مجله هنر و تمدن شرق
پیاپی 7 (بهار 1394)

Structuralism, as an artistic and literary approach, originated in the Eastern Europe during the first decades of the 20th century and reached its climax in the Western Europe in the second half of the same century. Through focusing on the structures of the artistic and literary works for analyzing them, structuralists created some criteria and formulas that seemed irrevocable and invariable from their perspective. Structuralism, as such, was presented as a scientific critical approach.
Structuralism, initially, was based on linguistics, however, it later extended to fields as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, history and finally different branches of humanities. This paper is to undertake a critical review of, and a reflection on structuralist approaches as developed in humanities, artistic and literary criticism.
What was once called structuralism is an obsolete approach not practiced any more. Despite the fact that some researches in the field of humanities rely on a few aspects of this approach, structuralism should be regarded as the last attempt of critics for establishing an absolute and irrevocable “truth”.

Main theorists of Traditionalists’ way of thinking pay more attention to the importance of art and beauty, and they have considered aesthetic of religious arts including Islamic arts in their works, explicitly or implicitly. The history of expansion and development of ideas and views of traditionalists about art and beauty in the intellectual and cultural climate of our country’s history is nearly five decades. Presence of critical aspects denying western culture and civilization and focus on interpretation and restoration of religious culture are two major reasons of paying attention to views and opinions of traditionalists, especially in the field of religious and traditional art, both before and after the Islamic Revolution. However, what has been neglected in this regard is lack of serious and rational critiques on this way of thinking as dominant and influential way of thinking in artistic space. In this paper, a summary of “Schuon” views on metaphysical foundations or bases of beauty are provided firstly. In the second stage, these metaphysical foundations including topics related to beauty and truth, unity of perfection, beauty, and objective reality are evaluated in terms of logic and content compared to thinkers of original Islamic intellectual tradition, including “Jafari” and “Tabatabai”. The next part of the article reviews the symbolism as base of Schuon’s aesthetics and traditionalists reviewed in the form of ability to prove beauty and inherent symbolism of forms in terms of methodology and content. As a conclusion, it is stated that the aesthetics of Schuon and traditionalists lack of clear logical and scientific properties as the theoretical foundations of Islamic art due to unconsidered generalizations, and the application of these ideas leads to a useless formalism.

Construction of buildings and formation, expansion or development of gardens and architecture are the results of political stability which is followed by economic stability and peace of the community. Meanwhile, paying attention to garden construction and thanks to its nature which is recreational aspect, achieves a stronger attachment to that stability. Is Persian Garden the result of drought period or belongs to prosperous period of Iranians’ origin? It is believed that the gardens in the heart of deserts have created enclosed sub climates (Oasis). The necessity of civilization in the Iranian plateau explains the attention to these sub climates to empower this civilization. Hence the Persian Gardens have only had the possibility to be developed in the era of civilization. Creating a Persian garden is somehow intertwined with the fate of initial cities or towns. Is there any other reason behind the construction of these beautiful gardens? Another question to be answered is related to non-civil causes of Persian historical gardens’ creation. Are gardens a symbol of thought in their corresponding era? Does the command to establish gardens have different reasons? The attempt to categorize the causes of these examples through searching in the old and new texts while finding the vague points of existence is a small step to understand the evolution of garden construction art of this country. Based on the conducted study it should be acknowledged that the spirit of kings and princes has been effective in the creation of these gardens. But among the factors forming the gardens, causes such as fruitfulness and creating beautiful landscapes are among the common causes and part of many historic gardens. However based on the tastes of each era some main reasons for the creation of the gardens include religious, recreational and mostly political- governmental factors.

Many factors are listed concerning the cause of genesis Persian garden and its specific geometry. Some considered the cause of Persian garden (Chahar Bagh) means quartet garden, thru this garden forms based on religious beliefs, before Islam and after it. Some of authors considered the cause of quartet forms before Islamic gardens, goes back to Iranian’s beliefs to divide the world into four parts and also some believes the reason of specific geometry in these gardens, originating from the four streams of paradise mentioned in Qur’an.
Opposite issue in this article is illustrating at the Iran and Islamic Beliefs, based on form, according to number four and its usage in the garden geometry and division, hence plans to put doubt this theory via research on the above idea, before Islam and after it. Many descriptions stated on Persian garden, allegory of paradise and an attempt to achieve the utopian paradise, between the effects of four streams of Paradise are more prominent shown in form and geometry of the garden. This paper emphasizes to the impact of conceptual paradise in design the Persian garden, and plans to pay with criticism of dummy effect at paradise and its geometry. Hypothesis with ref to Iranian’s historical and religious documents and content analysis rejected ancient Iranian’s beliefs regarding world is divided into four parts and also put doubt the effect of garden quartet geometry from paradise streams after Islam.

The Persian originated Sassanid, who were the heir to Achaemenid throne and civilization, ruled Persia over 5 centuries where numerous works of architecture, reliefs, paintings, textiles, porcelain, metal and glass objects, weapons and coins demonstrating Pahlavi symbolic motifs and calligraphy were created. Sassanid art is “new Persian” art comprising the tradition and manifesting history by magnificent and unique landscaping in form of temples, palaces, hunting ground, Persian paradise or the heaven on earth.
Sassanid art is molded on the basis of naturalistic beliefs and faith in Mithra and Anahita goddesses and Zoroastrian religion in a broad territory from Fars to Ctesiphon, Kermanshah, Sistan and Azerbaijan. Considering various precious types of art, the architectural masterpieces of the period includes temples, palaces, hunting grounds and about 34 inscriptions, built mostly in vicinity of natural elements such as mountains, water and trees.
Sassanid people can be recognized as the best landscapers throughout history whereas architectural monuments including temples, palaces and hunting ground, as well as carved graphs in the mountains are demonstrations of the claim.

This paper argues that whether Chinese development approach is more sustainable or The Hindi model. It seems that the Chinese community is more developed than the Hindi community. This thought besides several economic indicators and a high rate of urban development in china might have been realised as a truth. To reveal this, this paper applies deep interpretation of relevant evidence. By discussing the qualitative and quantitative causes, it is demonstrated that China, in spite of a high rate of economic and military growth, is considered more unsustainable compared with India. It appears that the current trend in a near future will decline and even may disrupt the today’s seemingly strong community of China. In contrast, the world will be faced with the new power named India. From other countries’ viewpoint, revealing the root causes of this issue plays a fundamental role in strategic planning and international relationsAlthough the Hindi development approach has a slow trend, it is comprehensive and balanced. The Hindi development approach considers improving the quality of life within the Hindi community economically and socio-culturally. This approach also entails the environmental and political aspect of sustainable development. The Hindi development approach, indeed, seeks to reduce the very poor segments of the community and turn it into the low- and middle-income level in a large-scale population. This is opposite to the Chinese model. The Chinese development approaches a rapid development and advertising in which the life realities of millions of Chinese have been hidden behind the window
of development. Once such an unbalanced development approach and the Chinese demographic .social, political features come together, can cause the failure of this economicsuper power