This article investigates one polemical issue, the substitution of Mecca for Jerusalem, in the writings of Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muslim b. Qutayba (828–889 ce). In his Book of the Signs of Prophethood (Kitāb Aʿlām al-Nubuwwa), Ibn Qutayba interprets five Biblical verses that speak of Jerusalem as actually alluding to Mecca. The investigation queries the quality of several Biblical allusions in Ibn Qutayba's work, probes Ibn Qutayba's reasoning in using them, and asks how they fit into the larger and longer-lasting polemic between Islam and Judaism concerning the identity of the son whom Abraham bound on the altar. It is found that the two issues—the place most sacred to God and the identity of the bound son—are strongly connected in the polemic between Islam and Judaism and between different schools of Islamic exegesis.

This study adopts an osmotic ethnography in order to decolonise the museum as an intellectual institution that was born in the West and informed by a logic of command (arkheion). As in the biological process of osmosis, characterised by an equilibrium between the inner and the outer that shapes its own distinctiveness through its symbiosis, the museum constitutes itself as a space intertwined with external reality. This is particularly true in the case of South Asian museum artefacts: because of the concept of darśan (the sensuous relationship between the worshipper and the deity's material embodiment) curators have faced the challenge of coming to terms with visitors’ responses, from colonial to post-colonial times. A direct consequence of this challenge is represented by the reconstructions of religious spaces—shrines, altars, temples—that should evoke the so-called “original context” and be in consonance with local forms of material engagement.

By adopting eco-phenomenology as its methodological framework, this article examines colonial sources, in particular the works of Thomas Hendley (1847–1917) and Fanny Parks (1794–1875), and compares them to the ethnographic fieldwork undertaken by the author at the Oriental Museum of the University of Durham in November 2014, as part of doctoral research.

This article addresses the issue of passive resistance by the Jogi and Mirasi musician castes against the puritanical notions of their former patrons, Meos. After the Meo patrons embraced the Tablighi Jamaat's version of Islam, the Jogis and Mirasis feel pressured to give up performing. Their artistry is also their livelihood which they value very much. By using James Scott's understanding of ‘passive resistance’ and ‘hidden transcript’ this article shows the use of poetic art for passive resistance. In doing so, the Jogis and Mirasis do not compromise with the civility of the art and positively use the lyrics of their new songs against the Meo patrons’ versions of religious purity on one hand, and extremist Hinduism on the other. They, in fact, emphasize a version of righteousness that is universal and thus needs no organised religion.

This paper seeks to contribute to understanding of the dynamics of reference relation and subordination in Tibetan grammar. As a way of shedding light on this complex topic, it examines a translated sūtra, the Ye shes rgyas pa'i mdo, which contains numerous stories relating interactions and conversations between a variety of characters. A close reading of several representative passages of this text reveals some of the systematic structures of subordination. Despite not being outlined as a principle in traditional Tibetan grammars, subordination is seen here to be clearly reinforced by, and at times entirely encoded in, the use of the converb –nas to express coreference, and in the verbal noun and converb structures –pa dang and -pa las to connote cross-reference. The paper thus aims to show how attention to the functioning of subordinating structures serves the reader in the interpretation of complex passages where such structures at times provide the only key to the attribution of agency.

The Huá-yí-yì-yǔ is a general name for the various wordbooks between the Chinese language and its neighbouring languages compiled from the beginning of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). It has broadly 4 different classes. In the wordbooks of the third class the words of each foreign language were transliterated only in Chinese characters and the letters of the language in question were not used. To this third class belongs the manuscript in the collection of the library of Seoul National University. Its seventh volume is for the Uighur language. It contains 19 categories. In this paper the first category of astronomy with 85 entries is treated.

There are many scribal errors in these materials. Apart from the shortcomings of the Chinese characters, this may be the main reason why the Uighur word materials in the wordbooks of this class are not highly regarded.

This essay in historical anthropology juxtaposes some rice rituals in southern China with their counterparts in the Shan States of Upper Burma. The approach is one of symbological analysis of iconic codes, and it is suggested here that the two sets of rituals, superficially different, may be seen as morphological transforms of a common cultural semantic pattern. This understanding has a bearing on further explorations of the formation of the wider Southeast Asian field.

In 1926 Zhou Xicheng, Governor of Guizhou, China, obtained a new car from an American Motor Company, the first car ever to find its way to this remote Chinese province. Road construction in Guizhou was well underway when the American engineer O. J. Todd, a member of the China International Famine Relief Committee, was invited that year to assist in its continued development. Governor Zhou had his own methods for the speedy and effective building of roads and recruited local people, the army, and even large teams of school children to assist in construction. It is likely that his work methods had taken their inspiration from Sun Yat-sen's plans as outlined in his book The International Development of China of 1920; plans that Sun Yat-sen further promoted in the writing of a letter to Henry Ford in which he requested the industrialist's assistance in the improvement of the motor industry in China. In 1928, in an effort to commemorate his own role in China's road construction projects, Zhou Xicheng had a coin struck. Instead of showing an image of his own head or that of another luminary such as Sun Yat-sen or Yuan Shikai - as had been common with coins of the first decades of the twentieth-century - this one yuan silver coin shows an image of his beloved motor car.