The Rise and Fall of the Han Dynasty of China_202 BCE – 220 CE_An Historical Essay with References_By Dr. Rahul S. Kharat Abstract The Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) was the second imperial dynasty of China and the one that gave the Chinese imperial order its enduring shape. Rising from the ruins of the short-lived Qin empire, the Han fused the centralised bureaucratic machinery it inherited with a new moral vocabulary drawn from Confucian learning, and presided for four centuries over an expanding state, a growing economy, and a cultural flowering whose influence is still reflected in the name of China's majority population. This article offers an integrated account of the dynasty's trajectory. It examines the collapse of Qin and the founding of Han by Liu Bang; the experiments of the early decades; the expansive reign of Emperor Wu; the institutional and intellectual settlement that followed; the fiscal and social strains that culminated in Wang Mang's usurpation; the...
The History of Dhammachakra Pravartan Din The Wheel Set in Motion Again: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's Conversion of 14 October 1956 and the Rebirth of Dhamma in Modern India
Dhammachakra Pravartan Din The Wheel Set in Motion Again: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's Conversion of 14 October 1956 and the Rebirth of Dhamma in Modern India Dr. Rahul Sadshiv Kharat Associate Professor and Head, Department of Commerce and Research Centre M. S. Kakade College, Someshwarnagar, Baramati, Pune, Maharashtra Abstract Dhammachakra Pravartan Din, observed every year on Ashoka Vijayadashami, commemorates the mass conversion to Buddhism led by Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar at Nagpur on 14 October 1956. The name deliberately recalls the Buddha's first sermon at Isipatana, when the wheel of Dhamma was first set rolling. This article examines the day as a historical event, a religious act, an intellectual project and a living public memory. It traces the antecedents of the event from the Buddha's first discourse and Ashoka's ethical polity through the eclipse of Buddhism in India; reconstructs Ambedkar's long passage from the Mahad satyagraha and the Yeol...