1.
1908 in literature
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1908. March – Ezra Pound leaves America for Europe, in April, he moves to Venice, where in July he self-publishes his first collection of poems, A Lume Spento. In August he settles in London, where he will remain until 1920, june 18 – Mark Twain purchases a house in Redding, Connecticut. Summer – The Marlowe Society stages a production at the New Theatre, Cambridge, July – Katherine Mansfield moves to London, she will never return to her native New Zealand. September 30 – Maurice Maeterlincks The Blue Bird is premièred at Konstantin Stanislavskys Moscow Art Theatre, october 3 – The Avenida Theatre opens on Buenos Aires Avenida de Mayo with a production of Lope de Vegas El castigo sin venganza directed by María Guerrero. December – Ford Madox Hueffer begins publication of the literary magazine The English Review in London, yeats, produces its first publication, Poetry and Ireland, essays by W. B. Ethiopian linguist Afevork Ghevre Jesuss ልብ ፡ ወለድ ፡ ታሪክ ።, malay tale Hikayat Hang Tuah is first published, edited by Sulaiman bin Muhammed Nur and William Shellabear. Romanian writer Urmuz is known to be working on his manuscript stories, K. M. Forster – A Room with a View John Fox, Jr. Madero – La sucesión presidencial en 1910 Friedrich Nietzsche – Ecce homo, Wie man wird, was man ist Alfred R. M
2.
1907 in art
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The year 1907 in art involved some significant events. February 7 – Vanessa Stephen marries Clive Bell, september – A cast of G. F. Watts sculpture Physical Energy is erected posthumously in Kensington Gardens in London. Henri Matisse begins to teach at the Académie Matisse in Paris, adolphe Valette joins the staff of Manchester Municipal School of Art. Kunsthalle Mannheim designed by Hermann Billing to serve an International Art Exhibition, the Chicago Plan is produced by Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennett, and illustrated by Jules Guerin. Bernard Berenson publishes North Italian Painters of the Renaissance, cadmium Red pigment first produced, in Germany. Georges Braque exhibited Viaduc à lEstaque, now at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, simultaneously, there was a retrospective exhibition of 56 works by Paul Cézanne, as a tribute to the artist who died in 1906. W. W. Marie Z. Peto, American trompe-lœil painter November 27 – Paul Ritter, German architectural painter November 28 – Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish dramatist, painter and designer
3.
Ivan Vazov National Theatre
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The Ivan Vazov National Theatre is Bulgarias national theatre, as well as the oldest and most authoritative theatre in the country and one of the important landmarks of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. It is located in the centre of the city, with the facade facing the City Garden, incidentally Vazovs play, The Outcasts was the first to be performed at the theatre when it opened. The theatres Neoclassical building, designed by famous Viennese theatre architects Hermann Helmer and Ferdinand Fellner, was finished in 1906, the building was extensively damaged by a fire in 1923 during an anniversary celebration, but was reconstructed in 1929 by German architect Martin Dülfer. A theatrical school was established as part of the National Theatre in 1925, the bombing of Sofia in World War II caused considerable damage to the building, but it was reconstructed in 1945. Another reconstruction followed in 1971–1975, and a €100,000 restoration project was implemented in 2006, the Ivan Vazov National Theatre has a well-equipped main stage with 750 seats, a smaller 120-seat stage and an additional 70-seat one on the fourth floor. The buildings facade is depicted on the obverse of the Bulgarian 50 levs banknote, the theatre has been host to productions from notable theatre directors such as Alexander Morfov who has been the Chief director since 1993. Official website Historical photographs of the Ivan Vazov National Theater Official Facebook Page 3D Laser scanning of the interior
4.
Sofia
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Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. The city has a population of 1.26 million, while 1.68 million people live in its metropolitan area, the city is located at the foot of Vitosha Mountain in the western part of the country, within less than 50 kilometres drive from the Serbian border. Its location in the centre of the Balkan peninsula means that it is the midway between the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea, whereas the Aegean Sea is the closest to it, Sofia has been an area of human habitation since at least 7000 BC. Being Bulgarias primate city, Sofia is a hometown of many of the local universities, cultural institutions. Sofia is one of the top 10 best places for business in the world. Sofia is Europes most affordable capital to visit as of 2013, for the longest time the city possessed a Thracian name, derived from the tribe Serdi, who were either of Thracian, Celtic, or mixed Thracian-Celtic origin. It seems that the first written mention of Serdica was made during his reign, during the Romans civitas Serdenisium was mentioned the brightest city of the Serdi in official inscriptions. The city was major throughout the past ever since Antiquity, when Roman emperor Constantine the Great referred to it as my Rome, other names given to Sofia, such as Serdonpolis and Triaditza, were mentioned by Byzantine Greek sources or coins. The Slavic name Sredets, which is related to middle and to the citys earliest name, the city was called Atralissa by the Arab traveller Idrisi and Strelisa, Stralitsa or Stralitsion by the Crusaders. The name Sofia comes from the Saint Sofia Church, as opposed to the prevailing Slavic etymology among Bulgarian cities and towns. It is ultimately derived from the Egyptian Kemetic word sbÅ, meaning star, door, teaching and wisdom and this was a tradition of collection of wise literature, shared between Mediterranean cultures, which was called sophia in Greek. In these documents the city is called Sofia, but at the time the region and the citys inhabitants are still called Sredecheski. The city became popular to the Ottomans by the name Sofya. In 1879 there was a dispute about what the name of the new Bulgarian capital should be, the citys name is pronounced by Bulgarians with a stress on the o, in contrast with the tendency of foreigners to place the stress on i. The female given name Sofia is pronounced by Bulgarians with a stress on the i, Sofia has an area of 492 km2, while Sofia City Province has an area of 1344 km2. Sofias development as a significant settlement owes much to its position in the Balkans. It is situated in western Bulgaria, at the foot of the Vitosha mountain, in the Sofia Valley that is surrounded by the Balkan mountains to the north. The valley has an altitude of 550 metres
5.
John Millington Synge
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Edmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, travel writer and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre and he is best known for his play The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey Theatre. Synge developed Hodgkins disease, a cancer that was then untreatable. He died several weeks short of his 38th birthday as he was trying to complete his last play, Synge was born in Newtown Villas, Rathfarnham, County Dublin, on 16 April 1871. He was the youngest son in a family of eight children and his parents were members of the Protestant upper middle class. His father, John Hatch Synge, who was a barrister, came from a family of landed gentry in Glanmore Castle and he was the uncle of brothers, mathematician John Lighton Synge and optical microscopy pioneer Edward Hutchinson Synge. Synges father contracted smallpox and died in 1872 at the age of 49, Synges mother moved the family to the house next door to her mothers house in Rathgar, County Dublin. Synge, although ill, had a happy childhood there. He developed an interest in bird-watching along the banks of the River Dodder and during holidays at the seaside resort of Greystones, County Wicklow. Synge was educated privately at schools in Dublin and Bray, and later studied piano, flute, violin, music theory and he travelled to the continent to study music, but changed his mind and decided to focus on literature. He was a student and won a scholarship in counterpoint in 1891. The family moved to the suburb of Kingstown in 1888, and Synge entered Trinity College, Dublin and he graduated with a BA in 1892, having studied Irish and Hebrew, as well as continuing his music studies and playing with the Academy Orchestra in the Antient Concert Rooms. Between November 1889 and 1894 he took music lessons with Robert Prescott Stewart. Synge joined the Dublin Naturalists Field Club and read the works of Charles Darwin and he wrote, When I was about fourteen I obtained a book of Darwins. My studies showed me the force of what I read, the more I put it from me the more it rushed back with new instances and power. Soon afterwards I turned my attention to works of Christian evidence, reading them at first with pleasure, soon with doubt and he then continued, Soon after I had relinquished the kingdom of God I began to take up a real interest in the kingdom of Ireland. Synge later developed an interest in Irish antiquities and the Aran Islands and he left the League because, as he told Maud Gonne, my theory of regeneration for Ireland differs from yours. I wish to work on my own for the cause of Ireland, in 1893 he published his first known work, a poem influenced by Wordsworth, Kottabos, A College Miscellany
6.
Dublin
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Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. Dublin is in the province of Leinster on Irelands east coast, the city has an urban area population of 1,345,402. The population of the Greater Dublin Area, as of 2016, was 1,904,806 people, founded as a Viking settlement, the Kingdom of Dublin became Irelands principal city following the Norman invasion. The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century and was briefly the second largest city in the British Empire before the Acts of Union in 1800, following the partition of Ireland in 1922, Dublin became the capital of the Irish Free State, later renamed Ireland. Dublin is administered by a City Council, the city is listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network as a global city, with a ranking of Alpha-, which places it amongst the top thirty cities in the world. It is a historical and contemporary centre for education, the arts, administration, economy, the name Dublin comes from the Irish word Dubhlinn, early Classical Irish Dubhlind/Duibhlind, dubh /d̪uβ/, alt. /d̪uw/, alt /d̪u, / meaning black, dark, and lind /lʲiɲ pool and this tidal pool was located where the River Poddle entered the Liffey, on the site of the castle gardens at the rear of Dublin Castle. In Modern Irish the name is Duibhlinn, and Irish rhymes from Dublin County show that in Dublin Leinster Irish it was pronounced Duílinn /d̪ˠi, other localities in Ireland also bear the name Duibhlinn, variously anglicized as Devlin, Divlin and Difflin. Historically, scribes using the Gaelic script wrote bh with a dot over the b and those without knowledge of Irish omitted the dot, spelling the name as Dublin. Variations on the name are found in traditionally Irish-speaking areas of Scotland, such as An Linne Dhubh. It is now thought that the Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duibhlinn, beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements where the modern city stands. Baile Átha Cliath, meaning town of the ford, is the common name for the city in modern Irish. Áth Cliath is a name referring to a fording point of the River Liffey near Father Mathew Bridge. Baile Átha Cliath was an early Christian monastery, believed to have been in the area of Aungier Street, there are other towns of the same name, such as Àth Cliath in East Ayrshire, Scotland, which is Anglicised as Hurlford. Although the area of Dublin Bay has been inhabited by humans since prehistoric times and he called the settlement Eblana polis. It is now thought that the Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duibhlinn, beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements where the modern city stands. The subsequent Scandinavian settlement centred on the River Poddle, a tributary of the Liffey in an area now known as Wood Quay, the Dubhlinn was a small lake used to moor ships, the Poddle connected the lake with the Liffey. This lake was covered during the early 18th century as the city grew, the Dubhlinn lay where the Castle Garden is now located, opposite the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle
7.
W. B. Yeats
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William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. He was born in Sandymount, Ireland and educated there and in London and he spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display Yeatss debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, from 1900, his poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, in 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Of Anglo-Irish descent, William Butler Yeats was born at Sandymount in County Dublin and his father, John Butler Yeats, was a descendant of Jervis Yeats, a Williamite soldier, linen merchant, and well-known painter who died in 1712. Benjamin Yeats, Jerviss grandson and Williams great-great-grandfather, had in 1773 married Mary Butler of a family in County Kildare. Following their marriage, they kept the name Butler in the family name, Mary was a descendant of the Butler of Ormond family from the Neigham Gowran branch of the family. They were descendants of the first Earls of Ormond, by his marriage, Williams father John Yeats was studying law but abandoned his studies to study art at Heatherleys Art School in London. His mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, came from a merchant family in Sligo. Yeats was raised a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, which was at the time undergoing a crisis of identity. In 1997, his biographer R. F. Foster observed that Napoleons dictum that to understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty is manifestly true of W. B. Y. Yeatss childhood and young adulthood were shadowed by the power-shift away from the minority Protestant Ascendancy, the 1880s saw the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell and the home rule movement, the 1890s saw the momentum of nationalism, while the Catholics became prominent around the turn of the century. These developments had an effect on his poetry, and his subsequent explorations of Irish identity had a significant influence on the creation of his countrys biography. In 1867, the moved to England to aid their father, John. At first the Yeats children were educated at home and their mother entertained them with stories and Irish folktales. John provided an education in geography and chemistry, and took William on natural history explorations of the nearby Slough countryside
8.
Russian symbolism
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Russian symbolism was an intellectual and artistic movement predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It represented the Russian branch of the symbolist movement in European art, the movement was inaugurated by Nikolai Minskys article The Ancient Debate and Dmitry Merezhkovskys book On the Causes of the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature. Both writers promoted extreme individualism and deified the act of creation, merezhkovsky was known for his poetry as well as a series of novels on god-men, among whom he counted Jesus, Joan of Arc, Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon and Hitler. His wife, Zinaida Gippius, also a poet in the early days of the symbolist movement, opened a salon in Saint Petersburg. By the mid-1890s, Russian symbolism was still mainly a set of theories and had few notable practitioners, Alexander Dobrolyubov published a book of verse in 1895, just before renouncing lay poetry in favour of wanderings from one monastery to another. Another talented author, Ivan Konevskoy, died at the age of 24 and it was not until the new talent of Valery Bryusov emerged that symbolist poetry became a major movement in Russian literature. In order to represent symbolism as a movement of formidable following, Bryusov adopted numerous pen-names, Bryusovs mystification proved successful — several young poets were attracted to symbolism as the latest fashion in Russian letters. Though the reputations of many of these writers had faded by the mid-20th century and this was especially true in the case of Innokenty Annensky, whose definitive collection of verse, Cypress Box, was published posthumously. His influence on the acmeist school of Russian poetry was paramount, Russian symbolism really flourished in the first decade of the 20th century. Many new talents began to publish verse written in the symbolist vein and these writers were especially indebted to the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. The scholar Vyacheslav Ivanov, whose interests lay in ancient poetry and his self-proclaimed principle was to engraft archaic Miltonic diction to Russian poetry. Maximilian Voloshin, known best for his poetry about the Russian revolution, jurgis Baltrušaitis, a close friend of Alexander Scriabin and whose poetry is characterized by mystical philosophy and mesmerizing sounds, was active in Lithuania. Of the new generation, two poets, Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely, became the most renowned of the entire Russian symbolist movement. Alexander Blok is widely considered to be one of the leading Russian poets of the twentieth century and he was often compared with Alexander Pushkin, and the whole Silver Age of Russian Poetry was sometimes styled the Age of Blok. His early verse is musical and rich in sound. Later, he sought to introduce daring rhythmic patterns and uneven beats into his poetry and his mature poems are often based on the conflict between the Platonic vision of ideal beauty and the disappointing reality of foul industrial outskirts. They are often characterized by a use of color and spelling to express meaning. One of Bloks most famous and controversial poems was The Twelve, Andrei Bely strove to forge a unity of prose, poetry, and music in much of his literature, as evidenced by the title of one of his early works, Symphonies in Prose
9.
Vsevolod Meyerhold
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Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in a theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre. During the Great Purge, Meyerhold was arrested, tortured and executed in February 1940 and he was the youngest of eight children. After completing school in 1895, Meiergold studied law at Moscow University and he was torn between studying theatre or a career as a violinist. However, he failed his audition to become the second violinist in the University orchestra, on his 21st birthday, he converted from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity and accepted Vsevolod as an Orthodox Christian name. Meyerhold began acting in 1896 as a student of the Moscow Philharmonic Dramatic School under the guidance of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre. At the MAT, Meyerhold played 18 roles, such as Vasiliy Shuiskiy in Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich and Ivan the Terrible in The Death of Ivan the Terrible, after leaving the MAT in 1902, Meyerhold participated in a number of theatrical projects, as both a director and actor. Each project was an arena for experiment and creation of new staging methods, Meyerhold was one of the most fervent advocates of Symbolism in theatre, especially when he worked as the chief producer of the Vera Komissarzhevskaya theatre in 1906–1907. He was invited back to the MAT around this time to pursue his experimental ideas, Meyerhold continued theatrical innovation during the decade 1907–1917, while working with the imperial theatres in St. Petersburg. He introduced classical plays in a manner, and staged works of controversial contemporary authors like Fyodor Sologub, Zinaida Gippius. In these plays, Meyerhold tried to return acting to the traditions of Commedia dellarte and his theoretical concepts of the conditional theatre were elaborated in his book On Theatre in 1913. The Russian Revolution of 1917 made Meyerhold one of the most enthusiastic activists of the new Soviet Theatre and he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1918 and became an official of the Theatre Division of the Commissariat of Education and Enlightenment. In 1918–1919, Meyerhold formed an alliance with Olga Kameneva, the head of the Division, together, they tried to radicalize Russian theatres, effectively nationalizing them under Bolshevik control. Meyerhold came down with tuberculosis in May 1919 and had to leave for the south, after returning to Moscow, Meyerhold founded his own theatre in 1920, which was known from 1923 as the Meyerhold Theatre until 1938. Meyerhold confronted the principles of theatrical academism, claiming that they are incapable of finding a common language with the new reality, Meyerhold’s methods of scenic constructivism and circus-style effects were used in his most successful works of the time. Some of these works included Nikolai Erdmans The Mandate, Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe, Fernand Crommelyncks Le Cocu magnifique, mayakovsky collaborated with Meyerhold several times, and was said to have written The Bedbug especially for him, Meyerhold continued to stage Mayakovskys productions even after the latters suicide. The actors participating in Meyerhold’s productions acted according to the principle of biomechanics, Meyerhold gave initial boosts to the stage careers of some of the most distinguished comic actors of the USSR, including Sergey Martinson, Igor Ilyinsky and Erast Garin. Energy was replaced by trance, the dynamic with the static, happy jesting humour with bitter, Meyerhold also gave a start to his one time assistant of The Queen of Spades Matvey Dubrovin, who later created his own theater in Leningrad
10.
Moscow Art Theatre
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The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow. It was founded in 1898 by the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and it was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russias dominant form of theatre at the time. The theatre, the first to put on shows implementing Stanislavskis system, proved hugely influential in the acting world and in the development of modern American theatre. At the end of the 19th-century, Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko both wanted to reform Russian theatre to high-quality art that was available to the general public and they set about creating a private theatre over which they had total control. On 22 June 1897, the two men met for the first time at the Slavyanski Bazar for a lunch that started at 2 PM, while Stanislavski’s approach to theatre revolved around the acting process, Nemirovich was far more concerned with the literary, intellectual angle. Stanislavski interviewed all his actors, making sure they were hard working and he made them live together in common housing for months at a time to foster community and trust, which he believed would raise the quality of their performances. Stanislavskis system, in which he trained actors via the studios he founded as part of the theatre. The system played an influence in the development of method acting. This production was so successful that the theatre adopted the seagull as its emblem and he took with him Savva Morozov, one of the theatre’s main investors at the time. Now in dire straits, the decided to accept invitations to go on an international tour in 1906, which started in Berlin and included Dresden, Frankfurt, Prague. The tour was a success, gaining the theatre international acclaim. The tension between the two led Stanislavski to abandon his duties as a member and to relinquish all his power over policy decisions. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote several plays for the MAT and satirised the organisation mercilessly in his novel Black Snow, isaac Babels Sunset was also performed there during the 1920s. A significant number of Moscow Art Theatres actors were awarded the title of Peoples Artist of the USSR. Many actors became known and admired thanks to their film roles. However, the Civil War saw many of the actors being cut off from Moscow. The subsidies it had come to rely on were withdrawn and the theatre was forced to survive on its own profits, by 1923, the MAT was in $25,000 debt. The theatre experienced further blows through the end of the 1930s, a “red director” was appointed to the management by the government to ensure that the MAT’s activities were not counter-revolutionary and that they served the Communist cause
11.
Konstantin Stanislavski
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Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski was a seminal Russian theatre practitioner. He was widely recognised as a character actor and the many productions that he directed garnered a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation. His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his system of training, preparation. Its influential tours of Europe and the US and its productions of The Seagull and Hamlet established his reputation. At the MATs 30-year anniversary celebrations in 1928, a heart attack on-stage put an end to his acting career. He continued to direct, teach, and write about acting until his death a few weeks before the publication of the first volume of his lifes great work, the acting manual An Actors Work. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of Lenin and was one of the first to be granted the title of Peoples Artist of the USSR. Stanislavski wrote that there is nothing more tedious than an actors biography, at the request of a US publisher, however, he reluctantly agreed to write his autobiography, My Life in Art, though its account of his artistic development is not always accurate. Two English-language biographies have been published, David Magarshacks Stanislavsky, A Life and Jean Benedettis Stanislavski, His Life, Stanislavski subjected his acting and direction to a rigorous process of artistic self-analysis and reflection. His system of acting developed out of his persistent efforts to remove the blocks that he encountered in his performances and he also introduced into the production process a period of discussion and detailed analysis of the play by the cast. Despite the success that this brought, particularly with his Naturalistic stagings of the plays of Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. Both his struggles with Chekhovs drama and his experiments with Symbolism encouraged a greater attention to inner action and he began to develop the more actor-centred techniques of psychological realism and his focus shifted from his productions to rehearsal process and pedagogy. He pioneered the use of theatre studios as a laboratory in which to innovate actor training, the system cultivates what Stanislavski calls the art of experiencing. In rehearsal, the searches for inner motives to justify action. Stanislavskis earliest reference to his system appears in 1909, the year that he first incorporated it into his rehearsal process. The MAT adopted it as its official rehearsal method in 1911, later, Stanislavski further elaborated the system with a more physically grounded rehearsal process that came to be known as the Method of Physical Action. Minimising at-the-table discussions, he now encouraged an active analysis, in which the sequence of dramatic situations are improvised, the best analysis of a play, Stanislavski argued, is to take action in the given circumstances. The Opera-Dramatic Studio embodied the most complete implementation of the training exercises described in his manuals, meanwhile, the transmission of his earlier work via the students of the First Studio was revolutionising acting in the West
12.
Diamond Sutra
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The Diamond Sūtra is a Mahāyāna sūtra from the Prajñāpāramitā, or Perfection of Wisdom genre, and emphasizes the practice of non-abiding and non-attachment. The Diamond sutra is one of the most influential Mahayana sutras in East Asia, a copy of the Chinese version of Diamond Sūtra, found among the Dunhuang manuscripts in the early 20th century by Aurel Stein, was dated back to May 11,868. It is, in the words of the British Library, the earliest complete survival of a printed book. The Sanskrit title for the sūtra is the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, in English, shortened forms such as Diamond Sūtra and Vajra Sūtra are common. The title relies on the power of the vajra to cut things as a metaphor for the type of wisdom that cuts, the sutra is also called by the name Triśatikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra. The Diamond Sūtra has also highly regarded in a number of Asian countries where Mahāyāna Buddhism has been traditionally practiced. Some western scholars such as Gregory Schopen also believe that the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra was adapted from the earlier Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, early western scholarship on the Diamond Sūtra is summarized by Müller. The Vajracchedika sutra was a work in the North Indian Mahayana Buddhist tradition. Buddhist philosophers such as Asanga and Vasubandhu wrote commentaries on the sutra, the first translation of the Diamond Sūtra into Chinese is thought to have been made in 401 by the venerated and prolific translator Kumārajīva. Kumārajīvas translation style is distinctive, possessing a flowing smoothness that reflects his prioritization on conveying the meaning as opposed to precise literal rendering, the Kumārajīva translation has been particularly highly regarded over the centuries, and it is this version that appears on the 868 Dunhuang scroll. It is the most widely used and chanted Chinese version, in addition to the Kumārajīva translation, a number of later translations exist. The Diamond Sūtra was again translated from Sanskrit into Chinese by Bodhiruci in 509, Paramārtha in 558, Dharmagupta, Xuanzang, the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang visited a Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda monastery at Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in the 7th century. Using Xuanzangs travel accounts, modern archaeologists have identified the site of this monastery, birchbark manuscript fragments of several Mahāyāna sūtras have been discovered at the site, including the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, and these are now part of the Schøyen Collection. This manuscript was written in the Sanskrit language, and written in a form of the Gupta script. This same Sanskrit manuscript also contains the Medicine Buddha Sūtra, the Diamond Sūtra gave rise to a culture of artwork, sūtra veneration, and commentaries in East Asian Buddhism. By the end of the Tang Dynasty in China there were over 800 commentaries written on it, such as those by prominent Chinese Buddhists like Sengzhao, Xie Lingyun, Zhiyi, Jizang, Kuiji and Zongmi. One of the best known commentaries is the Exegesis on the Diamond Sutra by Huineng, the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sutra contains the discourse of the Buddha to a senior monk, Subhuti. Its major themes are anatman, the emptiness of all phenomena, the liberation of all beings without attachment, in the sūtra, the Buddha has finished his daily walk to Sravasti with the monks to gather offerings of food, and he sits down to rest
