Koch) connected not only formally but also functionally. The utilitarian unit serviced the funerary unit of the tomb garden. By imperial command the upkeep of the tomb was ? nanced by the income generated from the bazaars and caravanserais, in addition to that of thirty villages from the district of Agra. 3 The service unit was the counterpart (qar? na)24 of the tomb complex, linked to it by design and function. The two zones, the funerary and the â€Å"wordly,† relate also to the dialectics of the Islamic concept of d? n waduny? }, the domains of the spiritual and the material life. 25 Furthermore, the addition to the mausoleum complex of quarters for merchants and foreign travelers ensured â€Å"that the whole world should see and admire its magni? cence,† in the words of the French jeweler and traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who was in Agra in 1640–41, and again in 1665. 6 Its reception through world travelers—jah? n-naward? n or rawandah? – 136 ebba koch yi {? lam, as the Mughals called them27—thus forms an integral part of the concept of the Taj Mahal. Of this two-part service unit, the southern cross-axial component is the great mystery of the Taj Mahal: we do not really know how much of it survives. Hardly anybody who walks through the southern gate of the jilawkh? na (? g. 3: 15) and enters the narrow street with the marble inlay workshops realizes that this area, known as the Taj Ganj, was originally part of the Taj complex.Here a densely built city quarter has grown up in which the architecture of Shah Jahan has been buried almost entirely; today one can make out only fragments of the wings of the original bazaars and caravanserais. The four gates of the central square or chawk are preserved (although two only in part) and protected by the Archaeological Survey of India (? g. 8). The Taj Ganj is, however, an integral part of the Taj Mahal, an indispensable component of its planning. It has been lost, but there is no doubt that it should be given back to the Taj by some means.I am planning to do this in the form of an architectural model that will reconstruct the entire complex of the Taj Mahal, the River Jamna, and the imperial garden called Mahtab Bagh on the opposite side of the river. The model will enable visitors to understand that the Taj is unique not only because of the grandness of the tomb building but also because of the carefully planned creative design, the scale, and the multifunctional complexity of the entire compound. It will also draw attention to the Taj Mahal as a constituent part of the urban scheme of Agra.I envisage placing the model in the new Visitors ’ Center at the Taj Mahal, in the eastern and western courtyards of the khaw p? ras (? g. 9), today called, respectively, Fatehabad Gate Court and Fatehpuri Gate Court. The Taj Mahal Visitors’ Center is part of a new initiative for â€Å"the conservation and restoration†¦of the Taj Mahal and surrounding areas and a new site visitor management,† realized since 2001 in a partnership between the Indian government, represented by the Archaeological Survey of India, and the private sector—the Indian Hotels Company Ltd. that is, the Tata Group of Hotels. The project is monitored by the Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative, directed by the conservation architect Rahul Mehrotra and by Amita Baig, and advised by a body of global experts of which I am part. 28 Fig. 7. Plan of the entire Taj Mahal complex with designations of the main buildings in Persian, late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, Museum fur Indische Kunst, Berlin, MIK 10060. the taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance 137 Fig. 8. Taj Mahal, bazaar and caravanserai complex (fig. : D), gate of the central chawk (square) leading to the northeastern caravanserai today called Katra Fulel (fig. 3: 16b). The area is now built in and over by the city quarter Taj Ganj; in the background can be seen the gate of the Taj Mahal garden, behind it part of the mausoleum, and to the right the Mihman Khana. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1999) THE TAJ AS BUILT ARCHITECTURAL THEORY The reconstruction of the original complex of the Taj establishes the determinant role of the waterfront garden in its planning.The complex of the Taj Mahal not only explores the potential of the waterfront garden as an ideal funerary and a utilitarian worldly form, it also expresses canonically the architectural principles of the period. We have no texts to turn to because the Mughals had no written architectural theory, and one wonders to what extent they were affected by the ancient Shastric traditi on of building theory. The Sanskrit texts translated in an extensive program under Akbar did not include the outstanding Indian genre of art and architectural theory, the shilpa sh? stras and v? st? sh? tras, respectively; theorizing about art was not a Mughal literary preoccupation. True, it was hardly a major theme elsewhere in the Islamic world, but one would have expected the Mughals to become interested in the ancient Indian textual tradition of art theory, all the more since, like the Muslim dynasties in India before them, they continued to absorb Indian artistic conventions into their art and architecture, and even newly revived them. However, the fact that no texts exist does not mean that architectural theory was absent from Mughal thinking, especially in the time of Shah Jahan.My investigations have shown that theory was laid down in the architecture itself. As in painting—and I have tried to establish this for the historical images illustrating Shah Jahan’s history, the P? dsh? hn? ma29—the ruler’s buildings and formal gardens express these concepts so systematically that we can derive them from their form itself. The Taj is 138 ebba koch Fig. 9. Taj Mahal, view from the roof level of the gate towards southeast onto the khaw p? ra (quarter of attendants) now called Fatehabad Gate Courtyard (fig. 3: 10b) and the subsidiary tomb to the east of the jilawkh? na (fig. 3: 13b). Photo: Ebba Koch, 1995) â€Å"built architectural theory,† which can be read almost like a literary text once we have mastered the grammar and vocabulary of the architectural language. The buildings speak to us â€Å"with mute eloquence† (bazab? n b? zab? n? ), as Lahawri puts it. 30 We note here the purest expression of a consistent formal systematization characteristic of the entire art of Shah Jahan; it represents a distinctive and outstanding contribution speci? c to this period. The principles of Shahjahani architecture, which interact closely with one another, can be identi? ed as follows: 1. Geometrical planning. . Symmetry. Favored in particular is bilateral symmetry, for which we even have a term in contemporary descriptions of buildings, namely, qar? na,31 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. an Arabic word that expresses the notion of pairing and counterparts but also of integration, thus ? tting conceptually into the ideas of universal harmony that played a great role in the imperial ideology of Shah Jahan. In a typical Shahjahani qar? na scheme, two symmetrical features, one mirroring the other, are arranged on both sides of a central, dominant feature. Hierarchy. This is the overriding principle, which governs all the others.Proportional formulas expressed in triadic divisions. Uniformity of shapes, ordered by hierarchical accents. Sensuous attention to detail. Selective use of naturalism. Symbolism. the taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance 139 Fig. 10. Agra Fort, courtyard now called Machchhi Bhawan, originally the â€Å"Ground Floor Courtyard of the Hall of Private Audiences† (Dawlat Khana-i Khass), south wing with marble baldachin for Shah Jahan’s throne, 1630s (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1980) A palace wing of the so-called Machchhi Bhawan (1630s) in the Agra fort illustrates these principles very clearly (? . 10). The wing consists of uniformly shaped arcades with a hierarchical accent in the center, in the form of the emperor’s marble baldachin. The central feature and the identical arcades on both sides express in a triadic division bilateral symmetry, or qar? na. The baldachin attains its hierarchical accentuation by the use of nobler material—namely, white marble—and with selective naturalism: it is formed of organic baluster columns, decorated with naturalistically sculpted acanthus leaves that also appear in stucco as decoration of the interior cupola.These elements are shaped with sensuous attention to detail and are in stark contrast to the plainer arcades of the wings. The organic plant forms of the baldachin symbolize the emperor, whose throne stood below it, as the generator of blossoming and wellbeing. 32 This is underlined by the pot with over? owing leaves out of which grows each of the four columns—a p? r? a ghata or p? r? a kalasha, in Indian architecture an ancient symbol of growth, fecundity, and prosperity (? g. 11). 33 This example is meant to suggest that the same principles govern the entire architecture of Shah Jahan— palaces, gardens, mosques, and mausoleums.They are, however, expressed most grandly and most consistently in the Taj Mahal, whose architecture epitomizes the Shahjahani system. THE PRINCIPLES OF SHAHJAHANI ARCHITECTURE AS EXPRESSED IN THE TAJ MAHAL First, a rational and strict geometry is ensured by the use of grid systems based on the Shahjahani gaz. Different modules are used for the garden and the subsidiary 140 ebba koch gate (darw? za) to the garden (? g. 3: 9), the fore court (jilawkh? na) (? g. 3: 11) and its southern gate (? g. 3: 15), the square (chawk) (? g. 3: 17), and the southern gate of the bazaar and caravanserai complex (? g. : 19). These elements are ? anked on both sides by pairs of identical buildings: the mosque (masjid) (? g. 3: 2) and the assembly hall (mihm? n kh? na) (? g. 3: 3), two garden wall pavilions (cim? rat), now called Naubat Khana (? g. 3: 7a, 7b), and, to accentuate the corners of the enclosure wall and the terrace step, three pairs of tower pavilions (burj) (? g. 3: 4a, 4b, 4c, 4d, 4e, 4f). The elements of the subsidiary unit (? g. 3: C, D) are arranged in the same mirror symmetry. Integrated into the overall qar? na symmetry are centrally planned elements, namely the four-part garden (b? gh) (? g. : B), the four-part bazaar-and-caravanserai complex (? g. 3: D), the miniature ch? rb? ghs of the subsidiary tombs (? g. 3: 13a, 13b); the individual buildings of the mausoleum (? g. 3: 1) and gate (? g. 3: 9) are raised ove r central plans (compare ? gs. 3 and 4). Each element plays an indispensable part in the composition; if just one part were missing, the balance of the entire composition would be destroyed. Bilateral symmetry dominated by a central accent has generally been recognized as an ordering principle of the architecture of rulers aiming at absolute power—a symbol of the ruling force that brings about balance and harmony.For Earl E. Rosenthal, this is expressed in the palace built into the Alhambra in Granada by Charles V in 1526 as a statement of the Christian Reconquista of Spain, â€Å"a striking symbol of the strati? cation of aristocratic society under centralized authority. †35 Third, triadic divisions bound together in proportional formulas determine the shape of plans, elevations, and architectural ornament of the Taj. A leitmotif is the tripartite composition consisting of a dominant feature in the center ? anked by two identical elements; the con? uration relates in turn to hierarchy as well as to qar? na symmetry (? gs. 1 and 12). Fourth is the hierarchical grading of material, forms, and color down to the minutest ornamental detail. Particular striking is hierarchical use of color: the only building in the whole complex faced entirely with white marble is the mausoleum. All the subsidiary structures of the Taj complex are faced with red sandstone; special features such as domes may be clad in white marble (? gs. 1, 2, 12). This hierarchic use of white marble and red sandstone is typical of impe- Fig. 11.Marble baluster column of the baldachin of Shah Jahan’s throne, topped with an acanthus capital and growing out of a pot with overflowing acanthus leaves, the Indian pur? a ghata. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1979) complexes, and even individual buildings have their own grid. The unit of the garden and the riverfront terrace is based on a grid with a 23-gaz module, and the unit of the jilawkh? na and bazaar and caravanserai complex on a 17-gaz mo dule. In the planning of the mausoleum a 7-gaz module is used and in that of the gate a 3-gaz module. 34 Second, there is perfect symmetrical planning with emphasis on bilateral symmetry (qar? a) along a central axis on which are placed the main features. The main axis running north-south is represented by the garden canal and the bazaar street in its extension. On it are set the dominant features: the mausoleum (raw ¬a) (? g. 3: 1), the pool (haw ¬) (? g. 3: 5), the the taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance 141 Fig. 12. Taj Mahal, Mihman Khana (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1996) rial Mughal architecture, but here it is explored with unparalleled sophistication. It represents the clearest link to pre-Islamic Indian Shastric concepts and expresses social strati? cation.The Mughals elaborated here an architectural praxis that already had been adopted by the early sultans of Delhi and that conforms to older Indian concepts laid down in the Shastric literature. The Vishnud harmottara, an authoritative compilation composed in Kashmir in about the eighth century, recommended white-colored stone for Brahmin buildings and red for those of the Kshatriyas, the warrior caste:36 â€Å"White, it would seem, is opposed to red as the purity of the Brahmin is opposed to the ruling power of the Kshatriya. † The synthesis of the two colors had an auspicious connotation. 7 By using white and red in their buildings, the Mughals represented themselves in the terms of the two highest levels of the Indian social system: architecturally speaking, they were the new Brahmins and the new Kshatryas of the age. Until Aurangzeb, the Mughal emperors were concerned to de? ne themselves as rulers in Indian as well as Muslim terms; the historian {Abd al-Qadir Bada}uni (d. 1004/1595–96), who was an orthodox Muslim and wrote a history of Akbar on his own account, criticized the emperor for letting himself be addressed as an incarnation â€Å"like Rama, Krishna, and ot her in? del kings. 38 Fifth is the uniformity of shapes, ordered by hierarchical accents: for instance, only one type of columnar support—the Shahjahani column—is used in the entire complex. It has a multifaceted shaft, a muqarnas capital, and a base formed of multicusped-arched panels39 and is always combined with a multicusped arch. The proportions and details of the columns may vary according to their position in the complex. In the galleries on both sides of the gate (? g. 3: 8a, 8b) they form monumental arcades (? g. 13, and cf. ?g. 10); on the roof level of the mausoleum similar arcades on a smaller scale are set in the back sides of the p? ht? qs (portals), and Shahjahani half-columns 142 ebba koch Fig. 13. Taj Mahal, galleries south of garden on both sides of the gate (fig. 3: 18), Shahjahani column with faceted shaft, muqarnas capital, and base formed of four multicusped panels, each enriched with a flowering plant in relief. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1995) Fig. 14. Taj Mahal, roof level, pillar with paired Shahjahani half-columns of roof chhatr? (kiosk), behind the back side of the p? sht? q (porch) with gallery formed of Shahjahani columns and multicusped arches. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1996) ?ank the pillars of the four marble chhatr? (kiosks) surrounding the main dome (? g. 14). This uniformity is true of the entire architectural vocabulary and its decoration; it applies to the paneling of the walls with shallow multicusped niches and cartouches, and to the treatment of vaults. One type of decorative facing is used for the main vaults and the half vaults of the mausoleum and gate (? gs. 15, 16)—a network developed from points arranged in concentric circles, which Shah Jahan’s authors described as q? lib k? r? , or mold work, because in the original plaster form of the vault the pattern was applied by means of molds (? g. 15).The design was transferred into marble in the central dome and half vaults of the p? sht? qs of the mausoleu m (? g. 16). Sixth, the principle of sensuous attention to detail is expressed most exemplarily in the ? owers of the mausoleum dado and in the exquisite pietra dura (literally, â€Å"hard stone†: gemstone inlay) decoration of the cenotaphs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan and the screen that surrounds them (? gs. 17, 18, 20, 21). Seventh, in the Taj the selective use of naturalism emphasizes hierarchy. The most naturalistic decor appears in the chief building of the entire complex, the mausoleum (? s. 17, 18, 20, 21). Eighth, the sophisticated symbolism in the architec- the taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance 143 Fig. 15. Taj Mahal, garden gate, half vault of the southern p? sht? q showing plaster facing with q? lib k? r? , that is, a network forming kite-shaped compartments developed from stars arranged in concentric tiers. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1996) Fig. 16. Taj Mahal, mausoleum, central dome with q? lib k? r? in marble relief. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1996) 1 44 ebba koch brought to its ultimate monumentalized design; thus it was raised to a level above the sphere of mortals.The concept of the eschatological house also governs the elaborate program of the inscriptions, designed by Amanat Khan Shirazi. Z. A. Desai and Wayne Begley have shown that passages of the Qur}an selected for the inscriptions focus on themes of the Last Judgment, divine mercy, the reward of the faithful, and Paradise (? g. 19). 42 Such themes are entirely ? tting for the mausoleum in their evocation of the abode prepared for Mumtaz in Paradise. Begley, however, uses the evidence for another, less close-at-hand reading and sees in the Taj Mahal an architectural realization of an Islamic cosmological scheme—namely, the oncept of the Throne of God on the Day of Judgment, as envisaged and recorded in a diagram by the thirteenth-century Spanish mystic Ibn al-{Arabi in his Fut t al-Makkiyya (1238). 43 Why then, as Maria Eva Subtelny has pointed out, 44 is the famou s Throne verse (Qur}an 2:255) extolling God’s majesty45 absent from the inscriptional program of the Taj Mahal? Begley’s interpretation ignores not only that, but also the use of an established Agra garden plan for the layout of tural program expresses, as I have suggested, the concept of the mausoleum as earthly realization of the mansion of Mumtaz in the garden of Paradise.This is clearly formulated by Lahawri in the of? cial history of the emperor’s reign: †¦the exalted mausoleum, which imitates the gardens of Rizwan [the guardian of Paradise], and which gives an impression of Paradise (literally, the holy enclosures) (raw ¬a-i mu}all? ki az riy?  ¬-i Ri ¬w? n hik? yat kard wa az ha }ir[rat al-] quds nish? n dahad). 40 Mughal eulogistical references have a complexity of their own; while they may represent a purely literary convention, they can also have a direct bearing on the work of architecture or art that they praise.In order to arrive at their meaning, the metaphors used in such eulogies thus have to be carefully evaluated against the evidence brought forth by formal analysis. 41 In the Taj Mahal, every aspect of the architecture supports the concept of the paradisiacal mansion. It is expressed in the overall planning of the entire complex. The waterfront garden, a typical residential garden form of Agra, was realized in ideal forms and Fig. 17. Taj Mahal, p? sht? q of mausoleum, marble dados with rows of naturalistic flowers representing heavenly flowerbeds. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1978) he taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance 145 Fig. 18. Taj Mahal, p? sht? q of the mausoleum, dado flowers of mixed botanical species, detail. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1978) the mausoleum. 46 He also disregards another highly relevant aspect, that is, the ? oral decoration that forms an integral part of the building. In a direct appeal to our senses, the concept of the paradisiacal garden house is expressed in the delicate ? ow ers that appear on the dados, at the eye level of the beholder. They are carved in sensuous detail and represent naturalistic but not necessarily identi? ble botanical species47 that transform the lower walls of the mausoleum into ever-blooming paradisiacal ? owerbeds (? gs. 17, 18). The naturalistic decoration culminates in the interior, in the central ensemble of the cenotaphs of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan and the screen that surrounds them. These are covered with spectacular ? owers and plants inlaid with semi-precious stones, in commesso (composition) di pietre dure; the Mughals called the technique parch? n k? r? (literally: â€Å"driven-in work†) (? g. 20). The poet Abu Talib Kalim tells us that the painterly effects that could be obtained with parch? k? r? made it possible to create the desired naturalistic ? owers, permanent and thus superior images of their counterparts in nature: On each stone a hundred colors, paintings, and ornaments Have become apparent through the ch isel’s blade. Fig. 19. Taj Mahal, interior of the central hall, south arch. End of the inscription of Qur}an 39:53–54, with the colophon of the calligrapher, reading â€Å"Finished with His [God’s] help; written by the humble faqir Amanat Khan al-Shirazi, in the year one thousand and forty-eight Hijri [1638–39], and the twelfth of His Majesty’s auspicious accession. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 2001) 146 ebba koch Fig. 20. Cenotaphs of Mumtaz Mahal (1632) and Shah Jahan (1666) in the main tomb hall. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 1981) Fig. 21. Cenotaph of Shah Jahan in the lower tomb chamber (â€Å"crypt†). Detail of poppies and yellow flowers set in cartouches, inlaid with semi-precious stones in pietra dura/parch? n k? r? technique. (Photo: Ebba Koch, 2002) the taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance The chisel has become the pen of Mani48 Painting so many pictures upon the translucent marble (? b-i marmar). †¦.Pictures become manifest from every stone; In its mirror behold the image of a flower garden. They have inlaid flowers of stone in the marble: What they lack in smell they make up with color. Those red and yellow flowers that dispel the heart’s grief, are completely out of carnelian and amber. †¦. When of such stones the surface of a tomb is made, The deceased will [want to] clasp the flower pictures to her heart. 49 147 and to provide a lasting memorial to his fame. Strict formal principles served to express within each work of art and each building the hierarchy and timeless order of Shahjahani rule.With their successful appeal to our senses, the seductive aesthetics make the message the more persuasive. It is the fusion of the intellectual and the sensuous that has made the Taj Mahal such a successful monument up to the present day. Lastly, the close connection between form and meaning in Shahjahani art makes it a methodological exemplar of general art-historical relevance; it reminds us tha t formal analysis should not be in opposition to a contextual approach but rather a starting point for art as history.Institute fur Kunstgeschichte University of Vienna NOTES Author’s note: A visiting fellowship from the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University in autumn 2002 enabled me to work on the manuscript of Taj Mahal, and to present my ? ndings in a lecture in the Aga Khan Program Lecture Series on Nov. 14, 2003, which forms the basis of this article. I thank Gulru Necipoqlu, David Roxburgh, Jeffery Spurr, Andras Riedlmayer, and Sunil Sharma for their interest in my research and their help during my stay in Cambridge.For supporting my project of the documentation and analysis of the Taj Mahal, I wish to thank the Jubilaumsfonds der Osterreichischen Nationalbank, the Bundesministerium fur Unterricht und Kulturelle Angelegenheiten, Austria, and Mr. E. Alkazi. 1. W. E. Begley, â€Å"The Myth of the Taj Mahal and a New Theory of its Symbolic Meanin g,† The Art Bulletin 61 (1979): 7– 37. Begley’s interpretation of the building as a replica of the Throne of God became widely known, probably because of its eccentricity and also because there was no proposed alternative; it even made its way into the popular travel guide literature: see Lonely Planet: India, 8th ed. Hawthorne: Victoria, Australia, 1999), 392. 2. The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra (London: Thames and Hudson, forthcoming 2006). 3. Mu? ammad Am? n Qazw? n? , P? dsh? hn? ma, British Library Asia, Paci? c, and Africa Collections (henceforth BL APAC), Or. 173, fol. 234b (librarian’s refoliation 235b), my translation; cf. the translation of this passage in W. E. Begley and Z. A. Desai, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Mughal and European Documentary Sources (Cambridge, MA: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture and Seattle: University of Washington Press, ca. 989), 42. 4. {Abd al-Yam? d L? hawr? , The B? dsh? hn? mah (Persian text), ed. M. Kab? r al-D? n A? mad and M. {Abd al-Ra m (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1865–72) vol. 1, pt. 1, 403, my trans. ; cf. the trans. of this passage in Begley and Desai, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb, 43. 5. I thank Dr. S. M. Yunus Jaffery for his continuing assistance in reading and translating Mughal source material. On both cenotaphs of Shah Jahan, which were placed next to those of Mumtaz after his death in 1666, the decoration with paradisiacal ? owers was given preference even over inscriptions.Inscriptions had decorated the sarcophagus-like element of both cenotaphs of Mumtaz, the one in the lower and the other in the upper tomb chamber, and full ? owering plants appear only on the platform of her upper cenotaph. But both of Shah Jahan’s cenotaphs are covered all over with ? owers (? gs. 20, 21); the only epigraphy appears in the form of a brief historical epitaph at the south end of each cenotaph. The w eight given to ? oral decoration is in tune, on the one hand, with the overall concept of the mausoleum as paradisiacal garden house, but the exclusively ? oral decoration of the emperor’s cenotaphs makes a more speci? statement, relating, even after his death, to the use of ? ora in his court settings to express imperial propaganda. The court poets and writers tell us that Shah Jahan was â€Å"the spring of the ? ower garden of justice and generosity,†50 the renewer (mujaddid) under whose rule â€Å"Hindustan has become the rose garden of the earth, and his reign†¦has become the spring season of the age in which the days and nights are young. †51 CONCLUSION From our investigations, the reign of Shah Jahan emerges as a time when the visual arts were most consistently and systematically explored as a means of promulgating imperial ideology.The written texts and the arts were seen as equally necessary means to represent the ruler and his state for a wider pub lic 148 6. ebba koch My ? eld research provides the material for a constantly expanding archive, which today comprises several hundred architectural drawings prepared mainly by Richard A. Barraud and ca. 50,000 photographs taken by myself. E. W. Smith, The Moghul Architecture of Fathpur-Sikri, Archaeological Survey of India: New Imperial Series (henceforth ASINIS) 18, 4 vols. (1894–98, repr.Delhi: Caxton Publications, 1985); idem, Akbar’s Tomb, Sikandarah near Agra, Described and Illustrated, ASINIS 35 (Allahabad: Superintendent Government Press, United Provinces, 1909). In the second Indian edition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 98–101. The most useful studies are Muhammad Abdulla Chaghtai, Le Tadj Mahal d’Agra (Brussels, 1938); R. A. Jairazbhoy, â€Å"The Taj Mahal in the Context of East and West: A Study in Comparative Method,† Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24 (1961): 59–88; Dieter Brandenburg, Der Taj Mahal in Agra (Berlin, 1969); R.Nath, The Immortal Taj Mahal (Bombay, 1972); and Lisa Golombek, â€Å"From Tamerlane to the Taj Mahal,† in Islamic Art and Architecture: In Honor of Katharina Otto-Dorn, ed. A. Daneshvari, Islamic Art and Architecture, 1 (Malibu, 1981), 43–50. Muhammad Moin-ud-din, The History of the Taj (Agra, 1905), recorded for the ? rst time the inscriptions of the Taj; his pioneering effort was superseded by Begley and Desai, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb. For excellent photographs by Jean Nou, see Amina Okada and M. C.Joshi, Taj Mahal (New York, London, and Paris: Abbeville Press, 1993): unfortunately the illustrations are only partly identi? ed. For further literature on the Taj Mahal, see Ebba Koch, â€Å"T? dj Ma? all,† Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (henceforth EI2) (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2004), vol. 10, 58–60, and idem, Complete Taj Mahal. Koch, â€Å"T? dj Ma? all,† ? g. 4 presents my new overall plan of the complex for the ? rst time. A brief assessment based on this survey is idem, â€Å"The Taj Mahal,† in The Seventy Architectural Wonders of Our World, ed. Neil Parkyn (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002), 57–61.We measured the buildings with metal and plastic tapes and with a laser measuring instrument called Disto Basic, made by Leica. Based on our survey, Richard Barraud did the scale drawings by hand; I took the photographs with a Nikon FS Photomic. All plans and photographs illustrating this article are part of this survey. A selection is published in Koch, â€Å"Taj Mahal,† 60. Jaques Derrida, â€Å"Structure, Sign, and Play,† Writing and Difference, trans. A. Bass (Chicago, 1978). The width of the complex at the southern, jilawkh? na, end measures 300. 84 m; at the riverfront it is 300 m. This is explained by Richard A.Barraud in his pioneering study â€Å"The Modular Planning of the Taj Mahal,† based on our measurements and illustrated with three drawings, in Koch, Complete Taj Mahal. Barraud refutes Begley’s assumption that the planning of the Taj can be reconstructed by putting a decimal grid over the whole complex and explaining away the features that do not ? t into it. See Begley and Desai, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb, ? gs. 13–15, and W. E. Begley, â€Å"The Garden of the Taj Mahal: A Case Study of Mughal Architectural Planning and Symbolism,† in Mughal Gardens: Sources, Places, Representations, and Prospects, ed. J. L. Wescoat, Jr. and J.WolschkeBulmahn (Washington, DC, 1996). In earlier publications I have given differing measurements of the complex. In Koch, â€Å"T? dj Ma? all,† 58, a misprint occurred in the rendering of the gaz equivalents of the preserved part, which are indicated as 690 x 313 gaz instead of 696 x 374 gaz. In my essay in Seventy Architectural Wonders, 61, the overall length of the complex is given as 897. 3 x 300 m, because we took it from the outer face of the southernmost g ate, which projects 1. 20 m from the enclosure wall. From this comes the overall length of 1114 gaz cited in Koch, â€Å"T? dj Ma? all,† 58, which differs from the one given here as 1112. gaz. Ebba Koch, â€Å"The Mughal Waterfront Garden,† in Gardens in the Time of the Great Muslim Empires: Theory and Design, Supplements to Muqarnas, 7, ed. Attilio Petruccioli (Leiden, New York, and Cologne: Brill, 1997), 140–60, repr. in Ebba Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 183–202. Cat. no. 126. The plan is painted on cloth and measures 294 x 272 cm. I have studied it since the mid-1980s and discussed it in several publications: see Ebba Koch, â€Å"The Zahara Bagh (Bagh-i Jahanara) at Agra,† Environmental Design 2 (1986): 30– 37; idem, â€Å"The Mughal Waterfront Garden† in M.C. Beach, Ebba Koch, and Wheeler Thackston, King of the World: The Padshahnama: An Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Roya l Library, Windsor Castle (London: Azimuth Editions and Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1997), cat. no. 29, 185–87 and cat. no. 45, 209–10, ? g. 132. I thank Dr. B. M. Jawalia, Keeper of Manuscripts, for assisting me in reading the inscriptions of the plan in July 1985 and Feb. 1986, and Dr. A? ok Kumar Das, then Director of the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, Jaipur, for the permission to study and to publish it. As no. 45 on the line drawing of ? g. I have added a further complex, which represents the Chhatri of Jaswant Singh (d. probably 1678), a well-preserved funerary complex that does not appear on the Jaipur map. L? lah S? l Chand, Tafr? h al-{im? r? t, compiled for James Stephen Lushington, Acting Collector and Magistrate of Agra, 1825–26, BL APAC, Pers. Or. 6371. I have used the copy prepared in 1836–37 for James Davidson, Sessions Judge, Agra, BL APAC, Pers. ms. 2450. Koch, â€Å"Zahara Bagh (Bagh-i Jahan ara). † For a full discussion of the Agra riverfront scheme, see Koch, Taj Mahal, chap. 1. L? hawr? , B? dsh? hn? ma, vol. 2, 322–31; and Mu? ammad O? li?Kanb? , {Amal-i O? li? , 3 vols. (Lahore, 1967–72) vol. 2, 315– 20; both trans. Begley and Desai in Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb, 65–82. On Mughal historiography, see the new study by Stephan Conermann, Historiographie als Sinnstiftung: Indopersische Geschichtsschreibung wahrend der Mogulzeit (932–1118/ 1516–1707) (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2002), 422 (on L? hawr? ) and 125, 395–96, and passim (on Kanb? ). In his painstaking assessment, Conermann regrettably does not consider art and architecture as sources of history, as I have pleaded for in the introduction to Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, xxiii–xxvii.The ? rst dated plan of the entire complex is by the British landscape artists Thomas and William Daniell, who had it prepared in Agra in 1789 and published in th eir Two Views of the Taje Mahel at the City of Agra in Hindostan Taken in 1789 (London, 1801). A similar plan, but painted on cloth, is in the 7. 8. 9. 15. 16. 17. 10. 18. 11. 19. 20. 21. 12 . 13. 14. 22. the taj mahal: architecture, symbolism, and urban signi? cance Museum of the Taj Mahal (acc. no. 22), in the pavilion set in the western wall of the garden; another plan of this type, 280 x 85 cm, is in the Museum fur Indische Kunst, Berlin, no. I 10 060.It has been published in Pratapaditya Pal, Janice Leoshko, Joseph M. Dye III, and Stephen Markel, Romance of the Taj Mahal, exhibition catalogue (London: Thames and Hudson and Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989), 55, ? g. 41. The plans differ in the areas of the jil? wkhana and the caravansarais. L? hawr? , B? dsh? hn? ma, vol. 2, 329–30; Kanb? , {Amal-i O? li? , vol. 2, 319–20. See also Begley and Desai, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb, 75, 81. For the term, see below. For d? n wa-duny? , see L. Gardet , â€Å"D? n,† EI2, vol. 2, 293–96, in particular 295. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, 2 vols. English trans. V. Ball, 2nd ed. ed. William Crooke (London: Oxford University Press, 1925; repr. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1977), vol. 1, p. 90. See, e. g. , L? hawr? , B? dsh? hn? ma, vol. 1, pt. 1, 155. The aims of the venture have been laid down in Taj Mahal Agra Site Management Plan, brought out by the Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative together with the Archaeological Survey of India (March 2003); for my mission statement, delivered on Sept. 28, 2001, at the end of the ? rst advisors’ meeting on the conservation of the Taj Mahal (Sept. 25–28, 2001), see 5–6; for the model, see 66–67 and 70, ? g. 12.Ebba Koch, â€Å"The Principles of Shah-Jahani Painting,† in Beach, Koch, and Thackston, King of the World, 131–43; repr. in Ebba Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, 130–62. L? hawr? , B? ds h? hn? ma, vol. 1, pt. 1, 149. See, e. g. , L? hawr? , B? dsh? hn? ma, vol. 2, 327 with regard to the Taj Mahal, namely, the placement of the Mihman Khana and mosque to both sides of the mausoleum. This concept of rulership is explained in more detail below. On the adoption of the p? r? a ghata in Mughal architecture, see R. Nath, History of Decorative Art in Mughal Architecture (Delhi, Varanasi, and Patna: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976), 6– 10.Barraud, â€Å"Modular Planning of the Taj Mahal,† in Koch, Complete Taj Mahal. E. E. Rosenthal, The Palace of Charles V in Granada (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 249–50. See Priyabala Shah, trans. , Shri Vishnudharmottara, a Text of Ancient Indian Arts (Ahmedabad: The New Order Book Co. , n. d. [1990]), 268, 271. Brenda E. F. Beck, â€Å"Colour and Heat in South Indian Ritual,† Man: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, n. s. , 4: 553–72; the quoted passage is on 559. Beck investig ates the use of the two colors, red and white, in South Indian ritual; her ? ndings tally with the recommendations of the Vishnudharmotara. Abd al-Q? dir Bad? }? n? , Muntakhab al-Taw? r? kh, English trans. (vol. 2) W. H. Lowe, 2nd ed. (Bengal: Asiatic Society, 1924; repr. Delhi: Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i-Delli, 1973), 336. For Akbar representing himself on Indian terms, see Ebba Koch, â€Å"The 149 39. 40. 41. 23. 24. 25. 26. 42. 27. 28. 43. 44. 45. 46. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 47. 34. 35. 36. 48. 49. 37. 50. 38. 51. Intellectual and Artistic Climate at Akbar’s Court,† in John Seyller, The Adventures of Hamza: A Monument of Early Mughal Painting (London: Azimuth Editions and Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2002), 18–31.Koch, Mughal Architecture, 93. L? hawr? , B? dsh? hn? ma, vol. 2, 323; trans. E. Koch; cf. trans. of Begley and Desai in Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb, 66. E. Koch, introduction to Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, xxiii–xxiv; see also idem, â€Å"Diwan-i {Amm and Chihil Sutun: The Audience Halls of Shah Jahan,† Muqarnas 11 (1994): 143–65, in particular 149–52, repr. in Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, 229–54, in particular 242–43. For a compilation and translation of the inscriptions, see Begley and Desai, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb, 195–244; for a discussion of their meaning, see W. E.Begley, â€Å"Amanat Khan and the Calligraphy on the Taj Mahal,† Kunst des Orients 12 (1978–79): 5–39; W. E. Begley, â€Å"The Myth of the Taj Mahal and a New Theory of Its Symbolic Meaning,† The Art Bulletin 61 (1979): 7–37. Begley, â€Å"Myth of the Taj Mahal,† in particular 25–27. Personal communication, Toronto, Dec. 5, 2002. For the frequent use of the Throne Verse in epigraphical programs, see E. D. Cruikshank Dodd, â€Å"The Image of the Word: Notes on the Religious Iconography of Islam,† Berytus 18 (1969): 35–61, 59; S. S . Blair, Islamic Inscriptions (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 69, 198, 214.I pointed this out in Mughal Architecture, 99; and in â€Å"The Mughal Waterfront Garden,† 143–44, repr. in Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, 196; but I could not convince Laura Parodi, â€Å"‘The Distilled Essence of the Timurid Spirit’: Some Observations on the Taj Mahal,† East and West 50, 1–4 (Dec. 2000): 535–42, in particular 539, where she considered my interpretation of the â€Å"ideal paradisiacal garden for the deceased† as â€Å"reductive† and preferred Begley’s Throne of God hypothesis. I have come back to the issue in the introduction to Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, xxiv.Both Begley and Parodi overlook the fact that, however spectacular their realization, the themes of Shahjahani art were conventional, as be? tting a ruler aspiring to classical equilibrium. Robert Skelton ? rst drew attention to the ambivalence of these ? oral creations in â€Å"A Decorative Motif in Mughal Art,† in Aspects of Indian Art: Papers Presented in a Symposium at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oct. 1970, ed. Pratapaditya Pal (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), 147–52. The founder of the Manicheans, and in Persian lore the ultimate painter. Ab? lib Kal? , P? dsh? hn? ma, Persian ms. , BL APAC, Ethe 1570, fol. 164a margin; my translation differs somewhat from that of Begley and Desai, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb, 83. I thank Sunil Sharma for his advice. Bah? r-i gulist? n-i {adl u karam: Y? jj? Mu? ammad J? n Quds? , Zafarn? ma-i Sh? h Jah? n, BL APAC, Persian ms. Ethe 1552, fol. 129a. Kanb? , {Amal-i O? li? , vol. 3, 24; see also Ebba Koch, â€Å"Mughal Palace Gardens from Babur to Shah Jahan (1526–1648),† Muqarnas 14 (1997): 143–65, quotes on 159; repr. in Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, 203–28, quotes on 227.