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43-533: Bibliotheca Indica is a series of "books belonging to or treating of Oriental literatures and contains original text editions as well as translations into English, and also bibliographies , dictionaries, grammars, and studies" on Asia-related subjects in other disciplines (such as ethnology). The series was launched in 1849 and published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta and subsequently by

86-575: A pejorative , particularly when used as a noun. John Kuo Wei Tchen , director of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute at New York University , said the basic criticism of the term began in the U.S. during a cultural shift in the 1970s. He has said: "With the U.S.A. anti-war movement in the '60s and early '70s, many Asian Americans identified the term 'Oriental' with a Western process of racializing Asians as forever opposite 'others ' ", by making

129-606: A cultural term, large parts of Asia— Siberia most notably—were excluded from the scholarly notion of "the Orient". Equally valid terms for the Orient still exist in the English language in such collocations as Oriental studies (now Asian Studies in some countries). The adjectival term Oriental has been used by the West to mean cultures, peoples, countries, Asian rugs, and goods from the Orient. "Oriental" means generally "eastern". It

172-549: A distinction between "Western" and "Eastern" ancestral origins. This is particularly relevant when referring to lands and peoples not associated with the historic "Orient": outside of the former Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire and Sasanian Empire (Persia), including the former Diocese of the Orient , as well as others lands sharing cultural legacies with the Oriental Orthodox churches and Oriental Catholic Churches . In contrast, regions of Asia further East, outside of

215-430: A few aligned in accordance with the saint's feast, with no general trend. There was no evidence of the use of compasses; and there was a preferred alignment towards true east, with variations due to town and natural topography. A notable example of an (approximately) oriented church building that – to match the contours of its location and to avoid an area that was swampy at the time of its construction – bends slightly in

258-511: A meaning in Western thought that transcends geography. By the mid-20th century, Western scholars generally considered "the Orient" as just East Asia, Southeast Asia, and eastern Central Asia. As recently as the early 20th century, the term "Orient" often continued to be used in ways that included North Africa. Today, the term primarily evokes images of China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Mongolia, and peninsular Southeast Asia. "The Orient" being largely

301-772: A pictograph of the sun rising behind a tree ) and " The Land of the Rising Sun " to refer to Japan. In Arabic, the Mashriq literally means "the sunrise", "the east", the name is derived from the verb sharaqa (Arabic: شرق "to shine, illuminate, radiate" and "to rise"), from sh-r-q root (ش-ر-ق), referring to the east, where the sun rises. Historically, the Mashriq was the southern part of the Eastern Roman Empire. Many ancient temples, including pagan temples , Hindu temples , Buddhist temples , Jain temples , and

344-713: A result of its prolonged use in the region, since the 18th century it was used in reference to the inhabitants of the Banda Oriental , the historical name of the territories that now compose the modern nation of Uruguay. In German, Orient is usually used synonymously with the area between the Near East and East Asia, including Israel , the Arab world , and Greater Persia . The term Asiaten (English: Asians) means Asian people in general. Another word for Orient in German

387-543: A rule that churches should have the sanctuary (with apse and sacristies ) at the east end, to enable Christians to pray eastward in church as in private or in small groups. In the middle of the sanctuary was the altar , behind which was the bishop 's throne, flanked by the seats of the presbyters , while the laity were on the opposite side. However, even in the East there were churches (for example, in Tyre, Lebanon ) that had

430-512: A whole make up approximately 9.3% of the population within the United Kingdom, and people of an ethnically South Asian background comprise the largest group within this category. "Orientals" refers exclusively to people of East and Southeast Asian origin, who constitute approximately 0.7% of the UK population as a whole. Of these, the majority are of Chinese descent. Orient is also a word for

473-427: Is Morgenland (now mainly poetic), which literally translates as "morning land". The antonym "Abendland" (rarely: "Okzident") is also mainly poetic, and refers to (Western) Europe. Orientation of churches The opposite arrangement, in which the church is entered from the east and the sanctuary is at the other end, is called occidentation. Since the eighth century most churches are oriented. Hence, even in

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516-700: Is a traditional designation (especially when capitalized) for anything belonging to the Orient or "East" (for Asia), and especially of its Eastern culture . It indicated the eastern direction in historical astronomy, often abbreviated "Ori". In contemporary American English, Oriental usually refers to things from the parts of East Asia traditionally occupied by East Asians and most Central Asians and Southeast Asians racially categorized as " Mongoloid ". This excludes Jews , Indians, Arabs , and most other South or West Asian peoples. Because of historical discrimination against Chinese, Korean and Japanese, in some parts of

559-475: Is more widely used to refer to the works of the many 19th-century artists who specialized in "Oriental" subjects and often drew on their travels to North Africa and Western Asia. Artists, as well as scholars, were already described as "Orientalists" in the 19th century. In 1978, the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said published his influential and controversial book, Orientalism , and used

602-535: Is oriented in line with sunrise on St. Stephen's Day , 26 December, in Julian calendar 1137, when it began to be built. However, a survey of old English churches published in 2006 showed practically no relationship with the feast days of the saints to whom they are dedicated. The results also did not conform to a theory that compass readings could have caused the variants. Taken as a body, those churches can only be said to have been oriented approximately but not exactly to

645-643: The Eastern world . It is the antonym of the term Occident , which refers to the Western world . In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the continent of Asia – loosely classified into Southwest Asia , Southeast Asia , South Asia , Central Asia , East Asia , and sometimes including the Caucasus . Originally, the term Orient was used to designate only the Near East , but later its meaning evolved and expanded, designating also Central Asia, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, or

688-1278: The Far East . The term oriental is often used to describe objects and people coming from the Orient/eastern Asia. The term "Orient" derives from the Latin word oriens , meaning "east" (lit. "rising" < orior " rise"). The use of the word for "rising" to refer to the east (where the sun rises) has analogues from many languages: compare the terms "Arevelk" in Armenian : Արեւելք (Armenian Arevelk means "East" or "Sunrise"), " Levant " (< French levant "rising"), "Vostok" Russian: Восток (< Russian voskhod Russian: восход "sunrise"), " Anatolia " (< Greek anatole ), "mizrah" in Hebrew ("zriha" meaning sunrise), "sharq" Arabic : شرق (< Arabic yashriq يشرق "rise", shurūq Arabic : شروق "rising"), "shygys" Kazakh : шығыс (< Kazakh shygu Kazakh : шығу "come out"), Turkish : doğu (< Turkish doğmak to be born; to rise), "xavar" Persian : خاور (meaning east), Chinese : 東 ( pinyin : dōng ,

731-635: The "oriental" and "occidental" provinces of Mindoro and Negros in the Philippines, and the French département of Pyrénées-Orientales . Since the 19th century, "orientalist" has been the traditional term for a scholar of Oriental studies ; however, the use in English of "Orientalism" to describe academic "Oriental studies" is rare: the Oxford English Dictionary cites only one such usage, by Lord Byron in 1812. " Orientalism "

774-515: The 1800s, India, and to a lesser extent China, began to displace the Levant as the primary subject of Orientalist research, while the term also appears in mid-century works to describe an appearance or perceived similarity to "Oriental" government or culture, such as in Tolstoy 's 1869 novel War and Peace , in which Napoleon , upon seeing the "oriental beauty" of Moscow, calls it "That Asiatic city of

817-610: The Church it is customary for Mass to be celebrated at the main altar by a priest facing the people". The medieval mendicant orders generally built their churches inside towns and had to fit them into the town plans, regardless of orientation. Later, in the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires they made no attempt to observe orientation, as is seen in San Francisco de Asis Mission Church near Taos, New Mexico . Today in

860-591: The Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, were built with their main entrances facing the East. This tradition was carried on in Christian churches . The opposite term " Occident " derives from the Latin word occidens , meaning west (lit. setting < occido fall/set ). This term meant the west (where the sun sets) but has fallen into disuse in English, in favour of " Western world ". Territorialization of

903-654: The Orient , corresponding roughly to the region of Syria . Over time, the common understanding of "the Orient" has continually shifted eastwards, as European people travelled farther into Asia. It finally reached the Pacific Ocean, in what Westerners came to call "the Far East". These shifts in time and identification sometimes confuse the scope (historical and geographic) of Oriental Studies. Yet there remain contexts where "the Orient" and "Oriental" have kept their older meanings (e.g., "Oriental spices" typically are from

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946-702: The Roman term Orient occurred during the reign of emperor Diocletian (284–305), when the Diocese of the Orient ( Latin : Dioecesis Orientis ) was formed. Later in the 4th century, the Praetorian prefecture of the Orient ( Latin : Praefectura Praetorio Orientis ) was also formed, including most of the Eastern Roman Empire , from the Thrace eastwards; its easternmost part was the original Diocese of

989-673: The Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal and then by The Asiatic Society . Publisher's advertisements of the early 20th century showed the Bibliotheca Indica as being divided in three "series" (in fact, subseries): Sanskrit Series, Tibetan Series, and Arabic and Persian Series. The Society's website in 2022 reports that the languages published in the series include "Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Rajasthani, Kashmiri, Hindi, Bengali, Tibetan, Kui, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, (...) sometime with [English] translations". The majority of

1032-469: The United Kingdom have been issued with guidelines to encourage political correctness where oriental should be avoided because it is imprecise and may be considered racist or offensive. "Asian" in Great Britain sometimes refers to people who come specifically from South Asia (in particular Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, Iran, and Afghanistan), since British Asians as

1075-540: The United States, some people consider the term derogatory. For example, Washington State prohibits the word "Oriental" in legislation and government documents and prefers the word "Asian" instead. In more local uses, "oriental" is also used for eastern parts of countries such as Morocco's Oriental Region . "Oriental" may also be used as an synonym of "eastern", especially in Romance languages . Examples include

1118-467: The West, orientation is little observed in building churches, even by the Catholic church, and still less by Protestant denominations. Charles Borromeo stated that churches ought to be oriented exactly east, in line with the rising sun at the equinoxes , not at the solstices , but some churches seem to be oriented to sunrise on the feast day of their patron saint. Thus St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

1161-474: The altar at the west end and the entrance at the east was sometimes followed as late as the 11th century even in areas under Frankish rule, as seen in Petershausen (Constance) , Bamberg Cathedral , Augsburg Cathedral , Regensburg Cathedral , and Hildesheim Cathedral (all in present-day Germany). The importance attached to orientation of churches declined after the 15th century. In his instructions on

1204-573: The books in the series are now in the public domain and are now available on the Internet as digital downloads. In addition, all of the Bibliotheca Indica books are available on The Asiatic Society's Digital Library is "available only on the LAN of the Society premises". Oriental The Orient is a term referring to the East in relation to Europe , traditionally comprising anything belonging to

1247-405: The building and arrangement of churches, Charles Borromeo , archbishop of Milan from 1560 to 1584, expressed a preference for having the apse point exactly east, but accepted that, where that is impractical, a church could be built even on a north–south axis, preferably with the façade at the southern end. He stated that the altar can also be at the west end, where "in accordance with the rite of

1290-476: The compass readings hypothesis. Yet another study of English churches found that a significant proportion of churches that showed a considerable deviation from true east were constrained by neighbouring buildings in town and perhaps by site topography in rural areas. Similarly, a survey of a total of 32 medieval churches with reliable metadata in Lower Austria and northern Germany discovered only

1333-492: The cultural domination of Abrahamic religions, do not share these same historical associations, giving way for the term "oriental" to have different connotations. In 2016, President Obama signed New York Congresswoman Grace Meng 's legislation H.R. 4238 replacing the word with Asian American in federal law. The Chinese word 东方 is translated as "oriental" in the official English names of several entities, e.g. Oriental Art Center , Oriental Movie Metropolis . In other cases,

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1376-486: The east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man". At first, the orientation of the building in which Christians met was unimportant, but after the legalization of the religion in the fourth century, customs developed in this regard. These differed in Eastern and Western Christianity . The Apostolic Constitutions , a work of Eastern Christianity written between 375 and 380 AD, gave it as

1419-488: The entrance at the east end, and the sanctuary at the west end. During the readings all looked towards the readers, the bishop and presbyters looking westward, the people eastward. The Apostolic Constitutions , like the other documents that speak of the custom of praying towards the east, do not indicate on which side of the altar the bishop stood for "the sacrifice". The earliest Christian churches in Rome were all built with

1462-723: The entrance to the east, like the Jewish temple in Jerusalem . Only in the 8th or 9th century did Rome accept the orientation that had become obligatory in the Byzantine Empire and was also generally adopted in the Frankish Empire and elsewhere in northern Europe. The original Constantinian Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem also had the altar in the west end. The old Roman custom of having

1505-401: The geographical east. Another survey of a smaller number of English churches examined other possible alignments also and found that, if sunset as well as sunrise is taken into account, the saint's day hypothesis covered 43% of the cases considered, and that there was a significant correspondence also with sunrise on Easter morning of the year of foundation. The results provided no support for

1548-584: The innumerable churches, holy Moscow!", while in 1843 the American historian William Prescott uses the phrase "barbaric pomp, truly Oriental" to describe the court life of Aztec nobility in his history of the conquest of the Aztec Empire . As late as 1957 Karl Wittfogel included Rome and the Incan Empire in his study of what he called Oriental Despotism , demonstrating the term still carries

1591-462: The lustre of a fine pearl . Hong Kong, a former British colony, has been called "Pearl of the Orient" along with Shanghai. In the UK, and much of the commonwealth, it is not considered a pejorative term, with many East Asian people choosing to use it themselves - notably in the names of East Asian businesses such as restaurants and takeaway outlets. People in the United Kingdom from Southwest Asia , Asia Minor and Near East are often referred to by

1634-532: The many churches where the altar end is not actually to the east, terms such as "east end", "west door", "north aisle" are commonly used as if the church were oriented, treating the altar end as the liturgical east . The first Christians faced east when praying, likely an outgrowth of the ancient Jewish custom of praying in the direction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Due to this established custom, Tertullian says some non-Christians thought they worshipped

1677-675: The regions extending from the Middle East to sub-continental India to Indo-China). Travellers may again take the Orient Express train from Paris to its terminus in the European part of Istanbul , a route established in the early 20th century. In European historiography , the meaning of "the Orient" changed in scope several times. Originally, the term referred to Egypt, the Levant , and adjoining areas as far west as Morocco. During

1720-472: The same word is more literally translated as "eastern", e.g. China Eastern Airlines . The official name of Uruguay is Oriental Republic of Uruguay, the adjective Oriental refers to the geographic location of the country, east of the Uruguay River . The term Oriental is also used as Uruguay's demonym , usually with a formal or solemn connotation. The word also has a deep historical meaning as

1763-416: The sun. Origen says: "The fact that [...] of all the quarters of the heavens, the east is the only direction we turn to when we pour out prayer, the reasons for this, I think, are not easily discovered by anyone." Later on, various Church Fathers advanced mystical reasons for the custom. One such explanation is that Christ's Second Coming was expected to be from the east: "For as the lightning comes from

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1806-489: The term to describe a pervasive Western tradition, both academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of the Arab and Muslim worlds that has been shaped by the attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and the 19th centuries. In British English , the term Oriental is sometimes still used to refer to people from East and Southeast Asia (such as those from China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Singapore). Judges in

1849-500: The term, "Middle Eastern". These can include Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Assyrians, West Asian Armenians, Yezidis, Egyptians (including Copts), Syriac Arameans, Mandeans, Shabakis and Turvomans among others. In some specific contexts, for example the carpet and rug trade, the older sense of "oriental" to cover not just East Asia but Central Asia , South Asia and Turkey may still be used; an Oriental rug may come from any of these areas. The term Oriental may sound dated or even be seen as

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