China-India history of the 1950s remains mired in concerns related to border demarcations and a teleological focus on the causes, course, and consequences of the war of 1962. The result is an overt emphasis on diplomatic and international history of a rather narrow form. In critiquing this narrowness, this article offers an alternate chronology accompanied by two substantive case studies. Taken together, they demonstrate that an approach that takes seriously cultural, scientific, and economic life leads to different sources and different historical arguments than an approach focused on political (and especially high political) life. Such a shift in emphasis, away from conflict and onto moments of contact, comparison, cooperation, and competition, can contribute fresh perspectives not just on the histories of China and India, but also on the histories of the Global South.

The fifth day of the Lunar New Year marks the beginning of six weeks of religious festivities in the rural area of Chaozhou, a distinct dialect region in Southeast China. Scheduled on separate dates, processions of local deities are staged by different villages. On the morning of the chosen day, villagers flock to the main village temple, where wooden statues of the divine occupants are congregated with those from other local temples. Each family sets up a table in the courtyard, lights incense and candles, and presents its offerings (of chicken, duck, goose, fish, rice, wine, fruits, cakes, and candies) to the statues. With paper money set on fire, worship and prayers begin.

Though there have been in China since 1949 occasional deviations in the policy regarding family life, some ideals enunciated at the start of the revolutionary regime have remained constant. The dominant policy has been that the family should be retained and its strengths used. However, family commitments should not interfere with commitments to the state or the collective, and within the family feudal customs should be eliminated. The parents' stranglehold over the lives of their children should be broken. Children should be able to marry without parental interfence. There should be no buying and selling of brides, and big, ostentatious and wasteful wedding feasts should be stopped. In an effort to limit births, marriages should be delayed to age twenty-three for girls and age twenty-five for boys in rural areas. As part of the program for more equal treatment of women, parents should show no favoritism towards boys. Women like men should work in the fields, and nurseries should be established so as to help women join in productive work. At more sporadic intervals, young children have been urged to teach their parents about the thought of Mao Tse-tung in order to rid them of old feudal ideas.

Differing both in structure and operation from its parent Mughal model, the political system which came to be known as Hyderabad State developed in the Deccan in the second half of the eighteenth century. The major structural difference lay in the great power of two hereditary daftardars, the keepers of the central revenue records—these men could usurp the Diwan's (Chief Minister's) traditional control of government finances. Without overemphasizing contrasts with the Mughal model, for few behavioral studies have been made of Mughal administration, other apparent differences lay in Hyderabad's complete reliance on private contractors for revenue collection, the customary treatment of jagirs (land grants) as inheritable, and clear functional distinctions within the mansabdari system. Loosely structured patron-client relationships and the use of vakils or intermediaries characterized the operation of the system. The participants—nobles, local rulers, military men, bankers, record-keepers—were of diverse origins. The recruitment and composition of the Hyderabad nobility reflected the flexibility of the political system, as illustrated by an examination of the career patterns of the acknowledged “ten leading families” of the Hyderabad nobility.

A successful pattern of close ties between the state and large-scale private enterprise in Japan and Korea has attracted the attention of scholars, policymakers, and businessmen. The prewar Japanese state (Moulton 1931; Lockwood 1955; Nakagawa 1983) with its distinctive methods of promoting private enterprise played a major role in this eminently successful case of a “late developing” (Gerschenkron 1966; Rosovsky 1961) society. It also provides an early example of what has recently been termed a “capitalist development state” (Johnson 1987). Studies of prewar business-state relations have distinguished business policy associations as major loci of state ties with Japanese firms (Ishida 1968; Tiedemann 1971; Heidenheimer and Langdon 1968), thereby offering insight into the formation of an entrepreneurial elite and the role of private enterprise in state-directed development efforts.

As part of the 1996–97 Fiftieth Jubilee celebrations, Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej published his version of the Mahajanaka Jataka, one of the many stories of the Buddha's former lives in the Theravada Buddhist tradition (Bhumibol 1996). The publication, in both English and Thai and complete with lavish illustrations, was heavily promoted by various agencies of the bureaucracy (especially in the media and the schools) and met with much public acclaim. Several editions of the book were published, including a cartoon version for younger readers (Bhumibol 1999). Tapes and CDs with readings of the story were released, and commemorative medallions were also available with purchases of the book. A musical version of the story was created and public performances held, with a number of the princesses involved in the production. The tale is of Prince Mahajanaka, who, though forced into exile, through his great perseverance (viriya parami) is able to return to his kingdom, claim his rightful throne, and bring prosperity to his subjects.

Monarchy was the dominant political institution of the Buddha's time. The Enlightened One was on very cordial terms with some of the leading monarchs of the times, whose interest and patronage early Buddhism appreciated a great deal. Many a rule of the Vinaya code was discreetly amended in deference to the convenience of kings such as Bimbisara and Pasendi, the Kosalan. And quite a few scions of royal families joined the order of monks and nuns and played a leading part in the propagation of the creed during its early critical years.

Scholars who study language often see standard or official languages as oppressive, helping the socially advantaged to entrench themselves as elites. This article questions this view by examining the Chinese case, in which early twentieth-century language reformers attempted to remake their society's language situation to further national integration. Classical Chinese, accessible only to a privileged few, was sidelined in favor of Mandarin, a national standard newly created for the many. This article argues that Mandarin's creation reflected an entirely new vision of society. It draws on archival sources on the design and promulgation of Mandarin from the 1910s to the 1930s to discuss how the way the language was standardized reflected the nature of the imagined future society it was meant to serve. Language reform thus represented a radical rethinking of how society should be organized: linguistic modernity was to be a national modernity, in which all the nation's people would have access to the new official language, and thus increased opportunities for advancement.

Marriage has been widely accepted as a universal institution that allows a kinship system to establish and perpetuate itself (Levi-Strauss 1963). Although the well-known case of the Nayar in Central Kerala of India has seriously problematized the anthropological definitions of marriage (Gough 1959), the universality of the institution is still accepted up to this day (Ember and Ember 1999). Since the early 1980s, however, a growing body of literature on the Moso, a matrilineal group in Southwest China, has made available an ethnographic case in which marriage is not the primary sexual-reproductive institution (Zhan et al. 1980; Yan and Song 1983; YNSBJZ 1986, 1987, 1988; Shih 1993; Weng 1993; Guo 1997; Cai 1997). Among the Moso, the majority of adults have practiced a visiting system called tisese (pronounced as “tea-say-say”), which differs from marriage in that it is noncontractual, nonobligatory, and nonexclusive (Shih 1993). Meanwhile, mostly amongst the elites, marriage has coexisted with tisese in Moso society for centuries.

A common conceptualization of development as a binary relationship between trustees and target groups is inadequate. This article proposes the metaphor of development as an entangled cultural knot, constituted by multiple power relations. It uses this concept to analyze a recent slaughter renunciation movement, in which some leading Tibetan Nyingma masters from Larung Gar have suggested that Tibetan herders give up selling their livestock to the slaughter market for religious reasons. The movement reflects an alternative form of development articulated by several leading Tibetan Buddhist teachers, particularly Khenpo Tsultrim Lodroe, yet it goes against the state project of developing the yak meat industry. This movement has been criticized not only by state officials, but also by secular Tibetan intellectuals, as well as by herders. This article argues that the complex relationships among Tibetan Nyingma teachers, state officials, Tibetan secularists, and herders; their shared and competing interests; and the apparently contradictory positions they take on various issues require a much more sophisticated conceptual tool than the simple dichotomous conceptualization of development.

Madras City, founded in the mid-seventeenth century, was the earliest colonial port city established by the British in India. Like the other port cities of Asia which were the creation of European powers, Madras functioned primarily as a base for overseas trade. As it grew and developed, its morphological and spatial patterns were dictated by the presence of a western population which at first was exclusively trade-oriented, but over the centuries became involved in banking, business and administration. As the British shifted from their role as traders to rulers of the Indian Subcontinent, they added a new dimension to the cities they created—a municipal apparatus to monitor urban growth, to regulate the use of land, and to insure that certain areas, especially those where they resided, would receive adequate urban facilities. The cities they founded had certain characteristics: each contained a large indigenous populace, far outnumbering the colonial elite that was effectively in charge of urban development. The residential areas of these urban dwellers were spatially segregated from those of the Europeans, and more densely populated. Indigenous and colonial life-styles determined the nature of settlement patterns and, in turn, molded the form of the built environment.

When I was a child at the height of the Cold War, the press painted China in vivid primary colors—red menace, yellow peril, blue-clad masses. China was a back-burner story, however, compared to the Soviet threat, and my education through high school never touched upon it. A shift in public attention began with the 1971 China visit of the U.S. ping-pong team and Nixon's state visit in February 1972. Suddenly the mainstream U.S. press discovered beggar-free streets, healthy children, acupuncture anesthesia, and national optimism.

Kālī, the Hindu goddess ‘Time,’ is a ubiquitous presence in contemporary rural and urban Bengali life and occupies a historic place as Calcutta's patron deity. Her prototypes go back to pre-Vedic India (Kinsley 1977:90; MacKenzie-Brown 1985:111). Kālī was incorporated into the orthodox Hindu textual tradition in the myths of the Devī-Māhātmya, or Candī, as this sixth-century A.D. text is known in Bengal. She subsequently became the chief divinity as Female Principle (Śakti, ‘Force’, ‘Creatrix’) in the esoteric Sākta Tantra cult, which was especially prevalent in eastern India around the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth century, Kālī's worship moved to the public sphere. The Kālī saints Rāmaprasāda (eighteenth century) and Rāmakrsna (late nineteenth century) were especially responsible for popularizing the devotional (bhakti) conception of Kālī as Mother, the prevalent perception of this deity among Bengalis today (Gatwood 1985:174; Kapera n.d.:71; Kinsley 1977:93, 117; Kinsley 1986:116, 125; MacKenzie-Brown 1985:118–19).

Different methods of communication imply different social and political relations. Generally, mass media are distributed through centralized broadcast stations or presses and controlled by the elite. Face-to-face communications, which circulate through physically close contact between people, have more subversive potential. The author analyzes rumors spread in the press and by word of mouth during October and November 1998 in East Java, Indonesia. Conspirators and ninjas were suspected of killing many alleged sorcerers and persecuting the traditionalist Muslim majority. In response, local residents established guards against, attacked, and even killed suspected ninjas. Suspicion also was directed against the government, elites, and the armed forces. This subversive content is attributed to the interaction of two forms of communication: oral rumors became written rumors, and vice versa.

On May 19, 2009, the president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, dressed in his traditional white sarong and shirt, solemnly addressed Parliament: “The writ of the state now runs across every inch of our territory … we have completely defeated terrorism.” The same day, photographs of the corpse of the ruthless rebel leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran adorned all of the local newspapers. With his death, the secessionist war was over—this endless war that had pitted the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against the security forces of the government of Sri Lanka since 1983. It had sunk deep into the psyche of the people of all communities, and its terrible violence had elicited much international attention and reprimand. President Rajapaksa then addressed his citizens in the Tamil language, promising reconciliation and embracing the Tamil-speaking people in his program of recovery for the ravaged North. A “northern spring” would soon come. On the streets of Colombo, there was a feeling of trepidation, while celebrations, some spontaneous and others orchestrated by sycophantic politicians, peppered the capital. The day had been given as a special holiday for the war-weary people to celebrate by eating kiribath (milk rice) and launching (peaceful) rockets, as fireworks are commonly called. People waved the Lion Flag and compared the president to the famous second-century bce Sinhalese hero Dutugemunu, another son of the Ruhuna (Southern Sri Lanka) who succeeded in conquering Anuradhapura from the Tamil king Elara, whom he famously slew with a dart. King Dutugemunu has long been a folk hero in Sri Lanka for uniting the country under a single rule.

This article bridges Sri Lankan studies and the academic debate on the relation between contemporary Islam and politics. It constitutes a case study of the Muslim community in Akkaraipattu on Sri Lanka's war-ridden east coast. Over two decades of ethnically colored conflict have made Muslim identity of paramount importance, but the meanings attached to that identity vary substantively. Politicians, mosque leaders, Sufis and Tablighis define the ethnic, religious and political dimensions of “Muslimness” differently and this leads to intra-Muslim contradictions. The case study thus helps resolve the puzzle of Sri Lankan Muslims: they are surrounded by hostility, but they continue to be internally divided. Akkaraipattu's Muslims jockey between principled politics, pragmatic politics and anti-politics, because they have to navigate different trajectories. This article thus corroborates recent studies on Islam elsewhere that argue for contextualized and nuanced approaches to the variegated interface between Islam and politics.

Revolutionary mass upheaval generally weakens the people's respect for authority, law, and discipline; and it brings in its wake social, economic, and political disorders, facilitating the establishment of an authoritarian regime. The French Revolution was based on the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity; but the destruction of the old social and political fabric, and the failure to institutionalize the new ideas, led Frenchmen to search for “the man of genius destined at once to carry on and to abolish the revolution.” The Russian Revolution of 1917 was also followed by several years of civil war, which led to the establishment of the ruthless totalitarian regime of Stalin, itself reminiscent of the Thermidorian Reaction. In Algeria, Cuba, China, and North Vietnam, successful mass armed revolutions have been consolidated only because of their one-party dictatorships.

A creative, potent, formless energy is assumed to animate the universe in parts of island Southeast Asia. In Luwu, a former kingdom of South Sulawesi (Celebes), Indonesia, this energy is called sumange'. This paper describes how sumange' is treated within the human body, which it is said to animate, and the logic of ritual substance that it implies. Because it can be lost through shock and routine depletion, humans make efforts to care for it, retain it, and increase it. Because it is potent, concentrations of it in people and places are dangerous. Its differential distribution orders the social and natural universe.

Two articles published in early 1992 in the monthly opinion journal Chūō kōron set off a minor debate on the essence of Japan's historical experience. The articles were written by Kawakatsu Heita, a professor of economic history at the Waseda University, as a critique of Ueyama Shunpei, a noted cultural historian. A rejoinder by Ueyama was published subsequently in the same journal, and a critique of Kawakatsu by another economic historian, Tsunoyama Sakae, also followed.