The film Gandhi is one of several events that have recently brought Gandhi's ideas to public attention in India and the West. In this review of the field of Gandhian studies, the author looks at the literature that probes beneath the popular images of the man. The author identifies some of the landmark works in the field and assesses recent publications. He finds that in India, especially, the emphasis is on the application of Gandhian ideas to movements for social and economic change.

The Anglo-Indian community of India is one of several hybrid Eurasian populations which have found themselves in precarious social positions in some of the newly independent Asian nations. Eurasian populations originated in early periods of colonial domination when European women were scarce, and grew over the years through natural increase and occasional mixed contacts. Their original size relative to the indigenous populations and policies of both governing European and native populations have determined whether they: (1) have been submerged in the numerically dominant local population (e.g., White Russians in China); (2) have attempted to return to the European countries of their male progenitors (e.g., Indos of Indonesia); or (3) have been forced to attempt the maintenance of social and cultural solidarity as permanent minorities (e.g., Ceylonese “Burghers” and the Anglo-Indians). Events of the contemporary nationalist revolution in Asia have increased public awareness of the problems of these minority groups.

As an epigraph to Taipei jen (Taipei residents), Pai Hsien-yung could not have chosen a better poem for effectively evoking the mood of sadness and that gripping sense of loss emanating from the “wild grasses” and the “slanting sun” of his stories, for dramatically bringing out the contrasts between the past and the present, between age and youth—one of the memorable features of this anthology. Inasmuch as “Black Coat Lane” can be read as a tiao-ku (mourning the past) poem, so can Taipei jen be read as an elegy on the final dissolution of an ancient culture. That Pai Hsien-yung should have chosen Taipei as “the center of paralysis” is only logical, since the very concept of life for so many of his Taipei jen depends on the observation of rituals. By rituals, I mean a practice or a pattern of behavior repeated in a prescribed manner. Understood in these terms, such a story as “State Funeral” could not have taken place anywhere other than in Taipei. Where else could the death of a Kuomintang general be honored in such a pompous manner? And where could Tou Fu-jen (in “Wandering in the Garden”) stage her k'un-ch'ü dinner party if not in Taipei? In Taipei, if she chooses to, she could stillprepare a cup of tea with as-much loving care as Yün Niang did in Fousheng Lu-chi (Six Chapters of a Floating Life), even if it is no longer possible to serve it in the immaculate manner of a Miao Yü in Hung-lou meng (The Dream of the Red Chamber).

Cooperatives are a promising link that can coalesce subdisciplines such as agrarian, labor, economic, and social history. This article reassesses the significance of cooperatives in the agrarian and social history of South Asia. It provides a broad sketch of the major historical developments—legal, economic, and social—in India up to 1970, emphasizing the continuity between the colonial and postcolonial periods in terms of state engagement with cooperatives. The article goes on to discuss the existing historiography regarding the cooperative movement on the subcontinent, arguing for the substitution of the prevailing notion of failure with a more historically grounded and nuanced approach that takes into consideration the broader economic context, as well as social stratification and inequality. Finally, some promising avenues—including, but not limited to, organizational economics, bottom-up social and cultural history, and global history—are suggested for the future historiography of cooperatives in South Asia.

Between 1900 and 1908 the Chinese revolutionary leader, Sun Yat-sen, tried to obtain assistance from the French government for his movement to overturn the Manchu dynasty, and at one point he contacted a French army officer who gave the impression that such aid might be forthcoming. This connection between Sun Yat-sen and France, revealed in Sun's memoirs, has intrigued and puzzled historians who have been uncertain as to the policy behind this curious contact. However, French archival records reveal that the promise of assistance to Sun was ephemeral as the French government decided that its political and economic interests in Asia dictated against any support for an Asian revolutionary leader. Under pressure from the Imperial Chinese government French officials banished Sun Yat-sen from Indochina in 1908, thereby demonstrating a basic hostility toward revolutionary movements in Asia.

Among the sins of scholarly translators from the Chinese, there is one which is so prevalent as to remain unchallenged generation after generation, possibly because no one is free from its taint. I refer to the practice of leaving uncooked and indigestible lumps in the sinological puddings served up to a tolerant public. This custom, against which I wish to make the strongest possible protest, has not yet been justified or even defended by any wellargued theory, but has become widely accepted usage in the absence of overt opposition. Specifically I challenge the common treatment of a large and poorly defined body of Chinese “names and titles” either by transliteration (an extreme kind of under-translation), or by what is sometimes known as “functional translation” (a species of paraphrase lacking consistent methodology). An obvious instance of the former would be the rendering of by “he styled himself T' ai-shang-huang,” and of the latter, the rendering of by “he was made Chancellor.” I oppose such procedures on the general grounds that the chief if not the sole responsibility of the scholarly translator is fidelity to his text. In other words it is to convey, as precisely as he may in a different tongue, the sense of the language of the original.

In recent years the cry has gone up: Sinology is dead; long live Chinese studies! And in this apothegm, by contrast with its prototype, a fundamental change is implied. Whereas old-time Sinology was given shape by its tools, so that Sinological skills defined the field and became an end in themselves, Chinese studies is shaped by its subject matter and Sinological skills are but means to analytic ends. Whereas traditional Sinology fostered uncritical immersion in a single civilization, modern Chinese studies brings at least that degree of impartial detachment which the comparative method implies. Whereas Sinology focused on China's “great tradition” and strove to capture the very ethos of the literati whose works it studied, Chinese studies today attempts to encompass the entire society and cultural product of China, to study its regional “little traditions” along with the “great,” and to empathize for heuristic purposes with nonélite social groups as well as with the literati. Sinology, a discipline unto itself, is being replaced by Chinese studies, a multidisciplinary endeavor with specific research objectives. As Professor Wright has suggested, what is text for the Sinologist becomes, for the disciplinary student of China, evidence.

The study of Theravada Buddhism and gender has often focused on the relationship between men's and women's roles, particularly their differing ability to become fully ordained monks. Yet in Thailand, as in many parts of the world, gender is more complicated than the binary of just men and women. Scholars have noted that what it means to be a man in Thailand is often defined in terms of not being effeminate, gay, or transgender. Drawing on Thai news stories, social media comments, and ethnographic research, I explore how monastic masculinity—the way in which what it means to be an ideal monk informs notions of being an ideal man—is constructed through the assertion that effeminate gay or kathoei (transgender) individuals cannot and should not be ordained. Taking into account such broader social constructions of gender and sexuality is important to better understand the relationship between masculinity and Buddhist monasticism.

Actors were luxury goods traded among the elite in late Ming and early Qing China. Not only individual actors but entire troupes were sold, bestowed upon friends, and bequeathed upon relatives. Their circulation served to create and maintain networks of social exchange, in much the same manner as did gifts of fine ceramic ware, calligraphic scrolls, and ancient bronzes. The cultural prestige of the actor as a luxury good, in turn, was predicated on a highly refined discourse of connoisseurship. For example, the theater aficionado Pan Zhiheng's (1556–1622) disquisitions on the art of acting were collected in a volume entitled Chongding xinshang pian (Recompiled texts on connoisseurship), published between 1600 and 1640 (Clunas 1991, 36). In this essay, I discuss the social significance of the connoisseurship of the actor, examining the exchange of actors and poems among a rarefied stratum of the mid-seventeenth-century elite.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries two Americans, E. S. Morse and N. G. Munro, did much to open Japanese eyes to dirt archaeology as one of the historical tools for elucidating Japan's past. Thereafter Japanese researchers published some English or German summaries on Japan's ancient remains and for a few decades Westerners wrote with much interest of new discoveries concerning Jōmon, Yayoi, and, occasionally, Tomb cultures. But Western interest was short lived and Japanese archaeology went out of fashion in Western journals for more than a quarter century. Japanese research went ahead, however, and has given rise to radical reinterpretations which have not found their way into Western language literature. My purpose here is to present briefly a review of the periods prior to the first flourishing of Buddhism in Japan and to offer some suggestions toward fitting these findings into the larger picture of Asiatic cultural development.

Since the early twentieth century, groups of Burmese Buddhist sorcerers and their followers have taken on the duty of guarding the Buddha's sāsana from colonial, ideological, and Islamic threats. Sāsana (broadly, the teachings of the Buddha and the institutions and practices that support them) and how it should be sustained in the face of its inevitable demise have been central concerns of these societies, expressed in both their textual and oral representations. To illustrate this tension between endurance and change, this article explores ideas of the life cycle of the sāsana and how ideas about its responsibility to wider communities of Burmese Buddhists became expressed through the intersection of sāsana and sorcery. Examining the ways these associations understood themselves to be protecting and propagating the sāsana through various means demonstrates how sāsana vitality gave their beliefs and actions a distinct collective and collectively ethical tone.

Although India presents a scene of great local cultural diversity, in the study of religion the subcontinent may be viewed as a single large field of social action. Within this field new movements are constantly arising, whose practices and ideas interact with others and penetrate from one section of the subcontinent to the other, filtering across deep political and social barriers. Thus in ancient times Brahminical Hinduism spread south from the Northwest, and Hinduism and Jainism, originating in the Northeast, followed closely upon its path. In medieval times the various bhakti movements which arose in South India spread northward, but have continued to play an important part in the life of all regions. Similarly reform Hinduism, born under the impact of contact with the West, affects areas far from its points of origin.

Ever since its first draft was written by a small group of Americans and presented to the Japanese Government in February, 1946, the present constitution of Japan has been a source of political controversy. Even under “normal” circumstances the enactment of a new constitution in modern democratic societies is almost certain to exhume and revivify all sorts of latent political conflicts and to add to these its own measure of new dissensions. Controversy is even more probable in the case of a constitution drafted by aliens and conquerors for a nation completely subject to their occupation and control and, in the Japanese case, the nature of the document itself still further increased this probability. The American-authored constitution of 1947 was in spirit and provisions almost a complete inversion of its predecessor, the Meiji Constitution of 1889. Where the latter did its brilliant best to protect the legal and political heartlands of the imperial system and a traditionally oligarchic and authoritarian form of government against popular encroachments, the former uniformly espoused concepts and institutions that are among the world's most democratic and progressive. It is difficult to conceive of two modern constitutions more diametrically opposed in spirit and in basic mechanics. The new constitution thus labored under the dual handicaps of alien authorship and of a radical departure from the traditionally ascendant norms and institutions of Japanese politics. It provided ample substance for bitter controversy.

For an Appreciation of the remarkable document reproduced in the article, some introductory observations may be welcome about the personality and scientific methods of its author and about the anthropological, religious, and historical background of Nepal.

Although Māra, the Buddhist symbol of evil, has been the subject of a number of books and essays, little has been written about the numerous Pali and Sanskrit textual references to a plurality of Māras. In Buddhist literature there are passages, more characteristic of the Pali canonical texts, which can be interpreted as references to a general, often unspecified plurality of Māras, while other passages, more frequently found in the Sanskrit treatises, specify four Māras and designate a name for each. The purpose of this study is to show how the four Māras function as a summary formula for the diverse ways in which the term “Māra” came to be used, and following that, to consider the meaning this plurality of Māra symbols has for the Buddhist understanding of evil (pāpa).

Most Local Studies of the “revolution“in pre-1949 China have focused on Communist successes and failures during the 1930s and 1940s in the base areas of north and central China. It seems obvious, however, that in its more complete meaning the Chinese revolution in this century has been more than the story of Communist Party fortunes. On the national level, it has been the process of casting off politically enervated and/or discredited systems (the imperial, warlord, and Republican) and moving toward the vision of a fundamentally new state and society. The first major blow in this process was the abolition in 1905 of the civil service system that had served as the foundation for the political and social structure of traditional China. The revolution, which has often focused on struggles for political power and prerogative, has continued throughout the country in a number of phases, with varying actors, agendas, timing, and dynamics. Like a war made up of innumerable engagements, it has been a congeries of countless local revolutions, some only loosely linked to national-level goals. If, as a recent work put it, “[a] new generation of scholarship is emerging [in the study of the Chinese revolution] which promises to resolve old debates, bridge old dichotomies, and join formerly separate strands of analysis” (Hartford and Goldstein 1989:3), then it must take into account the larger chronological sweep of the revolution at the same time it burrows deeply into its local bases. This essay is an exploration of the contours of revolutionary change in the half-century from 1900 to 1950 in Xiaoshan County, Zhejiang Province, a county in the Lower Yangzi region that was for most of this period in the Guomindang, not the Communist sphere (map 1).

The three maps accompanying this brief text are meant to be the body of the article. They tell a major story in themselves. Railway development in Manchuria is shown graphically to have been rapid and extensive over a period of less than half a century. The rate of railway growth received exceptional impetus after the occupation of Manchuria by the Japanese in 1931, and by 1945 the total trackage of the railways in that country was estimated to be close to 13,000 kilometers as compared with 5,600 kilometers in 1931.

Within the last decade, many publications have appeared in South Asia (especially India) and North America on subjects relating to women. Scholars concerned with the study of South Asia have generally neglected these publications instead of integrating them into research and teaching on South Asia. This neglect results from a “false specialization” on both subject matter and scholars interested in research on women, which has led to a “purdah of scholarship” or segregation of the new scholarship on women. The reasons for this segregation include prejudice, the absence of an emphasis on family and kinship in current South Asia studies, neglect of research on Muslim populations, the complexities of gender in the Hindu tradition, and the nature of institutional support for research on women. Advocacy for women's equality is characteristic of the new research on women in South Asia, both by North American and South Asian writers. The core of the substantive argument presented in the article is as follows: Gender differences are among the fault lines along which the effects of major social, economic, political changes are distributed within populations. Gender relations are proving to be vulnerable in the face of rapid change. The increased consciousness of women's issues in South Asia is the result of accelerated changes within these societies which have affected gender differences and gender relations. Gender is increasingly understood to be a factor in accelerating class differentiation and in other processes of change.

New contributions to the research literature on women and gender in South Asia are reviewed under three headings: (1) “complementary” studies that highlight forgotten sectors of the population; (2) stocktaking assessments that summarize data about women and government activities; (3) “integrative” studies that aim to develop social theory and methodology. The final section of the review suggests new lines for future scholarship, particularly with regard to control over female labor deployment.