Pre-modern great communities imagined themselves via sacred script, not ethnicity

Evidence

But Christendom, the Islamic Ummah, and even the Middle Kingdom – which, though we think of it today as Chinese, imagined itself not as Chinese, but as central – were imaginable largely through the medium of a sacred language and written script. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 60

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘Middle Kingdom imagined itself as central, not Chinese’ point directly parallels Said’s critique of how ‘the Orient’ was constructed by outsiders — relevant to how the Islamophobia field treats self-conceptions vs external ascription. — connects to: Sacred-language communities absorbed outsiders through script mastery — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 61; Sacred languages were imagined as emanations of reality itself — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 64; Pre-modern social group conception was centripetal and hierarchical, not horizontal — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 65 (+1 more)

Related

• Sacred languages were imagined as emanations of reality itself (similarity 0.86)
• Sacred-language communities absorbed outsiders through script mastery (similarity 0.85)
• Sacred written languages created pre-national communities out of signs, not sounds (similarity 0.83)
• Pre-modern social group conception was centripetal and hierarchical, not horizontal (similarity 0.81)
• Sacred-languistic community imagined membership as alchemic absorption rather than adherence (similarity 0.80)
• A universal imagined community was reproduced through countless particular local forms (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Sacred-language communities absorbed outsiders through script mastery #expands (0.85) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 61
• Early American nationalisms did not depend on language difference #corroborates (0.85) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 212
• Sacred languages were imagined as emanations of reality itself #expands (0.82) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 64
• Pre-modern social group conception was centripetal and hierarchical, not horizontal #corroborates (0.78) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 65