Nirvana
Nirvāṇa is associated with Jainism and Buddhism, represents its ultimate state of soteriological release, the liberation from repeated rebirth in saṃsāra. In Indian religions, nirvana is synonymous with mukti. All Indian religions assert it to be a state of perfect quietude, highest happiness as well as the liberation from or ending of samsara, the repeating cycle of birth and death; however and non-Buddhist traditions describe these terms for liberation differently. In the Buddhist context, nirvana refers to realization of non-self and emptiness, marking the end of rebirth by stilling the fires that keep the process of rebirth going. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union of or the realization of the identity of Atman with Brahman, depending on the Hindu tradition. In Jainism, it is the soteriological goal, it represents the release of a soul from karmic bondage and samsara; the word nirvāṇa, states Steven Collins, is from the verbal root vā "blow" in the form of past participle vāna "blown", prefixed with the preverb nis meaning "out".
Hence the original meaning of the word is "blown out, extinguished". Sandhi changes the sounds: the v of vāna causes nis to become nir, the r of nir causes retroflexion of the following n: nis+vāna > nirvāṇa. The term nirvana in the soteriological sense of "blown out, extinguished" state of liberation does not appear in the Vedas nor in the Upanishads. According to Collins, "the Buddhists seem to have been the first to call it nirvana." However, the ideas of spiritual liberation using different terminology, with the concept of soul and Brahman, appears in Vedic texts and Upanishads, such as in verse 4.4.6 of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. This may have been deliberate use of words in early Buddhism, suggests Collins, since Atman and Brahman were described in Vedic texts and Upanishads with the imagery of fire, as something good and liberating. Nirvāṇa is a term found in the texts of all major Indian religions – Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism, it refers to the profound peace of mind, acquired with moksha, liberation from samsara, or release from a state of suffering, after respective spiritual practice or sādhanā.
The idea of moksha is connected to the Vedic culture, where it conveyed a notion of amrtam, "immortality", a notion of a timeless, "unborn", or "the still point of the turning world of time". It was its timeless structure, the whole underlying "the spokes of the invariable but incessant wheel of time"; the hope for life after death started with notions of going to the worlds of the Fathers or Ancestors and/or the world of the Gods or Heaven. The earliest Vedic texts incorporate the concept of life, followed by an afterlife in heaven and hell based on cumulative virtues or vices. However, the ancient Vedic Rishis challenged this idea of afterlife as simplistic, because people do not live an moral or immoral life. Between virtuous lives, some are more virtuous; the Vedic thinkers introduced the idea of an afterlife in heaven or hell in proportion to one's merit, when this runs out, one returns and is reborn. The idea of rebirth following "running out of merit" appears in Buddhist texts as well.
This idea appears in many ancient and medieval texts, as Saṃsāra, or the endless cycle of life, death and redeath, such as section 6:31 of the Mahabharata and verse 9.21 of the Bhagavad Gita. The Saṃsara, the life after death, what impacts rebirth came to be seen as dependent on karma; the liberation from Saṃsāra developed as an ultimate goal and soteriological value in the Indian culture, called by different terms such as nirvana, moksha and kaivalya. This basic scheme underlies Hinduism and Buddhism, where "the ultimate aim is the timeless state of moksa, or, as the Buddhists first seem to have called it, nirvana."Although the term occurs in the literatures of a number of ancient Indian traditions, the concept is most associated with Buddhism. It was adopted by other Indian religions, but with different meanings and description, such as in the Hindu text Bhagavad Gita of the Mahabharata. Nirvana means "blowing out" or "quenching", it is the most used as well as the earliest term to describe the soteriological goal in Buddhism: release from the cycle of rebirth.
Nirvana is part of the Third Truth on "cessation of dukkha" in the Four Noble Truths doctrine of Buddhism. It is the goal of the Noble Eightfold Path; the Buddha is believed in the Buddhist scholastic tradition to have realized two types of nirvana, one at enlightenment, another at his death. The first is called the second parinirvana or anupadhishesa-nirvana. In the Buddhist tradition, nirvana is described as the extinguishing of the fires that cause rebirths and associated suffering; the Buddhist texts identify these three "three fires" or "three poisons" as raga and avidyā or moha. The state of nirvana is described in Buddhism as cessation of all afflictions, cessation of all actions, cessation of rebirths and suffering that are a consequence of afflictions and actions. Liberation is described as identical to anatta. In Buddhism, liberation is achieved when all beings are understood to be with no Self. Nirvana is described as identical to achieving sunyata, where there is no essence or fundament
Sanskrit
Sanskrit is a language of ancient India with a history going back about 3,500 years. It is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and the predominant language of most works of Hindu philosophy as well as some of the principal texts of Buddhism and Jainism. Sanskrit, in its variants and numerous dialects, was the lingua franca of ancient and medieval India. In the early 1st millennium CE, along with Buddhism and Hinduism, Sanskrit migrated to Southeast Asia, parts of East Asia and Central Asia, emerging as a language of high culture and of local ruling elites in these regions. Sanskrit is an Old Indo-Aryan language; as one of the oldest documented members of the Indo-European family of languages, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. It is related to Greek and Latin, as well as Hittite, Old Avestan and many other extinct languages with historical significance to Europe, West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, it traces its linguistic ancestry to the Proto-Indo-Aryan language, Proto-Indo-Iranian and the Proto-Indo-European languages.
Sanskrit is traceable to the 2nd millennium BCE in a form known as the Vedic Sanskrit, with the Rigveda as the earliest known composition. A more refined and standardized grammatical form called the Classical Sanskrit emerged in mid-1st millennium BCE with the Aṣṭādhyāyī treatise of Pāṇini. Sanskrit, though not Classical Sanskrit, is the root language of many Prakrit languages. Examples include numerous modern daughter Northern Indian subcontinental languages such as Hindi, Bengali and Nepali; the body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, drama, scientific and other texts. In the ancient era, Sanskrit compositions were orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity and fidelity; the earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st-century BCE, such as the few discovered in Ayodhya and Ghosundi-Hathibada. Sanskrit texts dated to the 1st millennium CE were written in the Brahmi script, the Nāgarī script, the historic South Indian scripts and their derivative scripts.
Sanskrit is one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. It continues to be used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hinduism and some Buddhist practices such as hymns and chants; the Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sam and krta-. It connotes a work, "well prepared and perfect, sacred". According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal qualities, rather than semantic. Sound and oral transmission were valued quality in ancient India, its sages refined the alphabet, the structure of words and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold", states Biderman, as an integral language they called Sanskrit. From late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic and religious literature" in India; the sound was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself, the "mysterious magnum" of the Hindu thought.
The search for perfection in thought and of salvation was one of the dimensions of sacred sound, the common thread to weave all ideas and inspirations became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit. Sanskrit as a language competed with numerous less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages; the term prakrta means "original, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth. The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in the Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patanjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and leads to the problems of interpretation and misunderstanding; the purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Dandin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit but involve "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar".
Dandin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view is found in the writing of the author of the ancient Natyasastra text; the early Jain scholar Namisadhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisadhu stated that the Prakrit language was the purvam and they came to women and children, that Sanskrit was a refinement of the Prakrit through a "purification by grammar". Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, it is one of the three ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as the Proto-Indo-European language: Vedic Sanskrit. Mycenaean Greek and Ancient Greek. Mycenaean Greek is the older recorded form of Greek, but the limited material that has survived has a ambiguous writing system. More important to Indo-European studies is Ancient Greek, documented extensively beginning with the two Homeric poems. Hittite.
This is the earliest-recorded of all Indo-European languages, distinguishable into Old Hittite, Middle Hittite and Neo-Hittite. I
Northern Wei
The Northern Wei or the Northern Wei Empire known as the Tuoba Wei, Later Wei, or Yuan Wei, was a dynasty founded by the Tuoba clan of the Xianbei, which ruled northern China from 386 to 534 AD, during the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Described as "part of an era of political turbulence and intense social and cultural change", the Northern Wei Dynasty is noted for unifying northern China in 439: this was a period of introduced foreign ideas, such as Buddhism, which became established. During the Taihe period of Emperor Xiaowen, court advisers instituted sweeping reforms and introduced changes that led to the dynasty moving its capital from Datong to Luoyang, in 494; the Tuoba renamed themselves the Han people surname Yuan as a part of systematic Sinicization. Towards the end of the dynasty there was significant internal dissension resulting in a split into Eastern Wei and Western Wei. Many antiques and art works, both Taoist art and Buddhist art, from this period have survived.
It was the time of the construction of the Yungang Grottoes near Datong during the mid-to-late 5th century, towards the latter part of the dynasty, the Longmen Caves outside the capital city of Luoyang, in which more than 30,000 Buddhist images from the time of this dynasty have been found. The Jin Dynasty had developed an alliance with the Tuoba against the Xiongnu state Han Zhao. In 315 the Tuoba chief was granted the title of the Prince of Dai. After the death of its founding prince, Tuoba Yilu, the Dai state stagnated and remained a partial ally and a partial tributary state to Later Zhao and Former Yan falling to Former Qin in 376. After Former Qin's emperor Fu Jiān was defeated by Jin forces at the Battle of Fei River in his failed bid to unify China, the Former Qin state began to break apart. By 386, Tuoba Gui, the son of Tuoba Shiyijian, reasserted Tuoba independence as the Prince of Dai, he changed his title to the Prince of Wei, his state was therefore known as Northern Wei. In 391, Tuoba Gui defeated the Rouran tribes and killed their chief, forcing the Rouran to flee west.
Northern Wei was a vassal of Later Yan, but by 395 had rebelled and by 398 had conquered most of Later Yan territory north of the Yellow River. In 399 Tuoba Gui he declared himself Emperor Daowu, that title was used by Northern Wei's rulers for the rest of the state's history; that same year he defeated the Tiele tribes near the Gobi desert. Early in Northern Wei history, the state inherited a number of traditions from its initial history as a Xianbei tribe, some of the more unusual ones, from a traditional Chinese standpoint: The officials did not receive salaries, but were expected to requisition the necessities of their lives directly from the people they governed; as Northern Wei Empire's history progressed, this appeared to be a major contributing factor leading to corruption among officials. Not until the 2nd century of the empire's existence did the state begin to distribute salaries to its officials. Empresses were not named according to imperial favors or nobility of birth, but required that the candidates submit themselves to a ceremony where they had to forge golden statues, as a way of discerning divine favor.
Only an imperial consort, successful in forging a golden statue could become the empress. All men, regardless of ethnicity, were ordered to tie their hair into a single braid that would be rolled and placed on top of the head, have a cap worn over the head; when a crown prince is named, his mother, if still alive, must be forced to commit suicide. As a result, because emperors would not have mothers, they honored their wet nurses with the honorific title, "Nurse Empress Dowager"; as Sinicization of the Northern Wei state progressed, these customs and traditions were abandoned. Five families formed a neighborhood Five lin formed a village Five li formed a commune At each of these levels, leaders that were associated with the central government were appointed. In order for the state to reclaim dry, barren areas of land, the state further developed this system by dividing up the land according to the number of men of an age to cultivate it; the Sui and Tang Dynasties resurrected this system in the 7th century.
During the reign of Emperor Daowu, the total number of deported people from the regions east of Taihangshan to Datong was estimated to be around 460,000. Deportations took place once a new piece of territory had been conquered; as the Northern Wei state grew, the emperors' desire for Han Chinese institutions and advisors grew. Cui Hao, an advisor at the courts in Datong played a great part in this process, he introduced Han Chinese administrative methods and penal codes in the Northern Wei state, as well as creating a Taoist theocracy that lasted until 450. The attraction of Han Chinese products, the royal court's taste for luxury, the prestige of Chinese culture at the time, Taoism were all factors in the growing Chinese influence in the Northern Wei state. Chinese influence accelerated during the capital's move to Luoyang in 494 and Emperor Xiaowen continued this by establishing a policy of systematic sinicization, continued by his successors. Xianbei traditions were aba
Asuka period
The Asuka period was a period in the history of Japan lasting from 538 to 710, although its beginning could be said to overlap with the preceding Kofun period. The Yamato polity evolved during the Asuka period, named after the Asuka region, about 25 km south of the modern city of Nara; the Asuka period is characterized by its significant artistic and political transformations, having their origins in the late Kofun period but affected by the arrival of Buddhism from China. The introduction of Buddhism marked a change in Japanese society; the Asuka period is distinguished by the change in the name of the country from Wa to Nihon. The term "Asuka period" was first used to describe a period in the history of Japanese fine-arts and architecture, it was proposed by fine-arts scholars Sekino Tadasu and Okakura Kakuzō around 1900. Sekino dated the Asuka period as ending with the Taika Reform of 646. Okakura, saw it as ending with the transfer of the capital to the Heijō Palace of Nara. Although historians use Okakura's dating, many historians of art and architecture prefer Sekino's dating and use the term "Hakuhō period" to refer to the successive period.
The Yamato polity was distinguished by powerful great clans or extended families, including their dependents. Each clan was headed by a patriarch who performed sacred rites for the clan's kami to ensure the long-term welfare of the clan. Clan members were the High Nobility, the Imperial line that controlled the Yamato polity was at its pinnacle; the Asuka period, as a sub-division of the Yamato period, is the first time in Japanese history when the Emperor of Japan ruled uncontested from modern-day Nara Prefecture known as Yamato Province. The Yamato polity was concentrated in the Asuka region and exercised power over clans in Kyūshū and Honshū, bestowing titles, some hereditary, on clan chieftains; the Yamato name became synonymous with all of Japan as the Yamato rulers suppressed other clans and acquired agricultural lands. Based on Chinese models, they developed a central administration and an imperial court attended by subordinate clan chieftains but with no permanent capital. By the mid-seventh century, the agricultural lands had grown to a substantial public domain, subject to central policy.
The basic administrative unit of the Gokishichidō system was the county, society was organized into occupation groups. Most people were farmers; the Soga clan intermarried with the imperial family, by 587 Soga no Umako, the Soga chieftain, was powerful enough to install his nephew as emperor and to assassinate him and replace him with the Empress Suiko. Suiko, the first of eight sovereign empresses, is sometimes considered a mere figurehead for Umako and Prince Regent Shōtoku Taishi; however she wielded power in her own right, the role of Shōtoku Taishi is exaggerated to the point of legend. Shōtoku, recognized as a great intellectual of this period of reform, was a devout Buddhist and was well-read in Chinese literature, he was influenced by Confucian principles, including the Mandate of Heaven, which suggested that the sovereign ruled at the will of a supreme force. Under Shōtoku's direction, Confucian models of rank and etiquette were adopted, his Seventeen-article constitution prescribed ways to bring harmony to a chaotic society in Confucian terms.
In addition, Shōtoku adopted the Chinese calendar, developed a system of trade roads, built numerous Buddhist temples, had court chronicles compiled, sent students to China to study Buddhism and Confucianism, sent Ono no Imoko to China as an emissary. Six official missions of envoys and students were sent to China in the seventh century; some remained twenty years or more. The sending of such scholars to learn Chinese political systems showed significant change from envoys in the Kofun period, in which the five kings of Wa sent envoys for the approval of their domains. In a move resented by the Chinese, Shōtoku sought equality with the Chinese emperor by sending official correspondence, addressed, "From the Son of Heaven in the Land of the Rising Sun to the Son of Heaven of the Land of the Setting Sun." Some would argue that Shōtoku's bold step set a precedent: Japan never again accepted a "subordinate" status in its relations with China, except for Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, who accepted such a relationship with China in the 15th century.
As a result, Japan in this period received no title from Chinese dynasties, while they did send tribute. From the Chinese point of view, the class or position of Japan was demoted from previous centuries in which the kings received titles. On the other hand, Japan loosened its political relationships with China and established extraordinary cultural and intellectual relationships. About twenty years after the deaths of Shōtoku Taishi, Soga no Umako, Empress Suiko, court intrigues over succession led to a palace coup in 645 against the Soga clan's monopolized control of the government; the revolt was led by Prince Naka no Ōe and Nakatomi no Kamatari, who seized control of the court from the Soga family and introduced the Taika Reform. The Japanese era corresponding to the years 645–649 was thus named Taika, referring to the Reform, meaning "great change"; the revolt leading to the Taika Reform is called the Isshi Incident, referring to the Chinese zodiac year in which the coup took place
Halo (religious iconography)
A halo is a crown of light rays, circle or disk of light that surrounds a person in art. It has been used in the iconography of many religions to indicate holy or sacred figures, has at various periods been used in images of rulers or heroes. In the sacred art of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Buddhism and Christianity, among other religions, sacred persons may be depicted with a halo in the form of a circular glow, or flames in Asian art, around the head or around the whole body—this last one is called a mandorla. Halos may be shown as any color or combination of colors, but are most depicted as golden, yellow or white when representing light or red when representing flames. Homer describes a more-than-natural light around the heads of heroes in battle. Depictions of Perseus in the act of slaying Medusa, with lines radiating from his head, appear on a white-ground toiletry box in the Louvre and on a later red-figured vase in the style of Polygnotos, ca. 450-30 BC, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
On painted wares from south Italy, radiant lines or simple haloes appear on a range of mythic figures: Lyssa, a personification of madness. The Colossus of Rhodes had his usual radiate crown. Hellenistic rulers are shown wearing radiate crowns that seem to imitate this effect. Further afield, Sumerian religious literature speaks of melam, a "brilliant, visible glamour, exuded by gods, sometimes by kings, by temples of great holiness and by gods' symbols and emblems." The halo and the aureola have been used in Indian art in Buddhist iconography where it has appeared since at least the 1st century AD. The rulers of the Kushan Empire were the earliest to give themselves haloes on their coins, the nimbus in art may have originated in Central Asia and spread both east and west. In Chinese and Japanese Buddhist art the halo has been used since the earliest periods in depicting the image of Amitabha Buddha and others. Tibetan Buddhism uses haloes and aureoles of many types, drawing from both Indian and Chinese traditions, extensively in statues and Thangka paintings of Buddhist saints such as Milarepa and Padmasambhava and deities.
Different coloured haloes have specific meanings: orange for monks, green for the Buddha and other more elevated beings, figures have both a halo for the head, another circular one for the body, the two intersecting somewhere around the head or neck. Thin lines of gold radiate outwards or inwards from the rim of the halo, sometimes a whole halo is made up of these. In India the head halo is called Prabhamandala or Siras-cakra, while the full body halo is Prabhavali. Elaborate haloes and aureoles appear in Hindu sculpture, where they tend to develop into architectural frames in which the original idea can be hard to recognise. Theravada Buddhism and Jainism did not use the halo for many centuries, but adopted it, though less than other religious groups. In Asian art, the nimbus is imagined as consisting not just of light, but of flames; this type seems to first appear in Chinese bronzes of which the earliest surviving examples date from before 450. The depiction of the flames may be formalized, as in the regular little flames on the ring aureole surrounding many Chola bronzes and other classic Hindu sculptures of divinities, or prominent, as with the more realistic flames, sometimes smoke, shown rising to a peak behind many Tibetan Buddhist depictions of the "wrathful aspect" of divinities, in Persian miniatures of the classic period.
This type is very found, on a smaller scale, in medieval Christian art. Sometimes a thin line of flames rise up from the edges of a circular halo in Buddhist examples. In Tibetan paintings the flames are shown as blown by a wind from left to right. Halos are found in Islamic art from various places and periods in Persian miniatures and Moghul and Ottoman art influenced by them. Flaming halos derived from Buddhist art surround angels, similar ones are seen around Muhammad and other sacred human figures. From the early 17th century, plainer round haloes appear in portraits of Mughal Emperors and subsequently Rajput and Sikh rulers; the Ottomans avoided using halos for the sultans, despite their title as Caliph, they are only seen on Chinese emperors if they are posing as Buddhist religious figures, as some felt entitled to do. The halo represents an aura or the glow of sanctity, conventionally drawn encircling the head, it first appeared in the culture of Hellenistic Greece and Rome related to the Zoroastrian hvarena – "glory" or "divine lustre" – which marked the Persian kings, may have been imported with Mithraism.
Though Roman paintings have disappeared, save some fresco decorations, the haloed figure remains fresh in Roman mosaics. In a 2nd-century AD Roman floor mosaic preserved at Bardo, Tunisia, a haloed Poseidon appears in his chariot drawn by hippocamps; the triton and nereid who accompany the sea-god are not haloed. In a late 2nd century AD floor mosaic from Thysdrus, El Djem, Apollo Helios is identified by his effulgent h
Bronze
Bronze is an alloy consisting of copper with about 12–12.5% tin and with the addition of other metals and sometimes non-metals or metalloids such as arsenic, phosphorus or silicon. These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability; the archeological period in which bronze was the hardest metal in widespread use is known as the Bronze Age. The beginning of the Bronze Age in India and western Eurasia is conventionally dated to the mid-4th millennium BC, to the early 2nd millennium BC in China; the Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting from about 1300 BC and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BC, although bronze continued to be much more used than it is in modern times. Because historical pieces were made of brasses and bronzes with different compositions, modern museum and scholarly descriptions of older objects use the more inclusive term "copper alloy" instead. There are two basic theories as to the origin of the word.
Romance theoryThe Romance theory holds that the word bronze was borrowed from French bronze, itself borrowed from Italian bronzo "bell metal, brass" from either, bróntion, back-formation from Byzantine Greek brontēsíon from Brentḗsion ‘Brindisi’, reputed for its bronze. Proto-Slavic theoryThe Proto-Slavic theory reflects the philological issue that in the most of Slavonic languages word "bronza" corresponds to "war metal" while at the early stages of the Bronze working it was used exclusively for military purposes; the discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects which were harder and more durable than possible. Bronze tools, weapons and building materials such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone and copper predecessors. Bronze was made out of copper and arsenic, forming arsenic bronze, or from or artificially mixed ores of copper and arsenic, with the earliest artifacts so far known coming from the Iranian plateau in the 5th millennium BC, it was only that tin was used, becoming the major non-copper ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BC.
Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the alloying process could be more controlled, the resulting alloy was stronger and easier to cast. Unlike arsenic, metallic tin and fumes from tin refining are not toxic; the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to 4500 BC in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik. Other early examples date to the late 4th millennium BC in Egypt and some ancient sites in China and Mesopotamia. Ores of copper and the far rarer tin are not found together, so serious bronze work has always involved trade. Tin sources and trade in ancient times had a major influence on the development of cultures. In Europe, a major source of tin was the British deposits of ore in Cornwall, which were traded as far as Phoenicia in the eastern Mediterranean. In many parts of the world, large hoards of bronze artifacts are found, suggesting that bronze represented a store of value and an indicator of social status. In Europe, large hoards of bronze tools socketed axes, are found, which show no signs of wear.
With Chinese ritual bronzes, which are documented in the inscriptions they carry and from other sources, the case is clear. These were made in enormous quantities for elite burials, used by the living for ritual offerings. Though bronze is harder than wrought iron, with Vickers hardness of 60–258 vs. 30–80, the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age after a serious disruption of the tin trade: the population migrations of around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean and from Britain, limiting supplies and raising prices. As the art of working in iron improved, iron improved in quality; as cultures advanced from hand-wrought iron to machine-forged iron, blacksmiths learned how to make steel. Steel holds a sharper edge longer. Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, has continued in use for many purposes to the modern day. There are many different bronze alloys, but modern bronze is 88% copper and 12% tin. Alpha bronze consists of the alpha solid solution of tin in copper.
Alpha bronze alloys of 4–5% tin are used to make coins, springs and blades. Historical "bronzes" are variable in composition, as most metalworkers used whatever scrap was on hand; the proportions of this mixture suggests. The Benin Bronzes are in fact brass, the Romanesque Baptismal font at St Bartholomew's Church, Liège is described as both bronze and brass. In the Bronze Age, two forms of bronze were used: "classic bronze", about 10% tin, was used in
Ikaruga, Nara
Ikaruga is a town in Ikoma District, Japan. Ikaruga is home to Hōryū-ji and Hokki-ji, ancient Buddhist temples collectively inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage. Other ancient temples include Hōrin-ji in the vicinity of Hōryū-ji; the town was named after the Palace of Prince Shōtoku, Ikaruga-no-Miya, whose grounds were at Hōryū-ji, thus it is called Ikaruga-dera. As of April 1, 2015, the town has an estimated population of 27,341, with 11,308 households; the total area is 14.27 km2. Nara Prefecture Ikoma Yamatokōriyama Sangō Heguri Ando Kawai Ōji Tatsuta River Yamato River Mount Matsuo Ikaruga Elementary School Ikarugahigashi Elementary School Ikaruganishi Elementary School Ikaruga Junior High School Ikarugaminami Junior High School Hōryū-ji International High School Hōryū-ji Hokki-ji Hōrin-ji Chūgū-ji Kichiden-ji Mimuroyama Ikaruga Shrine Ryūta Shrine Fujinoki Kofun Kasuga Kofun Okanohara Kofun Terayama Kofun West Japan Railway Company Kansai Main Line: Hōryūji Station Japan National Route 25 Japan National Route 168 Official website Geographic data related to Ikaruga, Nara at OpenStreetMap
