Ce que dit le Professeur P. E. de Josselin de Jong d'après P. Arndt des conceptions des Ngad'a de Florès pourrait êtré applique presque mot pour mot aux Mnong Gar: “In the spirit world die deva, the spirits, keep buffaloes, just as men do on earth. These spirit buffaloes are each connected with a human being; and when a deva slaughters a buffalo in the spirit world, a man on earth must die.” Ces “spirit buffaloes” correspondent aux hêeng rpuh des Mnong Gar que j'ai traduit faute de mieux par “âmes-buffles.” Chaque fois qu'un sorcier (caak) ou un génie (yaang, ce qui correspond au deva du texte cité) capture une hêeng rpuh, I'homme qui correspond à celle-ci tombe malade, le sacrifice d'un animal—qui peut aller jusqu'à être un buffle—permettra de libérer le malade; lorsque les yaang immolent une “âme-buffle” l'homme qui lui correspond meurt. D'autre part on assimile la croissance sociale de l'homme à la croissance physique de son “âme-buffle;” et le terme même de kuang (que j'ai traduit en français par approximation par “puissant”) sert à désigner l'home puissant, celui qui a été capable d'immoler des buffles (signe suprême de la puissance, ou si i'on veut, de la richess, à condition de donner à ce mot sa connotation mnong: on n'accumule des biens que pour les engloutir dans de grands sacrifices), ce mot kuang désigne un animal adulte mâle, notamment dans rpuh kuang “grand buffle mâle” taille de l'âme buffle d'un homme puissant, d'un kuang. C'est dans ce sens, je crois, qu'il faut considérer le cas du cadavre cité par le Pr. de Josselin de Jong. Autre exemple de corrélation entre l'homme et le buffle: on sait que lorsqu'une épidémie a ravageé un village, les habitants de ce village l'abandonnent un temps, puis reconstruisent leurs maisons sur un autre rngool (emplacement de village). De même, après une grande Fête du Sol (Nyiit Döng) où la majorité des foyers a immolé un ou deux buffles les maisons du village doivent être démontées et reconstruites sur un autre rngool, car l'hécatombe de buffles produit le même effet que la mort de plusieurs hommes.

The relationship between pragmatism and Chinese Communism is a question important in its consequences but ambiguous in its content. By careful reading of the intellectual history of China during past half-century, certain implications on the intertwined relationships between them can be easily detected. For example, both pragmatism and Marxism were introduced to China during the May Fourth era, a time of unprecedented intellectual ferment. Their common belief in the Western materialist tradition had not only paved the way for a brief united front in the struggle against the dead weight of the Confucian tradition, but their shared emphasis on scientific culture reinforced their common goals and made “science” one of the most worshipped watch-words in contemporary China. Such backgrounds have in fact led many to think that pragmatism represented only a transitional stage on a road that “led naturally and easily to communism as the science of society.” Some claimed that pragmatists not only tended to be tolerant of dialectical materialism and the Communists, but they admired the Communist movement as an integral part of the democratic ideal and helped to prepare the way for the spread of materialism in China in the next few decades. Although the precise relationship between pragmatism and Chinese Communism remains undefined to this day, the pragmatic element in Chinese Communism is a popular theme which has gained wide currency among some recent interpretations.

One of the weaknesses of comparative studies of the development of an entrepreneurial class is the lack of detailed data. Often such studies make use of census data which indicate the growth of this class in general but fail to show clearly the origins of new entrepreneurs. Available case studies, on the other hand, do not cover enough ground thus precluding generalizations.

Literary prose is a late developer in the history of any language and in Marathi, as for most other Indian languages, it does not appear in any significant quantity until the middle of the nineteenth century when the influence of English was beginning to transform a hitherto almost exclusively verse tradition. Before this the use of prose is limited to commentaries, to a few hagiographical works of the Mahānubhāv sect written in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, to historical narratives from the time of Maratha independence and to private and diplomatic correspondence of the same period. Of course, there must always have been a flourishing popular oral literature of fables and ghost stories, adaptations of episodes from the Puranas and the Epics, but these were never written down. Even among the well known Sanskrit story collections, only the Pancatantra is found in an early prose version in Marathi.

In a recent essay on “Some Mid-Ch'ing Views of the Monarchy,” Harold Kahn announced that he was moving past “the one-dimensional, simple cliché” and “the two-dimensional, complex stereotype” to add a third dimension so that he could show Ch'ien-lung as “a composite figure made up of several images.” Talk of three dimensions immediately prompts any healthy layman to try to add a fourth: to the three spatial dimensions which are historiographical, perhaps we can add a fourth dimension of time which is more positively historical.

In the summer of 1921, the Communist world was preparing for the first major conference of Far Eastern peoples. This conference was originally scheduled for Irkutsk in the late summer or early fall of that year. It was intended as a sequel to the Baku Conference of September 1920, which had been attended mainly by delegates from the Middle East. But it was also planned as the Soviet answer to the Washington Conference, as is well known. Competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for the support of the Asian people can be dated from this time, although initially Moscow was much more aware of this fact than Washington.

For underdeveloped countries bent on accelerating their economic development, there are two alternatives: one is a mixed economy compatible with democracy, the other is planned development under totalitarianism. What has been happening in Communist China during the past few years is a striking example of the latter case, and its degree of success will undoubtedly have far-reaching influences on other economically backward countries desiring rapid economic development. Since rapid economic development is unattainable without substantial investment, the sources of investment funds are of crucial importance in the whole development program. The purpose of this paper is to explore how public investment was financed in Communist China, and to estimate which population groups bore the burden of such financing.

Our coverage of wartime broadcasts emitted by Radio Tokyo and its satellite stations, while unavoidably incomplete, nevertheless offers clear clues to the Japanese blueprint for Indonesia. The essence of propaganda is to hammer away at a few points, and we may infer from these what the Japanese intended to do, regardless of what they actually accomplished. Despite certain conflicts in regard to timing, priorities and, above all, overall direction, this program seems to have represented the combined goals of Japan's military and big business elements. Although most of the desiderata were the same as those set for the rest of what Japan termed the Southern Regions, Japanese propaganda to and about Indonesia exhibited certain variations from the norm. As the richest, most populous, most distant from Japan, and most thoroughly Muslim area in Southeastern Asia, Indonesia necessarily called for special handling. Its political division by the Japanese into three administrative areas under separate army and navy commanders was a further complicating factor.

The South Asian historian, often unaccustomed to the tools of other disciplines, has largely neglected his most massive primary source—the newspaper. A newspaper file is massive enough to distract researcher and librarian alike, but they should not be distracted. A newspaper by its very nature cannot exist in an ivory tower. Whether subsidized or self-supporting, it is a part of its society. It reflects that society and influences it—sometimes both—in an intellectual ricochet. This article will consider, first, the availability and identification of South Asian newspapers; second, what might be learned from them, and third, how it might be learned.