For thirty-five years a major scholarly dialogue, (which often spilled over into abrasive debate) has enlivened the study of comparative Indo-European religions and mythology. At the center of this academic storm is Georges Dumézil, whose brilliant insights into the nature of early Indo-European cosmology, myths, rites, deities and social structure, have sent dozens of historians of religion, philologists and linguists to the texts in efforts to either corroborate or disprove his theories. The extent of Dumézil's influence may be seen in the number of scholars who have developed and amplified his ideas in their own research. Another, equally significant measure of his influence may be found in the number of well-informed critics which the French scholar has attracted. Dumézil's central theory, concerning the tripartite ideology of the Indo-Europeans, has proven to be suggestive and stimulating for scholars in Germanic, Roman, Celtic, Scandinavian and Indie studies. Certainly, Dumézil ranks alongside other great contemporary French scholars such as Braudel and Lévi-Strauss. Like them, his work has had an incalculable effect upon his discipline and upon the world of scholarship.

Until the arrival of the Europeans, sea traffic to the Indies was merely coastal. Sailing ships went from port to port along the coasts. As the Strait of Malacca was, of old, the gateway to the Indonesian Archipelago, it is no wonder that Islam was introduced first in the settlements along the coast of this Strait.

In all probability, Moslem merchants from Hindustan, especially from Gujarat, brought Islam to the Indonesian Archipelago. They arrived in the same way and by the same means as their ancestors who brought Hindu civilization twelve centuries earlier. Islam was introduced by merchants and not by conquering Arab legions, or even by missionaries.

Whether china has changed or remained the same is a question of remarkable longevity in the field of Chinese studies. It is sustained in part by the continuity of certain terms of reference within Chinese culture, from late imperial to contemporary times, together with the maintenance of certain institutions. W. F. J. Jenner has recently identified some of these: the bureaucracy, walls, “dad, mum and the kids,” “severe punishment,” among others (Jenner 1992). In Jenner's analysis, the fact of China being ineluctably Chinese is readily translated into the fact that it has failed the challenge of modernization. The same equation has been made by others: Peyrefitte's “l'empire immobile,” Mabbett's “mirage of modernity,” and Pye's nationalism without modernization all bespeak an understanding of China as not only imprisoned by its past but also, to draw on older views again, as stagnant, mummified, or decaying (Peyrefitte 1993; Mabbett 1985; Pye 1993).