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JOHN R. HINNELLS: Zoroastrian and Parsi studies. Selected works of

John R. Hinnells. vii, 430 pp. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. £50.

ALMUT HINTZE

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 65 / Issue 02 / June 2002, pp 379 - 487
DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X02440153, Published online: 04 July 2002

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X02440153

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REVIEWS

  

 -:
Babylonian liver omens: the chapters Manza: zu, Pada: nu and Pa: n
ta: kalti of the Babylonian extispicy series, mainly from Aššurbanipal's
library.
(Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications, 25.) 543 pp., 49 plates.
Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000.

The cuneiform tablets recovered in the nineteenth century from the ruined
palaces of Assyrian kings at Nineveh continue to give up their secrets. Slowly,
very slowly, the small international community of Assyriologists is processing
the huge morass of primary material and making it available to those who do
not read cuneiform. In this pioneering work texts of mythological, literary
and historical interest have been most often the focus of scholarly attention.
As a consequence, however, a large proportion of the less immediately exciting
Assyrian tablets has been neglected, remaining either completely unpublished
or available only as unannotated cuneiform texts. Some years ago a Finnish
scholar, Simo Parpola, described the archival documents from Nineveh as
essentially a ‘heap of meaningless junk’. Since then he and others in Helsinki
have transformed Neo-Assyrian studies by sorting, studying and editing the
tablets in the fifteen volumes of the State Archives of Assyria (Helsinki,
1987–). With the project nearing completion there exists at last a tool for
research into every aspect of seventh-century Assyria that can be used by
everyone. The junk is junk no more.
The book under review represents the beginning of a similar project. Very
many tablets from the royal libraries of Nineveh contain texts concerned with
divination by inspecting the organs of sacrificial animals. The ancient scholars'
reports on individual acts of extispicy have been collected and edited twice,
the last time in the State Archives of Assyria series. However, the much larger
corpus of professional divination compendia, which account for so large a
proportion of the Assyrian libraries, has enjoyed very little attention in the
last hundred years. Many tablets of omens have been published in cuneiform
only and others not at all. Very few editions have been made of any of the
many dozens of individual omen compendia from Nineveh.
Extispicy was one of the principal pillars of ancient Mesopotamian
religious, intellectual and political life, since it was believed to afford the most
reliable means of questioning the gods about their intentions and desires. To
be privy to the will of God was what ancient man yearned for most. Diviners
held the key to the manipulation of this channel of communication and their
expertise was accordingly a vital tool in the exercise of political power.
Consequently a book which sets out to make sense of the fragmentary remains
of King Aššurbanipal's considerable library of extispicial omen tablets by
editing and translating them—this provides the primary source material for
the study of a central instrument of Babylonian culture.
Ulla Koch-Westenholz's pioneering work presents a modern edition of
about twenty-seven ancient omen compendia and thus begins the transmission
380 

of the cuneiform texts in usable form to the scholarly world at large. Some
idea of the task at hand can be gained from considering that these twenty-
seven tablets, which occupy a book of nearly 600 pages, including cuneiform
copies, are only a fraction of the material at hand. Not only does the rest of
the series of Nineveh tablets await the same treatment but, in addition,
sources from other sites will come eventually to be included. For the finds of
Nineveh were only the first of an avalanche of tablets that has filled the
storerooms of museums and private collectors all over Europe, North America
and the Middle East.
This magnificent volume is only the beginning of the process of transmitting
to the modern world the most characteristic intellectual activity of the first
high civilization in human history. Its appearance is truly an important event
in the study of the ancient world, to be welcomed by Assyriologists, historians
of intellectual life and students of other ancient cultures alike. More please.
. . 

    

  (ed.):

Mediaeval Isma: "ı:lı: history and thought.
xviii, 331 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Since it first appeared in 1996, Daftary's collection of scholarly articles on the

medieval Ismailis has drawn consistently good reviews. The themes selected
in this collection are drawn from the pre-Fatimid, Fatimid and Niza: rı: periods
of Ismaili history and the contributors represent the full range of modern
scholarship. This affordable edition of what has already become an
indispensable volume for any Islamic history collection is to be applauded.
Daftary provides a useful introduction which not only outlines the history
of the da"wa, the principal da: "ı:s, and Ismaili dawla but also details more
modern Ismaili scholarship and the backgrounds of his book's contributors.
He later contributes a chapter himself on Has1an-i S1 abba: h1 and the origins of
the Niza: rı:s.
The first part of this Ismaili collection is concerned with the pre-Fatimid
and Fatimid periods of history. Wilferd Madelung offers an update of his
1959 landmark study of the Qaramat1:ıs of Bah1 rayn and the Fatimids, dispelling
the myth of their collaboration, and he also submits a study of Sijista: nı: and
the Ismaili attitude to the Intellect (al-"aql). Heinz Halm contributes two
chapters, one dealing with early Ismaili cosmology and the second examining
the controversial subject of initiation into the fold of the faithful. The process
of legal codification and the work of the early Fatimid jurist, al-Qa: dı:
al-Nu"ma: n, is the subject of the chapter by Ismail Poonawala, while Abbas
Hamdani returns to a favoured area, the dating and authorship of the Rasa: 'il
Ikhwa: n al-S1 afa: '. The two remaining chapters deal with the Ismaili attitude
towards the ‘other’ during the Fatimid period, Azim Nanji uses the same
Rasa: 'il Ikhwa: n al-S1 afa: ' as a principal source to illustrate the Ismailis'
‘pluralistic and non-dogmatic approaches’ (p. 14) to other religions, while
 381

Paul Walker introduces a unique Ismaili heresiography, the kita: b al-Shajara,

the work of Abu: Tamma: m, an obscure early tenth-century .. da: "ı:.
The second part of the book focuses on the Alamu: t period of Ismaili
history, opening with Daftary's own account of the origins of the Niza: rı:s. He
portrays the movement in part as an ‘Iranian’ protest against the Saljuqs
with social roots pre-dating this period, rather than as a schismatic reaction
to events in Egypt, as it is traditionally presented. Also examined are the
doctrinal and political developments which occurred in the early years of
Alamu: t, particularly under Has1an-i S1 abba: h, whose role was so crucial in the
establishment of this independent da"wa and quasi-state. Carole Hillenbrand
examines the same period from the point of view of the Saljuqs, drawing on
evidence of Saljuq-Niza: rı: encounters found in the work of Ibn al-Athı:r, Ibn
al-Jawzı: and other chroniclers openly hostile to the Ismailis.
The Saljuqs were not the only enemies of the Ismailis. In the mountainous
region of what is today eastern Iran, the medieval Ismailis had established a
stronghold in the area called Quhistan. Heterodoxy had a long history here
and the Saljuq administration had never been popular. But after the Ismailis
became firmly entrenched in the region's inaccessible valleys, they found that
their neighbours to the south, the Nas1rid Maliks of Sı:sta: n or Nı:mru: z, were
as hostile to their presence as the Saljuqs themselves, especially after Ismaili
attempts to extend their power and influence south. It is the relationship
between the Quhistani Niza: rı:s and the Nas1rid Maliks that C. E. Bosworth
explores in the twelfth chapter. The controversial role of the one-time resident
of Quhistan, Nas1:ır al-Dı:n T1 u: sı:, is the subject of the following chapter by
Hamid Dabashi. He portrays T1 u: sı: as a philosopher/vizier, a traditional Persian
figure whose role stands above the sectarian intrigues and affiliations into
which T1 u: sı: 's name has sometimes been dragged.
Moving to the western reaches of the Ismaili da"wa, Charles Melville
considers the Niza: rı:s as assassins, and illustrates the transformation of the
Niza: rı: fida: wı: into the paid assassins of the Mamluks with the curious case of
the defector Qara: sunqur and the attempts by Sultan al-Na: s1ir Moh1 ammad to
have him killed. For the chroniclers, the Syrian Niza: rı: Ismaili community
were the sole suppliers of assassins for the Mamluk sultans even though at
the time there were very few actual fida: wı: left which, concludes Melville,
‘reveal the persistence of the distorted image of the Isma: "ı:lı:s and hostile
rumours surrounding their community.’ (p. 258).
The two final chapters move away from Alamu: t to the post-Mongol
period. Ali Asani re-examines the South Asian gina: ns, devotional poems that
have acquired ‘sacred’ status within the Niza: rı: Khoja community. The
authorship and provenance of these orally transmitted gina: ns seems at odds
with traditional belief, and their transmission more complex than previously
assumed. Often these poems appear to be about rather than by the pı:rs who
arose among the original Hindu converts of the emerging Ismaili community.
Abbas Amanat's contribution on the Nuqt1awiyya, an esoteric off-shoot of the
H1 uru: fı:s, is the first scholarly investigation of this ghulat sect also known as
Ahl-i Nuqt1a, the Pası:kha: niyya, or the Mah1 mu: diyya. Founded by Mah1 mu: d
Pası:kha: nı: (d. 1427–8), the sect was well established in Qazvin, Shiraz, Kashan,
Isfahan and the Caspian region during the early Safavid period even though
its adherents were the objects of often severe persecution. Amanat's study
shows that despite the sect's belief in materialist metempsychosis, its denial of
the Imamate, and Pası:kha: nı: 's claims to prophethood, the core doctrines of
the Nuqt1awiyyam, espousing a cyclical view of time and hierohistory and the
382 

sect's reliance on ba: t1inı: (esoteric) exegesis demonstrate the underlying

Ismaili roots.
Farhad Daftary is head of the department of Academic Research and
Publications at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London and has published
many books and papers on Ismaili thought and history, subjects on which he
is a widely recognized authority. The appearance in paperback of this
absorbing and scholarly collection of essays should do much to advance the
cause of Ismaili studies to a widening audience.
 

. .  (trans.):
The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin.
(Crusader Texts in Translation 7.) 265 pp. Aldershot: Ashgate
Publishing, 2001. £42.50.
The work under review is a translation of Ibn Shadda: d's (d. 632/1234) al-
Nawa: dir al-sult1a: niyya wa"l-mah1 a: sin al-yu: sufiyya, a partly annalistic biography
of the Ayyubid ruler Saladin (d. 589/1193). Written by a member of Saladin's
immediate entourage, the text is of outstanding importance for students of
the history of this period, both within the Middle Eastern context and, more
specifically, for the history of the Crusades. The work has been well known
in Europe since the French translation of extracts in the Receuil des Historiens
des Croisades at the turn of the last century and the English translation by
C. W. Wilson, Saladin; or what befell Sultan Yu: suf (London, 1897). The
Arabic text was published by Gama: l al-Dı:n al-Shayya: l in 1964.
Richards bases his translation on the 1964 edition and the Berlin
manuscript (Ahlwardt no. 9811) of the work, which al-Shayya: l did not consult
for his edition. The differences between the Berlin manuscript and those used
for the edition are of minor importance. Consequently, the additions to the
text on this basis are of interest only to a specialized audience. The
introduction offers a short overview of the author's life, his works and existing
manuscripts, editions and translations. This brief section, in addition to the
maps in the annex, helps the non-specialist reader to situate the process of
writing of the al-Nawa: dir and its content. The index lists names of persons
and places, while sadly omitting termini technici.
The importance of Richards' translation lies in the fact that this crucial
text of the Crusading period has now been updated and decisively improved
in its English version compared with the 1897 translation, which was rather
unreliable. Richards succeeds in rendering the original into an English text
which is at the same time a pleasure to read and largely reliable. Compared
to the patchy quality of previous translations the author is to be congratulated
for this fine piece of Arabist scholarship. The translation gains in significance
because it is published in the framework of the Crusade Texts in Translation
series as the first Middle Eastern source, which decisively widens the breadth
of this series.
However, some points remain to be made which are more relevant for
students of Middle Eastern history. The introduction is based mainly on
al-Shayya: l's introduction to the 1964 edition without the addition of new
information. It cites for example works by Ibn Shadda: d in manuscript form
which have since been published, such as his Dala: 'il al-ah1 ka: m (M. Shayka: nı:
and Z. Ayyu: bı:, Damascus: Da: r Qutayba, 1992/93). Secondary literature on
 383

Ibn Shadda: d published since the 1960s, such as M. Ripke's Inaugural

Dissertation Saladin und sein Biograph Baha: 'addı:n b. Šadda: d (University of
Bonn, submitted 1980, published 1988) has not been included. The notes to
Abu: Sha: ma's (d. 665/1267) work al-Rawd1 atayn are based on the now outdated
Bulaq edition (1870–72), while a recent edition offers a more reliable version
of the text (I. al-Zı:baq, Beirut: al-Resaleh Publishers, 1997, 4 vols+index).
With regard to the translation, it would have been helpful, especially for
the wider audience of a translated text, to define certain Arabic terms, such
as khut1ba (p. 47), Atabeg (p. 68) and T1 awa: shı: (p. 136). The same applies to
the personal and geographical names, which are only partly explained; for
example, a short reference that S1 afad refers to Saphet might have been
helpful. Similarly, an explanatory note on an individual such as "Abd al-Ması:h1
might have been of interest in such a crucial text on the Crusade period.
Having played a controversial role in Mosul during the period of Nu: r al-Dı:n
he was obliged to change his name to "Abd Alla: h but made a career under
his old name under Saladin (on the former see Ibn Wa: s1il, Mufarrij al-kuru: b,
vol. , pp. 192f., p. 196; vol. , p. 39; ed.: al-Shayya: l Cairo 1953–57).
It is confusing that certain terms are sometimes transcribed and sometimes
translated without a visible system. The term iqt1a: " appears frequently in
transcription, but is also translated as ‘feudal grants’ (p. 34) or ‘fief’ (p. 202).
Similarly, jiha: d appears generally in transcription, but also as ‘Holy War’
(p. 62). The situation is rendered more complicated as ghaza: is occasionally
‘translated’/‘transcribed’ as jiha: d (p. 200), but also as ‘to fight for the faith’
(p. 189) and ‘campaigning’ (p. 197), while ghuza: appears in the text as
‘volunteer warriors’ (p. 189) or ‘jiha: d warrior’ (p. 80). It would have been
helpful, with an eye to the wider audience, to translate these terms consistently
and to discuss them briefly because of their central importance to issues such
as social history (‘feudalism’) and the encounter between Crusaders and
Muslims.
Other terms, such as mulk, are indeed better translated with different
words. However, a translation of this term with a variety of words including
‘kingship’ (p. 51), ‘rule’, ‘control’ (p. 78), ‘power’ (p. 51) and ‘sovereignty’
(p. 72) could have been accompanied by an explanatory notice. In general,
these examples raise the problem of the degree to which translations of
historical texts are possible without an emphasis on defining the context of
key terms.
The practice of arbitrarily inserting and omitting benedictory phrases in
the course of the text, contrary to the statement in the introduction, is
problematic. A similar problem is the occasional replacement of the personal
pronoun for Saladin with either ‘Saladin’ or ‘the sultan’ with no apparent
system.
Mistakes are rare in this excellent work of translation. The example of
‘noble qualities of character’ such as shaking hands (p. 35) refers to the
Prophet Muh1 ammad not to Saladin as stated in the text (read ‘Whenever he
[the Prophet]’ instead of ‘Whenever the sultan’). Occasionally the translator
does not take into consideration the many corrections in the annex of the
1964 edition. The ‘welcoming face’ (p. 35) is, for example, a ‘welcoming hand’.
In sum this translation is an important contribution to the field of
Crusading studies. Despite some minor problems, it is of high Arabist quality
and it can only be hoped that future translations of other Arabic texts of the
Crusader period will follow this example.
 
384 

 . :
Empire and elites after the Muslim conquest: the transformation of
Northern Mesopotamia.
(Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization.) 206 pp. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Robinson's book is concerned with post-conquest and Umayyad Northern
Mesopotamia, i.e. the Jazı:ra, with particular reference to the emergence of
the city of Mosul as an Islamic city, both in physical and social terms. The
author discusses the growth of this town, particularly in the Marwanid period,
through the use of literary sources, the most prominent of which is the Ta'rı:kh
al-Maws1il by Yazid b. Muh1 ammad al-Azdı: (d. c. 945). Although parts of this
annalistic history are lost, al-Azdı: was a native Mosuli and seems to have
preserved many local accounts from this period. The author also relies, with
great effect, on the Christian sources for the period, again with much of the
material being local or regional. He shows that it is possible to write pre-
Abbasid history in a useful form through the use of these literary sources and
interpretation of the accounts they preserve.
The first chapter of the book discusses the problem of the absence of
authentic documentary sources on the Arab conquest of the region and
proposes a method in which the extant material can be interpreted. This
chapter, and indeed much of the book, attempts to solve a dilemma faced by
any historian of the early Islamic period: what to do with material that is
incoherent or inconsistent. Robinson argues that the ‘conquest history’ which
is extant to us through the literary sources can be put to good use in
understanding the period in which it was produced. This material reveals
post-conquest history and administrative arrangements that evolved several
generations later and projects them back in the guise of conquest history in
order to set precedents for their current arguments. He sees the post-conquest
history as that which illustrates the conflict between the Muslim and Christian
élites of the area. It is an attempt to define relations, including taxation,
between these communities several generations after the conquest.
Chapter ii describes political affairs in post-conquest Jazı:ra, where it seems
that during the Sufyanid period the caliphs were primarily interested in the
tribal politics of the Arabs of the area. The author argues that it was only in
the Marwanid period that the caliphs decided that the Jazı:ra could be a
source of revenue and it is then that they turned their attention to organizing
its administration and taxation, finally developing it into a real administrative
province. In chapter iii the growth of Mosul from a garrison town to a city is
discussed. This pattern of change took place in Iraq after the Arab conquests
in places like Kufa, but its details are still not clear. The author argues that
in Mosul, however, a Marwanid stage in this pattern is clearly discernible. He
shows how the Marwanids employed a combination of direct family rule and
an ambitious programme of private and public building. They built canals
that allowed further settlement and therefore growth. Élite residential
compounds and irrigation works were developed which allowed further
agricultural development. With this the military tribal élite gave way to an
élite of landowners and office holders.
In chapter iv, the author discusses the Christian élites in the hinterland of
Mosul, showing how the Shaha: rija, wealthy landowners similar to the dih1 qa: ns
in other parts of Iraq and Persia, who collected taxes from their villages,
persisted into the ninth century. This shows that there was little social
 385

dislocation in this region as a result of the Arab conquests. It also demonstrates

that, even in the ninth century, the reach of the city-based conquering power
was limited. This is discussed in chapter v, which turns to the Kharijites of
the Jazı:ra, describing their composition and their aspiration. The author
concludes that these pastoralist tribesmen were not the violent revolutionaries
they were elsewhere, and are perhaps better described as restive ‘communities
of saints’, who were not intent on destroying the ruling Umayyads, but rather
sought to expose their corrupt and wayward ways.
Chapters vi and vii return to the city of Mosul and examine the social
changes and the new élites created as a result of the urban growth of the city.
This is done to great effect through the discussion of the material contained
in Azdı: 's Ta'rı:kh on the massacres committed by the Abbasids in the city
upon their conquest in 750. This material is rich in detail, which allows
conclusions to be drawn about many aspects of life in Mosul. Unlike, for
example, the material on massacres committed by the Abbasids on their
conquest of Damascus, which is limited to a few remarks preserved by various
historians, here we have accounts which describe these events, bringing in
characters, actions and reactions. From these descriptions, the author has
deduced many details of life on the eve of the Abbasid conquest. Thus we
know more about the provincial city of Mosul at that time than we know
about the capital city, Damascus.
Herein lies the strength of this book. The availability of a local history
written by a native, and preserving local and contemporary accounts, allows
the history of the city and its hinterland to be written. However, the work
under review is not a rewriting of Azdı: 's history for a modern readership.
Instead it shows how much material extant from the Abbasid period on the
post-conquest and Umayyad period can be made to yield if the conditions
under which it was produced are understood. It seems, therefore, that the key
is not to discard material that may seem incoherent and anachronistic, but to
use it to piece together the history of the period which produced it. In this
respect, the historiography of this book can be a useful model for historians
of early Islam still searching for ways in which to interpret some of their non-
contemporary literary material. For a history of post-conquest Jazı:ra and
Mosul to the ninth century, this book is a definitive work especially on the
social history of the region.
. . 

  (ed.):

Syrian Christians under Islam: the first thousand years.
vii, 241 pp. Leiden: Brill, 2001. $68.
One noteworthy feature of the current international crisis, where the
relationship between ‘Christians’ and ‘Muslims’ is discussed, daily and
incessantly in the media, is the lack of any interest whatsoever in the situation
as it affects the long-established and often ancient Christian communities in
the Middle East region. Only when shooting and shelling around the Church
of the Nativity in Bethlehem, or in Beit Jala happens to become the focus of
media attention does the very existence of these communities seem to matter
to those who dream, plan and doodle in the search for some kind of ‘New
World Order’.
Greater Syria is one geographical region where the two faiths have engaged
386 

over many centuries in dialogue and controversy. The former and, to a degree,
the latter, were particularly important and fruitful during the early centuries
of Islam and during the days of the latter's expansion, geographical, scholastic
and theological. It is precisely these issues which are clarified in this book, a
selection of papers from the Third Woodbrooke-Mingana Symposium on
Arab Christianity and Islam (September 1998) on the theme of ‘Arab
Christianity in Bila: d al-Sha: m (Greater Syria) in the pre-Ottoman Period’. The
content focuses on aspects of Syrian Christian life and thought during the
first millennium of Islamic rule. The series of Symposiums was held in
Woodbrooke College, Selly Oak, Birmingham, a most appropriate venue,
since the Iraqi priest Dr Alphonse Mingana (1878–1937), who had brought
to Woodbrooke College an important collection of Syrian and Arabic
Christian manuscripts, had temporarily lived there. His collection is referred
to on p. 191 in a chapter by Lucy-Anne Hunt on leaves from an illustrated
Syriac lectionary of the seventh/thirteenth century (pp. 185–202, including
12 figures).
The helpful introduction by the editor, David Thomas, gives an overall
comment upon the content of the volume, serves to make a comprehensive
assessment of what each contribution offers to the themes and goals of the
Symposiums, and indicates those which are most relevant to specialists in
Oriental Christianity in the Fertile Crescent, and to Islamists. The Foreword,
by Mor Gregorios Yuhanna Ibrahim, Syrian Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo,
makes an impassioned plea on behalf of Middle Eastern Christians.
The eight essays within the volume can be divided into those which
concentrate upon the structure, divisions and missions of the Oriental
Christian churches of Syria during the Abbasid age and those which are
immediately concerned with the problems which Islam, as a religion and a
community of believers, presented to those Christians who, for centuries, had
been established, widely accepted and were the fount of so much of the finest
thought and culture which the Syrians had contributed over many centuries.
Sidney Griffith's chapter on the sectarian and Christological controversies in
Arabic, in third/ninth century Syria, succinctly summarizes, yet at the same
time adds to, a number of his articles which were published in his Arabic
Christianity in the monasteries of ninth-century Palestine, Aldershot, 1992. In
the latter work, about the Arabic account of "Abd al-Ması:h1 al-Najra: nı:
al-Ghassa: nı:, is further examined, here, by a chapter devoted to the martyrdom
of this superior of Mount Sinai, written by Mark W. Swanson (pp. 107–30).
Seta B. Dadoyan's chapter on the Armenians in Syria between the fourth/tenth
and sixth/twelfth centuries (pp. 159–83) adds enormously to the general
picture conveyed by Edmund Schütz in his ‘Armenia: a Christian enclave in
the Islamic Near East in the Middle Ages’, in Michael Gervers and Ramzi
Jibran Bikhazi (ed.) Conversion and continuity: indigenous Christian communities
in Islamic lands, Toronto, 1990, pp. 217–36, reviewed in BSOAS /1, 128).
The contributions to the study of the relationships between Islamic and
Christian dialogue and controversy are at the heart of this collection. The
reality of this controversy, in this age, was highlighted by Sir T. W. Arnold
in his The preaching of Islam (London, 1935). Speaking of the controversial
dialogues with ‘Muhammadans’ undertaken by St. John of Damascus and
by Bishop Theodore Abu: Qurrah, Arnold quotes the bishop as saying, ‘The
thoughts of the Agarenes and all their zeal, are directed towards the denial of
the divinity of God the Word and they strain every effort to this end’. This,
and related controversies and major differences, are thoroughly debated and
clarified in Barbara Roggema's, ‘A Christian reading of the Qur'an: the
 387

Legend of Sergius—Bah1 :ıra: and its use of Qur'an and Sı:ra' (pp. 57–74) and
Samir K. Samir's examination of the Prophet, as perceived by Timothy 1 and
other Arab Christian authors (pp. 75–106). Relations at a personal level are
examined by Lawrence Conrad on the writings of Ibn But1la: n (pp. 131–58)
and by David Thomas on Paul of Antioch's Letter to a Muslim friend and the
Risa: la al-Qubrusiyya (pp. 203–22). All these contributions have a direct
bearing on quranic studies. These contributions supplement, to a small degree,
the general picture as is conveyed in such works as J. Spencer Trimingham's
Christianity among the Arabs in pre-Islamic times, (London and Beirut:
Longman, 1979). The interpretation of the Quran in the light of the scriptures
of the earlier ‘Peoples of the Book’ is a subject which occurs on numerous
pages and quotations in this volume. The publication is exemplary, crowned
by a bibliography of eleven pages, including books and articles, on every
aspect of the debates, citing examples from a wide range of European journals
and also others published in Beirut, Cairo and Jerusalem, as well as in the
United States. The index includes references from the Bible and the Quran.
The spelling of proper names is consistent and carefully transliterated.
Footnotes are printed at the foot of each page.
. . 

 :
Ibn Sı:na: : Lettre au Vizir Abu: Sa"d.
(Sagesses musulmanes, 4.) xii, 316 pp. Beirut: Les Editions
al-Bouraq, 2000. €43.45.
This is in every way an excellent book. Michot has retrieved an important
and interesting text which has long been unavailable. It deals with ibn Sı:na: 's
attack on Abu: l-Qa: sim al-Kirma: nı:, the leading philosopher at the court of
Abu: Sa"d al-Hamadha: nı: in Hamadhan, where ibn Sı:na: arrived in 405/1015.
The text and translation are preceded by a discussion of the manuscript itself
and a lengthy account of the wanderings of ibn Sı:na: around the time he
wrote it; it gives a good deal of useful information about cultural life at the
time, and the precise issues which were at stake between him and the
established authority al-Kirma: nı:. One quickly builds up a picture of ibn Sı:na:
as a young man in a hurry, eager to dazzle with his logical brilliance, and not
frightened to demand of the vizier a ‘fetwa’ on several occasions! There are
comprehensive indices and lists of terms and persons, and the translation is
set against the Arabic text. This is a very attractively constructed volume,
with occasional illustrations and calligraphy which enhances its value.
There is at least one discussion in the book about which readers may have
qualms, and that is to do with the question of the so-called ‘oriental
philosophy’ which has been such a controversial issue for so long in Islamic
philosophy. Ibn Sı:na: scholars can be divided broadly into two camps. One
group sees the contrast between ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ philosophy as a
contrast between the peripatetic sort of philosophy which came from Greece
and more mystical versions of philosophy which are often seen today, and
certainly were then, to come from further east. Michot sides with the
interpreters of ibn Sı:na: who see the Eastern/Western dichotomy as principally
388 

geographical, with ‘Eastern’ referring to Bukhara and Khurasan, and

‘Western’ to Baghdad. When ibn Sı:na: refers to himself as an ‘Eastern’
philosopher he means that he is someone who has an accurate view of
Aristotle and is able to develop Aristotle's principles and techniques to arrive
at a philosophical position which is both sound and also not slavishly
restricted to older peripatetic thought. Al-Kirma: nı: is criticized for not even
reaching the standard of understanding Aristotle properly, and the former's
views on physics and logic are dispatched with particular thoroughness in this
letter. Al-Kirma: nı: is, then, a ‘Western’ philosopher of a particularly weak
standard.
Michot devotes a lot of space to this issue, so it is not inappropriate to
discuss it here. It should be said that he makes the thesis as plausible as it
can be made, but it remains possible rather than plausible. He is certainly
right to be rather concerned at the thesis that ibn Sı:na: is part of some
shadowy Sufi movement which permeates Persian culture, and indeed
philosophy itself, and which inevitably emerges in the thought of virtually
every Islamic philosopher of the classical period. On the other hand, there is
a close connection between most Islamic philosophers and mysticism, and it
is not unreasonable to interpret those passages of ibn Sı:na: which are openly
mystical as indeed mystical. Michot suggests that they might just be poetic,
but someone who regards himself as an Aristotelian philosopher and who
also uses poetic language is surely doing something very different from a
standard Aristotelian thinker. Michot would no doubt say that what he is
doing is being ‘Eastern’; he is not slavishly following Aristotle but moving
on from him while remaining faithful to his basic principles. Why not take
ibn Sı:na: at his word and see him as being mystical? Most Islamic philosophers
were committed to some form of mysticism, and were also quite clear that
this was a different form of intellectual (and not only intellectual) activity
from peripatetic thought. Why not accept that ibn Sı:na: sought in his Eastern/
Western dichotomy to characterize this familiar distinction in Islamic
philosophy, one which by his time had already become fairly evident and
which in following centuries became even more standard? Michot makes an
excellent case to the contrary, but we should be careful before we accept his
case, since there is a mass of evidence against it, only some of which he
examines in his introduction.
I was very stimulated by this book, this is only one of the issues on which
Michot has interesting things to say. He has moved ibn Sı:na: studies onto a
new level.
 

 :
A brief introduction to Islamic philosophy.
xi, 199 pp. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999. £14.99 (paperback).
Professor Leaman is the prolific author, editor and translator of some
seventeen histories, anthologies and thematic volumes relating to the history
of Islamic, Jewish and ‘Eastern’ (including Islamic) philosophical traditions,
as well as more contemporary topics. In particular, he recently edited, together
with S. H. Nasr, a massive two-volume History of Islamic philosophy
 389

(Routledge, 1999) which provides what is certainly the most comprehensive

survey to date of the many schools and traditions of Islamic philosophic and
theological reflection. Against that background, the present volume consists
of what can best be described as a series of short, condensed and highly
personal essays on what the author judges to be of philosophic interest and
value—usually as ‘philosophy’ is defined in today's Anglo-American philo-
sophy departments—in the debates and controversies of a wide range of
earlier Islamic thinkers, with special attention to two key figures (Averroes
and Maimonides) to whom he has devoted separate studies in the past.
Apart from a brief summary of essential historical and theological
background, the author's meditations are arranged in a series of seven discrete
chapters (on knowledge, mysticism, ontology, ethics, politics, the question of
transmission, and language), usually focusing on one or two relevant
controversies from very different historical and philosophical contexts in each
case, and frequently highlighting as well the contemporary Islamic relevance
of the issues and approaches in question. While this approach may serve to
interest and motivate particularly bright and inquiring students previously
unacquainted with Islamic philosophy, most of the discussions in fact
presuppose a high level of familiarity with a wide range of Islamic (and
Western) philosophical and theological traditions and their very different
historical contexts. Indeed the overall impression is of a philosopher (much
more than a historian of philosophy) seriously attempting to engage other
philosophers and thinkers in constructive, thoughtful discussion of issues
which remain particularly central in the political, ethical and theological
contexts of contemporary Islamic intellectual life. Given the rarity of such
creative efforts to bridge and connect what have too often remained isolated,
highly specialized fields of scholarship and discourse, the author must surely
be acknowledged for this independent, informed and often revealingly personal
effort to, in the words of Henry Corbin, ‘bring Islamic philosophy out of the
ghetto of Orientalism’. While other specialists in this field will no doubt
supply a long list of thinkers, discussions and different approaches that could
or should have been included in each chapter, they will also recognize the
implicit challenges—and potentially fruitful further discussions—posed by
each of these avowedly introductory topical essays.
The preface to this work, in a revealing reflection on the author's own
intellectual itinerary, suggests that this study might be read as a sort of far-
reaching correction to the once standard scholarly conception of the ‘history
of Islamic philosophy’ as consisting above all of the ‘transmission’ of Greek
philosophy (and especially Aristotle) from the Hellenistic world to medieval
Latin scholasticism. Readers of these essays, even those who might strongly
disagree with the author's own particular selections and philosophic perspect-
ives, cannot help but be struck by how radically that broader conception of
the subject has changed over the past quarter-century, in at least two key
respects. First, this introduction gives serious consideration to the ongoing,
diverse and highly sophisticated traditions of Islamic philosophy from
throughout the ‘Eastern’ Islamic world, which are still vigorously flourishing
especially in modern Iran. Secondly, the author constantly refers to the
relevance of his chosen philosophical (and theologico-political) controversies
to ongoing political, social, and scientific debates that increasingly engage
Muslims—and unavoidably, as current events remind us, their neighbours as
well—on a truly global scale. Professor Leaman's omission of both ‘history’
and ‘medieval’ in his most recent title on this subject is certainly no accident.
 . 
390 

 .  (ed.):

Literary structures of religious meaning in the Qur'a: n.
393 pp. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000.

This volume, consisting of fifteen articles, impressively sets out to resolve the
intricate interplay between literary structures of the Quran and religious
meaning embedded in these structures. Not only is emphasis placed upon
determining how fittingly literary devices project the religious dimension of
the Quran's discourse, but the volume explores aesthetic perception of the
holy text. The volume's editor, Issa Boullata, states that not all methods of
literary criticism are encompassed in the various analyses and also asserts that
issues relating to the historicity and canonical status of the Quran are not the
concern of this work; however, it is evident that a number of the articles
included in this collection have clear implications for the discussion of the
Quran's textual integrity, as we shall see.
The first section tackles form, meaning, and textual structure in the Quran,
beginning with Sells' study of aural intertextuality in early Meccan revelation.
This extends a concept that quranic chapters are not semantically sealed units,
applying it to the realm of acoustics. Sells explains that sound functions as
the principal instrument cogently conveying the ‘spirit’ of the text in all its
religious connotations; and, correspondingly, that this spirit transcends the
strictures of temporality perceived in scriptural language. Sells adds that while
classical scholarship expounded upon the doctrine of the Quran's inimitability,
scant attention was paid to the subtle interaction between sound and meaning.
It must be said, however, that identifying the perceived effect of aural
contingencies in these contexts remains a relatively subjective endeavour.
Zahniser examines unity and coherence in Medinan chapters of the Quran.
This chapter is concerned with characteristic coherence and cohesion
underpinning the Quran's themes and meaning. The author reflects upon the
concept of thematic coherence in the Quran as developed by figures such as
Islahi, Mir and Robinson, circumscribing major transitions and borders in
respect of themes of revelation as exemplified in two Medinan chapters: Q.2
and Q.4. The lack of thematic unity perfunctorily assumed of Medinan
chapters is re-assessed: the suggestion is that a presumption of unity and
coherence in an approach to the lengthy Medinan chapters might yield
significant findings.
McAuliffe explores the hermeneutic implications of the classical approach
to the muh1 kam-mutasha: bih designation of quranic verses with a view to
‘constructing bridges between medieval commentaries and contemporary
theories’. She presents a fascinating piece of research which skilfully charts
the way in which this antithetical mechanism predicated approaches to
exegesis of the Quran; correspondingly, she argues that it is pertinent to resort
to intratextuality in the endeavour to unravel the language of scripture,
especially the professedly ambiguous mutasha: biha: t and the religious imagery
which such verses have the power ‘to persuade, to influence, to transform’.
It is intriguing to note that scholars who subscribed to the view that the
Quran did comprise mutasha: biha: t: verses whose import was unfathomable,
implausibly proceeded to offer a plethora of exegetical expositions on the
same verses. And thus in many ways a distinction in the designation of verses
remained abstract.
Welch's in-depth analysis of the formulaic features of the so-called
punishment stories propounds the view that these stories were steadily
 391

developed from a repository of ‘key terms, phrases, and formulas’. He argues

that the essentially oral nature of these stories along with their being
consciously adapted with audience, time, and location in mind, indicates that
the boundaries of scripture were seemingly fluid during the Prophet's own
lifetime. Such a view does impinge upon the canonical status of the Quran,
although Welch suggests that his conclusion ‘is not inconsistent with
statements in the Quran or with traditional Islamic teachings’.
The last two articles in this part are by Rippin and Shahid: Rippin deals
with quranic symbolism of personal responsibility as signified by the quranic
expression: ‘Desiring the face (wajh) of God’. The article places the quranic
contribution to religious discourse on monotheism firmly within the confines
of the Near East: the imagery conjured up by quranic dicta belongs to the
ancient heritage of that region, although such imagery is further shaped by
the theological tenets of the new faith. Shahid's contribution takes us back to
the realm of mutasha: biha: t. He pursues an intriguing hypothesis regarding the
mysterious letters of the Quran (al-h1 uru: f al-muqat1t1a"a) and their link with the
doctrine of the Quran's inimitability. Shahid premises his argument on his
exposition of Q.73. It is somewhat convoluted by his assertion that the
Prophet's state of mind influenced the way these mysterious letters were
perceived, which leads him to conclude that they were an intrinsic component
of revelation, albeit in an unintelligible form. It would seem that such a
hypothesis does not relate specifically to the meaningfulness and linguistic
marvel of the letters per se, but rather to the supposed reasons for their
so-called ‘unintelligible’ nature.
The second section of this volume deals with literary approaches to
selected chapters of the Quran. Neuwirth chooses to re-examine the
canonization of the Quran with a view to exploring the implications of this
process for the text itself. Reflecting upon the thesis of Wansbrough, along
with the notion that the religious consciousness of a community looms large
in the processes of canonization, Neuwirth examines the historical accounts
of the emergence of a textus receptus ne varietur: the resultant ‘heterogenous
ensemble’ and the fact that ‘genuine text units had lost their literary integrity’
could be used to reconstruct, or at least identify, the nucleus of scripture
around which the text crystallizes; this, she suggests, could be resolved by
applying self-referentiality and textuality; she uses Su: rat al-H 1 ijr to illustrate
her postulate. The chapter seemingly exhibits ‘organic growth out of a nucleus
of preceding texts’ and it intimates the emergence of a community. It must
be said that just how one ascertains definitively the chronological precedence
of the segments of revelation from which the core of the su: ra is putatively
derived is critical to the whole thesis.
Mir analyses the theme of irony in Su: rat Yu: suf as a literary device, and
argues that an objective approach to the Quran as literature was effectively
impeded by the classical doctrine on I"ja: z al-Qur'a: n: this doctrine was
anchored to a theological as opposed to a literary viewpoint, obscuring
attempts to clarify the Quran's rhetorical beauty and achieve a greater
understanding of its content. Having made the case for the ‘organic coherence’
of this chapter, the question is posed as to whether the device of irony is a
stylistic instrument found in other chapters of the Quran.
It is Su: rat al-Furqa: n which forms the basis of Johns's literary ‘exploration’
of its dynamics and spirituality. He offers a perceptive study of the chapter,
taking into account a classical appreciation of the aesthetic nature of the text
through the discipline of bala: gha, highlighting, for example, the dramatic
effect of grammatical shift and other rhetorical devices (intriguingly, Johns
392 

identifies a strong element of dramatic irony in the chapter). Indeed, also

central to Johns's evaluation of the literary power of the chapter is Muqa: til
Ibn Sulayma: n's tafsı:r which, along with the sı:ra literature, pivotally supplies
a framework for referencing verses of scripture. Johns believes that the
chapter's reference points are interfaced with the entire quranic canon.
The final contribution in this section returns to the theme of the aural
dimension of scripture, complementing Sells' opening chapter. However,
Hajjaji-Jarrah examines the enchantment of reading Su: rat al-"A 9 diya: t and
reflects upon the rhetorical impact of the Quran as an ‘auditory experience’
and the sheer effectiveness of the powerful imagery created by this chapter's
verses. She remarks that while early quranic revelation bore similarities in
structure to the rhythmic prose or saj", it actually challenged conventions
from both literary and theological standpoints: these were conventions revered
by the Arabs. Hajjaji-Jarrah argues that it is the orchestration of the dynamics
of sound which the su: ra employs with immense rhetorical effect.
The final section of this volume takes literary appreciation of the Quran
as its principal theme and begins with an article by Kermani assessing the
aesthetic reception of the Quran, specifically during the Prophet's lifetime.
Making a convincing point that fascination with and reverence for the holy
text were axiomatic in early Muslim interpretations, Kermani argues that this
has not been sufficiently reflected in recent academic studies. It is worth noting
that much of the material Kermani adduces to illustrate the various arguments
might be dismissed as emerging from the subjective processes of projection in
salvation history; however, he argues that one needs to consider cultural
factors which further substantiate the worth of this source material.
Rahman investigates the phenomenon of ellipsis (h1 adhf ) in the Quran,
probing Ibn Qutayba's definition of this linguistic feature as exemplified in
scripture. He also considers the relationship between h1 adhf and a developing
theory of maja: z, proffering an understanding of ellipsis in its early literary
context and illustrating how Ibn Qutayba's analysis of h1 adhf was gradually
worked into the texture of arguments on the Quran's inimitability. Rahman
examines the importance of a literary device, which, in classical scholarship,
distinguished the linguistic superiority of the quranic diction.
Al-Sharı:f al-Rad1 :ı 's contributions to exegesis and the early development of
literary approaches to the Quran are reviewed by Ayoub, who sketches the
cultural milieu which influenced the theological and literary outlook of this
figure. It is the exposition of metaphorical and figurative expressions of the
Quran which forms the focus of this study: al-Sharı:f composed one of the
first complete studies of metaphor in the Quran. Ayoub emphasizes the
theological tenets which governed al-Sharı:f's literary analysis, particularly
where metaphor is used to obviate the anthropomorphic imagery of scripture.
The article also examines an extant volume of al-Sharı:f's seemingly extensive
commentary of mutasha: biha: t verses entitled H 1 aqa: 'iq al-ta'wı:l fı: mutasha: bih
al-tanzı:l.
Al-Sharı:f al-Rad1 :ı also features prominently in Abu-Deeb's discerning
study of maja: z and metaphorical language of the Quran. This chapter
examines the literary theory of maja: z as traced in the work of the early Bas1ran
philologist Abu: "Ubayda, concluding that in this early work maja: z was not
linked to a developed concept of metaphor. Abu-Deeb ponders the theological
provenance of this term and then proceeds to assess al-Sharı:f's exposition of
maja: z and isti"a: ra as exemplified in both scripture and the prophetic traditions,
reviewing his Talkhis1 al-baya: n fı: maja: z al-Qur'a: n and al-Maja: za: t al-nabawiyya.
The author astutely reveals how the concept of metaphor was applied by
 393

al-Sharı:f to resolve the language of scripture from both literary and theological
perspectives. Abu-Deeb countenances the view that an adherence to linguistic
conventions established by generations of scholars hindered attempts to
harness the potential of ‘inventiveness and creativity’ inherent in the language
of the Quran.
The final contribution to this volume is by its editor, Boullata, who
assesses Sayyid Qut1b's literary appreciation of the Quran as outlined in two
of his works, al-Tas1wı:r al-fannı: fı: 'l-Qur'a: n and Fı: z1 ila: l al-Qur'a: n. Boullata
probes Qut1b's efforts to identify rhetorical devices crucial in prefiguring the
spirituality of the Quran's message. Recalling Qut1b's dissatisfaction with
classical attempts to sense the real compass of the Quran's artistic beauty (the
notion here is that i"ja: z discussions had seemingly impaired the focus of
classical scholarship—this is an argument raised in several of the articles in
this volume), Boullata introduces a number of literary devices recognized by
Qut1b as instruments which convey religious motifs in a vivid and imaginative
way. It was this linguistic artistry which was an attraction to the early Arabs;
and, examining the language of the Quran through such literary devices and
features, it is suggested that the unity and coherence of the text become all
the more apparent.
It is commendable that the typographical errors are minimal: defintion
p. 59; und p. 155.
The volume represents a valuable contribution to quranic studies. The
accentuation of the critical function of the Quran's literary elements reveals
just how effectively literary components projected theological, exegetical, and
historical dimensions of the text. Moreover, this selection of articles allows an
appreciation of the extent to which the linguistic features and conventions of
the Quran inexorably influenced classical Islamic scholarship.
 

  (ed.):

The Jewish discovery of Islam: studies in honor of Bernard Lewis.
viii, 311 pp. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press (for The
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel
Aviv University), 1999. $24.95.
In the concluding pages of his rewardingly full editorial introduction to this
Festschrift volume, Kramer firmly sites Bernard Lewis, for so long and so
powerfully associated with the SOAS History Department, at the end of that
great period of over one hundred years when European Jews played such a
key role in the interpretation of Islam in the West, seeing the date of his
departure for Princeton in 1974 (four years before the first appearance of
Orientalism) as indicating the final shift to North America of the centre of
gravity of Western Islamic studies.
As Kramer shows with broad reference to the chapters on individual
figures contributed to this book, the Jewish participation in this great project
was associated with a variety of complex broader cultural phenomena often
coming into unforeseen conflicts with one another, as the coincidence of
Jewish emancipation with the European re-discovery of the Islamic East gave
Jewish scholarship a leading part to play in eoncouraging what he calls (p. 43)
‘a European respect for peoples bearing cultures of extra-European origin,
precisely because the Jews were the most vulnerable of these peoples, residing
394 

as they did in the very center of Europe’, but ‘paradoxically, while Europe
gradually assimilated this approach to Islam, it often declined to assimilate
its Jewish bearers', leading ultimately to the tragic destructions and dispersions
of the Nazi period.
Within their chronological arrangement the contributions to the volume
are varied in style and approach as well as in their subjects, which include a
number of interesting and unusual figures as well as mainstream representatives
of the high academic tradition. The complex attitudes of one unusually
interesting English Jew to his own Jewish identity and to the Jewish presence
in the Middle East are explored in Minna Rozen's opening treatment of
Disraeli's fictional and other writings, which is followed by Benjamin Braude's
account of an even more extraordinary Englishman of Jewish descent, the
sometime Jesuit and secret agent W. G. Palgrave.
While Jacob Landau's brief notice of Vámbéry hardly does more than
draw attention to the latter's Jewish origin, Jacob Lassner's substantial
chapter on Geiger focuses particularly upon the remarkable achievement of
that great Judaic scholar's early thesis on Judaism and Islam. The greatest
Jewish Islamicist of them all is the subject of the next substantial chapter by
Lawrence Conrad, who prefaces his study of Goldziher's attitudes to Ernest
Renan by taking the opportunity to correct Said's quite misleading portrayal
of Orientalism as a project mainly, if not exclusively, dominated by the British
and the French.
Moving to the twentieth century, Joel Kraemer's full length contribution
traces the tragic life of the brilliant Paul Kraus from Prague to Berlin before
he was driven first to a remarkable association with Massignon in Paris,
thence to exile and to suicide in wartime Cairo. Martin Kramer then portrays
the convoluted career of Muhammad Asad, famous as the author of The road
to Mecca, from his birth in Galicia as Leopold Weiss, through his intimate
association with Ibn Saud, then across several continents to Pakistan, New
York and Geneva.
A worthy tribute to its honorand, this most interesting book ends with
three shorter chapters, each like all those in the volume provided with full
sets of footnotes containing all sorts of suggestive bibliographic listings: on
the transplantation of German Islamic scholarship to Israel, by Hava Lazarus-
Yafeh; on the interaction of Judaic and Islamic studies in the work of Samuel
Stern, by Shulamit Sela; and on Lévi-Provençal and the historiography of
Iberian Islam, by David Wasserstein.
 

-  (avec la collaboration de Jean-Luc Arnaud

et Sylvie Denoix) (ed.):
Grandes villes Méditerranéennes du monde musulman médiéval.
(Collection de l'École Française de Rome No. 269.) 323 pp. Rome:
École Française de Rome, 2000.
It is a well-known fact that medieval urbanism and urbanity in the
Mediterranean are, to a large extent, urban developments of Arab origin and
stamp—and that these urban centres were those of international trade and
commerce, of science and art and, last but not least, important political
capitals of military and religious powers. It is equally well-known that most
of these urban centres and their architectural, socio-economic and political
 395

histories have been thoroughly investigated and published by both Arab and
Western historians. So why another book on the medieval megalopoles of the
Mediterranean realm under Arab influence?
The approach and purpose of this publication is clearly a different one: it
is a comparative study based on the extensive and detailed research of
individual cities and cityscapes of the Arab-medieval world already in
existence. The ultimate aim and goal of this book, therefore, is to identify
commonalities in and identities of this specific urbanism and urbanity. This
intention and purpose is reflected in the arrangement of the texts.
The book begins with a short, but precise, discussion by Thierry Bianquis
of the concept of a ‘megalopolis’ in a historical perspective and its specific
role and function in the medieval Arab context by Jean-Claude Garcin. He
argues that size, population and cosmopolitanism in all its different aspects
can be considered as criteria for the megalopolis concept. At the same time,
however, he points to the fact that those cities considered to be megalopoles—
Damascus, Kairouan, Baghdad, Cordoba, Fustat, Aleppo, Cairo under the
Mamluks, Fès and Tunis—never formed a simultaneous urban network, but
must be seen as a sequence in time and space. In line with its comparative
approach, the introduction is complemented by extensive bibliographies on
those cities listed above (pp. 13–35) as the basis for the case studies which
follow and as an invitation to additional reading.
The comparative approach of the book becomes clearer still in the very
schematic representation of the urban histories: starting with some general
remarks on the overall historic importance of the specific city and its
perception among medieval Arab travellers, historians and geographers, each
of the aforementioned megalopoles is analysed with regard to quantitative
reconstructions of its spatial size and number of inhabitants, the ethnic and/or
religious composition and distribution of its population, the urban morphology
and architectural design, its population, its political functions, administration,
infrastructure and services, the city-hinterland relationships, religious and
cultural institutions and—finally—its specific identity as seen by its citizens
and by outsiders. The case studies themselves are analysed by proven experts:
Damascus by Thierry Bianquis, Kairouan by Mondher Sakly, Baghdad by
Françoise Miecheau and—for the period of its foundation until the beginning
of the tenth century—by Abdallah Cheikh-Moussa, Cordoba by Manuel
Acien Almansa and Antonio Vallejo Triano, Fatimid Fustat/Cairo by Ayman
Fu'ad Sayyed and Roland-Pierre Gayraud, Aleppo by Anne-Marie Edde,
post-Fatimid Cairo by Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Sylvie Denoix and Jean-
Claude Garcin, Fès by Halima Ferhat and Tunis by Mounira Chapoutot-
Remadi, a truly impressive list of competent urban historians and experts on
medieval Arab urbanism and urbanity.
In line with the editors' initial statement, according to which the purpose
of this book is to present ‘un ensemble d'études comparées des très grandes
villes de Méditerranée qui ont joué un rôle exceptionnel dans l'histoire’ (p. 1),
the concluding summary (pp. 263–308) as well as J.-Cl. Garcin's conclusions
(pp. 309–17) seem to support the hypothesis of a much greater range of urban
morphologies and diversities than hitherto anticipated and postulated in
Western scholarship. Such observations hold true not only in regard to the
concept of the ‘Islamic city’, but also and likewise in regard to changes in
urban functions and functional differentiations within cities over time and
space. Some of the above-mentioned case studies prove that, in the course of
history, considerable locational changes of citadels and other political
institutions, as well as relocations of grand mosques, have instigated both
396 

urban renewal and new functional differentiations within many of the case
studies. These—and other findings—become especially apparent in the
summarizing comparison of those aforementioned criteria of the megalopolis-
concept, where, more than once, ‘exceptions to the rule’ seem to prevail.
This, however, is to be expected in a comparative study which covers the
huge area between Baghdad in the east and Fès in the west, and a time span
of more than five centuries.
This book, although it adds no new insights into individual city-histories,
is nevertheless an inspiring and thought-provoking publication. It contributes
to our understanding of the very essence of Arab urbanism and urbanity in
Medieval times—and it promotes our understanding that each individual city,
although part of the stereotypical ‘Islamic’ or ‘Arab’ city, has its own
characteristics. The book contains a small atlas with twenty-two mostly
coloured maps and some statistics as well as a short list of definitions of Arab
terms (pp. 319–23) relevant to the case studies presented. All in all it is a
welcome addition to the large number of excellent urban histories of the
medieval Mediterranean realm, especially because of its innovative comparative
approach.
 

 :
Palestine 1948: war, escape and the emergence of the Palestinian
refugee problem.
xi, 398 pp. Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2000.
£45.
This book represents yet another foray into the events surrounding the 1948
Arab-Israeli war. Yoav Gelber notes in his acknowledgements that this work
is derived from a study of Israeli intelligence in the 1948 war. Indeed, this
reviewer understands that the author has written the official history of Israeli
intelligence covering 1948, which has been enbargoed by the Israeli Ministry
of Defence on the grounds of security. We can assume that this book is based
on his findings.
Whatever the origins of this book, the author sets out his stall regarding
his interpretation of these events by arguing that the ‘new historians’, that is
scholars such as Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim, are ‘particularly
irritating’ (p. 2) because they have not brought about any scholarly
breakthroughs, or revealed new approaches to the study of the 1948 war.
While this point is debatable, there can be little doubt that Gelber has little
to add either. This is because he could have used this opportunity to challenge
his opponents on a number of important historiographical questions. This he
fails to do. Indeed, Gelber only makes passing reference to this corpus of
scholarship in his numerous footnotes.
The author could have used his considerable knowledge of the Israeli
archives, especially the Israel Defence Forces Archives (IDFA), to great effect.
In reality he has produced a highly detailed military history that will be of
interest to a limited audience. Indeed, this book is long on detail and short
on analysis. In light of his long-standing work on the origins and evolution
of the Israeli intelligence community, it would have been of great interest to
see what Gelber had to say about the role and value of intelligence in
this conflict.
 397

As far as Gelber is concerned, Israel's victory in the 1948 war was

inevitable because of its superiority in personnel, equipment and organization.
This argument seems to be based on the benefit of hindsight. The overwhelming
impression the researcher gets from analysing the contemporary documentation
is that the Zionist/Israeli leadership could not have been sure about the war's
outcome. As a military historian, the author must be well aware that there is
no such thing as certainty in warfare. The fact that the Jews faced the
combined military strength of the neighbouring Arab states must have been
unsettling.
The author shows quite clearly that the Israeli leadership received confused
and contradictory assessments from its intelligence arm about the organization
and manpower of the Palestinians, their likely strategy, and the precise role
of the Arab states. On the latter point Zionist intelligence faced (as did the
British) the problem that the Arab states did not categorically make up their
minds to invade Palestine until the end of April 1948. Thus, it was very
difficult to reach concrete conclusions about their intentions.
Although Gelber goes into considerable detail concerning the relative
military strengths of both sides, he adds little to our existing knowledge of
these events. Moreover, he makes little attempt to explore the influence on
Israeli decision makers concerning the application of the 1948 Anglo-
Transjordan treaty to the West Bank. Although there is prima facie evidence
that Ben-Gurion and the military leadership had every intention of attacking
the West Bank, they could not be certain that such an operation would not
lead to King Abdullah invoking the treaty which required the British to come
to his assistance.
In light of Gelber's earlier research, it must be regarded a serious failing
that he does not place more emphasis on the wider diplomatic and strategic
influences on the course of the war. For example, he makes little mention of
the Jewish Agency's contacts with King Abdullah prior to the onset of the
war. On this point there are a number of significant questions, which he
simply ignores. By failing to address such significant issues as to whether or
not there was a pre-conceived plan between the Jewish Agency and King
Abdullah to carve up Palestine at the expense of the Palestinians, and the
influence of American and British policy, Gelber fails to provide a rounded
account.
One of the most contentious aspects of the 1948 war has been the question
of the exodus of between 520,000 and 630,000 Palestinians. Gelber robustly
rejects the argument that prior to the end of the mandate the Zionist
leadership adopted a deliberate policy of expelling the ‘escapees’. Nonetheless,
it is widely thought that the massacre at Deir Yassin in April 1948 acted as a
catalyst for a massive haemorrhaging of the Palestinian population. He shows
that the Israeli leadership was less interested in its causes, than in how to
prevent the refugees' return. This, as Gelber shows, was achieved by either
demolishing refugee villages, or by settling Jewish immigrants in their homes.
Ultimately the Israeli government of the time adopted a policy of ‘no
return before peace’ (p. 291). They argued that the refugees should instead
be resettled in the neighbouring states. Gelber concludes with the following
argument: ‘unless Israel is willing to commit demographic suicide it is difficult
to see how the problem will be solved’ (p. 301). As far as Gelber is concerned,
the Palestinian refugee question will only be solved by the de facto recognition
by the Palestinians that they will never return, and that they can only be
resettled in the Arab states.
Although Gelber is to be commended for using a wealth of archival
398 

material, this book suffers from a number of inherent flaws. In the first
instance, there are numerous stylistic infelicities. This point is borne out by
various misspellings of names, for example Troutbeck for the author's
Troutbek. Given that Gelber goes into considerable detail on operational
matters, the provision of three general maps (one of the UN partition plan
for Palestine, a second of Arab invasion plans and a third describing the
Jewish perception of these plans) is high unsatisfactory. Finally, the absence
of a bibliography is quite unbelievable.
 

   and   (ed.):

Golf-Spiel im 20. Jahrhundert.
(Hallesche Beiträge zur Orientwissenschaft 30/00.) 224 pp. Halle
(Saale): Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg, 2000.
This volume contains a collection of six articles in English and German on
the smaller Gulf states—Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates
and Oman. Some of the contributions deal also with Saudi Arabia. The
smaller Gulf states have long been the scholarly realm of political scientists,
military strategists, oil economists and the like, so a collection dealing with
the whole range of recent socio-economic, legal, constitutional, literary and
cultural developments in these states is long overdue. However, this collection
will only partly fill the gap.
Jerzy Zdanowski (in English) examines the emergence of Saudi Arabia as
a regional power in the Gulf in the first half of the twentieth century. In the
style of traditional diplomatic history, he adds substantially to our knowledge
of Saudi-Gulf relations. However, Zdanowski's depiction of internal develop-
ments and their inter-relation with diplomacy and war remains deficient. He
still seems to subscribe to the standard narrative of the emergence of Saudi
Arabia. According to his admirers, Ibn Saud acted as the founder-hero of the
kingdom and only by making use of his superior personal qualities, created
the Third Saudi State. In recent years, however, some authors have begun to
challenge this narrative by highlighting the influence of different social strata,
socio-economic structures and regional as well as international conflicts on
the emergence of Saudi Arabia, so that Ibn Saud's personal role should be
seen as only one factor in this process.
Monika F. Mühlböck (in German) gives an overview of internal and
constitutional developments in Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait during the
twentieth century. Although the article would have benefited from the
inclusion of more analysis and less emphasis on chronologic facts, it contains
valuable first-hand information, especially about Shiites in the aforementioned
countries. In particular the part on internal developments in Bahrain during
the 1990s is extremely useful.
Hans-Georg Ebert's article (in German) deals with recent developments
of the legal systems of the GCC-states. After summarizing the legal and
constitutional characteristics of the Arab Gulf states he focuses his discussion
of family and inheritance law on the Omani personal status law of 1997.
Ebert identifies the duality of secular and religious sectors in the administration
of justice and the continuing influence of traditional religious scholars on law
and justice as one of the most important characteristics of the Gulf states'
legal systems.
 399

Fred Scholz (in German) discusses socio-economic change in the smaller

Gulf states during the last thirty years. His article consists largely of a
summary of his former publications and a fairly comprehensive survey of the
present situation. Particularly interesting are his short case studies of social
and economic phenomena, mainly drawn from Oman, one of Scholz's main
fields of study. His remarks on the settlement of the bedouin and its socio-
economic implications reflect his research in this field, which might prove to
be of crucial importance for the future of the Gulf states.
Barbara Michalak-Pikulska's article on literary developments in the Gulf
states concentrates on contemporary prose since the end of the 1920s, when
this genre emerged in the Gulf states. She gives a deep insight into this
hitherto neglected field of cultural activity in the region. However, the piece
lacks comment on the reception of this kind of literature. Such comments
would have been of interest to a broad readership, and not just specialists,
trying to come to a better understanding of Gulf societies.
Dionisius Albertus Agius examines the different types of ships commonly
called dhows and the linguistic origin of their different denominations. His
article is replete with information on trade and maritime material culture in
the Persian Gulf region during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This article reflects a more recent trend in Western scholarship, namely the
study of Gulf history from the perspective of its integration into the economy
and culture of the Indian Ocean rather than as the history of a periphery of
the Middle East.
Although some of the contributions mentioned are of high quality, the
collection as such suffers from serious shortcomings. First and foremost, the
editors did not think it necessary to provide the reader with an introduction
to the subject. Rather, the foreword, of just a few sentences, tries to explain
(with only partial success) the puzzling title of the book (‘Gulf game in the
20th century’). It becomes clear from the articles selected that the intention is
to present an overview of recent political, socio-economic and cultural
developments, especially in the smaller Gulf states. If this was the case,
however, the book would have benefited from an article about religious
trends. Ebert's short hints are useful, albeit sometimes incorrect. Besides,
remarks about the Shiites in the various contributions—with the exception of
Mühlböck's article—are sketchy and sometimes unreliable. Shiite opposition
movements in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have recently reached understandings
with their respective governments. By ignoring these events, the editors have
neglected an important aspect of recent Gulf history. Furthermore, an
overarching conceptualization might have enhanced the value of the book. At
the end of the volume, the reader might wonder about the significance of all
the data collected and what the common denominator of articles on such
different topics as modern prose and traditional shipbuilding is.
 

  (ed.):

Studies on Central Asian history in honor of Yuri Bregel.
xi, 354 pp. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Research Institute
for Inner Asian Studies, 2001.
This book is a Festschrift in honour of Professor (Emeritus) Yuri Bregel, a
distinguished authority and a ceaseless pioneer in Central Asian Studies,
400 

especially its medieval history and the society of its varied peoples. The
introduction, by Devin DeWeese, contains a short biography. The distress
suffered by Bregel and his family in the early 1970s led to his exile in Israel
and to his appointment to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was one
of the Jewish ‘refuseniks’ in the 1970s and 1980s. His case was raised at the
1973 meeting of the International Congress of Orientalists, held in Paris, and
during the course of Western protests in regard to his application to emigrate,
his case was raised specifically by Professor Bernard Lewis and Professor
J. D. Pearson, both of whom had been leading figures in the life of SOAS. A
list of Bregel's publications is to be found in this book (pp. 11–20) and one
is struck by his prolific contribution in terms of his articles for the
Encyclopaedia of Islam (thirteen in all) and for the Encyclopaedia Iranica
(sixteen in all).
The Festschrift comprises twelve essays on a varied selection of topics
reflecting the expertise of the contributors. They are linked by a common
enthusiasm for Central Asia and they range widely within the fields of
financial, legal, religious, scholarly and social history. In several, linguistic
topics are to the fore. Contributions vary in length, but the quality is of a
consistently high standard. The first contribution on the subject of Bukhara,
its name, site and meaning (pp. 21–5), is a lengthy note rather than an article,
although it serves well as an opening topic since the city is to appear
frequently in the book. Peter B. Golden's ‘The terminology of slavery and
servitude in medieval Turkic’ (pp. 27–56) is a well knit study of the linguistic
and the historical as well as being of help to anthropologists concerned with
past societies in Central Asia. Beatrice Forbes Manz's ‘Family and ruler in
Timurid historiography’ (pp. 57–78) discusses, amongst other topics, the
legitimation programme of Timurid historical writing. Maria Eva Subtelny's
article on ‘Scholars and libraries in medieval Bukhara (with particular
reference to the library of Khwa: ja Muh1 ammad Pa: rsa: )’ (pp. 79–111) is
amongst the longest contributions. It includes a Deed of Endowment of the
library in question and a photo of a part of it (from the Central State Archive
of Uzbekistan) on p. 95. Jo-Ann Gross's article on Naqshabandı: appeals to
the Herat Court (pp. 113–28) will be of undoubted value to those with a
special interest in this brotherhood and in the legacy of Khwa: ja Ah1 rär. Elena
A. Davidovich's length essay (pp. 129–85) is one of two by Muscovites. The
second is by G. E. Markov on ‘The social structure of the nomads of Asia
and Africa’ (pp. 319–40). Davidovich's ‘The monetary reform of Muh1 ammad
Shaiba: nı: Kha: n (in 913–914/1507–08)’ (pp. 129–85), is accompanied by figures
and tables which illustrate countermarks on coins, tenth-century copper
dı:na: rs, silver and gold coins, with mints and dates, weights, and cartouche
inscriptions. There is new archaeological evidence, all of it of interest to
numismatists and to specialists in Central Asian Islamic art and archaeology.
Another contribution, of both archaeological and historical interest, is
R. D. McChesney's piece on the Vaqfı:ya of 947/1540 and the reconstruction
of Balkh. Drawings of quarters and building plots and tables of Balkh
property owners are included, as well as a facsimile of the Vaqfı:ya from the
archives of the Republic of Uzbekistan, which is translated on pp. 202–27.
Two of the remaining articles, that on the presence of Sayyid A 9 ta in
Khwa: razm (pp. 245–81) and ‘A Sufi history of Astrakhan’ (pp. 297–317),
are closely linked to substantial studies which have already been presented
and reviewed in the Bulletin. Sayyid A 9 ta ("Atta: 'ı:), figures in DeWeese's
Islamization and native religion in the Golden Horde, Baba Tüklës and
conversion to Islam in historical and epical tradition, Pennsylvania, 1994 and
 401

Allen J. Frank's contribution on Jaha: nsha: h's Ta: rı:kh-i Astarkha: n is already
referred to on p. 159 of his Islamic historiography and ‘Bulghar’ identity among
the Tatars and Bashkirs of Russia, Brill, Leiden, 1998, (reviewed in BSOAS
63/1, p. 133). This article may be called a ‘younger brother’ of that major
work. Saints and shrines of Astrakhan province are catalogued, and this work
contrasts with and complements Muh1 ammad Mura: d Ramzı: 's, Talfı:q al-Akhba: r
(Orenburg, 1908, published a year later than Ta: rı:kh-i Astarkha: n). Jaha: nsha: h's
work is characterized by a marked preference for the Qazaqs to the
Polish/Lithuanian/Belorussian Tatars. ‘He contrasts the model Islamic piety
and behavior of the Qazaqs with the illiteracy and ignorance of things Muslim
among the Polish Tatars, in effect reversing the modernist view that admired
the Europeanness of the assimilated Polish Tatars and decried the "‘savagery’'
and alleged semi-animism of the Qazaq nomads’ (p. 905). Whatever the
situation may have been in the nineteenth century (Tamara Bairašauskaité's,
Lietuvos Totoriai, XIX amžiuje, Vilnius, 1996, reviewed in BSOAS 61/1, 1998,
p. 146, furnishes an infinitely more objective and better documented assessment
than does Jaha: nsha: h), it is clear from the surviving kita: bs and Tatar Qurans
of the eighteenth century, the close ties with the Crimea, with Aqqerman and
the Ottoman Empire, that Jaha: nsha: h's opinions, as well as Ramzı:'s in
Daghestan (evident from the documents) is evidence for another side to the
coin. Like Ramzı:, Jaha: nsha: h maintains that ‘We Russian Muslims have been
given the name Tatar, suggesting that "a: lims viewed national designations such
as "‘Tatar’' as originating outside their community, and hence as essentially
foreign’ (p. 317). This may have inspired much of his contempt for Islam in
Poland, as he perceived it to be.
This book may not equal the format of, say, a number of the Variorum
publications. However, it is well printed, accurate in its transcription and very
well footnoted, where the bibliography may be found. There is no index of
any kind.
. . 

 :
The Arabic grammatical tradition: a study in ta"lı:l.
xi, 228 pp. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. £65.
Suleiman makes it clear in the preamble to this book that Classical Arabic
"illa can be translated by a variety of terms, among which are ‘cause’,
‘reason’, ‘rule’, ‘norm’, etc. (p. 1). The second form mas1dar from this
geminated root, ta"lı:l, the major subject of this volume, can thus be translated
as ‘explanation’, ‘rationalization’, and/or ‘justification’ (p. 223). A good
example of ta"lı:l is provided by the author when he cites the eighth-century
grammarian, Abu: "Amr Ibn al-"Ala: ' (770 ..), who while discussing an
exception to a grammatical rule (h1 ukm) cites the lack of grammatical
agreement in a Yemeni informant's saying ja: 'athu kita: bi ‘my letter reached
him’. His explanation for this is that since a synonym s1ah1 :ıfa, which is
feminine, could be substituted for kita: b (masculine), the sentence is still to be
regarded as grammatical. This is known as alh1 aml "ala: alma"na: ‘semantic
approximation’ (p. 79) or ‘interpretation’ (p. 220). After explaining the
concept of ta"lı:l and how it fits into the overall Arabic grammatical tradition,
the bulk of the research examines how ta"lı:l was conceived of by five major
Arab grammarians: al-Zajja: jı: (948 ..), Ibn Jinnı: (1002 ..), al-Anba: rı:
402 

(1181 ..), Ibn Mad1 a: ' al-Qurt1ubı: (1196 ..), and al-Suyu: t1:ı (1505 ..). One
of this study's major conclusions is that ta"lı:l is not a uniform notion. To
quote the author: ‘[it] may be used as an integral part of qiya: s (analogy) and
its capacity as a four-part relational network between 'as1l (base), far"
(subsidiary), h1 ukm (rule) and "illa ...’ (p. 3).
Let us now consider one of the work's most important chapters: the one
which examines ta"lı:l in the larger framework of 'us1u: l al-nah1 w ‘the principles
of grammar’ (pp. 15–42). The concept of sama: " ‘attested data’ is an
interesting one; this word for ‘corpus’ makes direct reference to spoken data
or ‘heard’ data (<sami"a ‘to hear’). Suleiman is correct to emphasize the
Quran's position as the major corpus (pp. 18–19). One may, however,
legitimately criticize the second major source of attested data used by the
medieval Arab grammarians, viz., poetry, and the author is quick to point
out that not only is poetry fundamentally different from prose, it is also
certainly not representative of ordinary speech. It is the focus on the latter
point of view of ordinary or commonly occurring language which is a
desideratum for any theory of descriptive grammar (p. 21). Also, one had to
be quite careful as a grammarian to exclude lah1 n ‘solecism, faulty speech’,
and to choose eloquent speakers confident in their Arabic: al-fusah1 a: '
al-mawhu: q bi"arabiyyatihim (p. 22). Of course, this generally meant using data
from the 'ahl al-wabar ‘bedouins’—not the 'ahl al-madar ‘urban dwellers’
(see Joshua Blau, ‘The role of the bedouins as arbiters in linguistic questions’
JSS, 1963, 8: 42–51). Suleiman concludes that ‘... the corpus of Arabic data
is full of anomalies and contradictions ...’ (p. 25). However, there can be little
doubt that the author is correct to emphasize that although "illa is basically a
descriptive term, its ‘primary aim is nevertheless one of prescription and
regulation’ (p. 31). This does not fit in well, however, with Ibn Jinnı: 's use of
"illa (pp. 64–108), since for him the notion has the senses of a: (1) descriptive
device; and (2) generative device (p. 103). This is tantamount to claiming that
the Arab grammarians were the first generative grammarians—a perspective
which today's Chomskyan linguists would probably deny. The author also
points out that Ibn Jinnı: 's ‘realist epistemology’ has ‘a strong mentalist or
psycholinguistic flavour’ (p. 104).
Unquestionably, Suleiman makes a solid case throughout the tome that
the medieval Arab grammarians operated with the notions of deep and surface
structure, and thus, at least in this sense, were Chomskyan in their orientation.
In the discussion, e.g., of al-Suyu: t1:ı 's Al-Iqtira: h1 fı: "ilm 'us1u: l al-nah1 w, it is
shown that the double verbs, such as "adda ‘to count’, derive from an
underlying *"adada via the "illa known as taxfı:f ‘lightness’ (p. 190). A second
example of this phenomenon can be seen in the consideration of 'as1l ‘origin’,
as istah1 waða ‘to overwhelm’ can be derived from a base form *h1 awaða,
although the actual surface verb is h1 a: ða ‘to turn aside’ (ibid.). Finally, let me
cite a third example from Ibn Jinnı:, who states that the surface form of mı:za: n
‘scales’ is to be derived from an underlying *miwza: n, and this process occurs
‘to avoid the heaviness [hiqal ‘heaviness’] associated with this form in actual
speech’ (p. 69).
Suleiman's book is a notable achievement, and once again one sees that
medieval Arab grammatical theory has great relevance for practitioners of
modern linguistics.
Although this book has been carefully edited and proofread, a few errors
came to my attention. The term qiya: s ‘analogy’ should be with a non-
emphatic s (p. 180); la: m al'ibtida: ' ‘initial or inceptive la: m’ should not have
its first glottal stop present since it is a hamzat ulwas1l (p. 183); Muz1 ammad is
 403

a typographical error for Muh1 ammad ‘Muhammad’ (p. 30); and the citation
of the journal of the German Oriental Society should be Zeitschrift der
deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft (p. 217).
 . 

 - and  :

Turkish region: state, market and social identities on the East Black
Sea coast.
(World Anthropology Series.) xii, 244 pp. Oxford: James Currey and
Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2001. £16.95.
The title of Ildikó Bellér-Hann and Chris Hann's book is a tribute to Paul
Stirling, the eminent social anthropologist whose seminal work Turkish village,
published in 1965, broke new ground in the field of Anatolian anthropology.
Nonetheless Turkish region would have deserved a more informative title on
its cover since it deals with the ethnically and linguistically diverse Eastern
Black Sea region of Turkey and is of interest not only to specialists of Turkey
but also to researchers dealing with the Caucasus. The book is based primarily
on extensive fieldwork undertaken during six journeys between 1983 and 1999,
years of tremendous social, cultural and economic transformation in Turkey.
The authors concentrate on the province of Rize and the three adjoining
counties of Artvin. The region is referred to as ‘Lazistan’. The term, used for
the sake of convenience, should not be confused with the historical Ottoman
sub-province of the same name that extended from Trabzon to territories deep
inside today's Georgia. Throughout their research Bellér-Hann and Hann
explore personal and social spheres by focusing particularly on changing
social attitudes. Many comments and discussions in this well-researched book
have relevance not only for Lazistan but also for Turkey as a whole.
The pervasive presence of the state and its administrative system is studied
in the first chapter. The authors discuss the role played by the educational
system in preventing the emergence of alternative discourses on national
culture and identity. They analyse the ambiguous attitudes of the people
towards the state—which is perceived as an intruding outside force, but which
is nonetheless expected to provide protection and support, in particular, to
the ailing tea industry. The tea crop, introduced in the 1950s, has completely
transformed the region and is central to its economy.
Chapter ii focuses on the integration of town and countryside in the
context of the periodic markets which are a form of continuity with traditional
practices. Attempts at rationalizing the economy of the market place through,
inter alia, taxation, have always been resisted, which explains the electoral
success of right-wing parties advocating greater economic liberalization. Yet
partial privatization has had a negative impact for the tea-growers, since
private enterprises, in contra-distinction to state-owned companies, have a
tendency to delay their payments. The former Prime Minister Turgut Özal's
privatization initiatives have transformed the economic landscape and led to
a more consumer-oriented society and to the integration of the regional
economy at the national level. The Russian markets which emerged after the
opening of the border with Georgia, had a significant impact on the region,
mainly because of their destabilizing effects on local small shopkeepers.
Prostitution too seriously affected the economic and the emotional stability of
several families.
404 

In chapter iv the authors argue that the concept of ‘civil society’, usually
defined by its opposition to the state, is of little use in Lazistan, where
political parties are in the main the only realms of voluntary association
beside the segregated world of informal networks of friendship. The latter
play an important role in upholding communal ties and are based on
co-operation and mutual help. Gender issues, evoked in the previous chapter,
are also fundamental in the debates regarding patriarchy (chapter v) and
marriage (chapter vi). Despite state intervention, traditional gender roles have
not changed greatly, and the position of women varies according to social
class, education and geographical location. Marriage in this context is not a
relationship between two individuals, but is usually arranged by families.
Though few people marry against their will, it is difficult to resist social
pressure, which explains the relatively high occurrence of marriages between
first cousins. Differences between the conservative west and the more liberal
east are also perceived in attitudes towards religion, discussed in chapter vii.
The authors explore the distinctions between popular religiosity, with its
unorthodox practices and beliefs, and more fundamentalist interpretations of
Islam. Political Islam merges those distinctions and has a stronghold in
traditionally conservative Lazistan. Most ordinary people, however, do not
perceive secularism and religion as two conflicting world-views and everyday
habits are a combination of both. Bellér-Hann and Hann question the alleged
dichotomy between the rival and, in theory, incompatible ideologies of
Kemalism and Islam. They reveal a much more complex everyday reality
where aspects of the two ideologies merge more or less peacefully.
Unfortunately the equivocal attitude of the Turkish state towards religion,
particularly since the military coup of 1980, is not discussed. Yet the state's
promotion of the Turkish Islam synthesis by means of cultural and educational
policies, and the crackdown on political Islam, have been influential in shaping
contemporary attitudes towards Kemalism and religion.
In the final chapter, on ethnicity, the authors stress that the four ethnic
groups that inhabit the region, namely Turks, Lazis, Hemşinlis and Georgians,
are to a large extent assimilated. The authors convincingly argue that the
region follows the social and economic trends of the rest of the country. It is
not clear why there is no mention of the fifth ethnic group of the region—the
Roma or Poşa as they are known locally—of whom a substantial number
have settled in Arhavi.
This chapter, however, serves mainly as a platform to question the concept
of culture and to criticize Wolfgang Feurstein's Herderian vision of the Lazi
as a volk, even though Feurstein himself states that he has never read Herder.
Their patronizing opprobrium of Feurstein's linguistic interventionism is a
little out of place since Bellér-Hann and Hann do not themselves discuss the
linguistic situation in north-eastern Turkey, even though they admit that
language is a major criterion for ethnic differentiation. According to optimistic
estimates there are only about 250,000 Lazuri speakers left. Lazuri is a
Kartvelian language that is related to Georgian, Mingrelian and Svan. Since
the state, despite a relative liberalization, continues to deny ethnic identities,
the kind of Lazi cultural assertiveness advocated by Feurstein, who devised a
script for Lazuri and had to face the wrath of the Turkish authorities
for distributing it, has an important role to play in saving the linguistic
diversity of the region and thus an important part of our common human
heritage.
 
 405

 :
Turkish foreign policy, 1774–2000.
xvi, 375 pp. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2000. £35.

The end of the Cold War has sparked much research on Turkish foreign policy,
and William Hale's book is a welcome contribution to the growing literature in
this field. There are few overall studies of Turkish foreign policy from a historical
perspective and in this sense the book fills an important gap in the literature.
Hale is an eminent expert on modern Turkish politics, and the book under
review is in some respects a sequel to his earlier book, Turkish politics and the
military (London, 1994), in terms of its scope and treatment of the topic.
It surveys Ottoman/Turkish foreign policy from the late eighteenth century
to the end of the twentieth century in nine chapters. Chapters i–v are devoted
to Turkey's foreign relations during the late Ottoman empire, the War of
Independence and Ataturk era, the Second World War, and the Cold War (in
two chapters). Chapters vi–ix deal with several aspects of Turkish foreign
policy after the Cold War: strategic options and the domestic environments;
United States, NATO, and the European Union; Greece, Cyprus, the Balkans
and Transcaucasia; and Central Asia and the Middle East. Chapter x offers
some speculative suggestions as to what challenges Turkish foreign policy
makers seem likely to face in the first few decades of the twenty-first century
in the light of historical experiences and policies.
The work is based on three main assumptions, the first of which is that
both the late Ottoman empire and (its successor) modern Turkey fit into the
international system as a middle power, in terms of geographical position,
human and natural resources, economic development, and foreign policy
behaviour in the international system. Basing his analysis on the definition of
Turkey as a middle power, Hale tries to show how medium-sized states have
acted in the changing international environment of the past 200 years. The
second assumption is that there have been important elements of continuity,
as well as change, in Turkish foreign policy since the days of the late Ottoman
empire. Following events back to the late eighteenth century, Hale attempts
to illuminate the continuities, as well as the changes, in foreign relations. The
third assumption is that the dominant themes in Turkish foreign policy in the
post-Cold War era have been realism and pragmatism, as had been the case
with most Turkish diplomacy since the late eighteenth century. Throughout
the book the author has attempted to assess the effects of domestic political
changes, and varying self-perceptions of the identity of the state, on the way
it conducted its foreign policy.
The book has some weaknesses: although it covers the period 1774–2000,
the reader will not find much on Ottoman foreign relations. Much of the book
is devoted to the period since the end of the First World War (pp. 44–322); only
pages 13–43 describe the years of the long nineteenth century, 1774–1918. While
concentrating on the period since the Second World War, the book merely
summarizes the evolution of late Ottoman foreign policy. Secondly, Hale relies
principally on material available in English (especially articles in certain journals),
but ignores the flowering Turkish-language literature on Turkish foreign policy
(for example, Faruk Sönmezoğlu (ed.), Türk Dış Politikasının Analizi, second
edition, Istanbul, 1998). Thirdly, there are some factual errors in the text. Two
examples will suffice: the revolt in Bosnia-Herzegovina began in 1875, not in
1874 (p. 27); and in April 1877, the Russians declared war on the Ottomans,
not the other way round (p. 28).
406 

These reservations notwithstanding, Hale's work is the most complete study

to date of Turkish foreign policy in historical perspective. The major strength of
the book is that it is the first historical analysis of the evolution of Turkish
foreign policy over the last two-hundred years, and it is a rare attempt to look
into the Ottoman bases of modern Turkish foreign policy. Classroom instructors
will welcome Hale's clear and highly readable treatment of Turkish foreign
policy, and it will surely become a standard textbook in the field.
 

   (ed.):

Passage Istanbul.
(Het Oog in't Zeil, 8.) 240 pp. Amstelveen: Bas Lubberhuizen
Uitgever.
This book is the eighth volume of the series Het Oog in't Zeil which explores
the literary heritage of major European cities. Fifteen writers from varied
backgrounds have contributed to this volume. Jan Paul Hinrichs, the editor,
avowedly chose an Orientalist perspective and thus the book deals mainly
with European perceptions of Istanbul. Even though the primary focus is on
literature the volume includes well-researched articles on other topics, notable
among them Ruud Visschedijk's discussion of Istanbul in Western cinema,
Bas Lubberhuizen's retelling and analysis of Le Corbusier's (1887–1965)
influential 1911 journey from Berlin to Istanbul and Petra Couvée's essay on
the astonishing encounter between Leo Trotsky (1879–1940) and the Belgian
novelist Georges Simenon (1903–89), who interviewed the prophet of the
permanent revolution in 1933 on Prinkipo island for the French daily Paris-Soir.
Articles on Gustave Flaubert (1821–80), Pierre Loti (1850–1923), Virginia
Woolf (1882–1941), William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) and Constantine Cavafy
(1863–1933) underline the extent to which Istanbul, Constantinople and
Byzantium are imprinted on European literary consciousness. The most interesting
essays, however, are dedicated to lesser-known literary figures such as the
Armenian poet Daniel Varoujan (1884–1915), the Soviet poet Joseph Brodsky
(1940–96), and the exiled Russian poet Ivan Bunin (1870–1953), as well as to
several Dutch travellers little known outside the Dutch-speaking world.
The eclectic selection of articles in Passage Istanbul make it a well balanced
introduction, for both scholars and dilettantes, to a city that once ruled over
three continents. It is, however, unfortunate that Turkish poets and authors
have been ignored in this volume: there are many who could have fitted
Hinrichs' Orientalist agenda, for example Yahya Kemal Beyatlı (1884–1958),
who argued that the likes of Théophile Gauthier (1811–72) and Pierre Loti
understood the Orient better than many of his Turkish contemporaries.
 

 -:
Bagdad nach dem Sturz des Kalifats: die Geschichte einer Provinz
unter ilh̆a: nischer Herrschaft (656–735/1258–1335).
(Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 231.) x, 246 pp. Berlin: Klaus
Schwarz Verlag, 2000.
Originally prepared as a Cologne thesis in 1998, this is the first published
 407

attempt in a European language to assess the fate of Iraq under Mongol rule.
After a short introductory chapter outlining problems and sources, ch. ii
surveys the years preceding Hülegü's attack in 1258, the circumstances of the
conquest and its immediate aftermath. Chapter iii, by far the largest single
section of the book, examines the personalities and policies of those who
governed the province on behalf of the Ilkhans, notably the celebrated
historian "Ala: ' al-Dı:n Juwaynı: (657/1259–681/1283). Social and economic
conditions, including currency, taxation and agriculture, are dealt with in
ch. iv, while ch. v is concerned with urban life and matters such as religious
currents and the status of Jews and Christians under a regime which was
pagan, at least until the adoption of Islam by the Ilkhan Ghazan in
694/1295.
The result is a competent and useful study which throws a good deal of
light on the character both of the Mongol regime and of its Persian servitors.
Gilli-Elewy's conclusions are balanced and judicious. In describing a depressing
series of conspiracies, trumped-up charges and executions, he is careful not to
yield to the temptation to exculpate the Muslim officials and lay the sole
blame at the door of the nomad aristocracy; even the cultured Juwaynı: does
not emerge spotless. Two major phases in the province's history are identified:
one in which the Baghdad government was relatively autonomous (although
on a number of occasions the central wazir or some other powerful figure
entrusted it to a brother); the other (after c. 1295), in which the region was
much more closely under the supervision of the Ilkhans' central administration
and the local authorities were eclipsed. In some measure this was a natural
consequence of the greater interest shown by Ghazan and his brother and
successor Öljeitü in the frontier with Mamluk Syria, as also of Öljeitü's
conversion to the Shia in c. 707/1307 and the need accordingly to keep in
close touch with Twelver Shii centres such as H 1 illa and Najaf. One cannot
help wondering, however, whether such periodization is in part an illusion
created by the uneven distribution of the source material. Down to c. 700/1300
the local chronicle H 1 awa: dith al-Zama: n ascribed to Ibn al-Fuwat1:ı is highly
informative, and the merest glance at Gilli-Elewy's footnotes suffices to
demonstrate that he makes commendably full use of it. But, as he points out
(p. 129), Ibn al-Fuwat1:ı had no successor and thereafter we lack narratives
that focus so heavily on affairs in Iraq: inevitably the book has to cover the
era of Öljeitü and his son Abu: Sa"ı:d in a more cursory fashion than that of
the earlier Ilkhans.
I noticed few factual errors: it is difficult to see in what sense Was1s1a: f can
be said to have ‘ergänzt’ Rashı:d al-Dı:n's Ja: mi" al-Tawa: rı:kh (p. 9); Simeon
Rabban-ata was not a Jewish physician (p. 188, n. 80) but a Nestorian
Christian one. More seriously, perhaps, a number of publications that
presumably appeared just around or after the completion of the thesis have
not been consulted. The chapter on the economy might have benefited from
Tom Allsen's Commodity and exchange in the Mongol empire (1997). In the
section on religious affairs, it is strange to find no reference to the papers
edited by Denise Aigle in L'Iran face à la domination mongole (1997), notably
Monika Gronke, ‘La religion populaire en Iran mongol’, and Jean Calmard,
‘Le chiisme imamite sous les ilkhans’. Gilli-Elewy might have wished, too, to
qualify the statement that ‘die Mongolen keine genauen Vorstellungen einer
Verwaltung hatten’ (p. 47) had he read David Morgan's most recent thoughts
on Ilkhanid government, in the volume just mentioned and in the Harvard
Middle Eastern and Islamic Review (1996).
 
408 

 :
Waqf im mongolischen Iran: Rašı:duddı:ns Sorge um Nachruhm und
Seelenheil.
(Freiburger Islamstudien, XX.) 416 pp. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 2000.
The Waqf-na: ma-yi Rab"-i Rashı:dı: (or, as its author himself called it, al-
Waqfiyya al-Rashı:diyya) is the work of the Ilkhanid wazir and polymath,
Rashı:d al-Dı:n Fad1 l-Alla: h al-Hamada: nı:, best known, perhaps, for his
voluminous world history, the Ja: mi" al-Tawa: rı:kh (‘Compendium of
Chronicles’). Its importance is manifold. It is one of the earliest waqf
documents to have survived; it exists in an autograph copy, drafted in
709/1309 by a major figure in the history of Ilkhanid Iran; and through its
length and detail it furnishes an unusually extensive insight into the workings
of a waqf institution, the purposes behind its endowment, and the vast
economic resources at the founder's disposal. In this masterly study, Birgitt
Hoffmann, the author of a number of articles on waqfiyya and on Rashı:d
al-Dı:n's Waqf-na: ma in particular, embarks on a much-needed analysis of the
document, in which not only are the juridical and stylistic aspects subjected
to minute examination, but full attention is given to the historical and
geographical contexts. The Rab"-i Rashı:dı: was plundered after Rashı:d al-Dı:n's
execution in 718/1318 and again following that of his son, the wazir Ghiya: th
al-Dı:n Muh1 ammad, in 736/1336; by the end of the fourteenth century it was
in ruins, and indeed it may have functioned properly for less than three
decades. Less can be said on the architectural side, consequently, although
Hoffmann makes careful use of the investigations conducted on the site by
Wilber and by Minovi in the middle decades of the twentieth century.
Rashı:d al-Dı:n is in many ways an enigmatic figure. Belonging to a family
of Jewish physicians, he was either a convert to Islam or, at most, a second-
generation Muslim. Throughout his career in the upper reaches of the Ilkhanid
bureaucracy, he had to run the gamut of accusations from his political
enemies that he had not truly abandoned his ancestral faith; and although his
various theological works were probably designed to remedy the ignorance of
the Ilkhan and the Mongol aristocracy—who had themselves embraced Islam
only recently—there can be little doubt that his chief priority was to assuage
doubts concerning his own spiritual allegiance. As Hoffmann remarks (p. 54),
the production of a comprehensive biography represents ‘eine große
Verlockung ..., der bislang jedoch noch niemand nachgegeben hat’. Not the
least interesting and valuable part of the book, therefore, is the excellent
survey of Rashı:d al-Dı:n's background and life (pp. 53–91) and of his
numerous progeny (pp. 91–9), where the author not only distils the most
up-to-date research but makes her own original contribution by a careful
sifting of the primary material in both Persian and Arabic.
Throughout the book, references are helpfully given both to the facsimile
produced by Minovi and Afshar (1971) and to their subsequent edition of the
text (1977). A lengthy appendix (pp. 249–348) comprises the translation of
part 2 of ch. iii of the Waqf-na: ma, where Rashı:d al-Dı:n makes detailed
arrangements for the operation of the several charitable institutions attached
to the foundation—the mosque, the school, the scriptorium (which was
expected annually to produce a copy of each of the founder's literary works),
the hospice, the orphanage, and so on. There are numerous figures, maps and
tables, an extensive bibliography and some valuable indices. Hoffmann's
 409

scholarship is tireless, but eminently readable. This admirable monograph

deserves a place in the library of anyone concerned with the political,
economic or social history of Mongol Iran or with the history of Iranian Islam.
 

  and  :

Mingrelisch–Deutsches Wörterbuch.
(Kaukasienstudien.) 688 pp. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2001. €98.
Mingrelian, Laz, Svan and Georgian form the South Caucasian (Kartvelian)
language family. Only Mingrelian, spoken in the lowlands of western Georgia,
and Laz, largely confined to N.E. Turkey, are mutually intelligible. Because
speakers of all four languages resident in Georgia (or the former USSR) were
classified as ‘Georgians’ in around 1930, no one knows how many Mingrelians
there are (perhaps a million), nor of course how many actually speak the
language. Though some communist texts, and many local newspapers and
journals, were published in Mingrelian (using the Georgian script) from the
late 1920s to 1938, Mingrelian was never officially awarded literary status, the
most widely spoken indigenous Caucasian language to be denied this privilege.
Most Mingrelians are educated in Georgian, which they employ both as
principal means of communication outside the home and for writing. In 1914
the talented (but soon to perish) Georgian linguist Ioseb Q'ipshidze produced
a 574-page grammar (in Russian; republished 1994) with texts and dictionary,
which made Mingrelian at that time perhaps the best described of all the
Caucasian languages (including Georgian, with its long literary tradition).
The neglect of Mingrelian for most of the Soviet period meant that after 1938
very few materials appeared, and those that did catered mainly for the
specialist markets of folklore and philology. Since Georgia's independence
(1991) publishing in and on Mingrelian has increased. By way of lexicons
alone (sc. Mingrelian-Georgian) the present compilers mention those by:
Avaliani (1995, also including Svan); Ch'araia (1997 from a 1918 ms.); Eliava
(1997); Pipia (in preparation); and a 5,000-page manuscript by Kadshaia
himself, from which the present work is an extract, with German replacing
Georgian. One could add B. K'ilanava's 900 Mingrelian words (1998) and
A. Chikvanaia's Mingrelian expressive words and expressions (1998).
This latest offering begins with a mere five-paragraph foreword. More
useful than the nationalist propaganda of paragraphs 3 and 4 would have
been a statement explaining (a) the principles by which the selection of words
presented here was made, and (b) why Kadshaia's entire manuscript could
not have been prepared for a German edition (obviously in fascicles) to match
K. Tschenkéli's ‘Georgisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch’ (1965–74), surely a worthy
project. All that readers are told is that a roman transcription accompanies
each basic entry for those unfamiliar with the Georgian script, in which the
Mingrelian is, as it should be, represented (two additional characters are
necessary for schwa, transcribed by ‘y’, and the glottal stop, though here an
apostrophe indicates the latter—usually the Georgian graph for [q'] is
inverted). However, since all extra citations within the entries for verbs are
given exclusively in the Georgian script, serious readers need it anyway. We
also learn that, whilst verbs have as their basic entry the (usually preverbless)
masdar, each such entry contains, where they exist, the 3rd person singular
forms of the present, future, aorist, ‘1st perfect (resultative)’, and ‘3rd perfect
410 

(resultative)’—all participial forms are also quoted. Readers (including this

reviewer) will be puzzled over the terminology here.
It is customary to distinguish (for Georgian, at least) three Series of tense-
aspect-mood paradigms, the first member of Series III, the perfect, being
usually deemed the inferential counterpart to the Series II aorist, used for
factual past statements. Now in 1953 (‘Ibero-Caucasica V’, in Georgian)
native-speaker Giorgi Rogava demonstrated that Mingrelian has a fourth
Series, containing inferential counterparts to the Series I paradigms—it is the
first member of this extra Series, formed by circumfix no-ue and meaning ‘X
is/was apparently VERBing’, that is presented under the guise of the
mysterious ‘3rd perfect (resultative)’.
Little progress is possible in Kartvelian languages without a full
understanding of the verb. The reputations of grammars and dictionaries thus
essentially depend on their treatment of this category. The present volume
has systematicity in its favour, but Q'ipshidze is more fulsome, particularly
concerning the (often complex) combinations of preverbs (in which Mingrelian
is vastly richer than Georgian) and roots. For example, the half column (large
print) here devoted to ula ‘going’ compares with six and a half columns
(small print) for the same root l- in Q'ipshidze! Whilst all 3rd person singular
aorists end in -u, some (most) conjugations demand -i, others -e for the first
two persons, but the entries here are silent on which is required. Causative
formations (like postpositions) are generally omitted. Under ngara ‘crying’
one will not find the simple expression ‘X cries’ (ingars), and one wonders
why ongaruans is translated ‘er beweint’—surely it corresponds to Georgian
at'irebs ‘X makes Y cry’? All verbs are assigned a participle formed by
circumfix na-ueri (translated as ‘Entgelt für das [Verb]’), a formation not
mentioned by Q'ipshidze and unencountered in my investigations (into the
westernmost dialect).
To illustrate an average verbal entry let us take ch'arua ‘writing’. Given
(with Series-forms) are: 1. ch'aruns ‘X writes’, 2. ich'aruns ‘X writes for X's
self’, 3. uch'aruns ‘X writes for Y’, 4. ich'aruu(n) ‘X is being written’ (long
vowels, absent from the dialect with which I am familiar, are indicated by
geminates), 5. ach'aruu(n) ‘X is being written for/to Y’, 6. ich'are(n) ‘X can
be written’, 7. ach'are(n) ‘X can be written by/for/to Y’+participles. These
all take perfectivizing preverb do-. duuch'aru appears as the (1st) perfect for
(1)–(3)—by adding the external pronouns musho ‘for self’ to (2), tisho ‘for
Y’ to (3), the authors could have indicated how the language syntactically
preserves the semantic difference. For a full entry I would have expected to
see reference to at least the additional: och'arapuans ‘X makes Y write’,
ech'arua ‘describe’, mech'arua ‘write to (thither)’, moch'arua ‘write to
(hither)’, gilach'arua ‘write around’, ginoch'arua ‘copy’, mishach'arua ‘regis-
ter’, eshach'arua ‘lift (text) out of; remove (text)’, inoch'arua ‘inscribe’.
Strangely, gech'arua/gech'arapa ‘write on; assess’ has its own entry, minus all
finite forms. Entries such as ?vashich'ara ‘fate’ might usefully have been
etymologized, here giving ‘forehead's-writing’, which has no (single word)
parallel in Georgian but for which cp. neighbouring Abkhaz a.la.xje.n."ts'a
the.eye.above[=forehead].on.place[=record] ‘fate’.
This is a useful contribution to Mingrelian studies, but what is really
needed is for the Georgian Academy file-cards on Mingrelian and Svan to be
turned into their respective dictionaries—for which Kartvelologists have been
yearning for decades.
 
 411

 . :
Culture and conquest in Mongol Eurasia.
(Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization.) xiv, 245 pp. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001. £40.
Any new publication by Thomas T. Allsen is justly followed by ripples of
excitement in the world of medieval Euro-Asian research. A new book excites
those ripples to tidal proportions. Allsen's latest study, following his appetiser,
Commodity and exchange in the Mongol Empire, fully deserves such anticipatory
enthusiasm and few if any could be disappointed at the result of his efforts,
Culture and conquest in Mongol Eurasia.
Once again the focus of Allsen's attention is the Chinggisid courts in
medieval Iran and China, discerned through the medium of Mongolian,
Chinese, Persian, Arabic, European and Caucasian sources and presented in
Allsen's always readable and lucid style. His conclusions are possibly radical
but his argument is convincing and the picture he unveils of the medieval
Mongol polity is one that will fit securely behind those who, in recent years,
have been urging a reassessment of the traditional, sometimes negative, view
of the Chinggisid empire. While acknowledging the existence of both a Pax
Mongolica and a Tartar Yoke, and recognizing the traditional role of nomadic
society in facilitating communication while at the same time fostering
destruction, Allsen demonstrates how the Mongols initiated and perpetuated
cultural exchange on a vast scale in the furtherance of their imperialistic
ambitions. Rather than being a by-product of imperial conquest, with urban
entrepreneurs and traders taking advantage of newly opening markets, cultural
exchange was initiated and promoted by the Mongols themselves, who acted
as the agents of their own multinational cultural clearing house. For the
Mongols, human talent was just another form of legitimate plunder and a
further source of booty which along with land, slaves, animals, precious
material and other goods, was expected to be equitably divided among the
‘royal family’. It was this human traffic which formed a central element in
the empire's cultural exchange.
The extent of this human traffic is made plain from the outset of Allsen's
study. The Mongols were a minority in their own empire and they needed the
help of ‘foreigners’ to run their vast administration. These ‘foreigners’ would
ideally be without local political or social ties and it was in Yuan China that
the ruling Mongols developed a technique for accommodating these criteria.
This entailed dividing the Yuan population into geographically defined groups
and determining office, promotion, and work location according to quotas
which ensured equal treatment for western Asians and Mongols with those
from north and south China. The result was an administration composed, at
all levels, of a complex ethnic, linguistic, and religious mix which meant
‘thousands of agents of cultural transmission and change dispersed throughout
the Yuan realm’ (p. 7). The table which accompanies this point graphically
illustrates the social depth and extent of this systematic immigration and
transmigration, with Italians, Flemings, Scandinavians, Germans and other
Europeans among immigrants from western Asia working as everything from
leopard keepers and goldsmiths to accountants and singers. To a lesser extent,
the same pattern was evident in Iran, with eastern Asians employed in
occupations ranging from agriculturalists and stonemasons to cooks and
wet nurses.
The book initially outlines the economic and political framework in which
412 

this Mongol-inspired cultural exchange was able to develop. Iran and China
had long had commercial, cultural and even religious links dating back to the
earliest times and substantial ‘Persian’ trading centres are recorded in China
as early as the mid-eighth century, with Chinese governments establishing
institutions to administer these growing communities. With the advent of the
Mongols, the centuries-old relationship between Iran and China underwent a
dramatic intensification, initiated in particular by the accession of the Great
Qa'an, Möngke, in 1251. Allsen deftly emphasizes the significance of the
establishment of the Ilkhanate and details the sometimes convoluted history
of the Mongols in Iran until the demise of Abu: Sa"ı:d in 1335. Allsen sees this
whole period as being of great importance to both China and Iran, and finds
the development of their relationship reflected in an ‘enduring partnership’.
The two countries maintained diplomatic, ideological and military support:
‘They exchanged intelligence, commodities, tribute, personnel, and envoys’.
And their national resources were ‘appropriated, apportioned, and
exchanged’ (p. 56).
Two men who recognized and took full personal advantage of the
enormous cultural opportunities of this ‘enduring partnership’, and who
receive Allsen's full attention and praise, are the Persian wazir Rashı:d al-Dı:n
and the Mongol emissary to China and Iran, the chancellor Bolad Aqa (aka
Pu: la: d and Po-lo]. The detailing of Bolad's career from a number of diverse
sources, Chinese and Persian, is particularly welcome since the Yuan sources
do not contain his biography. Though commonly credited as ‘a literate
Mongolian and informant of Rashı:d al-Dı:n’ (p. 79) Allsen acknowledges
Bolad as far more than this, characterizing him ‘as a Mongolian intellectual—
literate, cosmopolitan, and a man of affairs’ (p. 79) whom Rashı:d al-Dı:n
frequently praised, consulted, quotes, and to whom he would also defer.
However, though Bolad was a respected and powerful Mongol administrator
who encouraged reform in both China and Iran and one ‘who favoured
accommodation and innovation’ (p. 79), he remained true to his nomadic
Mongolian roots and traditions and is unlikely, Allsen concludes, to have
been hauled before any court and tried for ‘un-Mongolian activities’ (p. 79).
Rashı:d al-Dı:n's particular indebtedness to Bolad in the compilation of the
Ja: mi" al-Tawa: rı:kh and others of his literary works, is fully explored in a
chapter on historiography.
The body of the work, often of a descriptive nature, concerns specific
exchanges of cultural ware. Studies on, for example, astronomy have appeared
before, but Allsen has uncovered some fascinating information in the field of
agronomy, the Chinese government office over which Bolad held considerable
sway, and cuisine, the area which served as the launching pad for both Bolad's
and Rashı:d al-Dı:n's careers. Other areas examined include medicine, printing,
geography and cartography.
The final chapters of this welcome book deal with the centrality to this
cultural exchange of the Mongols themselves. Muslim astronomers went to
China and vice versa, not because their counterparts wanted to exchange
scientific information but because their Mongol masters wanted second
opinions and further clarification of their astronomical findings.
This is an important book not only for the refreshing light it throws on
Chinggisid history but also for the wealth of new material it has uncovered in
the process. The Mongols as cultural brokers is an exciting concept in itself
but the evidence that Allsen has produced in support of this view will occupy
and entertain specialists for some time to come.
 
 413

: 1 :

Knowledge and liberation, a treatise on philosophical theology: a new
edition and English translation of the Gusha: yish wa raha: yish by
Faquir M. Hunzai, with an introduction and commentary by Parwiz
Morewedge.
xii, 132, 92 pp. London and New York: I. B. Tauris (in association
with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London), 1998. £25.
  (ed. and trans.):
Make a shield from wisdom: selected verses from Na: s1ir-i Khusraw's
Dı:va: n.
(Revised edition) vii, 103 pp. London and New York: I. B. Tauris (in
association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London), 2001.
£12.95.
 . :
Nasir Khusraw, the ruby of Badakhshan: a portrait of the Persian
poet, traveller and philosopher.
(Ismaili Heritage Series, 4.) xxiii, 292 pp. 4 pl. London and New
York: I. B. Tauris (in association with The Institute of Ismaili
Studies, London), 2000.
At a time when there has never been more talk about the need for better
informed Western understandings of Islam, it is sobering to reflect still just
how little material which is both readable and reliable is available to the
English reader who wishes to discover something of even many of the major
figures of Islamic civilization. Due acknowledgement should therefore be
made of such excellent initiatives as that represented by the publications
programme of the London Institute of Ismaili Studies, in which all three titles
under review appear. Both as a committed Ismaili who attained the rank of
h1 ujjat in the Fatimid hierarchy, and as a leading figure of the early medieval
Persian literary renaissance, Na: s1ir-i Khusraw is an ideal topic for this
programme, with its aim of seeking ‘to explore the relationship of religious
ideas to broader dimensions of society and culture’. Collectively, the three
books mark a significant advance in enhancing the understanding of an
exceptionally interesting Islamic thinker and poet. Partly as a consequence of
Na: s1ir-i Khusraw's exceptionally varied oeuvre, each book takes a very
different approach. A comparison between them thus itself stimulates some
reflection on the possibilities and the problems inherent in the task of writing
for a twenty-first century English-reading public about an eleventh-century
Persian writer.
The core textual disciplines of edition, translation and commentary,
themselves the necessary foundations of intercultural understandings, are
deployed to admirable effect in the first book under review, which presents
the Gusha: yish wa raha: yish (‘Unfettering and Setting Free’), a set of thirty
questions and answers which is one of the shorter philosophical treatises
composed by Na: s1ir-i Khusraw in Persian prose. In his short editorial preface,
F. M. Hunzai explains his recourse to the author's other extant philosophical
works, in the absence of independent manuscript evidence, to correct the
414 

errors in the two previous editions by Sa"id Nafisi; and briefly explains the
methodology of his English translation, which is admirably clear and readable.
Parviz Morewedge provides a lucid introduction to Na: s1ir-i Khusraw's
hermeneutic philosophical theology which concludes with a persuasive counter
to those still prevalent attitudes which would marginalize Ismaili thought as
heretical and obscurantist. Both here and in Morewedge's economically
organized analytical commentary which follows the translation, attention is
particularly drawn to the originality of Na: s1ir-i Khusraw's doctrine of time,
which specified existence in terms of the ‘present time’ and to his distinctive
orientation within the Islamic context to a neo-Plotinian attribution of
existence to the Universal Intellect rather than to God. Readers with interests
in medieval philosophy should thus find much of interest in this carefully
produced scholarly volume.
Students of Islamic literature familiar with Annemarie Schimmel's work
will have a good idea of what to expect from her short study, a slightly
revised version of the first edition (London, 1993). It provides a quick
introduction to Na: s1ir-i Khusraw's other persona as the prolific author of a
very large dı:wa: n of Persian poetry. Mostly cast in the qas1:ıda form, this is
remarkably distinguished from the poetry of his Ghaznavid contemporaries
by its thematic orientation towards Ismaili themes, especially its emphasis
upon the pursuit of wisdom as a supreme ideal. Although slightly spoilt by a
number of typographical errors, the book is composed with Schimmel's
customary verve. Through wide-ranging quotations in English translation,
two introductory chapters establish a poetic profile for Na: s1ir-i Khusraw and
give a sense of his centrality within the Persian poetic tradition through
frequent cross-reference to such favourite later poets as Ru: mı: and Iqba: l. The
third chapter consists of a linked series of longer quotations which provide
an enjoyable overview of Na: s1ir-i Khusraw's handling of the qas1:ıda, especially
his use of the nası:b for remarkably vivid pictorial evocations of nature and
the seasons.
Of the three approaches exemplified in these books, the most original and
probably the one which will be found most congenial by many readers is that
adopted by Hunsberger. Seeking to avoid the probability of most readers
skipping the chapters on philosophy if these were separately composed, she
has constructed her general introduction to Na: s1ir-i Khusraw as both poet and
philosopher around the remarkable narrative of his Safarna: ma, the pioneering
Persian prose travel book in which he describes his seven-year return journey
from Khurasan to Cairo the Fatimid capital and to Mecca. After two
introductory chapters which provide admirably clear accounts of the sources
both for Na: s1ir-i Khusraw's life and for the texts of his works, the Safarna: ma
is used in the excellent version by Wheeler Thackston (Albany, N.Y., 1986)
as the organizing principle around which to base generous extracts from the
poetry and from the philosophical works.
It has to be said that, while the main ideas of the philosophical writings
are clearly conveyed, the chopping up of their original presentation which
Hunsberger's method necessarily involves does entail some awkwardnesses of
continuity across the volume as a whole. But the poetry comes off splendidly.
Hunsberger provides very generous selections with always helpful running
prose introductions and commentary. She also translates well, and many
should find the measured freedom she permits herself more attractive than
Schimmel's more literal renderings. Compare for example, by way of
concluding endorsement, the opening of the famous qas1:ıda beginning a: mad
baha: r u naubat-i sarma: shud, where Schimmel (p. 66) has ‘Spring has come—
 415

the air is cool and fresh / and the aged world is young again! / Dark blue
waterponds look now like wine; / meadows, silver-like, are now soft green /
and the wind, once winter's banner, turned / fragrant, like perfumed with
aloes-wood!’, Hunsberger (p. 153) renders ‘Spring arrived and the season of
ice has fled. / Once again this ancient world turns young. / Ice-blue water
now turns dark like wine, / Silvery fields turn a verdant green. January's
harsh wind, whipping like flags, / Has turned soft like mildest mist of incense’.
 

 -:
Bactrian documents from northern Afghanistan, I: Legal and
economic documents.
255 pp. (Studies in the Khalili Collection, Vol. =Corpus
Inscriptionum Iranicarum. Part II, Vol. VI.) Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000. £45.
Nicholas Sims-Williams' work contains texts and translations (but no
reproductions) of a stupendous number of documents composed in the
Bactrian dialect of Middle Iranian, which was previously known only
fragmentarily. These documents are written in Graeco-Bactrian cursive script,
a late vestige of Alexander the Great's expedition. Among them are 26
documents, numbered A to X, which are of particular value, dating from the
years 110 to 549 in the era of the Tochi inscriptions, which I published in
HuBS (=Baktrische Sprachdenkmäler, Wiesbaden 1966/7). Sims-Williams is
inclined to follow me in calling this era, which begun at 233 .. (not 232 as
I had read), ‘Kushano-Sasanian’. The majority of the documents are preserved
in two copies, which occasionally show slight differences.
Texts and translations are arranged face-to-face, which will be greatly
appreciated by users of the fascinating material. To numerous scholars the
world over, however, the Greek characters of the edition may prove to be an
obstacle to detailed study. For this reason I should like to suggest adopting
Latin transliteration in the future as far as possible, at least in the secondary
literature: Greek e, o>Latin e, o; Greek g, v>Latin e: , o: ; Greek u (which has
the phonetic value of h here)>Latin u (not y); Greek Q, x>Latin f, x (not
ph, kh); Greek h (rare in Bactrian)>Latin t with any diacritical sign available,
e.g. ţ (not th). To avoid confusion between the figures j∞ (ksi not x) ‘60’ and
x∞ (khi/x) ‘600’, the Greek figures must be rendered by ‘Arabic’ ones (e.g.
s∞j∞=200-60=260; t∞p∞g∞=300-80-8=388; in Tochi x∞l∞a∞=600-30-1=631).
Information on the geographical and historical framework was detailed by
Sims-Williams in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Iranian and Central
Asian Studies in the University of London delivered on 1 February 1996 and
published 1997 by the School of Oriental and African Studies. The geographical
centre is the kingdom of Ro: b, modern Rui, province of Samanga: n to the
north of the Hindu Kush; see ms. N malabo samiggano o: dago abo sandarano
abo ro: boxaraggo albaro ‘here in the district of Samingan, at Sandaran, the
court of the Khars of Rob’. The region of Gandara (Skt. Gandhara) to the
south of the Hindu Kush is mentioned but marginally. By focusing attention
on legal, economical, social, political, historical and ethnographic conditions,
the texts shed light upon a rather dark period of Afghan history. The new
material gives clear evidence of the co-existence of peoples of quite different
origins. Among them are also Turkish invaders, faint traces of whom I have
416 

already identified in HuBS on the coin inscriptions (NumH) of Robert Göbl's

‘Iranian Huns’.
The tradition of the Iranian Zoroastrians becomes obvious in proper
names such as o: romazdano ‘Ahuramazdian’, but kamirdo, the name or title
of a god, looks rather heterodox or even heathen, cf. Av. kamereda- ‘head’
(said of the heads of the dae: vas=devils). The name of the Hephthalite Huns
(Greek hunnoi hoi hephthalitai, Skt. hu: n1 a), which I had found abbreviated to
e: b in NumH 287, is now attested in its full form as e: bodalo (pl. e: bodalano,
adj. e: bodalaggo). Turkish elements are accumulated in ms. T 1f. bagoaziiaso
storogo torosanzo oislogdo xotologo tapagliio bilgauo sabouo xinzo: iio xalasano
oislogdo ‘Bagaziyas, the Turkish princess, the queen of Qutlugh Tapaghlıgh
Bilgä Sävüg, the princess of the Khalach people’. Indian influence (probably
Buddhist) is manifest in razogolo<Skt. ra: ja-kula- ‘royal family, royal court’,
in the PN dde: borazo<Skt. devara: ja ‘king of the gods’, and even in the
simplex dde: bo PN<Skt. deva ‘god, ruler, lord’ in ms. Q 9 dde: bo ialogano
poro tarmiddigo zadago ‘Deb son of Yalgan, a native of Tarmid (Termez)’.
As Sims-Williams has pointed out to me, the same also occurs in NumH 244
and 246 bago dde: bo (not ooe: bo, doe: bo, ade: bo), where Iranian bago ‘lord’ is
combined with its Indian equivalent deva. In this connection the question
could be raised as to whether the title se: ro, already known from the coin
inscriptions NumH 241-243 and now attested in se: rotorko ‘ser of the Turks’
ms. S3,6,11 and se: rogo: zoganaggo ‘belonging to the ser of Gozgan’ ms. R 18
(derived from *se: rogo: zogano ‘ser of Gozgan’) has the same origin as Greek
se: r ‘Chinese’ (also ‘silk-worm’). If se: ro is a title, as Sims-Williams argues, its
position as first constituent of the two compounds is unexpected, the normal
position of the title being seen in go: zoganoxoe: aggo ‘belonging to the lord of
Gozgan’ ms. O18f.
A most useful description of the verbal system is preceded by a few notes
on orthography. These deal mainly with the lack of a distinction between the
letters a and d (but o is clearly distinguished from both), furthermore with the
development d>dd occurring in the later texts before the palatal vowels e: and
i (but also in the place name malro, maddro modern Madr). The end of the
word regularly is a silent -o, a historical spelling which continues the Bactrian
nom. sg. ending o: >o of the third century .., generalizing it by replacing the
older -e and –i (e.g. prep. pido<pati ). It seems worth mentioning that, from
a descriptive point of view, similar historical or pseudo-historical spellings
may link compound constituents as in pido-robdo ‘received’<*pati-gr̊fta-
(unless the spelling follows a more recent pronunciation as in pi-sagdo
‘agreed’<*pati-saxta-). A further development can be observed in the
arbitrary use of o as a syllable boundary marker as in alobaro ‘court’, variant
of albaro<*dwa: ra-, storogo ‘great’<storgo (also astorgo), e: bodalo
‘Hephthalite’<*e: bdalo. The result is a puzzling orthographical inconsistency.
Of the noun prefix Bactr. abe: - ‘without, -less’ (=MP abe: ) Sims-Williams has
found the variants abe: a-, abe: io-, abe: o-, abe: uo-, be: -, be: go-, be: uo, to which
abue: - should be added (see below). The strange collection of spellings is a
mixture of diachronic and synchronic variants of phonetic, morphologic and
also purely graphic nature, including erroneous archaizations and other
misspellings, thus being a typical example of the obstacles which Sims-
Williams had to face in his deciphering of the texts.
Divine names show the natural tendency to preserve archaic forms
such as oaxs̆o ‘deified river’ (see below)<waxs̆u- vs. oaxo ‘increase,
interest’<*waxs̆a-. Unexpected is the loss of initial long vowels in zaborgo
‘freeman’<azaborgo<*azadborgo, variant of azadoborgo>*a: za: ta-puhraka-;
 417

dagoggo ‘such, in such a way, in this way, thus’<*e: dagoggo<*aita: t/aitat-

gaunaka-.
The text edition is followed by a superbly organized glossary in which the
meanings posed by the author are briefly but precisely justified as far as he
considered it necessary. Some notes:

abo prep. ‘to, for, against, into, in, on, at’: In the Lazard volume (Paris 1989)
209–15 I discussed kidabo, odabo, malabo where abo is graphically joined with
the preceding kido ‘who’, odo ‘and’, malo ‘here’, a fact which suggested the
interpretation of abo as an enclitic particle. Yet in all the new occurrences of
these and other similar combinations abo clearly governs a following noun,
which makes its equation with the well-attested preposition abo unavoidable
though leaving the ‘graphic enclisis’ unexplained.
abue: bindo ‘detached, dissociated (from)’ (also abe: bindo, abe: mindo, be: bindo),
for which Sims-Williams offers a complicated etymology, is in my opinion to
be dissected into abue: -bindo ‘without bond, free of’ with bindo<Iran. banda-
‘bond, tie’.
anauagdo ‘without deduction(?)’ shows a meaning quite different from that
of Av. anahaxta- (*ana: haxta-) ‘unauthorized’, with which it seems to agree
etymologically.
andago ‘district’, "‘perhaps<*antaka-, cf. OInd. ánta- ‘edge, border’ (NSW).
Better<*hanta: ka- ‘junction of water courses’?
laxmigo ‘place of burial’, cf. laxm(o) or laxm(i)[go] in the Hephthalite
fragment MB7,1.
laxs̆atanigo stands beside laxmigo in mss. V and W, but NSW's explanation
as ‘crematorium’ with underlying laxs̆atano<*daxs̆tana- is not without
difficulties. Av. daxs̆ta- means ‘sign’, and Av. daxs̆a- must have the same
basic meaning (>Phl. daxs̆ag ‘sign’, cf. Skt. laks1a- ‘sign’); in its only
occurrence P21 (22) it does not mean ‘burning’ (‘Brand’ Bartholomae 676
after erroneous Phl. tr. dazis̆n) but it is used there in the sense of ‘branding,
stigmatization, brand’. Thus laxs̆atano possibly from *daxs̆asta: na- ‘place of
physical punishment, torture, stigmatization, execution’.
miuroasano, miroasano, mirosano ‘east’: sano instead of expected asano is also
attested in uo: rsano NumH 240 vs. Phl. xo: ra: sa: n NumH 208.
oaxs̆o, a river god also attested on the Kushana coins is explained by Sims-
Williams as ‘the deified river Oxos’, yet he must be a river-god in general.
Note particularly ms. U 2 oaxs̆obago kidabo gandaro spisindo ‘the god Wakhsh
whom they worship in Gandara’ (similarly ms. W1), and note also Aramaeo-
Iranian wxs̆wprtbg ‘lord of the river fords’ on Davary's inscription
Laghman II, where wxs̆w (waxs̆u) points to the river of Laghman, a tributary
of the Kabul river in Gandara, far from the course and the sources of the Oxos.
uilitobe: ro PN, in origin a title, Turk. iltäbir: Skt. hitivira in NumH 208 stands
for *hiltivira with simplification of the ligature lt. In a similar way the
subsequent kharalakha (thus better than kharala: va) is graphically simplified
from *kharlukha ‘Qarluq, member of the Qarluq people’.
xoe: o ‘lord’ is contracted from xoade: o (variants xodde: o, xodde: oo, xodde: io):
The contracted xoe: o was found by myself on the coin countermarks Km 84
and 97, see also mss 22 (1967) 56 on ge: lano xoe: o for ge: lano xoade: o. The
contraction, which is not necessarily of purely graphic nature (oad
inadvertently>ooo simplified>o), could originate from a vocativic weak form
of the same type as Missis, Miss<Mistress.
zonolado PN<*zru: n(a)-da: ta- ‘given by the time-god Zruwan’ (from the weak
418 

stem zru: n- of Av. zruuuan-), variant zolado as also in zolado go: zogano
(NumH 273, zonlado intended in NumH 271?).
If my explanation of the PN zonolado is acceptable, zorigo, zorago ‘time,
period, age’ comes from *zruwaka- rather than from *zru: naka- as Sims-
Williams wants, comparing Sogd. z1 wrn'k. As for the meaning note the
interesting contrast between zamano in aso mandaronigo ro: so parso mabaro
zamano ‘from tomorrow and for all future time’ ms. J17 and zorigo in aso
mo: so abo iaoie: dano zorigo ‘from now to eternity’, ibid. 20.
The work is a philological and linguistic masterpiece. Iranologists will
impatiently await the publication of its second volume.
 

 . :
Zoroastrian and Parsi studies. Selected works of John R. Hinnells.
vii, 430 pp. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. £50.
The book under review is not just a collection of articles, but a testimony to
thirty years of dedicated research and first-rate scholarship, devoted to a
religion of great ethical and intellectual appeal, Zoroastrianism, and to an
exciting community, the Parsis. The volume comprises eighteen of John
Hinnells' articles, and includes some of his major contributions on the
influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism and Christianity, as well as a selection
from his ground-breaking work on the history, religion and diaspora of the
Parsis. The articles are grouped together thematically in six sections. Each of
the latter is introduced by the author's recent reflections on the subject,
written specifically for this book and outlining areas for future research. The
volume also includes a hitherto unpublished paper on ‘War and medicine in
Zoroastrianism’ (pp. 277–300), which was delivered as the Second Dastur
S. H. Kutar Memorial Lecture at SOAS in spring 1999.
Section A, ‘Theory and method in Zoroastrian studies’ consists of one
article entitled ‘Postmodernism and the study of Zoroastrianism’ (pp. 7–25).
This is a revealing account of the ‘meta-narrative’ in the work of various
scholars of Zoroastrianism and their more or less conscious move towards
postmodernist approaches.
Section B, ‘Zoroastrian influence on biblical imagery’ offers two of
Hinnells' crucial articles on the influence of Zoroastrian cosmology on Jewish
eschatology. Together with scholars such as Mary Boyce, Shaul Shaked and
Andres Hultgård, John Hinnells is one of the most important proponents of
the idea that Zoroastrianism had a powerful impact on Jewish and Christian
eschatology. The first article, entitled ‘Zoroastrian saviour imagery’
(pp. 45–72), focuses on the development of cosmic dualism and the concept
of evil, including the devil, demons and hell, and their counterpart, God,
angels and heaven. Most of these concepts are found in the Zoroastrian texts
right from the beginning, but in Judaism they surface only in the
Intertestamental literature and the New Testament, dating roughly from
around 200 ... to 100 .. Thus there appears to be a time-lag between the
earliest historical contacts between Persians and Jews—dating back to the
beginnings of the Achaemenid period in the sixth century ...—on the one
hand, and the attestation of apparently Zoroastrian ideas in Jewish texts,
which date only from the second century ... and later, on the other.
This problem is addressed in the second article entitled ‘Zoroastrian
 419

influence on Judaism and Christianity: some further reflections’ (pp. 73–92),

where Hinnells makes a compelling case for a later dating of the period of
influence. He argues that it took place during the Parthian period, and
convincingly describes the historical setting which makes such influence—as
he writes—‘not only possible but likely’ (p. 33). For, between 200 ... and
100 .., Jews and Zoroastrians were allies fighting against common enemies,
first the Seleucids and then the Romans, and Zoroastrianism was a powerful
presence in the Jewish world.
The major part of this book, comprising Sections C, D and E, is
appropriately dedicated to the field in which John Hinnells' research is most
innovative: that of the Parsi communities around the globe. Section C, on
‘Parsi history’ includes three articles on the relationship between the Parsis
and the British (pp. 101–73), originally published in the 1978 edition of the
Journal of the K.R. Cama Oriental Institute, and a fourth one on ‘Social
change and religious transformation among Bombay Parsis in the early
twentieth century’ (pp. 175–200).
What distinguishes his work from that of his predecessors, such as, for
example, E. Kulke, is that—in his interpretation of attitudes to social
problems—Hinnells takes religion seriously into account. This is particularly
obvious in the articles collected in Section D entitled ‘Zoroastrianism and the
Parsis’. For example, in his contribution on ‘Parsi charities in the 19th and
20th centuries’ (pp. 209–40) he convincingly demonstrates the religious
foundations of the ‘Flowering of Zoroastrian benevolence’. Hinnells concludes
that Parsi charities indicate that ‘the ideals of the religion ... have been
implemented on a scale perhaps unequalled in any other community’ (p. 238).
The same approach is also apparent in his important article on
‘Contemporary Zoroastrian philosophy’ (pp. 241–75), where he summarizes
the various religious and intellectual movements within the community in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In spite of a great diversity of opinion
regarding Zoroastrian religious philosophy, he concludes that within their
moral philosophy there are constant features, which have changed little over
the millennia. These include care for Ahura Mazda's good creation, and an
emphasis on truth and honesty, industry and learning. These values and
attitudes contributed to the Parsi rise to prosperity and influence in British
India, and continue to characterize the diaspora communities. Hinnells points
out that ‘[h]owever Zoroastrians may philosophise, what they practice has
remained constant’ (p. 271).
Section E includes four articles in Hinnells' current field of research: the
Parsi diaspora, which is the title of this section. His article on Muncherji
Bhownagree (pp. 307–34) throws new light on the second Asian MP at
Westminster as a politician and as a Zoroastrian. The last three contributions
on ‘The modern Zoroastrian diaspora’ (pp. 335–430) are comparative studies
of Parsi settlements around the globe and investigate the modes of, and
motives for, their emigration. All this work is based on original research and
is without precedent both thematically and methodologically. With these
studies Hinnells outlines a whole new field of research (cf. p. 365), to which
he is devoting a major book, soon to be published by Oxford University Press.
In conclusion, Zoroastrian and Parsi studies is a treasure-trove of
information which facilitates our understanding not only of the Zoroastrian
religion, but also of the historical background of Christianity and, especially,
of the Zoroastrians themselves.
 
420 

  :

Reise zu Gott: Sufis und Derwische im Islam.
219 pp. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000. €12.50.

This book represents an extremely valuable addition to the scholarly literature

of Sufi studies and will be of great value as both an introductory text to the
subject and a reminder to more advanced researchers of the extraordinary
diversity of style and substance which has typified Sufi history. While many
existing introductory texts concentrate on figures from the ‘classical’
homelands of Sufism in Iraq and Khurasan, this study differs in that it surveys
the whole of the Islamic world, from Sub-Saharan Africa across the Middle
East to East Turkestan, with particular emphasis on the author's main regions
of specialization in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. However, what
distinguishes this study most clearly from the considerable number of
introductions to Sufism currently available is that it offers an account of
Sufism from the perspective of the ethnographer as much as that of the
historian. Herein lies the book's greatest value.
For the most part, the history of Sufism as conceived in Western
scholarship has been presented in one of two ways: either through the
discussion of the lives of the ‘great men’ of Sufi tradition, often as perceived
and evaluated through the textual evidence of their sometimes complex
theoretical writings, with occasional (though often roundly criticized) attempts
to form models of the institutionalization of Sufism into its characteristic
orders (tarı:qas). The other, more essentialist, approach has been to present
Sufism as a single system (or mode) of knowledge handed down, often with
the help of vernacular traditions of love poetry, to its various practitioners
over many centuries. While both approaches continue to complement each
other in contributing much of great value to our understanding of Sufi history,
both have ultimately failed to provide a convincing account of how Sufism
managed to develop into the almost ubiquitous mass movement, present at
all levels of Muslim society until modern times, which it became over time.
For while accounts of complex Sufi metaphysicians hardly provide a convincing
basis for the evolution of a tradition of mass appeal, descriptions of the power
of love poetry at the other extreme have tended to over-emotionalize the
‘popular’ following of Sufism. Frembgen is wise in refraining from building
an overarching model accounting for the many diverse developments in Sufi
history, and the strength of his account is in its emphasis on the intelligibility
of Sufism only when it is seen as being embedded in its wider social and
cultural environments, linked by so many subtle threads to traditions of group
identity, medicine, political resistance, folklore, social status and even humour.
This approach also has the great advantage of rendering comprehensible the
mass appeal, influence and longevity of Sufism by stressing the interdependence
of the practice of Sufism with shrines and other supporting institutions and
belief in the miraculous power of God's chosen friends at all levels of society.
Although due respect is paid to the great theorists of tasawwuf, the author's
ethnographical approach makes for an account of the traditions of Sufi and
Dervish from the broader perspectives of the mass of its followers, occasional
attendants and outright sceptics in Muslim societies at large, as opposed to
the more ‘top-down’ perspective inevitable in studies emphasizing the roles
of a narrow band of textual Sufi theorists. In this respect, then, the work may
be considered to be in part a study of the much maligned category of ‘popular
Sufism’. It is here, however, that it makes its greatest contribution to our
 421

understanding of Sufism in unravelling the intelligibility and coherence of

these traditions as forming a complex cultural system in their own right.
After a short introduction outlining the scale and scope of Sufi traditions,
the book is divided into four main sections: the relationship of mystics and
saints; orthodox (bu: -shar") orders; ‘free’ (bı:-shar") orders and ecstatics; and
the diverse practices of Dervish life. Within these sections, the author discusses
not only a wide variety of expressions of Sufism, but also provides sober
accounts of such complex and often contested issues as the relationship of
Sufism to politics (in pre-modern, colonial and present times), islamization
(or ‘conversion’), shrine-cults, gender, sexuality and drugs. However, the
most fascinating sections of the book describe the expression of Sufi piety in
traditions of food, jewellery, dress and the many other manifestations of Sufi
material culture. The author has explored the latter at greater length in his
Kleidung und Ausrüstung islamischer Gottsucher: Ein Beitrag zur materiellen
Kultur des Derwischwesens (Wiesbaden, 1999). Of similar interest is the
material he presents on traditions of Dervish communities and popular
entertainment. These sections, like much of the material drawn from the
author's own fieldwork, are all the more poignant for describing the richly
varied Islamic heritage of pre-war Afghanistan.
The author's emphasis on the social underpinnings of Sufi life—seen at its
best in his discussion of the economic foundations of Sufism through the
patronage of Sufi institutions, personal employment and begging—reflects the
tenor of a considerable body of post-war German scholarship on Sufism,
much of it in stark contrast to the more individualist emphasis of Anglo-
Saxon and French work. Reise zu Gott is therefore also helpful for the non-
specialist reader in drawing together much of this German tradition. The
book assembles an impressive array of ethnographical and travellers' accounts
of Sufi practices stretching back some four centuries. This, along with a
careful use of modern historical scholarship, lends the work a chronological
depth that might otherwise be missing in an ethnographical survey.
Nonetheless, scholars of earlier periods of Sufi history might be frustrated by
the inevitable slant towards nineteenth- and twentieth-century evidence.
Others, by contrast, might find this a helpful rectification of the emphasis of
a great deal of work on Sufism on much earlier periods, and a timely reminder
that Sufism has continued to be a dynamic force in Muslim societies through
to the present day.
 

 

. . :
Collected papers. Vol. .
xvii, 265 pp. Oxford: The Pali Text Society, 2001.

The seventh volume of K. R. Norman's indispensable Collected papers on

Pali and related topics roughly covers the 1990s. A number of book reviews
are appended, covering O. von Hinüber's monographs on the history of Pali;
Colin Renfrew's, J. P. Mallory's, and A. Parpola's contributions on the origin
and migration of the Aryans; and Balbir's A 9 vaśyaka-Studien and Oberlies's
accompanying Glossar, to which Norman adds valuable comments on several
422 

of the glossary's more difficult entries. The review of W. B. Bollée's studies of

the Jain Nijjuttis (the heading accidentally omits the author's name) also
provides a large addendum to the glossaries. Norman tentatively supports
Bollée's etymology nijjutti<*nirvyukti: but derivation from niryukti, used in
the sense of niyoga=prayoga, seems much more suitable, semantically and
otherwise.
The article ‘When did the Buddha and the Jina die’ offers a rational
reappraisal of the traditional evidence; and ‘Dialect variation in Old and
Middle Indo-Aryan’ documents further discontinuities between Sanskrit and
MIA. His ‘Aśoka's debt to his people’ draws conclusions from the distribution
of references to the discharge of duty in the Aśokan corpus, either Aśoka's
duty to others (RE bhu: ta: nam 1 a: naniyam1 yeham
1 ) or theirs to him (SepE mama
a: naniyam 1 ehatha). Application of the genitive case to the creditor is surely too
well established for the latter phrase to convey ‘you [my ministers] will pay
my debt’, as suggested on p. 72. In ‘Traces of the subjunctive’, notably those
thought to subsist in the Aśokan and Pali 2 pl. -a: tha, Norman prefers to
attribute the vowel length to the influence of prosody and rhythm. The
phenomenon, recalling the R 1 gvedic strong imperative dadha: ta, may, however,
owe more to the semantic pressure of the 1 pl. imperative in -a: ma.
‘Masculine vocatives in -e in Pali’ addresses itself to the theme of those
-e vocatives that have been described as Magadhisms (Geiger) or as feminine
nicknames (CPD). Norman accepts the notion of nicknames in -a: , while
conceding that the commentaries do not really justify any such belief (p. 29),
and also, when that explanation seems inapplicable, a notion of honorific
plurals in -a: , again conceding that only honorific titles in the manner of
°a: ca: ryaih1 can be attested. One might rather suggest that -a vocatives that are
metrically long (as in the R 1 gveda) have been altered by analogy with brahme,
ra: je, ise, etc.: hence the Tris1t1ubh-opening Takka: riye and (converting an A 9 rya:
opening into the semblance of a Tris1t1ubh) Ca: le Upaca: le. This vocative was
then extended, via the locution Takka: riyama: n1 avo, to names that look like
feminines: Pilotikam 1 Paribba: jakam 1 , Bhesikam1 Naha: pitam 1 , Medakatha: liko
antiva: sı:, and *Godho Sakko, (hence Ghat1a: ya Sakkassa?).
‘Solitary as a rhinoceros horn’ reasserts this as the commentators' view
of the matter, although it seems unlikely that Nidd II 129 has this sense. The
khaggavisa: n1 a is an emblem of solitary grazing (eko care), and its name is
explained as ‘(one-)horned Khagga’, to make the point that the
Paccekabuddha is similarly unhampered (muttabandhano). The tassadiso refers
more naturally back to the emphasized khaggassa na: ma: ‘As the rhinoceros
has one single horn, so he, being individually enlightened, should go his way
in life properly, like it, as one single individual rid-of-encumbrances’. The
Jain version, however, agrees with later commentators.
‘A comparative study of Aśoka's Second Separate Edict’ assesses the
contribution of the recently discovered Sannati version. The appended
translation offers alternatives, where the versions part company: but in (B),
the insertion of ‘indeed’ for Jaugad1 a seems to be an oversight (since its kam 1
kam 1 - is ‘by dittography’). In (G), it is not clear why the superfluous ca of
Dh-J is preferred to the va of Sa (after mamam 1 nimittam1 ). The conclusions
drawn concentrate upon points of orthography, but diction must also have a
bearing on any attempt to reconstruct an Urtext. Sannati's orthography may
be past praying for, but its wording may sometimes help to identify pointless
padding: in (G), Norman's translation follows tacitly, but rightly, Dh-Sa ca
and Dh eva, against J ca me and J-Sa eva ca.
‘Adopting the domestic way of life’ supports Brough's reading of Dhp
 423

vissam 1 dhammam 1 as *veśmadharmam (Uv. veśmadharma: m1 ). Accepting that it

is a compound, Norman is also willing to understand a plural on the strength
of the Uv. reading; but Pali -am 1 could hardly convey so unobvious a
connotation. It is odd that there is no mention of the development -śm->
-m1 s- (ram 1 si) on p. 85. Accidental replacement of *vim1 sa- by visam1 - (SN Ee),
corrected to vissam 1 (Dhp and Spk), alongside the gloss *visma->visama in
Dhp-a, seems possible.
In ‘Does Ma: ra have flower-tipped arrows’, discussing Dhp 46 (GDhp.
300) Ma: rassa papupphaka: ni, Norman rejects the later implication of flower-
arrows, and follows others in understanding ‘cutting off the flowery blossoms’.
Epic (sam)pra-pus1pita confirms that the prefix is verse-filling; but the ‘flowers’
that are to be ‘cut down’ are, in the adjacent verse GDhp. 294 (Dhp 47–48,
MBh. 12.169.13, 17), the wayside flowers that distract one's attention from
the approaching cataclysm of death. This would be an appropriate item to
interpose between equally figurative expressions that amount to ‘the
insubstantiality of existence’ and ‘avoidance of Hades’. The fact that MBh.
expands the two hemistichs of GDhp. into two verses, while the Pali
substantially conflates GDhp. *kurute vasam 1 with the MBh. version a: da: ya
gacchati, tells against Brough's inference that a verse was lost in GDhp.
A study of two Rathoddhata: passages in Lakkhan1 a-suttanta (DN III, 152
and 155) provides, for the first time, metrically corrected texts. Despite the
translation offered, each one describes a present-tense reward for a past good
deed. In the second passage (here misleadingly conjoined as vv. 4–8), the deed
occupies one verse and the reward four verses, instead of one half-verse and
two and a half verses; and the present-tense reward includes a: sa and ahu,
present-perfect in meaning, and narrating the acquisition of two physical
characterstics. This is less neat than the perfect-present a: hu that explains their
significance in vv. 2–3.
v. 1ab. The notes seem to envisage four sorts of nourishment (p. 96), but a
Sanskrit commentary on lehyam quoted in BRD (rasa: sva: dena nigı:ryate,
dravı:bhu: tam 1 ) confirms that the gerund-gerundive construction involves only
two kinds, kha: dyabhojya ‘eaten chewed’ and lehyasva: dya ‘relished supped’.
Similarly, the DN prose narrative offers two noun phrases (... bhojanı:ya: nam 1,
... pa: na: nam 1 ‘food and drink’). The Sv commentary latches on to bhojana as
a noun, but foolishly drops pa: na and strews in three conjunctions. Since the
two expressions are in fact adjectival, pa: da a is scarcely syntactically ‘floating’
(p. 101 ‘[There were] all sorts of food’), but is in apposition with compounded
rasa-, again as implied by the rasita kha: danı:ya bhojanı:ya of the prose, and as
Rhys Davids had construed the line. The rendering ‘best giver of excellent
flavours’ is quaint as a qualification for Superman status: rasada means ‘giver
of essences (Rhys Davids), physician (MBh, 12.121.44)’, hence ‘supreme
purveyor of finest essences, solid and liquid’.
v. 2cd. The reward on earth (bhojjarasa-la: bhita: ) is more banal. The culinary
use of the word vyañjana might well have arisen from reinterpretation of the
term vyan: jananimittakovida ‘fortune-teller’, in view of its association here
with the prediction of gastronomic delight.
v. 3b. We can happily read pabbajam 1 pi ca tada: and (a)dhigacchatti,
understanding tad- in 3a as the verb's object, referring to heavenly reward
and prosperous rebirth (and not to food, as the translation seems to imply).
Thus we need not rely upon the oddity a: nubh(av)i=anvabh(av)i to justify a
tad a: dhigacchati, awkwardly following upon tam 1 and tad- in the previous line.
v. 3cd. Despite the second passage, which understands lay and clerical
alternatives, the prediction, from two auspicious physical characteristics, is of
424 

a prosperous career and subsequent renunciation: ‘It is predicted that he will

be very well-fed, and will sever all domestic ties’. A reverse Karmadha: raya
°la: bhi-r-uttamam1 (postulated in deference to Be!), is hardly credible, especially
when the commentary (Ee!) preserves °la: bhim 1 . The corrupt reading attempts
to take °la: bhi as the subject of uttamam
1 , under the impression that the uttama
in 1b uttam' aggarasada: yako qualifies bhojjam 1 ... aggarasa- as the object of
da: yako. In Be, the commentary on 1b registers this as an alternative rendering.
This volume of Collected papers, like its predecessors, identifies a number
of long-standing problems in Middle Indian studies and, using recent
discoveries and insights, points the way towards satisfactory and definitive
solutions.
. . 

 :
Kleine Schriften. Hrsg. von Friedrich Wilhelm.
(Glasenapp-Stiftung Bd. 40.) xxxii, 704 pp. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 2001.
For its fortieth invaluable publication the Glasenapp Foundation has turned
its attention to reprinting the principal minor works of the Indologist and
ethnologist Lucian Scherman (1864–1946). Born in Prussian Poznań, and a
student of Stenzler in Breslau and of Ernst Kuhn in Munich, he was
eventually, until 1933, Professor of Asian Ethnology and founding Director
of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Munich. Exile in America enabled him,
as a ‘Volljude’, to survive the war.
Two early Indological monographs, a dissertation and a habilitation,
occupy more than a third of the bulk of the volume. The first, mainly carried
out at the age of twenty, was a study of the Vedic cosmogonic hymns (RV 10
and AV), annotated also with references to parallel passages from the
Upanis1ads. It was used by Geldner and Whitney: Geldner consistently marks
a step forward, but Scherman would clearly have produced a more useful
annotated version of the AV than Whitney achieved.
The second monograph is a survey of Vedic, Buddhist, and Puranic visions
of Purgatory and, ‘weit monotoner und interesseloser’, of an adjacent
Paradise. He linked a rationalist Ca: n1 akya verse (Kl. Schr., p. 114: krodho
vaivasvato devah1 ... ‘Yama is wrath, the Vaitaran1 :ı River is thirst, the
Ka: madugha: Dhenu is knowledge, Paradise is contentment’) with the similar
substitution of a personified Krodha for Yama in the Bhr1gu story (ŚBr.
11.6.1.13 pu2 rus1ah1 ... dan1 d1 a2 pa: n1 ih1 ... kro2 dhah1 ), next door to Varun1 a's wish-
fulfilling Heaven (JBr. 1.42–44). Instructively, he associated this with the
Naciketas story, with its comparable motifs of fatal anger and saving ritual
knowledge.
His interest expending itself rather on comparative folklore than on closer
analysis of the texts, it did not strike him that his starting-point (p. 111),
Weber's treatment of the description of retribution for past Him 1 sa: in
ŚBr. 11.6.1, is problematic. Its visions of human sacrifice and cannibalism are
differently worded, and Delbrück (followed, inconsistently, by Eggeling) had
already rejected Weber's recourse to the ‘vibhajyama: na: h1 ’ of the commentary:
trees and cattle were in fact dissecting (vibhajama: na: n) their victims, whereas
plants and waters were the victims being consumed (adyama: na: n). We must
 425

infer that trees and animals were the first to be deemed likely to object to
man's abuse, and that plants and waters were added by someone who indeed
had understood a passive vibhajya- and coupled it with an agent purus1aih1 and
awkward es1a: m (presumably in lieu of purus1a: n1 a: m). The context requires not
an enactment of past crimes on earth, but a scene of present retribution (with
ida2 m iha pra2 ti saca: maha: 2iti rightly taken by the commentary as pratisaca: mahe
‘here and now we are requiting’). This crucially contradicts Weber's (and
Scherman's) notion of the incorporation of a ready-made story, ‘dem Munde
des Volks entlehnt’ and rendered puerile by its use in a ritual context. The
JBr. version arrives more nearly at a dramatization of the Ca: n1 akya verse.
Buddhist iconography is represented by several articles from 1924–32, and
by the identification in 1939 of panels depicting the presentation of clean
grass on Gautama's arrival at the Bodhi-tree (as mentioned in Buddhacarita).
In his last years he offered (in JAOS) his personal assessments of Indian
religion and culture in the guise of marginal notes on two cultural syntheses,
Coomaraswamy's small-scale Hinduism and Buddhism and Kroeber's large-
scale Configurations of cultural growth. His last publication was an essay on
the background to the ‘Siddha’ script symbols that survive in Japanese
iconography.
His many ethnological studies grew out of a period of fieldwork in
1910–11: a month in Ceylon, six weeks in South India, eight months in
Burma, and three months en route from Shillong to Peshawar and back to
Ellora. Photographically illustrated descriptions of the Nilgiri tribes, Toda,
Kota, and Badaga are complemented by a later study of the Kurumba, Irula,
and Paniyan. Ethnographic studies of Burmese tribal dress, ritual, dwellings
and textiles, and technical studies of Burmese bronze casting and of Javanese
batik, all well illustrated, were widely scattered hitherto in various journals
and commemorative volumes.
This carefully produced and indexed collective reprint is a worthy tribute
to one whose efforts on behalf of both scholarly research and popular
dissemination were admirable and tireless. A few JAOS photographs really
ought to have been spread over two pages, rather than reduced like the text.
Otherwise the only regret is that the bibliographical format of the Glasenapp
series was changed, so that there is a Table of Contents that serves no very
useful purpose, and a Bibliography where the new pagination needs to stand
out more boldly.
. . 

 :
Kleine Schriften. Hrsg. von Karin Steiner und Jörg Gengnagel.
(Glasenapp-Stiftung, Bd. 41.) xxix, 718 pp. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 2001.
The forty-first volume of the Glasenapp Foundation's series of collected
papers of German Indologists has been devoted to Ernst Windisch, who
taught Sanskrit and Comparative and Celtic Philology, mainly in Leipzig, in
the decades prior to the First World War. Besides his masterly study of
evolution of the Italo-Celtic -r passive (ASGW, 1887), the articles cover a very
wide range of Indological topics, linguistic, literary, and philosophical.
Windisch stressed, and did much to meet, the need for integration of Pali
426 

and Sanskrit, Buddhist and Brahmanical studies. His ‘Brahmanischer Einfluss

im Buddhismus’ (Festschrift Kuhn, 1916) and ‘Die Komposition des
Maha: vastu’ (ASGW, 1909) constitute a primer for every Indologist on the art
of tracing the development from primitive coherent episodes in one tradition
to great epic narratives in another (‘quid sit pulchrum quid turpe quid utile
quid non’). His canvassing of the possibility of a Magadhi substratum for the
linguistic ‘Compromiss’ that the Pali literature of the south represents (‘Über
den sprachlichen Charakter des Pali’, IOC, 1905) may not get us very far,
but it is hardly so downright ‘verfehlt’ as the editors baldly dub it.
The manuscript of Hemacandra's verse manual of lay Jainism called
Yogaśa: stra (edited and provisionally translated in ZDMG, 1874) presumably
came to his attention through his brief association with Eggeling and Haas at
the India Office Library. His collation (JPTS, 1890) of a Burmese manuscript,
also from the IOL, provided corrections for the 1948 reprint of the PTS
edition of the Uda: na, but it includes many other instructive variants. His
comparison of Tittiraja: taka 438 with the Puranic versions (Festgabe Weber,
1896) assumed, too rashly, that priority lies with the euhemerism of the latter
(‘today's meeting on Meru’ in lieu of giraggasamajjasadisa chan1 a).
Windisch showed (BSGW, 1891) that the R 1 gvedic phrases śı:rs1án1 i krátum /
śı:rs1án krátavah1 cannot be locating ‘Geisteskraft’, the faculty of reasoning, in
the head (as opposed to the heart); but this has been unjustly ignored. Geldner
has for 2.16.2 ‘im Haupte die Überlegung’ and for 8.96.3 ‘ausschliesslich in
Indra's Haupt sind die Gedanken’, where Sa: yan1 a must be nearer the mark
with vijña: na and darśanapreran1 a: di karman, thus associating kratu with indriya.
His protest (Festgruss Roth, 1893) against the notion that R 1 gvedic chariot
racing symbolizes a bardic contest, rather than relevantly (with Sa: yan1 a) the
conveyance of thought, word, and deed to the gods, was expressly rejected
by Geldner, who preferred to falsify the evidence from the outset (2.31.1
‘U n s e r e n Wagen bevorzuget’ for asma{ kam avatam 1 rátham). Unlike Windisch,
Geldner failed to appreciate the primacy of Book 9's chariot imagery.
An essay on possible Greek influence on Sanskrit drama (IOC, 1882)
remains a useful catalogue of often significant analogies with New Attic
Comedy; and a companion paper (BSGW, 1885) sees Mr1cchakat1ika as an
amalgamation of this same romantic drama with political motifs drawn from
the Kr1s1n1 a legend (the young cowherd pretender to the throne who is taken
from the ghos1a and imprisoned: Windisch might have mentioned that a
‘Ma: thura’, as well as a would-be ‘Va: sudeva’, feature as characters in the
romantic plot).
The short monograph Über das Nya: yabha: s1ya (1888) is a valuable
introduction to the basic texts of what he preferred to call Indian dialectics;
and he has also usefully traced the evolution of the story of the soul's fate
after death in Bra: hman1 as and Upanis1ads (BSGW, 1907). He gave some sound
advice on the value of Sanskrit literature, both for the ‘thinking man’ and
for Lutheran missionaries, in the text of addresses delivered in 1897 and 1895.
The indexes live up to the high standards of the series, though RV 8, 85
needed to be indexed as 8, 85 (96). A very obvious batch of computer
misprints on p. xi has come through unscathed; and the series has yet to come
to terms with its unhappy resolve to split the bibliography in two. Reversing
the procedure of Bd. 40, the Table of Contents does mercifully include the
publication details; but now the new pagination has been dropped altogether
from the full Bibliography.
. . 
 427

 :
Wohlwollen, Mitleid, Freude und Gleichmut: eine ideengeschichtliche
Untersuchung der vier aprama: n1 as in der buddhistischen Ethik und
Spiritualität von den Anfängen bis hin zum frühen Yoga: ca: ra.
443 pp. (Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien, 50.) Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 1999.

The monograph under review constitutes a revised version of a doctoral

dissertation submitted by Maithrimurthi to the Fachbereich Orientalistik der
Universität Hamburg in 1998. Broadly speaking, the work falls into two parts.
The first consists of a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the conceptual
and spiritual content of four Buddhist practices subsumed under the
title aprama: n1 a/brahmaviha: ra (pp. 13–214) as portrayed in mainstream
Buddhist sources. In the second part, Maithrimurthi provides an analysis
of the aprama: n1 a in early Yoga: ca: ra literature, including critical editions
and translations of key passages from the Yoga: ca: rabhu: mi and
1 ka: ra (pp. 176–426). In addition to the examination of the
Maha: ya: nasu: tra: lam
individual practices (pp. 47–160), the first part also includes two very useful
discussions focusing, first, on the meaning and historical evolution of the
terms aprama: na and brahmaviha: ra, including their various formulae, drawing
on both pre-Buddhist and early (mainly Pali) Buddhist literature (pp. 13–46),
and, second, on the definitions of the aprama: n1 a provided in the
Abhidharmakośa and Visuddhimagga (pp. 187–214). The first part includes
also a critique of H. B. Aronson's seminal study of the brahmaviha: ra (Love
and sympathy in Therava: da Buddhism, Delhi, 1980), exposing a number of
serious flaws in its methodology, premises and conception (pp. 161–86).
The second part, in addition to a detailed evaluation of their content,
contains lengthy quotations from the Śra: vakabhu: mi (Sanskrit, Tibetan),
Bodhisattvabhu: mi (Sanskrit), Maha: ya: nasu: tra: lam 1 ka: ra (Sanskrit) and
*Asvabha: va's commentary (tı:ka: ) on the Maha: ya: nasu: tra: lam1 ka: ra (Tibetan), as
well as their respective German translations (pp. 276–426).
Even the most cursory glance at the acknowledgements reveals immediately
that the author had the privilege to benefit from a notably throrough and
inspiring Buddhist Studies education in the West. Trained at Hamburg
University by L. Schmithausen, D. Seyfort Ruegg, S. A. Srinivasan and
A. Wezler, to name only some of Maithrimurthi's best-known teachers, his
work is firmly rooted in the classical German Buddhological tradition, shaped
by philological rigour and carefully framed historical, text-critical analysis.
Maithrimurthi positions himself firmly within this school, arguing that its
methodologies confer on ‘(ihre) Thesen durch Belege wenigstens eine gewisse
Überprüfbarkeit und damit auch eine gewisse Wahrscheinlichkeit’ while its
critics discharge themselves from ‘der lästigen Pflicht der philologischen Belege
ihrer Thesen ohne ... entsprechenden Ersatz zur Absicherung ihrer Thesen
beizubringen. ... So hat ihre Arbeitsweise immer etwas Willkürliches und
Unüberprüfbares’ (p. 8). These are strong words that will not be appreciated
in every quarter. However, the author, evidently himself in full command of
his sources, demonstrates again and again just how valuable this classical
approach can be.
On every page this study brims with insightful observations and convincing
models of interpretation, spanning Indian religious thought from Vedic times
to the early Yoga: ca: ra. For example, the author's attempt to define and
428 

establish the conceptual content of the term brahmaviha: ra (which he translates

as ‘brahmic states of mind/contemplation’) is informed by passages from the
Bra: hman1 as, Upanis1ads, Dharmaśa: stras, Pali canonical sources and their
commentaries. The analysis of the origins, scope and application of the terms
metta/maitrı:, karun1 a: , mudita: and upekkha: /upeks1a: is based on a whole range
of sources, mainly extrapolated from the nika: ya of the Pali canon. The
interpretations pay particular attention to the contexts in which these terms
appear, and Maithrimurthi thus achieves a carefully nuanced account of their
role in early Buddhism. For instance, the discussion of maitrı: (benevolence)
distinguishes between: (1) basic friendliness; (2) motherly love; (3) the ethical
dimensions of benevolence; (4) benevolence as self-protection; (5) its
soteriological aspects as well as maitrı:'s; (6) karmic annulation effect (Karma-
Tilgungseffekt) (pp. 47–114). The discussion of maitrı:, doubtlessly inspired by
Schmithausen's earlier work on Buddhist ethics, is the most detailed. The
three remaining practices, that is, compassion (karun1 a: ), sympathetic joy
(mudita: ) and equanimity (upeks1a: ), feature less frequently in the nika: ya and
hence receive a more succinct treatment limited to their historical backgrounds,
soteriological roles and specific functions within the aprama: n1 a complex. As
in the preceding section, here too, Maithrimurthi's findings and observations
are adeptly framed by (and juxtapositioned to) the views of other scholars,
most notably Bronkhorst, Cousins, Gethin, Gombrich, Griffiths, King,
Schmithausen and Vetter. It appears that research carried out by Schmithausen
and Vetter on early Buddhist practice was particularly formative for
Maithrimurthi's views, since I did not find a single instance where, in cases of
overlap, his exegesis differed substantively from their interpretations.
Readers familiar with scholarly publications on early Buddhist practice
will have noticed that the Buddhologist who has written most extensively on
the brahmaviha: ra, H. B. Aronson, is not mentioned in the above enumeration.
His work is the focus of the next chapter, where Maithrimurthi questions,
with good reason, several of Aronson's premises about early Buddhism which
led him to attribute to Therava: da Buddhism a system of altruistic ethics for
which there appears to be little evidence in the canon. While Maithrimurthi
does not dispute that the practice of the brahmaviha: ra may be conducive to
social engagement, in particular among the laity, he refutes Aronson's
assertion that such altruistic engagement played a significant role in the
practice of early or Therava: da Buddhism, that is, in the ideals and conduct
of the monks and nuns (p. 162). He argues, drawing in part on the work of
Schopen, that the monks' social activities were, above all, motivated by a
desire to increase monastic prosperity, and not by some higher form of
altruism (pp. 163–5). Maithrimurthi also casts doubt on Aronson's (re)inter-
pretation of King's and Spiro's characterization of ‘kammic’ and ‘nibbanic’
Buddhism which he formulates (according to Maithrimurthi) in order to
remove the label ‘nibbanic’ from Therava: da Buddhism (pp. 174–85). He
argues that, in early Buddhism, there is no real conflict between egotism and
altruism, since it expounds quite clearly that one becomes capable of helping
others only after becoming liberated oneself (p. 183). The polarization between
these two terms evolved much later (even in early Yoga: ca: ra, sva: rtha and
para: rtha are still equally valued) and does not feature in the canonical writings
(p. 184). Maithrimurthi attributes these misrepresentations to, inter alia,
Aronson's failure to take into account (and differentiate between) the various
historical strata found in the sources he used to substantiate his views: ‘Das
Problem seiner Herangehensweise ist jedoch, daß er zwar in seiner Einleitung
durchaus unterscheidet zwischen kanonisch und post-kanonisch, aber in seiner
 429

eigentlichen Untersuchung späteres Material (aus post-kanonischen Werken

und Kommentaren) gleichberechtigt mit dem kanonischen Material behandelt.
Der historischen Entwicklung und Heterogenität des kanonischen Materials
selbst und den sich daraus ergebenden Problemen wird keine Beachtung
geschenkt’ (p. 161). Clearly, in the light of Maithrimurthi's well-founded
concerns, much of Aronson's work, for many years influential among scholars
and the general public alike, needs to be thoroughly reassessed.
Maithrimurthi concludes his discussion of the aprama: n1 a in mainstream
Buddhist literature with a study of their expositions in the Abhidharmakośa
and Visuddhimagga. These texts, composed by Vasubandhu and Buddhaghosa
respectively, originated during the first part of the fifth century .. Although
both texts contain much valuable information, because they were composed
with different objectives (the Abhidharmakośa is more concerned with theory
while the Visuddhimagga is primarly practice-oriented), Maithrimurthi's
discussion is largely contrastive and somewhat lacking in conclusions. On the
other hand, he manages to trace aprama: n1 a development beyond the canonical
phase and to contextualize their practice in the wider framework of Buddhist
meditation (pp. 197–202) and soteriology (pp. 202–10). Here, it is perhaps
worth noting that Frauwallner's hypothesis of the existence of two
Vasubandhus (which Maithrimurthi appears to accept, at least implicitly) was
recently convincingly challenged by Peter Skilling (‘Vasubandhu and the
Vya: khya: yukti literature’, JIABS, 23/2, 2000, 310–14).
The editions and translations of the aforementioned Yoga: ca: ra works are
prefixed by a detailed analysis of their content (pp. 215–73). The passages
cited from the Śra: vakabhu: mi deal only with the meditative cultivation of
maitrı:, discussed in the context of the five preparatory exercises aimed at the
elimination of the three root poisons (ra: ga, dves1a, moha). The other aprama: n1 a
do not feature at all in the Śra: vakabhu: mi. Significantly, but perhaps not
surprisingly given the early date of this text, its exposition of maitrı: follows
largely the salvic scheme of pre-Maha: ya: na Buddhism (p. 233). In contrast,
the aprama: n1 a passage of the Bodhisattvabhu: mi is wholly Maha: ya: na in
orientation, expounding the role of the four practices in the bodhisattva
training. Here, greatest importance is given to the practice of karun1 a: (p. 235),
closely followed by maitrı: (p. 237), while mudita: and upeks1a: are only secondary
in rank. The Maha: ya: nasu: tra: lam1 ka: ra, building on the exposition in the
Bodhisattvabhu: mi, contains the most developed account of the aprama: n1 a,
devoting half a chapter to their practice. With even greater emphasis than in
the Bodhisattvabhu: mi, the scope and practice of the aprama: n1 a are now fully
governed by Maha: ya: na perspectives. Key importance is accorded to karun1 a: ;
maitrı: serves to reinforce and complement karun1 a: (p. 271), while mudita: and
upeks1a: are largely ignored (p. 272). These changes in the ranking of the
individual aprama: n1 a reflect not only the chronology of these three texts, but
also attest to the phased and gradual evolution of Indian Buddhist thought.
The editions and translations of the aprama: n1 a passages from the
1 ka: ra bear all the
Śra: vakabhu: mi, Bodhisattvabhu: mi and Maha: ya: nasu: tra: lam
hallmarks of meticulous, perceptive scholarship. In all three cases,
Maithrimurthi consulted original Sanskrit manuscripts, as available, and
modern editions, including two Tibetan bsTan 'gyur versions (Derge, Peking)
and the respective Chinese translations. The texts and translations are carefully
annotated, giving variant readings, explanatory material and cross-references
in the footnotes. Although the passages from the Maha: ya: nasu: tra: lam 1 ka: ra are
already available in French, Maithrimurthi's translation provides new depth
and context, not least through the inclusion of *Asvabha: va's commentary.
430 

In short, this study of the aprama: n1 a complex is a fine example of what

classical Buddhology is able to achieve. The author's acute doctrinal
understanding, sound philological skills, keen historical perception and
thorough acquaintance with a wide range of Buddhist literature render his
investigation a mature and insightful piece of scholarship that will retain its
value for many years to come.
 

 :
Kr1s1n1 a: lord or avata: ra? The relationship between Kr1s1n1 a and Vis1n1 u in
the context of the avata: ra myth as presented by the Harivam 1 śa, the
Vis1n1 upura: n1 a and the Bha: gavatapura: n1 a.
(Curzon Studies in Asian Religion.) x, 254 pp. Richmond: Curzon,
2001.
The author of this book came to Indian studies in a roundabout way. Having
taken a degree in French at Oxford (1947), she obtained an appointment in
biblical studies at Hockerill College of Education, while studying for her B.D.
degree at London University. Extending her perception of the field of religious
studies, she eventually enlisted at Lancaster University to read Sanskrit and
Indian religions for an M.A., whereupon she specialized in Pura: n1 ic studies.
After her return from a study stay in India in 1982 she started attending the
annual Symposium on Indian Religions while they were still being convened
by the reviewer (1974–84) and thereafter. She used this forum to present a
sample of her research efforts, ‘The pervasiveness of Bhakti in the Bha: gavata
Pura: n1 a’, at the 13th Symposium in 1987. This piece revealed her patient
scholarship and the attention she gives to narrative details in her sources. I
included its reworked version when editing the collection of Symposia papers
Love divine. Studies in bhakti and devotional mysticism (Durham Indological
Series No. 3), Richmond: Curzon, 1993. In the meantime she earned her
Ph.D. in 1990 and her thesis became the basis for the present book which she
finished in retirement, while attached to the Department of Religious Studies
at Lancaster University as an Honorary Research Fellow.
The title and subtitle express clearly the scope of the book, which also
deals with a number of concomitant issues. Thus in the first chapter (pp. 8–9)
she tries to clarify the notion of avata: ra (lit. ‘descent’, usually translated as
‘incarnation’, sometimes as ‘manifestation’) by distinguishing ‘primal myths’
of individual stories incorporated into the sequence of the ten avata: ras of
Vis1n1 u and the ‘avata: ra myth itself’ which is ‘a secondary myth, doctrinal or
ideological in character and purpose’. Consistently applied, this distinction
would amount to regarding all theology as ‘secondary mythology’. Matchett
does feels some unease about this and ponders the term ‘avata: ra doctrine’ as
perhaps ‘more appropriate’, but seduced by the narrative presentation of the
materials in the pura: n1 as, she settles for the notion of ‘doctrinal myth’, which
she unfortunately incorporated into the subtitle of her book and which she
considered to be applicable also to the doctrine of trimu: rti. To be sure, the
stories of the ten individuals in the scheme of daśa: vata: ra are myths, but
linking them together and subordinating them to the highest deity is a
theological exercise, as is the linking of the three most revered gods, Brahma,
Vis1n1 u and Śiva into a trinity, even if it is expressed in the context of narrative
mythology. To take a biblical parallel (as the author occasionally does in her
 431

endnotes), we might regard the stories in Genesis involving God, the New
Testament stories from the life of Jesus and the appearances of the Holy
Ghost as myths, but the dogma of Trinity based on these stories is certainly
a theological doctrine which developed over a number of centuries. The
avata: ra doctrine emerged slowly from earlier mythological sources, such as
the Buddhist notion of repeated appearances of Buddhas in different ages of
world history and has perhaps its earliest source in the ancient Vedic myth of
the Goddess Aditi who represented the pre-creational Absolute and gave birth
to all gods, humans, other creatures and all that is, and subsequently was
born into the world as a daughter of the god Daks1a, one of her foremost
sons called A 9 dityas.
The author is at her best when she keeps to interpreting pura: n1 ic texts and
Harivam 1 śa within their own contexts. She rightly treats her three sources as
integral wholes even while pursuing her particular theme when comparing the
‘three versions of the avata: ra drama’. Harivam 1 śa, the last book of the epic
Maha: bha: rata which also contains the well-known Bhagavadgı:ta: where Kr1s1n1 a
shows himself to be the supreme deity, is rightly regarded as a transitional
text by the author in which Kr1s1n1 a's role as a subordinate avata: ra of Vis1n1 u
emerges, although not without being foreshadowed in some passages of the
main Maha: bha: rata text. This is a simple statement, but the process of this
transition is described by the author in minutest detail and painstakingly
documented through references to the texts and extensive endnotes in two
chapters, a method evident throughout the book.
The Vis1n1 upura: n1 a is primarily the glorification of the god whose name it
bears, as the supreme deity and, indeed, as both transcendent and immanent
Absolute identical with the Upanis1adic brahman. Kr1s1n1 a is just the convenient
and effective focal point for bhaktas on the path to salvation as ‘a tiny share
of Vis1n1 u’ (p. 94) which pushes the other avata: ras into the background. The
author, following Charlotte Vaudeville, calls the chapter dealing with the
Bha: gavatapura: n1 a ‘The Bible of Kr1s1n1 aism’; perhaps one could call it the
‘Bible of bhaktiism’. The author shows convincingly how, using various
literary devices, the Bha: gavatapura: n1 a sets out to place itself above the
Vis1n1 upura: n1 a in importance and authority within the Vais1n1 ava tradition, not
least also by its extended and comprehensive treatment of the traditional
pura: n1 ic themes, such as the cosmic, earthly and dynastic histories and the
Lord's role in them, his grace and the forms in which he manifests himself
throughout the ages. In the end it establishes Kr1s1n1 a, not Vis1n1 u, at the centre
of its universe. Kr1s1n1 a thus becomes ‘identified with the Cosmic Man ( purus1a)
who comprises yet transcends the universe’ (p. 148). Here one is reminded of
the R 1 gvedic purus1a su: kta (RV 10.90) which the author points out in the
penultimate chapter. But it is just one of the many R 1 gvedic echoes in the
Bha: gavatapura: n1 a.
The glorification of Kr1s1n1 a as the Lord in the Bha: gavatapura: n1 a is further
underlined by the small importance given in it to the list of avata: ras which
the author discusses in the penultimate chapter. Five different lists are
presented, none conforming to the standard list of ten avata: ras, while two
lists are considerably longer. One is even in the form of a hymn of praise
sung by gods to Kr1s1n1 a when he was still in his mother's womb and enumerates
his (Kr1s1n1 a's) various appearances as avata: ra. This may be an early textual
reminder that the daśa: vata: ra list is, in fact, only one feature of the avata: ra
doctrine which is flexible and always has had and still has wider applications.
There are important and lifelong as well as lesser and temporary incarnations
and it is a living doctrine still. This reminds me of a day (13 January 1976)
432 

when I arrived in the Ponnalai temple dedicated to Kr1s1n1 a in Moolai village

in the Tamil northern part of the then peaceful Sri Lanka when the community
was celebrating Kr1s1n1 a's birthday. To my surprise I was greeted by the chief
brahmin with reverence and given a place of honour during the special pu: ja:
and in the procession which paraded the divine effigy round the temple and
its surroundings. It was later explained to me that my arrival was seen as a
special favour on the part of Kr1s1n1 a who had sent a guest for the occasion
and through him participated in the celebration of his own birthday; thus I
was a part-incarnation of his for a day. (I do not feel, in retrospect, that I
was enacting an episode of the ‘avata: ra myth’, while I can see that my arrival
on the auspicious day may have fitted in with the Hindu community's
understanding of the lesser aspects of the avata: ra doctrine.)
How does the author answer the question in the title of her last chapter
‘The supreme reality: Kr1s1n1 a or Vis1n1 u?’ Wisely, she does not take sides. It all
depends on your point of view. The texts are sometimes definite in one way
or another and at other times ambiguous or vacillating. A sectarian believer
may have a definite answer, but within the wider context of Hinduism the
issue need not be decided, not even by Hindus themselves. As the author
maintains in her conclusion, ‘Kr1s1n1 a and Vis1n1 u are ... both contenders for the
title of Supreme God’ and she admits that ‘the avata: ra framework
(!—what a relief she does not say "‘avata: ra myth’') allowed much more flexi-
bility than might have seemed likely at first sight’. I would add that it still
allows it.
Despite betraying its origin in a sequence of research projects, one or two
previously published in article form, the chapters are neatly put together so
that the book makes for fluent and good reading suitable even for the general
reader interested in the theme. As a scholarly work it will remain for a long
time indispensable for anybody diving into the vastness and perplexity of
pura: n1 ic literature, in a part of which she has left useful signposts for guidance.
 

.  . :
The Bible and the Buddhists.
136 pp. Bornato in Franciacorta: Sardini, 2000.
The title of this work is not entirely misleading, in that discussion of the
sources for passages in the New Testament can hardly ignore the Old, but it
is the question of Buddhism's bearing upon the New Testament which
predominates here. Indeed, the very useful index to biblical references on
pp. 125–31, while spanning both parts of the Christian Bible and some of the
Apocrypha and other writings in between, shows clearly that it is the Gospels,
and especially that of St. John, which are most frequently discussed—while
the Johannine epistles and those of Jude and James, as it turns out, have
apparently never been accused of Buddhist influences. For, as the introductory
section of this study makes admirably clear, its agenda has largely been set
by earlier controversies, especially those that flourished in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, which seem to have gained new life in
recent decades.
Equally clearly outlined in the introductory portion are some of the
manifold uncertainties engendered by the nature of our source materials. The
canonical New Testament may have in due course gathered into one corpus
 433

the earliest Christian materials, but the textual integrity of this ensemble as
reflecting the original state of those materials is open to a certain amount of
question. The same applies with at least as much force to canonical Buddhist
materials even of Therava: da derivation, to say nothing of the early literature
of what was to call itself the Greater Vehicle, which twentieth-century research
has identified as stemming from an environment more likely to have seen
some interaction with the earliest stages of Christianity. The tone of the work
throughout, therefore, is judicious and undogmatic, even though the listing of
possible parallels, accompanied with provisional suggestions as to the
directions of apparent influence, runs to fifty-five items without claiming to
be exhaustive—further case studies from the same author may, we learn, be
expected.
They will be welcomed, for there is a wealth of erudition on display here
(some of it unfortunately rather hard to retrieve, in the absence of an index
or a fully comprehensive bibliography) which it has taken more than the span
of a working career to amass. Even so, it would probably take a working
retirement yet longer than a career to master all the materials on the Buddhist
side which might be called into evidence. It is noticeable, for example, that
the Lotus Sutra is alluded to here far more frequently than any other sources
of comparable date, perhaps because it was already well known at the time
of the initial controversies, but the Buddhist literature of roughly the same
period that may now be consulted is much more extensive. There would seem
to be no reference, for example, to the very useful corpus of materials
translated from Chinese by Chavannes, the bulk of which was published while
the controversy first raged, but when Chinese sources were not as highly
regarded as of late.
For now the situation is even more favourable to the type of exploration
undertaken here. The newly discovered materials from Afghanistan now in
the British Library and elsewhere and the very early Chinese translations now
being investigated by Paul Harrison and others all are rather likely to stem
from precisely the environment where Greek rule had lately interposed itself
between the Indian and Mediterranean worlds and where Buddhist and
Gospel stories may have been propagated simultaneously. For even if there is
no specific evidence for the author's notion that ‘confabulations’ may have
taken place between proponents of the two religions, the more diffuse
circulation of scraps of religious wisdom seems enough of a possibility to
make the venture worthwhile. And as is well known, there is no denying in
any case that early in Christian history, a good century before the New
Testament canon took its final shape, Clement of Alexandria refers to the
Buddha briefly, but quite explicitly (p. 99).
This is, then, a topic that is unlikely to go away, even if the author's
conclusion that only matters of presentation rather than basic doctrine are
likely to have been affected by any exchanges would seem to be reasonably
sound. The nature of all the evidence is not such that any particular instance
of supposed borrowing can be proved beyond all doubt, but that is no reason
against trying to weigh up the probabilities after the fashion demonstrated
here, especially since one day fresh material may come to light advancing the
argument beyond what is currently possible. Until that happens, the setting
of exemplary standards for further discussion has been a task concisely
achieved by the volume under review, and no one in future would be wise to
venture into this area of research without taking full account of its perspectives
and methods.
. . 
434 

 . :
Tradition and liberation: the Hindu tradition in the Indian women's
movement.
(Curzon Studies in Asian Religions.) x, 230 pp. Richmond: Curzon
Press, 1999. £40.
The book under review traces the history of the Indian women's movement
from the British Raj to the present, showing how the ideology of the
movement changed and showing the sources of this ideology. There are
broadly two phases in this development, a ‘first wave’ Indian women's
movement from the nineteenth century to the 1970s and a ‘second wave’
from then to the present. The former focused on ‘women's uplift’ and equal
rights in order that women could play a larger role in public life and thus
enhance the welfare of the nation, the latter on both ‘rights’ and
‘empowerment’. Catherine Robinson describes the origins of the ideology of
equal rights in a very interesting way, locating this discourse in figures such
as John Ruskin ‘who upheld the moral and spiritual excellence of true
womanhood’ (p. 12) and John Stuart Mill who argued for the ‘natural
equality of women’. Ruskin saw men and women as having different but
complementary natures and roles. Robinson shows how this idea influenced
the ‘women's uplift’ ideology and created a discourse facing towards both a
British and an Indian audience.
In six chronologically ordered chapters, Robinson demonstrates how these
ideas play out in the complex ideological and political field of the colonized
and then emergent nation. She focuses principally on the relationship between
the Indian women's movement and the Hindu tradition. She begins with an
account of Hindu reformers Roy and Vidyasagar, and their concerns with
satı: and widow remarriage which resulted in legislation prohibiting satı: and
allowing remarriage. Chapter ii traces the early emergence of the women's
movement, focusing particularly on Ramabai Ranade (1862–1924, the wife of
Mahedev Govind Ranade) and Sarala Devi Choudurani (1872–1945). Ranade
was active in women's associations founded by men, such as the Arya Mahila
Samaj, the latter herself founded a women's organization, the Bharat Stree
Mahamandal. The idea of ‘women's uplift’ drew on Hindu values for its
justification, and ch. iii focuses on the leading figures Annie Besant (1847–1933)
and Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949). They appealed to a ‘golden age’ of India's
past when women supposedly played a full part in political, religious and
social life. Chapters iv and v trace the story further, discussing the All India
Women's Conference and the campaign for women's social rights in the
reform of Hindu personal law. This is a particularly interesting section, which
discusses how the British decided at the end of the eighteenth century to
administer Hindu law to Hindus (and Muslim law to Muslims) in domestic
concerns. Warren Hastings, in a Judicial Plan in 1772, divided indigenous law
into personal law—dealing with such matters as inheritance—governed by
Hindu traditional law, and the rest, governed by British regulations. Robinson
traces relevant legislation into the twentieth century and describes the Indian
women's movement's reactions. In this context, she shows how on the one
hand voices such as Lady Sircar's argued that women's demand for the
removal of legal disabilities was based on ideas of justice and equity, and on
the other how we have Sri Sankaracarya of the Kamakoti Pitham defending
Hindu law against reforms that would favour women. The final chapter
discusses the contemporary debate and the issue of whether the position of
 435

women is to be improved and developed from within the Hindu tradition

itself, or whether the subordination of women is inherent in the Hindu
tradition. Robinson describes different trajectories within the modern move-
ment, such as the Marxist Progressive Organization of Women which sees
women's inequality as being due to economic causes, and the Mahila Samta
Sainik Dal which regards religion as the primary cause of women's oppression.
A conclusion examines the situation to the mid-1990s with a discussion of
satı:, dowry deaths, and female foeticide.
In one sense the book makes somewhat depressing reading in that even as
we enter the twenty-first century ‘the Indian women's movement is still
confronted with many obstacles to the empowerment of women in contempor-
ary India’ (p. 175). The debate is further complicated by the ideology of
hindutva and the rise of the Hindu radical right in which many women
participate. Many Indian women do not share the vision of the Indian
women's movement and rather construct an identity of Hindu women within
one community in opposition to women of another community. This is, of
course, antithetical to the liberal agenda of the women's movement and it is
yet to be seen how all this will be played out in history.
The book is a welcome contribution to the literature on the women's
movement in India and to discussions of world feminism. It must be seen as
following from Jana Matson Everett and Geraldine Forbes in the context of
whose work the author locates her own. Indeed, one criticism is that Catherine
Robinson's voice could have come through more strongly in emphasizing the
originality of her own project. In my view, the book would have been
enhanced by a greater theoretical sophistication: firstly in drawing on the
work of the ‘subaltern’ theorists such as Spivak and Guha and locating her
work more centrally in a postcolonial discourse. The name Gauri Visvanathan,
whose very interesting work on Besant could have been used in this context
comes to mind. Secondly the author could have developed a feminist critique
drawing on Cixous and Irigaray. Of particular relevance, I would have
thought, would be Irigaray's idea of the erasure of women's subjectivity. The
development of this idea in an Indian context (it is already implicit in the
book) would have perhaps given a sharper critical edge. But nevertheless this
book does a great service in teaching a great deal to those who do not know
this history and in highlighting the names of the extraordinary women who
have fought for women's rights in Indian history, and who are still fighting.
 

 :
The poetics of devotion: the Gujarati lyrics of Daya: ra: m.
(London Studies on South Asia, 19.) xii, 379 pp. Richmond:
Curzon, 2001.
Gujarati literature is not widely known. Rarely translated into non-Indian
languages, it suffers in India as in the West from a negative, yet unjustified,
prejudice. Rachel Dwyer's book, a study of the last pre-modern poet, one of
Gujarat's greatest, is most welcome. Daya: ra: m (1777–1852) is not easy to
understand or to evaluate, even less to translate. The author must therefore
be congratulated first for situating him within his ambiguous tradition, on the
threshold between the medieval period and modern times, for guiding us
towards a progressively improving understanding of his work thanks to an
436 

innovative analysis based on Mikhaı̈l Bakhtin's critical theories, and above

all for offering us translations of 106 of his poems.
Chapter ii deals with Daya: ra: m's life and work. Dwyer stresses the two
contradictory aspects of Daya: 's biography: the hagiography of a Vais1n1 ava
poet saint surrounded by his disciples, and the tumultuous life story of a
rebellious poet, a non-conformist who clearly enjoyed being supremely elegant.
Dwyer does not argue that Daya: ra: m belonged to the exclusive caste of the
Na: gar Brahmins who advocated an accomplished literary and artistic
education, including music, and who, as they knew and liked the Persian
language, were well acquainted with the culture of the Muslim courts which
they traditionally served. But she quite rightly focuses on Daya: ra: m's religious
background—the Vallabhan Pus1t1ima: rga sect from which he drew, according
to her, his poetic inspiration, while at the same time avoiding close contact
with the religious authorities of the movement. Erroneous dates concerning
(pp. 23–4) Vit1t1halna: th: 1516–86, and Gopina: th: 1512–43, ought to be
corrected. The Gujarati contribution to the Pus1t1ima: rga needs to be nuanced:
the Nava: khya: na or Vallabha: khya: na by Gopa: lda: s (before 1577), of no literary
value as such, is known, recited, translated in Braj and commented upon (p. 25).
Daya: ra: m's œuvre is described clearly and exhaustively. He is the only
traditional poet whose works were fairly well transmitted, as he checked the
copies of his manuscripts himself (p. 34); it is not surprising that, being
a Na: gar brahmin, he used the devanagari script, a characteristic habit of
his caste (n. 45), rather than the rounder Gujarati one. The garabı: form
undoubtedly characterizes his short lyrics, and Dwyer aims to define as
precisely as possible this exclusive Gujarati genre typical of the medieval Indo-
Aryan short lyrics which remain incomplete unless placed into the context of
their ‘performance’ (S. K. Das, ‘Terms for the medieval Indian short verse
forms’, Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature, 1982–83). One might
regret that Dwyer, although generally well informed, chooses to neglect the
living tradition of Daya: ra: m's lyrics (introduction, pp. 9 and 55) generally a
useful and rewarding source of information. Concerning the list of model
padas quoted from Bhayani and Yajnik (p. 42), it is published in N. Vora,
Désionı: su: ci (Gandhinagar, 1990, pp. 369–77). I liked the concise analysis
(pp. 48–52) of the language used by Daya: ra: m in his lyrics and especially the
list of the Arabo-Persian words (pp. 49–51).
Chapter iii explores Daya: ra: m's position as a classic, with the sectarian
opinion of the Vais1n1 ava on one hand and on the other Daya: 's reputation
among nineteenth-century critics, under the influence of the colonial culture,
at a time marked by the influence of puritanism—this perhaps partially
explaining why his fame spread slowly. However, one of Dwyer's arguments,
namely the allegedly small number (nine in all, p. 59), of Daya: ra: m's poems
contained in I. S. Desai's anthology Br1hatka: vyadohana (Bombay, 1886–1913,
8 vols and not 10 as originally planned) needs to be nuanced: Daya: ra: m is
present not only in vol. 6, but also in vol. 1 (pp. 614–38) and 4 (pp. 778–840);
the introduction to vol. 5, which Dwyer could not see, deals with Daya: ra: m
on pp. 3 to 52, where Desai explains the relative absence of his works by
stating that he had published at the Gujarati Printing Press the Works of
Daya: ra: m (3rd ed., 1887) edited by Kavi Narmad.
In order to situate Daya: ra: m clearly in Gujarati literature, Dwyer introduces
the most important writers and creators of the classical canon, generously
illustrating their work with the help of translated passages. I slightly disagree
on the following points: the literary analysis of K. M. Munshi (Gujara: ta and
its literature, 1935) is outdated and it is not necessary to reprint, for instance,
 437

his assertion that Narasim 1 ha Maheta: was (p. 63) an ‘apostle of Aryan
culture’. It must be stated more firmly that Mı:ra: ba: :i (Mı:ra: m 1 ), pp. 63–6, has
been ‘adopted’ in Gujarat but is not a Gujarati author. One ought not to
put faith in fanciful biographies of an author like Prema: nand (p. 68) about
whom—as in the case of all medieval authors—no certain evidence is
available; Daya: ra: m is an exception. Finally, on p. 70, Ratanba: i, the disciple
of the Chishtı: S1 u: fı: Ka: yamadı:n, cannot have been an Ismaili Bohra. Stating
severely yet lucidly at the end (p. 76) that Daya: ra: m's œuvre, along with the
entire corpus of medieval Gujarati literature, still awaits serious scholarly
appraisal, Dwyer admits the limits to her efforts, thus justifying the use of
Bakhtinian methods of analysis in her fourth chapter.
Introducing Bakhtin, Dwyer aims to prove ‘that carnival and chronotope
are essential to a generic understanding of Daya: ra: m in particular and Kr1s1n1 aite
poetry in general’. She thus succeeds in increasing our understanding of one
type of bhakti, namely that which has taken shape in the Braj country, on
the substratum of Braj folk culture, partially adapted and reworked by the
sectarian views of the Pus1t1ima: rga, and she is able to explain the function of
the religious literature retransmitted by Daya: ra: m to his contemporaries in the
first half of the nineteenth century in the Gujarati language and to account
for the ‘brahmanization’ made fashionable by Pus1t1ima: rgı: principles as much
as by contemporary literary critics. The examples illustrating her demonstration
are all drawn from the themes and imagery shared by the Kr1s1n1 aite Braj
bhakti. However, Daya: 's specific contribution, the retransmission in Gujarati
of a poetic tradition, and, in order to achieve this, the creation of a new
poetic language rendering possible access to the divine world of Kr1s1n1 a, is not
the subject of Dwyer's work, and remains, as she rightly says (p. 8), the object
of further Indological work. Whatever the efficiency of the Bakhtinian
analysis, this alone cannot prove that thanks to it Daya: ra: m's work becomes
a source for the history of Gujarati folk culture during the nineteenth century
(p. 113); and while it is interesting to explain, in terms of ‘carnivalization’,
the phenomenon of Kr1s1n1 aite bhakti, one must remember that Gujarati
popular religious culture never rejected its tantric components.
In the final chapter, Dwyer presents, with the translation appearing on the
opposite pages, the text (in roman characters) of 106 of Daya: ra: m's poems,
mainly padas and garabı:s, chosen from the 228[229] figuring in the Ra: val
edition, Daya: ra: ma–rasasudha: (Bombay, 1953). No reason is given for this
choice. A few poems, especially at the end and very famous, depart from the
traditional inspiration of the Kr1s1n1 aite Śr1ṅga: r bhakti, to achieve a Kabirian
flavour. The author modestly affirms the translations to be literal. They are
indeed very pleasant to read, elegant, and very easy to follow with the original
text on the opposite page. It is an excellent achievement, all the more so as
we do not have much translation of or even many commentaries on medieval
Gujarati poetry. Yet the need for further explanatory notes is clearly felt (in
spite of the author's explanations on p. 16). Daya: ra: m is difficult to translate,
in spite of a reliable textual transmission, many a perplexing interpretation
ought to be motivated. One would have liked to have been party to the
translator's understandings and to have participated in the elaboration of the
philological work. Let us take two examples: 1,7 ta: na is read as tana ‘body’
whereas it might not be impossible to accommodate the meaning of the
original ta: na ‘keynote, tune, sound of music’; inversely 142,2 khara is kept
unchanged with the somewhat surprising meaning of ‘donkey’, where some
editors have read, more logically if less grammatically accurate, kha: ra ‘salt’
(B. J. Sandesara, Daya: ra: m, Baroda, Gu: rjara ka: vyaśren1 :ı, 1960, 79, and
438 

M. Jhaveri, Daya: ra: ma, Bombay, Gu: rjara sa: hitya sarita, 1960, p. 44). Only
three of the seven erratically numbered footnotes (on a total of 217 pages)
are thought sufficient to inform about, or explain, an intricate translation.
These few observations are not meant in any way to diminish the quality
of a remarkable translating job. The select bibliography achieves an excellent
compromise without any major omissions. Exhaustiveness would not have
added much. A short and intelligent index concludes the book.
 

 . :
Masnavi: a study of Urdu romance, translated from the Russian by
M. Osama Faruqi.
(The Millennium Series.) xxvi, 291 pp. Karachi: Oxford University
Press, 2000. £6.99.
The number of scholars anywhere outside South Asia who work on Urdu
literature is so small that it must be a matter for special regret that a field
thus limited is further divided by language, with most of us in the West
needing translations in order to have direct access to the work of our Russian
colleagues, otherwise known to us only through too brief English summaries
or reviews. This translation into English of a major study first published in
Russian in 1992 by their currently most distinguished representative, Anna
Suvorova, is particularly to be welcomed both on these general grounds and
because it is itself a work of such intrinsic scholarly interest.
Ever since the time of Hali and his reformist contemporaries, the masnavı:
has had rather a hard time of it in Urdu literary criticism. Failing to survive
the transition from the classical to the modern period, unlike the ever supple
ghazal, the thematic and stylistic elaborations of the classical Urdu masnavı:,
with its often fantastic romantic themes, have invited little sympathetic
attention from most Urdu critics or their Western counterparts. The great
merit of Suvorova's approach is the way in which she succeeds in arousing a
lively interest in what has too often come to be regarded as a genre which
properly belongs in a museum.
This is achieved through a mixture of stimulating generalization with often
very illuminating critical discussions of representative individual texts. Arguing
against the conventional view that the Urdu romntic masnavı: is simply a
mechanical imitation of the Persian genre, Suvorova begins by drawing a
fundamental typological distinction between the ‘da: sta: n-like’ masnavı: and
what she calls the ‘ballad-like’ type. In distinction from the familiar first
type, with its extended narrative, fairy-tale setting and happy ending, the
‘ballad-like’ masnavı: is much shorter, has a local setting ‘creating an
atmosphere of pseudo-authenticity’, and ends tragically.
First identifying the ‘ballad-like’ type of Urdu masnavı: in the Deccani
period in Muqı:mı: 's Chandarbadan-o Mahiyar of 1638, where it is already
intertwined through the different religions of the lover and his beloved with
the ‘Turk and Hindu’ theme so characteristic of the later pre-modern Indo-
Islamic literary imagination and its marked Sufi orientations, Suvorova goes
on to establish a suggestive link with the classic Panjabi and Sindhi romances
and the transmission of these into the cultural mainstream through those
subsequently little read seventeenth and eighteenth century Persian versions.
She then shows both how closely Mı:r's short romantic verse narratives, which
 439

fit only rather awkwardly into the conventional critical categories, in fact

conform very closely to this type, and how neatly his Darya: -e "ishq and
Shu"la-e "ishq, the two poems she selects for particular discussion, contrast as
Sufi allegories in their respective symbolic explorations of the watery world of
women and the fiery fate of a hero who goes up in flames.
The ground shifts to the other, ‘da: sta: n like’ type of masnavı: in the two
following chapters which deal with the prime examples of this type in Urdu,
Mı:r Hasan's Sihr ul baya: n and the Gulza: r-i Nası:m. While helpfully tidying up
some previous confusions, including some of the loose definitions of Mı:r
Hasan's poem offered in Russell and Islam's still influential account in Three
Mughal poets, the critical focus here is upon the cultural significance of these
poems. Showing the intimate linkage of the first with the aristocratic values
and practices of the culture of Lucknow, and of the second with that culture's
stylistic obsessions, Suvorova also makes a number of stimulating observations
on the place of the masnavı: in the classical Urdu hierarchical system of literary
genres. These culminate in the book's fifth chapter, where on the one hand
the historically controversial status in the canon of its last significant exemplar,
Shauq's Zahr-e "ishq, is convincingly shown to derive from the perception of
a culturally unacceptable contamination of the ‘ballad-like’ type with a new
post-classical realism, while on the other the popularity of its adaptation as a
drama points to the still under-explored generic shifts associated with the
great Indian cultural divide of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
It has to be said that the English translation, while competent, is rather
wooden. It will, however, be apparent from the enthusiastic tone of this
review that the distancing effect sometimes thereby produced is by no means
a barrier to the appreciation of a voice of very real critical intelligence.
 

 :
Kerala Brahmins in transition: a study of a Nampu: tiri family.
(Studia Orientalia.) xiii, 436 pp. Helsinki: The Finnish Oriental
Society, 2000.
Parpola sets herself an ambitious task—to measure the degree of change that
has taken place within the Brahmin community in the state of Kerala, South
India. Continuous fieldwork spanning thirty years has allowed her to monitor
the effects of modernization, globalization, cultural shifts and socio-political
trends on generations of Nampu: tiri Brahmins. By choosing to record material
from only a few families she produces a convincing and extensive study.
Parpola grounds her ethnographic approach in a Sanskrit text from the
Vedic period known as Śa: ṅkara-Smr1ti. This text incorporates sixty-four
ana: ca: ras or irregular customs traditionally followed by the Nampu: tiri
Brahmins. These ana: ca: ras could be thought of as rules or social laws that
propound the behaviour expected of members of this high-caste group. They
are often called Kerala: cca: ras or customs of Kerala, revealing their uniqueness
to this region of India. Parpola compares, through the generations evolving
during her lengthy fieldwork, the extent to which current behaviour (at any
time) reflects the practice and conventions outlined in this text. Through such
an analysis she is able to draw conclusions regarding the extent to which
440 

Nampu: tiri families have changed, not just in terms of their religious practices,
but also with respect to the organization of their living space, the level of
interaction with other castes, employment, movement outside the domestic
space, education, dress, pollution, food, etc.
Parpola founds her methodology in the work of Bourdieu, who states that
individuals make choices for themselves (display agency) within the pre-
existing social system. As such Parpola regards her informants as agents
within their social system. She also identifies conflicts which highlight how
change does not suit all. Some family members (male elders) attempt to hold
on to the power invested in them in the traditional feudal system both in
terms of land ownership and through their control over the priesthood and
thus the divine.
Parpola concludes that Nampu: tiri Brahmins are in transition. Bourdieu
describes a period of crisis (doxa) that may occur within a community as the
decisive factor which will force its members to question the status quo of the
social order; some may demand and even achieve change. Parpola believes
that the period of crisis affecting Nampu: tiri Brahmins began with colonialism
and persisted through the erosion of Orthodox Brahmin tradition by Western
material culture. In particular the influence of television, broadcasting images
of more liberated lifestyles, has provoked younger generations to demand
greater freedoms, including the power to decide their future professions. The
prevalence of nationalism has perpetuated the crisis. Although nationalist
leaders propound Brahmin ideology, the drive to see a resurgence of traditional
values does not translate into greater power for Nampu: tiri families. Instead
they see their power further eroded; in spite of their once being well positioned
to acquire education and thus enter the professions, Brahmins now struggle
to compete for places against individuals from lower castes who have found
their opportunities increased by a system of reservations in both education
and professions.
I believe that this book represents a valuable contribution to the debate
on the impact of global change on the social reality of individual families
(bridging the gap between the micro and the macro). However, I was left
disappointed that the author did not go further. Her wealth of material failed
to go beyond a study of the workings of patriarchy operating within a
prescriptive set of Vedic rules. Although she identified the group that resists
change (male elders), she does not offer a full explanation as to why they fear
change (loss of power). Answering this question in detail would uncover a
full range of voices expressing dissent from orthodox practice as well as
identifying various strategies used by groups that find themselves marginalized
and who then act to carve out a more satisfactory lifestyle for themselves. By
limiting her focus to an analysis of the extent to which orthodox rules are still
followed she is unable to access the diversity of modes of expression that will
exist within a given group. I would question her claim that she has increased
the self-esteem of the women she interviewed through the very process of
consultation. Does she assume that what she saw was an accurate reflection
of the feelings and beliefs of the women with whom she lived? Public
interviews pressurize informants into supporting the dominant voice (male
elder) whilst suppressing their own views of how they experience life. This
may well be a methodological weakness. I would argue that what Parpola
conveys in her work are the experiences of the dominant male group within
the Nampu: tiri family. Even though the book does include separate chapters
on women and men, Parpola's interviewing techniques are very formal and
thus fail to allow her informants to express themselves in ways they find
 441

natural. This does not in any way diminish her contribution, but the author
might consider adapting her methodology on future work on the experiences
of other groups. On finishing her work I was left questioning how this period
of transition is personally experienced by the Nampu: tiri Brahmins it affects,
and its impact on young men, male elders and widows.
In summary this is a useful work which opens up further lines of inquiry
which other researchers may well fruitfully undertake.
 

 :
Language politics, elites, and the public sphere: western India under
colonialism.
(Permanent Black Monographs: The ‘Opus 1’ Series.) xi, 300 pp.
New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001. Rs 575, £27.95.
There is a growing body of research on the public sphere in South Asia which
analyses common phenomena—like language standardization, the impact of
the colonial education system, the beginnings of a vernacular press and of
local associationism—through the prism of regional specificities—as dictated
by the political and economic history of each region, by its social forces,
cultural traditions, and so on. The result, however, is not a uniform history
of nationalism merely declined along public sphere terms—with an emphasis
on rational communication, voluntary activism, the press and education, and
changes in literary tastes and in political ideology. Rather, what we see is a
history of different trajectories, each shedding a peculiar light on certain
common processes in the making of colonial modernity. Take the case of
Marathi, studied in this book. Unlike other parts of India, where colonial
administrators and educationists argued the advantages of working through
English or through Indian classical languages (Persian and Sanskrit), and
where education was thoroughly bilingual throughout, in the Marathi area
the importance of the vernacular was recognized from the very beginning.
Only later was official patronage withdrawn from vernacular education and
textual production, and the emphasis shifted towards English. Did this open
up a greater possibility for vernacular intellectuals from non-élite backgrounds,
is the author's tantalizing question. Did it allow them to take a more active
role in the production of public discourse and to diffuse (‘laicise’ is the word
the author uses) the new knowledge?
This question becomes even more pertinent considering the second
peculiarity of Marathi, that is the presence of a lower-caste, anti-Brahminical
set of public institutions and discourses from as early as the mid-nineteenth
century, with the remarkable figure of Jotiba Phule and his schools for girls
and for low-caste boys. Whereas vernacular intellectuals elsewehere in India
in the nineteenth century—all invariably of high caste—started talking of
themselves as the vanguard of the public and saw themselves as ‘educating’
and reforming the unreformed public—lower castes, women and all—in
Maharastra they had a much harder time, because here was someone who
was claiming access to the same colonial public sphere and to the same
benefits of education, the new knowledge and social mobility under the aegis
442 

of liberal discourse. The specific question this book raises is then: why, given
these potentially democratic or democratizing factors, did the Marathi
vernacular public sphere in the phase of ‘maturity’ (after 1860) take such a
decisively conservative turn? Why didn't a ‘popular anti-colonial alliance’
arise? On the contrary, what is generally called the vernacular Renaissance of
the 1870s marks in fact the success of the dominant agenda of the conservative
defence of the hierarchical structure of native society (p. 137).
This, however, is only the ‘ethnographic’ part of this book. Much more
ambitiously, and with great assurance, it also probes analytically into some
of the central themes in the constitution of any public sphere under a colonial
regime. For this reason, this book is recommended to all those who seek to
understand colonial public spheres anywhere in the world. These themes are:
the fate of liberal ideas in regimes of ‘colonial difference’ and ‘in contexts
inimical to the principles of liberal communicative resaoning’ (p. 205); the
actual, as opposed to the intentional, connection between education and social
mobility; and bilingualism and the all-important role of translation as a
vehicle of change, at times displaying and at times hiding the asymmetrical
power relations between guest-language and host-language. Translation from
English into Marathi in the classroom, for example, was ‘burdened with
multiple cognitive functions: it was meant as a somewhat hapless substitute
for a substantive elucidation of ideas and concepts, even as it was meant to
drill students in habits of writing and reading. Translation was used pretty
much like a holdall pedagogic tool to reduce the learning of several unfamiliar
skills and competencies to a circular pattern of activity that would eventually
deliver results through mechanical repetition’ (p. 110).
Perhaps the most fascinating discussion in the book is that on bilingualism,
from the staggering beginning of Balshastri Jambhekar's Bombay Darpan
(1832), which was completely bilingual and, by virtue of its absence of
comment on this fact or on the ‘original’ language of contributions, or on
the underdeveloped state of the vernacular, fearlessly tried to posit equality
between the status of English and of Marathi (p. 129). This kind of
bilingualism eventually proved unsustainable, and subsequent Marathi news-
papers were monolingual. Later journals in the 1870s were bilingual in a
different, and more common, way: by carrying some of the news and articles
in Marathi and others in English ‘these later papers implicitly admitted the
existence of two virtually discrete audiences to whom non-identical messages
needed to be directed, and who needed to be addressed simultaneously, but
separately, in English and Marathi. The layout of these papers acknowledged
an irrevocable ideological divide between the English and vernacular spheres’
(p. 219). Unlike the old vernaculars, the new, standardized vernaculars which
became print-languages and the regional vehicles of public discourses, were
conceived as an extension of English and remained locked in a relation of
subordination to it.
In the case of Marathi, the control over vernacular textual production and
education by a Brahminical intelligentsia ensured, Naregal argues, that the
democratic possibility of the vernacular as a vehicle of popular communication
and the diffusion of knowledge were curtailed, and non-élites were marginalized
or excluded from the Marathi public sphere; even if, with Phule, they had
been there in the first place. A significant merit of this richly-argued history
is the way it raises questions such as that of general access to and control
over knowledge, of education and social mobility, and of the fate of liberal
discourses which reach out to the present day.
 
 443

 . :
Modern Indian family law.
xiv, 432 pp. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001. £50.

The title of this publication would lead one to believe that it is a textbook on
Indian family law written for the convenience of a student of the subject. It
is, however, a collection of essays on selected topics written and published by
the author over a period of time through South Asian outlets, in particular
the Kerala Law Times. Nevertheless, the book covers all major areas and
issues in modern Indian family law; marriage, divorce, polygamy, maintenance,
property and a uniform civil code. It provides a representative overview of
the major issues and developments in Indian family law in the 1980s and 1990s.
The essays included are testimony to the highly commendable tradition of
SOAS scholars to contribute to the study of law and society in Asian and
African states. This publication not only demonstrates Menski's fine
scholarship but also shows the depth of his knowledge of Indian family law.
Writing with a great deal of care and skill, the author presents us with his
candid views on the state of the development of Indian laws in general and
family law in particular. The essays presented in this book speak of the wealth
of knowledge the author has of not only the law but also the socio-political
dimension that have influenced the operation of the Indian family law.
It is a quite daunting task to present a comprehensive and comprehensible
picture of family law in India, a country so diverse in its ethnic and religious
composition. Menski more than meets the task by presenting a nice overview
of modern Indian family law without setting out to write a student-oriented
book designed to provide a comprehensive treatment of the subject matter.
When analysing the law he also explains its background, which makes for
interesting reading not just for lawyers but also for students and researchers
of other areas of social science. When analysing the provisions of Indian
family law the author makes frequent comparisons with Western equivalents;
this approach is very helpful to Western readers.
Many Indian concepts relating to family are fundamentally different from
those in the West. Hindu traditions going back centuries are a major influence
and matrimonial and marital matters are regulated less formally than is the
case in the West. For instance, the concept of marriage in Indian Hindu
tradition is fundamentally different from the modern concept of marriage in
the West. Consequently, when the formal rules of law have to be applied to
the problems resulting from such traditional relationships the situation
becomes complicated. The author states that cases relating to marriage ‘often
come up in Indian law where one party claims that a particular Hindu
marriage does not exist or, more precisely, there is or was no legally binding
marriage between two particular spouses’ (p. 9). This is because a Hindu mar-
riage is very much a traditional affair performed within a society; there is no
involvement of the law or any formal state institutions. Similarly, the very
idea of divorce is not recognized in Hindu tradition. Modern Indian society
is, however, trying to come to terms with the alien concept of divorce.
Consequently, the law is now trying to recognize and regulate divorce in a
society which is not fully geared to accepting it. The author is successful in
examining such intricacies in a Hindu society and in so doing highlights
Muslim traditions and practices which differ from their Hindu equivalents.
Constitutionally, India is a secular state. The vision of the state from the
time of Indian independence in 1947 seems to have been to achieve some sort
444 

of uniformity in matters of family law through the adoption of a uniform

civil code for the whole country. However, the state seems to be far from
achieving this objective. Consequently, the Indian judiciary has to grapple
with both the Hindu and Muslim religious traditions in deciding cases relating
to family matters. The cases analysed in this book demonstrate the difficulty
the courts face in this regard: it is difficult enough a job to present a
comprehensive overview of family law issues governing a traditional Hindu
society, but it is doubly challenging to cover the influence of both the Hindu
and Muslim traditions on family law matters of a single jurisdiction. Menski
takes up this challenge and presents us with a book which analyses law and
practice from both Muslim and Hindu perspectives. He devotes a long chapter
to an analysis of the central role of the judiciary in modernizing Indian family
law and in imposing uniformity in its own Indian way. The author rightly
concludes that ‘The realisation that life drives law, not the other way round,
contradicts not only the dominant Western model approach to legal positivism
and legal centralism, it is also typically Indian’ (p. 403).
All in all, what we see in the work under review is an attempt to examine
modern Indian family law from both Hindu and Muslim perspectives, and
the efforts of the state machinery and the Indian judiciary and parliament in
particular to impose some order, uniformity and consistency in regulating the
private family affairs of Indian nationals. The book succeeds in meeting these
objectives and is a welcome addition to the limited body of literature available
in the West on this subject.
 . 

 :
Kinship and continuity: Pakistani families in Britain.
xvii, 320 pp. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000. £38.
Alison Shaw's earlier field study of Oxford Muslims (A Pakistani community
in Britain, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), based on extensive fieldwork in
Britain and Pakistan, is now considered one of the major recent studies on
the Pakistani presence in the UK, together with the work of Philip Lewis on
Islamic Britain (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994) and Pnina Werbner's book on
The migration process (Oxford: Berg, 1990). Now based at Brunel University,
Shaw has continued work on her earlier field and the present book expands
and updates the earlier study rather than being just a second edition (p. xv).
The result is a most valuable and very readable account of change and
continuity within the Oxford Pakistani Muslim communities since the 1980s.
Shaw manages to capture developments and trends which can also be observed
elsewhere and thus documents and corroborates, meticulously and often with
direct quotes, what we are beginning to understand in more detail about the
reconstruction of Muslim communities in Britain ‘on their own terms’, to use
Roger Ballard's key phrase from Desh pardesh (London: Hurst, 1994).
Shaw's study makes important contributions to a number of ongoing
debates. Rather than the academically cemented, publicly constructed idiom
of South Asians in Britain, she emphasizes situation-specific scenarios and
personal strategies by individuals within the context of the family or wider
group to work out agreeable solutions to conflicts. This approach not only
records the carefully hidden personal experiences of her local informants in
Oxford and Pakistan as a matter of anthropological enquiry, it also highlights
 445

how Oxford Pakistani Muslims, while sharing many characteristics with other
British Muslims, have been reconstructing their very own worlds within the
contexts of their personal histories and specific local settings. Bradford is
some way away, but what goes on elsewhere does not bypass the Oxford
Pakistanis, who are shown to be skilful users of multiple communication links
within Britain, and across the oceans to Pakistan.
Shaw's main arguments come together in a central thesis of ‘accommoda-
tion without assimilation’ and the observation that kinship remains a key
concept in practice and is likely to remain the central idiom of social
interaction (p. 158). The importance of the family over individuals is
highlighted, as well as the positioning of Oxford families as extensions of
Pakistani biraderis or clans, which makes British Pakistanis (and not only
them) ‘double-rooted’. Linked to these anthropological, more internal issues
is the political and external, public dimension of the place of Pakistanis in
modern Britain's civil society. Here Shaw takes a clear stance and cautions
against taking all Pakistanis as a homogeneous group, warning in particular
against assuming some form of unidirectional social change. Her richly
documented material provides innumerable examples of how what appears to
be a cross-cultural challenge involves ‘not a wholesale rejection of a "‘culture’'
or "‘religion’' in favour of "‘Western’' values, but is instead an attempt at
reform from within’ (p. 189). The conclusion to this debate reiterates that
stresses inherent in the Pakistani migrants’ culture itself, rather than outside
influences, play a central role in settling contested issues in a new socio-
cultural (and legal) environment. Only someone with deep cultural insight can
reach and project such conclusions as clearly as Shaw does throughout
this study.
From a legal perspective, I found this work immensely helpful, even
though Shaw does not write specifically for lawyers. But the issues she
identifies, especially the conflict situations, all have immensely direct legal
relevance. This is the kind of study that English judges should read in order
to be sensitized and more effectively prepared for dealing with ‘ethnic
minority’ legal issues.
Apart from the introduction and conclusion, the book contains nine major
chapters. These focus in turn on the migration and settlement processes,
household and family, caste, the biraderi and cross-cousin marriages, as well
as issues of honour and shame, health, domestic relations, and the more
outwardly political public dimensions of Oxford Pakistani life. Many points
of detail would deserve specific mention but alas, a review does not permit
that. At any rate, there is simply no substitute for reading this excellent book.
For example, Shaw repeatedly refers to the key role of dowry arrangements
among Pakistanis. This constant allusion to a particular set of practices and
their contested and changing nature definitely whets the appetite for more
information and deeper analysis. Perhaps we will get there one day; it is
evident that a lot more painstaking research work needs to be done before
full-fledged studies on such specialized but immensely relevant issues can be
written. The same would apply to work on ‘forced marriages’, a spicy topic
to which the study under review repeatedly alludes. Shaw's work thus helpfully
opens some windows, allowing us a glimpse of the enormously detailed
research work that is yet to be done on so many issues concerning Pakistanis
and other South Asians (and indeed all other ethnic minorities) in the UK.
An area of central interest to many readers will be the very complex
position of women among Pakistanis, generally as well as in Oxford. Shaw's
account is subtly perceptive not only about processes of chain migration,
446 

which first of all involved males, but also about the impact of bringing wives
to the UK from Pakistan (p. 37), clearly a process which continues. Her study
provides a multi-layered analysis of women's work and roles and its changing
social evaluation, with innumerable points of relevant detail. Finally, Shaw
emphasizes in the concluding analysis that Muslim identity (which is so
manifestly pluralistic in itself), rather than ethnicity, remains a central issue
for all concerned.
Regrettably, a considerable number of printing and setting errors have
survived the production process, but this cannot distract from the fact that
this is a significant contribution to the literature on South Asians as
‘transnational’ or perhaps rather ‘translocal’ communities. Many people,
from a number of disciplines, will read Shaw's book not only with intellectual
curiosity but with practical concerns in mind. More studies of this kind are
needed to facilitate the ongoing process of Britain becoming more aware of—
and hopefully more at ease with—growing pluralization and more explicit
recognition of the hybrid nature of all human existence.
 

 :
Health and population in South Asia: from earliest times to the
present.
vii, 178 pp. London: C. Hurst & Co., 2001. £25.
In this monograph Sumit Guha discusses a range of significant issues in
relation to health and population in South Asia. He shows how fluctuations
in population growth have been one of the more elusive areas of interest for
South Asian historians and demographers. In his overview of various
contemporary theories and historical perspectives used in demographic analysis
Guha covers some well-known debates and issues regarding population
growth. His own research adds some innovative insights into the problematic
field of population analysis.
Demographers and historians alike have debated explanations of popula-
tion movements in India. Guha provides the reader with detailed studies
dealing with specific issues in relation to health and population in South Asia
from the first century to the present day. The six essays in the book under
review enable Guha legitimately to cover such a wide time span. He begins
with a broad introduction to some complex issues relating to health and
population drawing on a variety of academic research in this area and related
fields of enquiry. He presents an overview of the fluctuations in specific world
populations during different historical periods. The first three chapters explore
the myriad theories concerning the fluctuations in population in South Asia,
offering a concise overview of the various debates that have arisen in recent
years regarding health issues in South Asia. The author addresses the sudden
and inadequately explained decline in the mortality rate in early twentieth-
century India. He also re-evaluates some traditional notions with regard to
household size and structure in western India from 1700 to 1950.
In chapter iv Guha examines the popular argument that, during the late
nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, advances in modern medicine
were responsible for the improvement in mortality and morbidity rates in
India; others have emphasized improved nutrition and sanitation measures
taken to prevent disease. Guha uses detailed statistical evidence of a specific
 447

historical population, the British Army in India, to assess how knowledge

regarding health issues was implemented. He points out that although this
sample does not reflect the rest of the population, it can provide information
about the prevalent health issues of the time. In chapter v Guha presents a
translation of propaganda produced to encourage people to take the smallpox
vaccination. The tract was written in Marathi by the English surgeon Thomas
Coats in 1812. Guha demonstrates how Coats used a local style and
information to legitimate vaccination against smallpox in order to encourage
a population known to have resisted both variolation and vaccination. The
final chapter seeks to examine and assess the effect of recent sanitary
campaigns on the environment and the overall health of the population.
With the use of government and military statistics, contemporary research
and a rare translated document, Guha examines traditional issues in
population studies such as fertility, mortality and morbidity. He also explores
some contemporary health issues, such as the effects of the environment,
climate and female infanticide, on population fluctuations, although famine
mortality, contraception and maternal mortality are not dealt with in great
detail. The book is a useful introductory text for anyone embarking on
research in population studies in South Asia or in comparative world
population studies, and would also be of interest to historians, demographers
and health administrators interested in population fluctuations with specific
reference to health issues in South Asia. Rather than the excessive amounts
of quantitative data and inaccessible language usually associated with
population studies, Guha maintains a balance between qualitative and
interpretive details. His accessible use of language allows him to highlight
some of the more important contemporary debates regarding issues of
demography.
 

 

 . :
ABC dictionary of Chinese proverbs.
xxvi, 239 pp. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, and Richmond,
Surrey: Curzon Press, 2002. £16.99.
Since it plainly takes nothing less than the wisdom of Solomon to compile a
collection of proverbs of truly lasting value, it is probably best not to judge
any new work in the field too harshly, and in truth there is a very great deal
to commend in John Rohsenow's volume. Some time has now passed since
the first publication of now classic works of this type by earlier sinologists,
like those of Arthur Smith or C. H. Plopper, during which (as Rohsenow's
fascinating and erudite introduction points out) the rise from the mid-
twentieth century onward of a new literature celebrating peasant life has
stimulated a great deal of lexicographic activity in China itself. Even Lu Xun,
one notes, attracted in 1978 a slim volume entirely devoted to the regionalisms
in his works, and other authors introduced many more snippets of local
wisdom to the Chinese reading public. The reduction of what we now know
concerning Chinese proverbs to the convenient format of the ABC dictionary
series, and the addition of a full bibliography of these older and more recent
448 

materials, together with a comprehensive index, all go to make this reasonably

priced volume a must for anyone who uses the Chinese language at all, for
whatever purpose.
Even so, there are a number of points for criticism too. Unlike, for
example, the original ABC Chinese-English dictionary, there would appear to
be no statement that this reviewer could find concerning the principles of
selection governing inclusion in the work. Presumably (though under the
circumstances, this is no more than a guess) every proverb given in the body
of the work is in some sense in current use, and this must at least be true of
those which are equipped with an asterisk to mark them out as ‘the most
commonly occurring proverbs’ (p. xxv), but there is no obvious clue as to
how this fact was determined. In many cases a locus classicus is cited, but in
many others there is simply an indication that the proverb occurs in a named
early vernacular source, such as the great examples of Ming-Qing fiction. Yet
it would seem that here these indications are not necessarily supposed to
provide the earliest historical examples known, for in the couple of cases of
proverbs with which I happen to be familiar from much earlier times, Ming-
Qing sources are the only ones given. No characters are provided for any of
the sources either in the body of the work or the index, nor are any details of
these materials listed in the general bibliography or elsewhere, so although
the majority are well enough known to pose no problems in pinyin
transcription, others appear distinctly mysterious, at any rate to an outsider
to this field.
There are also one or two lesser errors which might be readily corrected
in a subsequent printing. Thus while it may perhaps be pardonable to cite
proverbs in the introduction which are not included in the body of the work
(viz. p. xvi, ‘Cats who like to mew can't catch mice’), to refer to one and the
same pioneer collector there as Yang Sheng'an (p. xv) and as Yang Shen in
the bibliography (p. 209) is mildly misleading. Proverb C183 on p. 22 also
looks to me as if it contains a homophonous misprint in the Chinese. But, as
proverb G14 has it, ‘There is no sugar cane that is sweet at both ends’, so if
the compiler's success has not been entirely unalloyed, we are nevertheless
very much in his debt for having produced a work of reference that is also,
all in all, a most affordable repository of highly browsable wisdom.
. . 

 , translated by  . , Jr:

Chinese literature, ancient and classical.
xi, 168 pp. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
2000.

 ,  ,   and  

(ed.):
Ways with words: writing about reading texts from early China.
(Studies on China.) x, 283 pp. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 2000. £12.50.

Although the integration of the study of Chinese literature into the general
study of the humanities in higher education seems to have made better
 449

progress in the USA than in Europe, it is interesting to note that educators

there have on more than one occasion lately been obliged to turn to European
products in order to produce surveys of the field suitable for a broad audience.
Evidently the European tradition of writing academic works for general public
consumption, a tradition which has already made the writings of historians
such as Jacques Gernet familiar to the reader of English, is still robust enough
to produce material suitable for American undergraduates. One recent example
would be the Guide to Chinese literature of Wilt Idema and Lloyd Haft,
originally in Dutch, which was published in 1997 by the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, in an English translation by the original authors—
though the reader should be warned that the expansive polyglot bibliography
of the hardback version is reduced to a merely anglophone shadow of itself
in the concurrent paperback.
Evidently, producing an entirely anglophone bibliography for the latest
translation venture, an English version of André Lévy's more summary survey
of traditional Chinese literature by (broadly conceived) genre, has equally
proved relatively easy for William Nienhauser, too, as his thoroughly
Americanized version of the French original attests. Doubtless, for example,
Yuan Mei's prowess as a cookery writer involved no reference to Julia Child
(p. 52) in the original French, while the convenience of the Indiana companion
to traditional Chinese literature and its supplement as sources for bibliograph-
ical tips leads on several occasions simply to the citation of their survey
articles for further information. As it stands, four chapters waste no time in
introducing the Chinese Classics and other pre-imperial works, later historical
and literary prose, poetry, and the literature of entertainment (drama, popular
fiction, and the like) succinctly enough to allow the ‘Suggested further
reading’ to expand the beginner's horizons yet further, for example by adding
to the section on the twin origins of Chinese poetry (the Songs of Chu and
Han yuefu) Dore Levy's study of somewhat later Chinese narrative poetry.
True, despite the attention lavished on making this volume as user-friendly
as possible, one or two blemishes remain, or have been newly introduced. I
very much doubt, for example, that even if the Hanshan corpus was—for all
its apparent individuality—produced by a group of Zen monks, they should
have done so in the sixth century (p. 75), for unless we have got the
historiography of the school entirely wrong it seems unlikely that at that time
the Zen tradition—even if already founded by Bodhidharma—had enough
adherents on Cold Moutain or anywhere else to run up a corpus of verse
acting as a team. As for the length of dash required in hyphenation, the copy
editor seems to set out in two minds on page one and maintained a studied
inconsistency until amost the very end.
Doubtless, as in the case of the first of the larger Indiana volumes, these
minor corrections may in due course be added to a master list of errata
compiled by some European colleague in the hope that they may be of use in
the preparation of a second (and surely a paperback) edition. For most
certainly a work such as this should prove robust enough to run to more than
one incarnation, so that in due course an entire generation of graduates in
Chinese literature may one day rise up to thank both Lévy and Nienhauser
for their earliest orientations in what will have proved to be a lifetime of
learning. American studies of China established themselves in the mid-
twentieth century in a way that involved heaping a certain amount of
opprobrium on Old World sinology; it is good to see the new century setting
off in a more co-operative and harmonious direction.
Something of the maturity of North American studies of Chinese literature
450 

may meanwhile be gauged from a very different contribution to the education

of English-language students in the subject. Ways with words is evidently
designed for that more advanced stage in the curriculum when the simple
verities of introductory courses have to be undermined in order to produce
researchers alive to the infinite possibilities that the study of Chinese
civilization opens up. As such, it takes the laudably bold approach of selecting
seven texts from more than a thousand years ago and subjecting them to
translation and to competing interpretations at the hands of a dozen scholars
from different backgrounds. The last dozen or so pages then contain the
original texts in Chinese for the reader to confront in the light of these
conflicting stimuli.
This dramatic way of emphasizing that China before the Song was itself
by no means a univocal place cannot be commended too highly, even if the
claim of the introduction (p. 2) that such an approach has the sanction of
early sinological tradition does seem to be going a little far. That the Jesuits
never spoke in terms of a ‘grand opposition between East and West’ is rather
belied by the titles of some of their Chinese compositions, even if perhaps
inwardly they acknowledged the complexity of cultural comparisons. In fact
the editors seem to have boldly gone beyond all existing sinological conventions
by devoting their fourth chapter to a piece of prose that was never considered
as literature on the same footing as its companion pieces by any Chinese
reader in early times, namely the Heart Sutra.
Acknowledging the existence of Buddhist scriptures translated from or
composed in imitation of Indian models as an irreducible component on the
Chinese past after Han times forms such a break with the tradition of Chinese
literary studies in the West that one hesitates to criticize this chapter in any
way. Nevertheless, it is perhaps worth pointing out that the Heart Sutra was
not just ‘literature’, even in the noblest conception of what that might mean
in Chinese terms, but also very much more. For as the illustration of the
Heart Sutra written out in the shape of a pagoda on p. 115 testifies, the text
constituted a shrine in itself, embodying as it did, like all sutras, the living
presence of the very Buddha.
Nor will it do to translate the Buddhist term fa, meaning ‘dharmas’ as
‘laws’, as on p. 117, as if to suggest that the average Chinese reader was
unfamiliar with the basic technical terminology of Buddhism. Are we to
suppose that Yuan Hongdao's friend, the Old Drunkard, went around
muttering (to modify the Jonathan Chaves translation) ‘All laws return to the
One’? Or that when the early Manchu poet Nalan Singde composed a letter
discussing the same phrase with an unnamed monk he did not know what it
meant? The division between sinology and Buddhology is a feature of
university organization in the English-speaking world; it has nothing to do
with the way Chinese texts were read. Real life in China was never chopped
up into different course units in different departments—something we have
come to expect our students not to notice, but which surely all teachers should
be aware of. One can live with books on ‘Chinese literature’ as (to introduce
another Buddhist concept) an expedient means, designed to show that China
is fit to be studied in the context of the ‘disciplines’ erected by our entirely
Eurocentric educational traditions rather than shunted off into some academic
ghetto as mere ‘sinology’. In this necessary enterprise both books under
review will no doubt have important parts to play. But why succumb so
readily to the distortions of knowledge imposed upon us by the institutions
in which we are obliged to work?
. . 
 451

-  (ed.):

A Chinese literary mind: culture, creativity, and rhetoric in Wenxin
Diaolong.
xii, 315 pp. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.
In contrast to modern East Asian scholarship on Liu Xie's (c. 465–c. 521)
Wenxin diaolong, (translated by Vincent Shih in 1959 as The literary mind and
the carving of dragons), which is estimated to have reached 140 books and
2,419 articles by 1992 (p. 2), the study of this seminal work on Chinese
literary theory in English has been limited to Shih's translation, two Ph.D.
dissertations, and Stephen Owen's translation of its major chapters with
commentaries in his Readings in Chinese literary thought. This collection of
ten papers from a conference held in 1997 is a welcome addition, being the
first book-length study in English. The work under review is divided into four
parts. Part 1 focuses on the relationship between Wenxin diaolong and broader
literary and critical traditions. Kang-i Sun Chang discusses Liu Xie's work in
the context of canon formation and explains his strategy of forming a link
between the literary tradition and the Confucian classics. Zong-qi Cai argues
for Liu Xie's synthesis of religious, humanistic and didactic concepts of
literature into his own comprehensive vision of literature. All these concepts
regard literature as a harmonizing process, though Cai gives important
qualifications.
Part 2 discusses some of the intellectual foundations of the work. Victor
H. Mair tackles debates on the role played by Buddhism in the composition
of the work, whether shen (spirit) and xin (mind) in the work is Buddhist or
not. He lays bare these polemics, and argues that the methodology and
epistemology of the work is Indian, although native Confucianism played an
equally important role in its composition. Richard John Lynn focuses on the
relationship between the writings of Wang Bi (226–249), the neo-Daoist
philosopher and Liu Xie's work, arguing that Liu adopted three key terms
from Wang, but with a crucial difference. Wang believed that writing could
not communicate the Dao, while Liu argued to the contrary.
Part 3 examines the creative process as understood by Liu Xie. Ronald
Egan gives a full translation and close reading of the Shensi chapter of the
work, which deals with literary imagination. Following the lead of Angus
Graham, he uses the term ‘daimon’ for shen, and crucially points out that
for Liu, unlike in the West, there is no opposition between imagination and
reason or intellect in daimonic thinking. Liu describes the freedom of daimonic
thinking, but also highlights the theme of control in terms of prior training
of the impulses, mastery of language, reason and unity of purpose for literary
creation. Shuen-fu Lin compares Western and Chinese concepts of imagination,
and concludes with the remark that while Coleridge and Wordsworth regard
the poet's ‘shaping spirit of imagination’ as genius which, once lost, cannot
be regained, Liu emphasizes the importance of continuous cultivation, and
the possibility that a writer's power of imagination is not something with
which he alone is endowed, but something he shares with fellow human
beings (p. 160).
Part 4 focuses on the art of rhetoric discussed in the work. Andrew Plaks
writes on rhetorical parallelism, pointing out that in the classical Chinese
literary system, this principle is developed to a degree of subtlety and
complexity unequalled in the other classical literatures, and that Wenxin
diaolong is a primary locus classicus for this notion among the various texts
452 

of early Chinese literary theory (p. 164). He further teases out Liu Xie's
treatment of the aesthetics of the four-part scheme of ‘lexical’, ‘semantic’,
‘direct’ and ‘antithetical’ parallelism, and the complementary use of parallel
and non-parallel styles. Stephen Owen approaches the same topic from a
different angle, and deals with the problems of reading parallel prose. He
points out that although parallel prose is well suited for descriptive purposes,
it is less effective in making ‘arguments’. For this formal expository procedure
of developing a topic through division and amplification, he coins the term
‘discourse machine’, and gives a number of examples where Liu Xie the critic
goes along trying to control the problematic products of this machine. Wai-
yee Li writes on the tension between wen (pattern, literature, etc.) as immanent
order and rhetorical excess, as illustrated in the title ‘Literary mind’ and
‘Carving dragons’, and explains Liu's contradictory versions of literary
history through this ambivalent view. The final chapter, by Zhang Shaokang,
surveys studies of the work in East Asian languages, and may be fruitfully
read along with Zhou Zhenfu's Wenxin diaolong cidian (A dictionary for
Wenxin diaolong, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996), which includes entries on
important studies in Chinese and Japanese and on areas in the text that are
hotly debated.
The above does not do justice to the author's numerous original
contributions. In general, terminology in Wenxin diaolong is not easy to pin
down, and Liu Xie wrote at a time when more than one strand of thought
was current. The first task has been to determine which system(s) Liu Xie
subscribed to when he wrote his work, and hopefully one day this problem
will be solved through further evidential scholarship. Arguing with internal
evidence is also crucial, as can be seen in the methodology of many of the
contributors. As an extension, chapters in this study can also be fruitfully
compared. For example, Zhong-qi Cai's discussion of Liu Xie modelling his
system on the symbolic numerology of fifty in the Book of Changes (p. 56)
can be read against Mair's proposal of an Indian system of poetics. The
Buddhist concept of shen (spirit) as proposed by Rao Zongyi in Mair's
chapter (p. 70) can be read against the chapters by Egan and Lin.
This book provides close readings of some of the important chapters in
Liu Xie's work. Many other aspects remain to be explored, including those
chapters on specific genres. Again, Zong-qi Cai gives a clear summary of the
ten chapters in his introduction, and ends with Owen's challenging question
of why Wenxin diaolong was relatively neglected in Chinese writing before the
Qing period. This work provides the stimulus for readers to launch a
new enquiry.
- 

  (ed.):

The literary field of twentieth-century China.
vii, 252 pp. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999.
During the 1990s a new trend in international Chinese studies developed:
there is a kind of collective thinking which forces scholars wishing to be
successful in their field to make use of certain patterns of thought and
a certain terminology. Studies of modern China can no longer do without
words like ‘gender’, ‘space’, ‘post-colonialism’ and ‘post-modernism’.
Contemporary French philosophers in particular, whose works are read in
 453

English translation or adapted from textbooks, are quoted again and again
as if China and (post)structuralism and deconstructivism were inseparable. In
the 1970s and 1980s it was Maoist discourse which made Chinese studies
indigestible, now it is French discourse that can make the reading of Chinese
studies written in English an academic torture.
The title of the work under review is taken from the French philosopher
Pierre Bourdieu, who published his Les règles de l'art. Gènese et structure du
champ littéraire in 1992. As if it is necessary to illustrate the rights and wrongs
of Pierre Bourdieu's règles! The participants at a workshop held in Leiden,
the Netherlands, in January 1996 seem to feel bound not to depart from their
masters' voices. I am afraid I have to admit that I felt increasingly bored
when I read through Michel Hockx's exhaustive introduction to the thought
of Pierre Bourdieu and the subsequent collection of articles dealing with
Bourdieu and China, too.
Another important rule of international Chinese studies says: if you do
not want to perish, quote only yourself. The works quoted most frequently in
this book are those of the editor himself. The excellent works of Rudolf
Wagner are not mentioned at all, and Márian Gálik is mentioned only once.
Not one of the numerous studies published in Germany during the last
twenty-five years seems to be known to the authors. For Oliver Kremer, a
German, it would have been easy to enrich his article about Chinese writers
in exile by taking into account the large number of works which have been
published in Germany.
Where is the ‘older’ generation of sinologists? Scholars like Rudolf
Wagner, Milena Dolezelova and Márian Gálik have preferred to interpret
contemporary Chinese literature either from a literary or from a political
point of view; the ‘younger’ generation of sinologists such as Raoul
D. Findeisen, Michel Hockx and Claire Huot prefers to talk about the
conditions under which it is possible to write about Chinese literature and
how it can be organized as an academic discipline. Therefore, the approach
of the book under review is quite different from that preferred in the 1980s.
The older generation liked ideas, the younger generation likes facts. Nowadays,
the reader is fed rich facts which have been overlooked by the more idealistic
scholars of the past. However, there remains the problem of China changing
so fast that facts become outdated very quickly. This applies in particular to
the article by Claire Huot, who writes about censorship as a form of state
coercion. Perry Link and others, however, have shown that in the case of the
People's Republic of China one should speak rather of self-censorship than of
government censorship.
The bewildering aspect of The literary field of twentieth-century China is
the fact that nearly thirty years of contemporary Chinese literature (1949–79)
does not seem to belong to this very ‘field’: this period is not dealt with at
all. Instead, many minor works are discussed at length. I do not deny that I
learned a great deal when I read Findeisen's article on writing about couples
or articles on the meaning of ‘she’ (Hockx), the distribution of popular
literature (Kaikkonen, Chen Pingyuan) and about translations of foreign
literature in magazines at the beginning of the last century (Gimpel). Yet, I
constantly had to ask myself, what is the value of literature? The approaches
in the book under review lack affection and engagement.
This kind of research can be done on any topic, on papermaking or
printing processes in China, for instance, but it does no justice to the aesthetic
value of literature. From this admittedly traditional point of view, only Wang-
chi Wong managed to write an inspiring article. The reason might be quite
454 

simple: the author does not quote Bourdieu and shows very convincingly that
translation in China has always been carried out according to political and
social needs so that any foreign original had to pass through the same kind
of alteration which a Chinese original in a Western language also had to go
through.
 

 :
Women at the siege of Peking.
xxii, 408 pp. Oxford: HOLO Books, The Women's History Press,
2000. £22.95.
Susanna Hoe has now accumulated such a weight of experience in writing of
the lives of women, especially Western women, in East Asia during the high
noon of imperialism that she evidently now has the self-confidence to take
risks which lesser writers would tremble even to contemplate. Here, for
example, even though this book was evidently released in the teeth of
considerable competition to take advantage of the centenary of the Boxer
troubles, it opens with no historical sketch of the nineteenth-century interaction
of China and the West, no analysis of the rise of the Boxers—nothing from
the normative, male world of historiography at all. Instead a brief prologue
and introductory chapter acquaint us in the first instance with the de facto
ruler of China, the Empress Dowager, as observed by those women of the
diplomatic community of Peking who were able to secure audiences with her,
a privilege which was itself first granted only in 1898. Throughout what
follows it is the writings of women which predominate amongst the sources,
even if the records of some men—especially men like G. E. Morrison, who
talked both to and about women—are also drawn upon.
As a result we are plunged right from the start into the microscopic
examination of events within a small world increasingly hemmed in by larger
events until quite soon we are dealing with the day-to-day details of the siege
itself. The effect is in a way appropriately claustrophobic. Indeed, at first
glance the microscopic approach would seem sometimes to verge on self-
parody, as the title of the section ‘Who screamed?’ (pp. 188–92) might
suggest. But in fact the patient cross-checking of the published and often
unpublished and unfamilar materials on these questions throws light, as the
author unobtrusively points out, on a number of broader issues, such as
which nationalities were expected to behave in a less than plucky fashion, and
other similar stereotypes.
When the book is read consecutively, indeed, one soon learns to trust the
author to select and arrange her material judiciously enough to keep wider
horizons always in view, even if she does ‘leave it to the reader to make
judgements and draw conclusions’ (p. xv). In practice, though, leaving it to
the reader also extends to not making all the connections that a more heavy-
handed writer would drive home. This allows us the pleasure, for example, of
noting the gloomy reference to Cawnpore by one woman at the start of events
(p. 105), balanced by the joyous reference to Lucknow (p. 269) as the relief
expedition came at last within earshot—a broader historical viewpoint, of
course, was not denied even to the participants themselves.
 455

So, while this is not a book one would read in isolation to gain an
understanding of what happened in 1900, there is not much to complain
about here, and quite a bit to admire and to learn from. Doubtless other
reviewers have complained or will complain about p. 35, where Robert Bredon
is described accidentally as ‘brother of Robert Hart's sister’ (meaning ‘wife’,
namely the absent Hester Bredon), but the prominence of this error is largely
due to the accuracy of the rest. In lesser hands this work could have been a
disaster, full of clunking analysis and potted history. One cannot but be
charmed by the good sense of an author who by contrast respects her readers'
intelligence whilst concentrating her considerable energies on the research
necessary to make such a book a success. And I do hope that other topics
within the territory that she has made so much her own have already suggested
themselves to her, for it is a success that deserves to be repeated.
. . 

 . :
Japan's imperial diplomacy: consuls, treaty ports, and war in China,
1895–1938.
(Studies of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University.) xi,
296 pp. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000.
Did the Japanese Foreign Ministry have China hands, and if so, what role
did they play in imperial Japan's foreign policy towards the continent?
Barbara J. Brooks sets out to answer this question and, in doing so, provides
a valuable addition to recent studies of China and Japan, particularly Louise
Young's Japan's total empire: Manchuria and the culture of wartime imperialism
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Whereas Young focused on
the lived experience of creating and maintaining a socio-political experiment
in Manchuria, Brooks travels back and forth between the metropole and its
periphery, examining the men who were ostensibly responsible for formulating
and guiding Tokyo's China policy. In short, Young argues that, yes, the pre-
war Gaimusho: had an extensive cadre of China experts, but that, due partly
to bureaucratic in-fighting in the ministry, these China hands were increasingly
frozen out of the decision-making process.
Brooks provides a loose chronological narrative organized into two main
sections: the first recounting what she calls the institutional, cultural, and
political setting for the Gaimusho: and its China diplomats, and the second
showing the China bureau's loss of authority over both Sino–Japanese
relations and the formation of Tokyo's policy. Throughout, Brooks is careful
to note that she is not concerned primarily with top policy makers;
rather, her focus is on the middle-level bureaucrats and diplomats, most
of whom were opponents of continental expansion. From the first, then,
Brooks conceptualizes a scheme in which the relatively moderate China
diplomats lost out to factions linked to the aggressive imperial army and its
governmental allies.
Of particular note is the first section, whose three chapters break new
ground on a number of issues. Since we have only Ian Nish's 1977 study of
modern Japanese foreign policy, Brooks's first chapter is especially interesting,
456 

recounting as it does the development of the Foreign Office and the emerging
role of orthodox ‘Kasumigaseki diplomacy’, which is identified with Shidehara
Kiju: ro: . This reviewer wishes the discussion had been more thorough, but it is
valuable nonetheless. Similarly, chapter ii provides an in-depth exploration of
the making of the China diplomats, those mid-level bureaucrats, sometimes
in the field, whose influence on metropolitan policy waxed and waned
according to their own levels of access. No comparable study in English exists
to my knowledge. The third chapter minutely details the sphere of responsibility
and various roles of the China consuls. Brooks argues that in the interests of
reducing the slide towards the colonization of China the consuls attempted to
play a buffer role between Chinese authorities and Japanese nationals. Here
she ventures to delineate the relationship between the consuls, the Chinese,
and the resident Taiwanese and Koreans working under Japanese auspices in
China, arguing that the Japanese used their consular jurisdiction to help knit
together their emerging sphere of interests between the mainland and these
increasingly Japanese-controlled areas.
Brooks's final two chapters detail the loss of Gaimusho: authority over
China affairs in the wake of the 1931 Manchurian incident, in which a group
of Japanese army soldiers engineered an ‘attack’ on the Manchurian railway
and used it as a pretext to begin expanding army control over China. This
recounting is notable primarily for retelling the well-known story of the loss
of civilian control over Manchuria from the point of view of the diplomats
on the scene. Theirs were hands increasingly tied by both the encroachments
on their administrative authority in the region and the Gaimusho: 's growing
impotence in Tokyo, due in part to the rise of nationalistic ‘reform’
bureaucrats. The China diplomats could only watch as the international order
they had helped create in China (beneficial to Japan, of course) disintegrated.
Brooks's argument rests on defining the interplay among various
Gaimusho: and non-Gaimusho: groups in this period. She attempts to carve
out an independent space for the China hands, who were intellectually
pro-Kasumigaseki, that is, pro-Anglo-American, yet were disappointed by the
failure of Shidehara and others to prevent military expansion in China. The
China experts, along with their Kasumigaseki superiors, steadfastly maintained
that the Gaimusho: was not a colonial agency; it was this inability to respond
to changing realities in China, as well as the failure to prevent those changes,
that resulted in their loss of authority over China affairs.
The capstone to this process was the setting up in 1938 of the Asia
Development Board, which severely undercut the policy input from
Gaimusho: 's Bureau of Asiatic Affairs. Yet precisely because Brooks argues
that the mid-level China experts never reached prominence themselves, or
established an undisputed position as key aides to top policy makers, it is
unclear what other outcome could have resulted. Unlike Peter Duus in his
study of the almost haphazard development of Japanese control over Korea,
Brooks clearly believes that Manchuria was not acquired in a fit of absence
of mind; moreover, she does not believe that Japanese imperialism in China
was an aberration from a more stable tradition of international diplomacy.
Brooks concludes that there was no single cause for either the loss of
Gaimusho: authority over China or the slide into war. The failure was system-
wide and therefore defies simple exegesis. Fundamentally, it was the rational
bureaucratic infighting between men of different ideological stripes, harnessed
to an increasingly unstable domestic situation in Japan, which provided much
of the tragedy of the modern Sino–Japanese experience.
 
 457

 . . :
Manchus and Han: ethnic relations and political power in late Qing
and early Republican China, 1821–1928.
(Studies on Ethnic Groups in China.) x, 394 pp. Seattle and London:
University of Washington Press, 2000. $55.00.
The question of the relationship between Manchus and Chinese (Han), and
the related issue of the Manchus' assimilation to Chinese culture, has been at
the heart of a number of recent studies, to which Edward Rhoads's book
represents a thoughtful, thoroughly researched, and overall very welcome
addition. It is fair to say that everyone engaged in the study of the Qing
Dynasty is today aware that the relationship between conquering Manchus
and conquered Han can no longer be liquidated as an instance of sinicization.
Even the voices that have risen in defence of sinicization have had to qualify
their viewpoint in the light of much research, beginning with Pamela Crossley's
Orphan warriors (Princeton, 1990), showing the complexity and the multifarious
nature of this question. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, neither had the
Manchus abandoned the privileges and marks of distinction that set them off
from the mass of the Chinese population, nor were the Chinese (Han)
suggesting that such a process had taken place. Rather, foremost on the mind
of fin de siècle anti-Manchu reformists and revolutionaries were worries of an
opposite nature: Manchu barbaric costumes had been imposed on the Chinese
people for so long that the true essence of Chinese culture might have been
forever lost. Of course, modern Chinese historiography would look at such
claims as anathema, within the centrality of the principle of the ‘unity of
nationalities’ (minzu tuanjie), but the anti-Manchu movement was definitely a
key ingredient of the Republican movement, and Rhoads does well to
highlight all of its facets, including the unsavoury ones.
After an introductory chapter on the history of the Eight Banners, the first
half of the book details the Manchu élite and court's responses to growing
pressures to reform the state and, within it, the status of the Bannermen. The
latter had become an unbearable burden on the depleted public coffers, and
generated much resentment among the non-Banner population. Other causes of
Han resentment were of a more narrow, nationalistic, and even racist, nature.
Under Cixi and later under the regency of Zaifeng (Puyi's father) massive
reforms were introduced, which attempted to ‘recentralize’ and ‘remilitarize’
(to use Rhoads's expression) the political process under the leadership of the
Court. Such tardy attempts to reform the state by strengthening the centre were,
as we know, already too late, but the year-by-year unfolding of the drama,
especially between 1906 and 1911, makes fascinating reading.
The second half of the book presents a persuasive re-evaluation of the last
days of the dynasty, and the consequences of the Xinhai revolution for the
Manchus. The revolution was not, as it appears from many accounts, a
relatively mild affair: it was neither bloodless nor entirely one-sided. Much
Manchu blood was shed, and Rhoads's reconstruction suggests strongly that
anti-Manchu feelings among the Han were so rampant that a massive
genocidal blood bath would not have been, under the circumstances,
inconceivable. As it happened, in a number of places Manchus were targeted
racially and summarily killed.
But Rhoads's most important argument concerns the nature of the
Manchus as a people and a social group. If a broad consensus has been
emerging among scholars that the Han–Manchu relationship cannot be
458 

reduced to the single point of cultural assimilation, what that relationship

entailed, how it should be viewed, and what insights it can give us with
respect to the political and cultural history of Qing China, are by no means
settled issues. Rhoads contends that the Manchus should be viewed, right
until the last two decades of the dynasty, as ‘equivalent to the banner people’
(p. 290). That is, neither as an ethnic group, nor as a political group, but
rather as an occupational group and a hereditary military caste. Whereas
originally the Banners were by no means an ethnically, linguistically, or
‘racially’ homogeneous group, by the late nineteenth century Manchus and
Bannermen (qiren) came to be identified as a single ethnic group. It is at this
time that the ‘occupational’ (and social) divide began to be seen with ‘ethnic’
or even ‘racial’ eyes. The attractiveness of this argument is that it safeguards
the unity of the Banners as a social group without having to sacrifice its
internal diversity to any Procrustean urgency to see Manchu identity embodied
in a fixed set of ethnic markers.
Yet Rhoads's argument will probably find its critics. In particular some
may question his definition of the Bannermen as an occupational group and
a military caste, in contrast to the ‘civilians’ forming the rest of the imperial
subjects (p. 67). One problem with this definition is that the Banners ceased
to hold a military monopoly when, at the beginning of the dynasty, the Green
Standard Army was created out of the remnants of the Ming army. Later on
it played key roles in important campaigns, and was regarded in every way as
part of the military establishment. Although the Banners continued to be the
élite fighting force, an analysis of their relationship with other sectors of the
military, like the Green Standard and other non-Banner military forces, (e.g.
the local militias and regional armies that emerged in the nineteenth century)
would have added cogency to Rhoads's argument.
On the other hand, Rhoads's focus on the Banners as both a military
caste and the chief locus of Manchu identity is likely to generate a prolific
line of questions. For instance, if the survival of the Manchus at the top of
the socio-political scale depended on their role as a military caste, it is
surprising that the government played such a backward-looking and
conservative role by not responding to pressures to modernize the Banners as
an effective fighting force already in the early nineteenth century.
In conclusion, Edward Rhoads's fascinating narrative has made an
important contribution to the ongoing debate on the ‘Manchu question’ in
Qing history. Readers interested in China's late imperial social and political
history, and ethnic relations, or simply wishing to know more about the
astonishing ‘rise and fall’ of the Manchus and their empire will be rewarded
by this solidly researched and very readable book.
  

  :

Christianity in rural China: conflict and accommodation in Jiangxi
Province, 1860–1900.
(Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies No. 91.) xii, 281 pp. Ann
Arbor, MI: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan,
2001. $50.
This monograph provides much-needed scholarship for the study of Chinese
Christianity on two levels. First, it is a splendid addition to the growing
 459

literature on the inner dynamics of Christian communities in rural China

based on archival research and fieldwork. Sweeten builds on many current
studies of Chinese Christianity—by Daniel H. Bays, Jessie G. Lutz and
Rolland Ray Lutz, and others—which have shown that Chinese converts had
enjoyed a great deal of autonomy in evangelistic work during the late
nineteenth century. Drawing on the multi-volume series of the Jiaowu jiao'an
dang (The Archive on Christian Affairs and Religious Cases) (hereafter jiao'an
materials) and other relevant missionary sources, he argues that Catholicism
had become far more indigenous at the local level than we once thought. The
spread of Catholicism among large numbers of ordinary Chinese in the
countryside was the direct result of evangelistic activities undertaken by native
catechists and lay leaders rather than by foreign missionaries alone (pp. 22–30).
These Chinese Catholics came from diverse social backgrounds: they were
farmers, artisans, landholders, merchants, lower degree holders and widows.
Rather than living on the fringes of the society, they were deeply integrated
into the political, social, economic and cultural spheres of the local
communities (pp. 37–9).
Second, it contributes to our understanding of different patterns of social
conflicts involving Chinese Catholics at the local level, including litigation,
intra-/inter-lineage disputes, domestic violence against women, church property
disputes and Christian sectarian rivalries. Using more than forty religious
cases from the jiao'an materials, Sweeten argues that many anti-Christian
incidents resulted from ongoing resource conflicts that had long predated the
arrival of Catholicism. In areas with a long history of resource disputes, the
Catholics often employed conversion as a political strategy to foster communal
solidarity and to attract external resources in local power struggles. This
analysis of the Catholic involvement in local conflicts not only highlights the
agency of the Chinese Catholic communities but also corrects the widespread
misconception that anti-imperialism, anti-foreignism and cultural antagonism
between Confucianism and Christianity were the ultimate grounds for conflict.
As well as analysing the endogenous origins of anti-Christian violence,
Sweeten also explores a wide range of crisis management strategies employed
by Catholic missionaries, Chinese officials, Catholics and non-Catholics to
resolve disputes in different social settings. When disputes and violence
escalated beyond the village communities, conflict resolution was largely
influenced by the involvement of the Catholic missionaries and their resort to
diplomatic pressure at both the central and provincial levels. The missionaries
and Chinese central government exerted a more significant influence than the
local officials in resolving anti-Christian cases, and this intensified the erosion
of state power at the local level.
Overall, this study is based on a very solid foundation of empirical data.
Sweeten presents his findings in readable language, using the jiao'an materials
to illustrate the diverse experiences of the Catholic communities in late-
nineteenth-century Jiangxi province. He handles these Chinese official sources
effectively and demonstrates a critical awareness of their values and limitations.
For example, the reliability of the jiao'an materials is a major methodological
problem. Sweeten points out that the anti-Christian arguments probably reflect
the Chinese official perspectives on the Catholic activities rather than the views
of those Catholics and non-Catholics involved. Some correspondence from the
Chinese district officials who investigated the anti-Christian disputes are
obviously missing, and their views were only quoted by the provincial governors
in their reports to the Zongli Yamen in Beijing. One should therefore be aware
of the provincial officials' bias that might have gone into the reporting.
460 

Another methodological problem concerns the representativeness of the

selected cases. There is no doubt that disputes against Catholic missionaries
and Chinese converts were as widespread in Jiangxi province as they were in
other parts of China throughout the late nineteenth century, and that many
disputes resolved at village level were seldom reported to the Zongli Yamen
in Beijing. Since these cases represent only a fraction of the overall situation,
one should avoid making generalizations about the entire picture of the
Catholic movement in Jiangxi. Instead, it is important to investigate the
different patterns of anti-Christian conflicts and the changing power relations
between Catholics and non-Catholics at the grassroots level (pp. 178–95).
Bearing this point in mind, one can understand that in areas with a long
history of rural violence, the desire for accommodation often co-existed with
the impulse to confrontation. Whenever the Catholic identity took precedence
over communal unity, an outbreak of anti-Catholic violence was only a matter
of time. Wherever Catholics and non-Catholics were of equal strength,
co-operation was essential for communal survival and compromise tended to
be an option favoured by all parties in cases of disputes.
Sweeten has made a significant contribution to the writing of the social
history of Christianity in China. This work is a breath of fresh air in terms of
the approach, which examines the political impact of Catholicism in the
interior of Jiangxi. Thoroughly researched, clearly written and strongly argued,
it raises new questions and opens the possibility of further research into and
comparisons with the expansion of Christianity in other parts of late
imperial China.
 - 

 :
The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927.
(Chinese Worlds.) xii, 324 pp. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000. £40.
Since access to Soviet archives improved so dramatically in 1991, numerous
studies have attempted to shed new light on previously disputed topics.
Alexander Pantsov has chosen to revisit a subject that featured prominently
in the inner-party disputes that raged in the CPSU of the 1920s. This was
true above all in 1926–27, when the so-called United ‘Left’ Opposition,
whose most prominent members included Trotsky and Zinoviev, accused the
Stalin-Bukharin leadership of grave policy errors regarding the Chinese
revolution. The tactic of an alliance between the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) and the nationalist Guomindang, supported by Stalin but increasingly
rejected by Trotsky, lay at the heart of the debate. Trotskyist historiography
has long condemned Stalin for betraying the Chinese revolution. It was on
Moscow's insistence, the Trotskyists claim, that the CCP tempered its actions
in the Guomindang's favour. When the Guomindang was supreme, it then
massacred its communist allies. Historians sympathetic to Stalin have
countered that Trotsky's ultra-leftism was utopian. Stalin made the best out
of a difficult situation. Pantsov aims to cut through these competing versions
by using an impressive range of sources, from archives to private interviews
with Russian and Chinese witnesses.
The opening two chapters set the scene by outlining, first, the main trends
within pre-revolutionary Russian Marxism; and, second, how Marxist thought
 461

initially took root amongst Chinese radicals. This material is particularly

useful for listing which Marxist tracts were published in Chinese and when.
The author's sympathy for Trotsky is evident at this early stage, both in his
appraisal of Trotsky's standing in pre-October Russian Marxism, and in the
claim that Marxism entered China in its Trotskyist variant. Not all historians
will agree with these and other assessments. The view that Lenin's concept of
the party matched a Russian psychology that had no ‘idea about civil society
and personal freedom’ (p. 21), is just one of several contentious statements.
There is strong evidence to counter this, including the largely successful
democratic elections to the Constituent Assembly (1917), as well as Socialist
Revolutionary and Menshevik inspired insistence upon socialist pluralism.
Democratic slogans were not uncommon in protest activity, for example in
trade unions, at the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921 and so on.
Pantsov is on firmer ground as he explores Bolshevik thinking on China
from 1919–27. The eight chapters devoted to the various twists and turns of
Russian involvement in the Chinese revolution contain numerous revelations
and insights. I was struck most of all by the careful reading of Stalin's hopes
for the united front tactics. He had genuine revolutionary aspirations, and
firmly believed that the CCP could capture power through the alliance with
the Guomindang. Indeed, Pantsov accepts that there was a clear logic to
Stalin's line, and that Trotsky underestimated its ‘true leftist intentions’
(p. 129). It was therefore disappointing to discover that, in the conclusion,
Pantsov reverts back to the black-and-white picture of Trotskyist histori-
ography, arguing that the Chinese communists were ‘hostages of Stalin's line’
(p. 212). However, reaching this point there is an excellent section on the
Chinese communist community in Moscow, and how it became entangled in
the CPSU's inner-party battles. Pantsov pinpoints how Stalinist measures to
involve Chinese students at international schools in the campaign against
Trotsky resulted in the formation of a Chinese section of the Left Opposition.
So disillusioned were the Chinese with Stalin's dirty politics that they turned
to Trotsky. However, the Chinese followers of Trotsky were never so numerous
as to be in the majority. They shared the fate of Trotsky's supporters in
general: some recanted, some were exiled, and some were imprisoned. Some
did make the trip back to China, where they kept a Trotskyist tradition alive
within Chinese communism.
Pantsov's book was first written (but never published) in Russian in 1993.
He could have used its translation into English as an opportunity to
incorporate some of the latest Western research. In this connection the
analysis of Stalin and Trotsky's (unknowingly) shared expectations for success
in China could have been extended. In recent work on Shanghai, for example,
Steve Smith has argued that both Stalin's and Trotsky's strategies overestimated
the strength of the CCP. Smith's research also throws into doubt the extent
of Moscow's control in China. Smith shows that local activists acted on their
own initiative, suggesting a much greater degree of independence than has
been allowed for within traditional historiography and by Pantsov (see, for
example, Smith's essay in T. Rees and A. Thorpe (ed.), International
Communism and the Communist International 1919–43, Manchester, 1998).
Finally, Pantsov's conclusion could have explored the consequences of the
débâcle in China for subsequent Comintern thinking. After all, from 1928 the
Third International dropped the united front strategy, arguing that in the
coming period of revolutionary upsurges reformists were the main enemy.
Communists must stand alone to win over the masses. It was a change in
outlook that was adopted, it has recently been claimed, under the influence
462 

of Trotsky's critique of Chinese events (see, for example, K. McDermott and

J. Agnew, The Comintern. A history of international Communism from Lenin
to Stalin, Basingstoke, 1996, p. 70). It is ironic that the so-called Third Period
of communist offensives may have been inaugurated with an eye on Trotsky's
writings on China, for it was the tactic of go-it-alone communism that Trotsky
blamed for helping Hitler come to power in Germany. But this is another tale
of tragedy for the world revolution.
 . 

 .  and  .  (ed.):

Chinese collaboration with Japan, 1932–1945: the limits of
accommodation.
xiv, 290 pp. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.
This is an extremely important volume of essays which provides a vital new
perspective on our understanding of the 1937–1945 Sino–Japanese war.
Chinese collaboration with the Japanese occupation has been one of the great
gaps in scholarship in recent decades. Since the pioneering works of John
Boyle and Gerald Bunker in the early 1970s, there has been little concentrated
work on the phenomenon of collaboration, although the work of Poshek Fu
and Edward Gunn has greatly increased our understanding of the issues
behind intellectuals' collaboration with the occupiers. More broadly political
and social studies of the phenomenon, however, have been lacking.
That has changed. Since the late 1990s, we have begun finally to see new
work on this subject in China and in the West. The essays in David Barrett
and Larry Shyu's edited volume set a standard for empirical depth and
analytical rigour which should be emulated by anyone venturing into this
subject. The editors' introduction establishes clearly the book's agenda,
offering a definition of what they understand by the term ‘collaboration’,
drawing a contrast with the ‘collaborationism’ of intellectuals in Vichy
France: ‘If collaborationism is to be understood as ideological identification
with Japan, then the term has little application to China’ (p. 8). Instead, the
book's subtitle, ‘the limits of accommodation’, suggests the kind of
collaborative model which the editors are proposing, where the Japanese
presence was not welcomed, but sometimes tolerated and dealt with on a day-
by-day basis, with the consciousness that Japanese promises of pan-Asian
co-operation were proved hollow by the reality of Japanese behaviour in
occupied China.
This approach is developed further by the articles on Nationalist China's
attempts to cope with the Japanese encroachment of the 1930s. Wang Ke-wen
lucidly analyses the actions of Wang Jingwei, the president of the Japanese-
controlled ‘Reformed’ Nationalist government from 1940 to 1944. Wang
argues that it is a mistake to regard Wang as pro-Japanese; rather, he was
aiming to win time to build up China's strength to the point where it could
afford a showdown with Japan. At the regional level, Marjorie Dryburgh
suggests that the North China militarist Song Zheyuan was similarly caught
in a vice between the calls for national loyalty and the reality of Japanese
attempts to squeeze him into compliance: his collaboration with Japan was
out of necessity, not conviction. During the war period itself, Huang Meizhen
and Yang Hanqing show, there were sporadic low-key negotiations between
 463

representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese, which failed because of

the unbridgeable gulf between the two sides. While Chiang might have
accepted de facto Japanese control over Manchukuo and parts of Mongolia,
he was not prepared to budge over the occupation of the rest of China. The
authors of this section convincingly show that tactics among these top-level
politicians were pragmatic, and that sympathy with Japan was in short supply.
The same can be seen, ironically, in the governments that have been most
excoriated, the client regimes which were set up under Japanese auspices after
1937. Timothy Brook deftly examines Liang Hongzhi's Reformed government
in central China, which was run mainly by regional and Nationalist politicians
who had been sidelined under Chiang's rule, and who now saw a chance to
claw back some power. In contrast, as David Barrett argues, Wang Jingwei's
regime consciously took on the mantle of the Nationalist government, claiming
that it had ‘returned’ to Nanjing, and even taking on the trappings of the
old Chiang regime, such as the flag, to make the point. However, the regime
was also forced to concoct a genealogy that came from Sun Yat-sen's pan-
Asianist musings of the early 1920s to try and justify the strong Japanese
involvement with the regime. This argument was none too successful, and Lo
Jiu-jing's article wryly notes that if Wang had used a Hobbesian argument—
that he had collaborated to try to save individuals from persecution by the
Japanese, rather than to save the nation—his argument might look more
convincing in retrospect.
Some of the freshest ground is broken in the final section, which examines
local examples of collaboration and the reasons behind it. Parks Coble shows
that while the rhetoric of East Asian co-prosperity was empty, Chinese
businessmen could sometimes find a space to demand concessions from the
Japanese who controlled commerce in Shanghai as the war worsened.
Similarly, the Chinese film-makers examined by Poshek Fu who were coerced
into making movies under occupation mostly managed to avoid making
blatantly pro-Japanese pictures, using ‘non-political’ entertainment to send a
message of passive resistance to the occupation. Keith Schoppa and Peter
Seybolt provide fascinating microcosms of the occupation in two counties,
Shaoxing and Neihuang, arguing that for many local élites, the war provided
an opportunity to continue existing local feuds and power relationships by
other means: the supposedly all-encompassing agenda of ‘national resistance’
was either sidelined or irrelevant to these communities. Finally, Odoric Wou
offers a very useful methodological essay on sources for those who intend to
carry out research themselves in this area.
This volume aims to raise questions as well as to answer them, and some
further thoughts do come to mind. The first is that we need yet more studies:
for example, in occupied Manchuria after 1931, many of the tactics used by
the Japanese, and responses by the indigenous population, were very similar
to those seen several years later in central China, suggesting that Manchukuo
may have been a precursor to the cases seen here. Second, although true
sympathizers with the Japanese were clearly very few in number, those that
did exist might merit examination. For instance, could issues of gender or
ethnicity intersect with or cut across national loyalties in some cases of
collaboration? However, these are issues for a future volume. There is no
doubt that this immensely rich collection is a valuable addition to the field,
and it should be warmly welcomed by all serious students of the Sino–
Japanese war.
 
464 

 :
The silent traveller in London.
(Lost and Found Series.) xvi, 216 pp. Oxford: Signal Books Limited,
2002. £10.99.
Of all the literary figures employed by SOAS over the years, the most widely
read on a pure headcount basis would probably be those Chinese writers who
found success in the land of their birth, authors such as Lao She or Hsiao
Ch'ien. Yet despite the relative success of the latter as a writer in English also,
by far the most widely read such Chinese figure in this country must surely
have been Chiang Yee. In fact, as the preface by Da Zheng to this reissue of
one of the best-loved volumes from his ‘Silent Traveller’ series makes clear,
Chiang first came to British public attention as a writer and lecturer on art
and calligraphy—and also, one might add, as an illustrator, as his contributions
to the printed text of S. I. Hsiung's play Lady Precious Stream attest.
But in a land at that time almost entirely devoid of any sort of education
with regard to China there was a considerable (albeit by no means clearly
articulated) thirst for knowledge about the place, provided only that this
knowledge was of a readily palatable type. Though others, such as Hsiung
and Lin Yutang may have pointed the way, Chiang certainly hit upon an
extraordinarily successful formula for sustaining this appetite amongst his
readership. Ostensibly the mute witness to Western life is putting pen to paper
in order to record his impressions of the West considered as an exotic
experience—a genre with roots going back to Goldsmith and beyond—but
Chiang works the conventions of this form with considerable skill so as to
introduce a remarkable amount of information about China as well. He was
evidently a born educator, and though the situation imposed upon him the
burden of maintaining a relentlessly humorous, self-deprecating charm, his
books are so packed with matters of substance—sly portraits of Laurence
Binyon, George Eumorfopoulos and other contemporary luminaries, for
instance—that they stand up surprisingly well to re-reading in our very
different times.
Yet whilst his books sold well, their ingratiating prose and quirky
illustrations have made them great favourites with collectors, so that copies
at reasonable prices have lately been quite hard to come by. The reissue of
one of his earliest classics, first published in 1938, in a bright and modern
paperback format answers this problem admirably; Da Zheng's brief new
preface brings too the gratifying promise of a whole biographical volume in
due course. Chiang was an unusually talented pioneer, and he deserves to be
both read and remembered just as much as his more famous colleagues,
especially here in SOAS itself.
. . 

 :
Popular religion in China: the Imperial metaphor.
xii, 283 pp. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001. £16.99 (paper).
Though naturally the publisher does not go to any great lengths to advertise
the fact, the authorial preface to this work makes it entirely clear that this is
a revised edition of the volume originally published (with the current title and
 465

subtitle reversed) by Routledge in 1992. At first glance the material seems

much the same, apart from a chapter on recent developments, and some may
be tempted therefore not to replace the original with a new copy.
This would be a mistake. The new chapter contains not just the expected
updating but also, for example, an important reconsideration of political
ritual, especially that of the Maoist era, and its long-term effects. Even the
chapters that follow the same outlines as before have unannounced fresh
material in them, addressing points raised in earlier reviews. And either
through an increased familiarity with the ideas propounded in the first version,
a clearer layout, or discreet rewriting, the whole book comes across as
presenting its main points with far greater clarity than before.
That is not to say that the book in its new form is likely to stand
indefinitely as the ultimate statement of what Chinese religion is all about.
There is still in my opinion plenty of room for historical research to help in
explaining how the current very complex situation has been built up over a
very long period of time, especially since the apparently less complex situation
in times long past may help to identify patterns of interaction between
different types of religion (primarily local and transregional, though that may
not be the only polarity involved) which over recent centuries have come to
overlap, coalesce, or even generate completely new levels of religious
organization.
Nor would I expect the author to think of this rewriting as an end point,
either, simply because of the prospect of further learning from the existing
situation as it continues to evolve, with an intensity which continues to
surprise most academics brought up in an era when religion was predicted to
play no part in Chinese society by the year 2000. But as a sophisticated
statement of how Chinese religion looks to us at the moment this study more
than justifies its reappearance in a new guise. Anyone at all interested in the
topic should firmly resist the temptation to stick with the original publication,
and go out and buy its successor.
. . 

  and  :

Japan and Greater China: political economy and military power in the
Asian century.
xvi, 368 pp. London: C. Hurst & Co., 2001. £16.95.
This is a very comprehensive book on the political and economic aspects of
Japan's relations not only with mainland China, but also with Taiwan and
Hong Kong. In the first chapter the authors analyse the goals and interests of
both countries against the structure, institutions and norms of the international
and regional systems. Japan and China are both now judged to be status quo
powers, but are nevertheless seeking important adjustments of certain aspects
of these orders. Despite having reached—or possibly even passed—its peak,
it is considered that Japan could play a more important role in certain areas
of growing international significance if it could overcome its leadership
problem. China's global influence is growing and its co-operation is needed
in addressing many global problems. In the second chapter, on images and
attitudes, a thorough analysis of the legacy of Japan's past is presented from
the perspective of the Japanese as well as the Chinese. The authors conclude
that the dynamics of these divergent perceptions will continue to play a
466 

negative role in the bilateral relationship despite certain improvements. Public

opinion in each country shows little interest in the other, and its influence on
government policies is mostly negative or limiting because of the heavy
influence of stereotypes. In the third chapter, on security relations, the authors
conclude that despite pre-1945 history and many security disputes since then,
war is no longer considered a means of settling conflicts. The chapter looks
briefly at the territorial conflict, China's nuclear tests in the mid-1990s,
Japanese–Chinese security talks and the Japan–US alliance and TMD. The
fourth chapter deals with Japan's relations with Taiwan and Hong Kong. The
authors point out that Japan changed its interpretation of the one-China
policy by allowing the visits of high-level Taiwanese political leaders, which
led to renewed Chinese distrust concerning Japan's ultimate intention vis-à-
vis China. On the other hand, Chinese missile tests in the Taiwan Strait led
to a Japanese reconsideration of China and of Japan's security.
The next three chapters are devoted to the aid, investment and trade
aspects of the bilateral relationship. The authors argue that despite its
importance in relative and in absolute terms, the direct political and strategic
benefits to the bilateral relationship are insubstantial. The chapter on
investment details the goals of both China and Japan and evaluates the
importance of achievements for each. Japan's investment in China is judged
to have had relatively little impact on interdependence because it involved
relatively small amounts despite having a positive influence on the relationship.
The chapter on technology transfer analyses the positive factors (Japanese
investment in China, government support) as well as the restrictive ones
(Japanese concern about security and ‘boomerang’ implications). On trade,
the authors do not find an interdependence that would offer significant scope
for the exertion of either direct political or economic leverage. The Asian
financial crisis, they argue, led to a downturn in trade and investment, but
also re-emphasized the importance of the bilateral economic relationship for
both sides. The authors argue that the level and composition of trade offer
some incentives to deal positively with political problems, but the economic
relationship is considered sufficiently unequal and as not having created
enough trust to overcome all bilateral political problems.
In the chapter on ‘Japan, China and regional order’, the authors give a
brief overview of moves towards greater regionalism and the attitudes of
Japan and China, concluding that the leadership aspirations of both countries
are constrained by regional and domestic factors. In their conclusions, the
authors discuss three major external aspects determining the bilateral
relationship: the role of the USA, the evolution of world order under the
influence of market economics and international institutions, and the general
process of internationalization. Change is seen as emanating from dynamic
and structural sources. The authors predict that ‘the bilateral relationship will
remain one that lacks respect and warmth’. While this may sound rather
pessimistic, they seem to assume that the relationship will improve, albeit very
slowly, as a result of generational changes and economic interdependence.
The USA is seen as the major external influence on Japanese–Chinese
relations, with the US–Chinese relationship causing serious strains in the
trilateral US–China–Japan relationship due to fundamental disagreements
over regional order and the Taiwan issue. Despite these difficulties the authors
predict that Japan is likely to establish a more independent strategic position
in Asia through a gradual expansion of its military activities abroad, albeit
within the framework of the Japan–US alliance. Concerning China's military
modernization, the authors emphasize the backwardness of China's technology,
 467

and Japan's advance in the area and therefore have greater sympathy with
China's security concerns vis-à-vis Japan than vice versa. Competition for
regional leadership is predicted to be more indirect since, as they assert,
‘Japan and China cannot compete in the same spheres or choose not to’.
Despite substantial differences between both countries, the authors predict
that a business-like approach will prevail because of common interests and
the lack of a belligerent constituency in either country. Factors which may
disrupt co-operative behaviour are seen as lying outside of the control of both
countries.
Some may find the book's conclusions rather optimistic, too readily
sweeping away issues of growing concern, notably in Japan (e.g. territorial
issues in the East China Sea, trade frictions). One reason for this is probably
the reliance on secondary materials (mostly of American origin) concerning
the Japanese side of the relationship; another may be the sharpening of
disputes since 1999 when most of the manuscript was probably completed.
This is nevertheless a major contribution to a very complex field, and the
publisher should be congratulated on making it available in an affordable
paperback edition.
 

 ,  ,   and

 :
Japanese: a comprehensive grammar.
xx, 636pp. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. £29.99.
Having recently discovered that the Japan Times reference grammars that I
have recommended to students for the past few years are now out of print, it
was with the hope of finding a replacement that I approached this new
grammar, described as ‘a complete reference guide to modern Japanese
grammar ... suitable for students at all levels, whether independent learners
or on taught courses’. My standard recommendations were A dictionary of
basic Japanese grammar (1986) and A dictionary of intermediate Japanese
grammar (1995) by Seiichi Makino and Michi Tsutsui.
As with kanji dictionaries, we all get used to the way our favourite
grammars are organized, and familiarizing oneself with the style of a new one
can take some time. Overall this new grammar is very comprehensive, clearly
set out and well organized, listing both general English grammatical terms
(‘adjectives’, ‘comparison’) and specific Japanese items with a grammatical
description, such as ‘nante [adverbial particle]’ and ‘tari [conjunctive particle]’.
Despite the claim in the introduction that ‘the reader should be able to use
this book fully without learning a new set of technical terminology’, some of
the linguistic terminology used in headings (such as valency and cleft sentences)
would certainly be unfamiliar to the non-specialist. However, the inclusion of
these concepts simply extends the usefulness of the text to the more advanced
reader without making it inaccessible to the student in the early stages of
learning Japanese.
The examples are all taken from authentic written Japanese, and so are
more interesting than some of the more contrived examples in other grammars
and textbooks. The treatment of elements of classical Japanese that commonly
occur in written Japanese is particularly good: for example, the classical
adjective ending -ki (which is absent from Makino and Tsutsui). But this does
468 

not mean that colloquial Japanese is neglected, and there is even a section on
dialect. One immediate advantage of the new work is that it combines the
perspectives of a non-native Japanese speaker and those of the three native-
speaker authors. This is perhaps why it includes sections such as ‘point of
view’ (more speaker-centred point of view) and ‘repetition [for emphasis]’,
which describe clearly and succinctly aspects of the ways in which Japanese is
used, in addition to the usual discrete grammatical structures.
I particularly like the way this new grammar brings together words of
similar function. For example, there is a long section on conjunctions,
subdivided into eleven points on the various conjunctions that express
addition, consequence, contrast, qualification, reason, paraphrasing, and so
on. This would be very useful to those trying to write in Japanese.
Unfortunately, these conjunctions are not all listed individually in the index,
so anyone wishing to find, say, sono ue, would need to know to look in the
‘addition’ subsection of ‘conjunctions’. Moreover, I could not find some
items that I would have expected, for example ni mo kakawarazu, via the
indices. No book can contain everything, and a quick search for a few items
revealed that dake ni and nanka appeared in Kaiser et al. but not in Makino
and Tsutsui, whereas darake and nanishiro were in Makino and Tsutsui but
not in Kaiser et al.
One aspect in which the Makino and Tsutsui grammars excel is the
treatment of the nuances of similar items. For example, the treatment of the
usage of V-yo: compared to V-kata in the intermediate grammar is very
precise. Kaiser et al. do not demonstrate instances where one structure is
required rather than the other. On the other hand, they do deal with some
items far more comprehensively than do Makino and Tsutsui. For instance,
the Kaiser et al. treatment of mono includes examples of its use in extended
idiomatic phrases, such as mono ka, nai mono daro: ka. and so on.
The book contains some idiosyncrasies of typography. Sentences in ro: maji
do not begin with capital letters. This looks strange, particularly where there
is more than one sentence and a full stop is followed by a lower-case letter.
One of the author's names is written as ‘Hilofumi’, presumably according to
his personal preference. Fortunately the use of ‘l’ instead of ‘r’ is not
continued in the text, where it might prove irritating.
Comparing this new work with my old favourites allowed me to discover
its advantages and disadvantages, and to conclude that the former outweigh
the latter. Japanese: a comprehensive grammar will certainly be appearing on
my new reading lists. But I will also be advising students to spend some time
familiarizing themselves with its organization and to be prepared to look
under broad category headings if the item they are looking for is not
immediately obvious. Perhaps they will even pick up some useful English
grammatical terminology on the way.
 

 :
Word-processing technology in Japan: kanji and the keyboard.
xvi, 219 pp. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000. £40.
Nanette Gottlieb's latest book is the third instalment in a series of works on
language policy (Language and the modern state: the reform of written Japanese,
London and New York: Routledge, 1991, and Kanji politics: language policy
 469

and Japanese script, London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1995).
In this book, she analyses the history of word-processing technology and its
socio-cultural impact. Rather than detailing the technical aspects of the
electronic handling of characters, the book deals with the varying reactions
and forceful debate prompted by the appearance of word-processing machines,
and their laboured adoption by society at large. She sets out to achieve this
by letting ‘the voices of those involved in the debate speak for themselves’
(p. xvi) and so she illustrates the acculturation process involved in the shift
from handwriting and typewriting to computer-typing, by interrogating the
viewpoints and attitudes of intellectuals, white collar workers and policy
makers. The technology's history is narrated from the appearance of the
laborious typewriter in 1915 to the constantly improving functions of the
stand-alone word-processor (wapuro) and the personal computer (however,
unfortunately the book does not dwell on the development of different
functions in software packages).
The oddity of adopting a writing system based on a monosyllabic, isolating
language to record a polysyllabic, agglutinative language was somewhat reconciled
with the invention of kana in the tenth century. Nevertheless, that ‘foreign’
system (and the way it came to be combined with the indigenous phonetic
scripts) was to remain the biggest hurdle in the development of an efficient
system for the production of printed documents throughout the six decades it
took to solve the input-output problem, the period which the book vividly
portrays. An efficient machine had to allow easy retrieval of a great number of
characters; it had to be able to ‘cut’ a sentence into meaningful components; it
had to be taught how to interpret an amazingly high number of homophones,
and it had to produce acceptable outputs for the ever increasing and diversified
community of users. The book's greatest achievement is the contextualization of
this curve of technological improvements against the backdrop of the controversial
debate about the Japanese script, the critical issues of national heritage and
national identity, and the role of Japan in the global community.
The electronic handling of the Japanese script discharged specialist typists
from the painstaking operation of the typewriter machine, but by broadening
the community of users now directly engaging with the production of printed
documents it opened a flood of complex and at times painful socio-cultural
issues. From the outset, in the company environment, the wapuro prompted the
problem of workforce specialization and reallocation. Lecturers welcomed the
lightening of the manual load (the need to look up a kanji in a dictionary) as
well as the intellectual load (the machine can be made to learn the user's
preferred kanji among the many homophones), but criticized the often
inadequate (business oriented) dictionaries with which the machines were
equipped. Advocates of romanization reforms were alternately delighted by the
dysfunctional complexities of the conversion process (compared to the ease of
alphabet typing) and shattered by the prospect that a relatively easy character
retrieval dispelled the perception of kanji as a hindrance to modernization and
progress. While the transfer of competence from the individual to the machine
in the retrieval and output of kanji relieved many of a culturally induced
‘writing complex’, it also prompted fear of progressive loss of the national
heritage, as many realized that the more familiar they became with a wapuro,
the less confident they felt to write a kanji without checking it first, or even to
type in the correct one among the available choices. In such a current
framework, the fact that kanji need to be recognized rather than produced
prompts difficult questions for subjects within and without Japan's national
borders: should teachers of Japanese across the world rewrite kanji curricula
470 

accordingly? Should the content of a writing class exclude the teaching of kanji
altogether and concentrate on ‘writing’ as a creative process?
The book addresses all of these issues and many more with an accessible
style and interpretive enthusiasm that translates government deliberations and
dry lists of figures into a poignant account. However, it is at times also rather
frustrating. The ‘multivocality’ that Gottlieb chooses to portray often
becomes an end in itself and results in tedious repetition. Quoted comments
and opinions are not consistently relevant, nor always arranged along a
logical thread within and across chapters. Survey results occasionally invalidate
an individual's subjective opinion, yet we find both types of data equally listed
one after the other. The resulting effect is not a dialectic juxtaposition, but a
somewhat confusing panorama, where all sources contribute to illustrate a
chapter perhaps democratically, but not necessarily organically.
Gottlieb seems to believe that wapuro have indeed changed Japanese
society but she is unable to draw strong conclusive claims. Perhaps this is not
wholly due to a legitimate non-committal attitude—the history is still very
short—but to the almost complete lack of precisely targeted and big-scale
users' surveys on the part of researchers and governmental agencies alike, as
lamented also in the book (p. 122). The omission for which Gottlieb is
seriously guilty, however, is the question of the part women played in the
history of the technology. Case studies in 1981 clearly showed the rather
peculiar policy of diverting a company's entire female staff population to
training for the new machines (p. 63); women's roles in the repatterning of
work practices (and their consequent effects on family and society) were
crucial in the 1980s (p. 175). Yet their voice is nowhere to be heard. Gottlieb's
sources are invariably male and, more often than not, middle aged. She fails
to bring the issue to the fore, and does not even attempt to pursue some
surprising and telling results of the users' surveys (pp. 125, 181). We have to
look at quotes from Tessa Morris-Suzuki (1988) to find the most interesting
remarks on ‘gender and the keyboard’, sadly collapsed in only four or five
pages of a concluding chapter ‘Changes in the workforce’ (p. 172).
Similarly, despite her notable awareness of the traps of Nihonjinron-oriented
interpretations (p. 191), Gottlieb falls pray to the same old temptation and ends
up polarizing the discourse between Japan and the USA. This results in
disregarding yet again some important voices: this time, those of China and
(South) Korea. Their discourse on the implications from the point of view of
national identity of such a substantial change in the handling of the script is
likely to be far more relevant to the Japanese reality than any Western one.
Finally, the work simply seems to suffer from poor editing: consistent
repetitions and some obscure passages could easily have been spotted by an
attentive reader. Surely the scale of the work deserved a more careful final
revision.
 

 :
L’enseignement de la lecture au Japon. Politique et éducation.
365 pp. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2001. €21.35.
In 1998 Christian Galan began to make a name for himself with two
substantial and well-researched articles in Ebisu—études japonaises on the
subject of education in the years before the Restoration. Here he presents a
 471

revised version of his doctoral thesis (1997) on the practices and theories of
teaching children to read in modern Japan. Educationally, he observes, Japan
was ’modern’ well before 1872, when the Gakusei, or fundamental law on
education, was promulgated. Although he does not elaborate on this here, he
seems to mean that Japanese education in the Tokugawa period partook of a
functional modernity without having to align itself with Western practices, for
he reminds us early on that, although the egalitarianism and individualism of
early Meiji educational thinking were products of contact with the West,
Japan owed neither utilitarian ideas nor self-help notions of personal
advancement to the West. At any rate, as a result of his earlier published
work, he brings to his discussion a healthy awareness of the characteristics
and achievements of education in the Tokugawa period, some of which
survived in the Meiji education system for some decades.
Galan's focus is on the politics of education, the impact of educational
ideologies and the effects that they had on the teaching of reading as seen
through the various readers and textbooks published from the early Meiji
period up to the 1990s. He does this by analysing each generation of
textbooks, Ministry of Education directives and guidance issued to teachers
and placing them in the context of shifting educational ideologies; he makes
effective use of boxes in the text to present materials, such as instructions
for teachers and model lessons, which cannot easily be incorporated into
the narrative but which support and illustrate his arguments. A number of
important points emerge from this book, the first of which is the centrality of
reading in the curriculum. Of course, educational practices in the Tokugawa
period, too, were founded on various forms of reading, but Galan demonstrates
that educational thinking, practice and textbook production since 1872 were
narrowly focused on teaching children during their compulsory education
how to read, to the extent that in the 1870s around three-quarters of classroom
time was devoted just to the Japanese language. Secondly, he shows how
deeply influential were successive generations of educational theory, which
Japanese educators kept up to date with and rapidly introduced to Japan.
Thus theories and methods generated for the teaching of European languages
were enthusiastically, if not always logically, applied to the teaching of
Japanese. Well known is the influence of the American educational system in
the 1870s as a result of the personal involvement of Mori Arinori as Minister
of Education, but far less well known is the impact of Pestalozzi at that time,
let alone that of German pedagogical theory in the 1880s: Galan critically
explores the impact of waves of new ideas, tracing their effects on educational
practices. And thirdly, Galan emphasizes that the teaching of reading was,
for most of the period under consideration, not simply a matter of imparting
a technique but was also inextricably tied to the nature of the material to be
read: thus in the years following the Russo–Japanese war, textbooks offered
children texts that idealized nature, extolled civic virtues or advocated national
independence, while textbooks issued during the Pacific War sought to convey
another set of values. Given the government control over the content of
textbooks, formally introduced in 1890 when the textbook authorization
system which still causes controversy today came into operation, the messages
being sent by the school readers were clearly a deliberate choice.
This is not a short book, so I hesitate to suggest that Galan might have
written more. There are, however, some issues touched on here that seem to
me to deserve further consideration, and I mention them to encourage the
author to explore them further. The first is the matter of sinological education.
As Galan explains, for most of the Meiji period there was something of a
472 

struggle going on between sinologists, and what one might call latter-day
Kokugakusha, over the amount of Sino–Japanese vocabulary presented in
textbooks, but by restricting himself to the public education system Galan
inevitably overlooks the spread in the Meiji period of kangakujuku, private
sinological academies which maintained the tradition of sinological reading
and supplemented the teaching of the public schools. The second is the
question of language. Although Galan is alive to the linguistic issues
surrounding the teaching of reading, he gives hardly any space to Meiji
perceptions of language, or even the genbun-itchi undo: , the movement for the
unification of speech and writing which was deeply involved in the presentation
of writing for the benefit of larger numbers of readers. The issues here range
from the abandonment of historical kana spelling for phonetic spelling to the
introduction of a more orderly punctuation system; these aspects of the mise
en page of school readers deserve closer examination. The third and final
point is that the missing dimension are the recipients of all this education.
Did the changing educational ideologies produce different results? Did the
textbooks and classroom practices have the impact on children that educators
expected them to have? Did children learning to read absorb the ideological
messages they were supposed to be imbibing? The inevitable gap between
intention and reception is notoriously hard to explore, but some clues might
be found in autobiographies and the like.
Galan has covered a prodigious range of material with aplomb. His
historical reach is long and thorough, and his reflections on the contemporary
debate in Japan on methods of teaching children to read are well informed
and sensitive. This is an important book, not only for historians of modern
Japan, but also for those interested in schooling in contemporary Japan, and
Galan is to be congratulated on his perception of the centrality of this
question in Japanese educational thinking since the Meiji period.
. . 

  and  .  (ed.):

Japan and global migration: foreign workers and the advent of a
multicultural society.
xiii, 306 pp. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. £60.
This tightly organized and well edited volume explores the gulf between the
powerful official myth of a homogeneous Japan, where foreigners may visit
but never settle, and the reality of Japan as a magnet for workers with diverse
skills from around the world. The editors set the scene, debunking with
reference to clear facts and analytical logic the myths that Japan has no
history of immigration, that the Japanese government can effectively prevent
immigration, that large scale immigration of foreigners willing to do the jobs
the Japanese shun will not be needed in the future, and (at the point of
greatest friction), that immigration imposes high costs on Japanese society
and economy. While the foreign population may be transient, geographically
confined, even sanitized (through a preference for ‘Japanese’ workers made
in Brazil), and the export of manufacturing jobs has kept many blue collar
migrants at home, the stock of migrants has survived the post-bubble
recessions of the 1990s. In the future it can only increase, as foreigners fill the
many new jobs that cannot be exported, servicing Japan's dwindling and fast-
ageing ‘native’ population. The advent of a multicultural society is clear, but
 473

its eventual form is not, given the challenge which the demographic facts
present for inherited political and social institutions and the core identity of
a people steeped in an exclusive ‘Japaneseness’.
The historical and global context for the contemporary domestic issue of
societal change fills the remainder of Part 1. Yamawaki reminds us of past
expressions of prejudice against Asian immigrants, especially Koreans (Japan's
largest minority), from which useful lessons remain to be learned. Weiner
situates Japan-focused migration squarely within a globalizing migration
system featuring differentiation and feminization as cardinal attributes, with
which both the bureaucracy and the general population struggle to come to
terms, leaving the migrants themselves adrift in a legal, administrative and
social limbo. Lie exposes the dark side of the homogeneity myth, where race
and class consciousness combine to depict (non-white) foreigners as inferiors
from lower class lands, while Douglass situates the distinctive historical
patterns of female migration to and from Japan within gender relations which
confine women (Japanese or otherwise) to subservient roles in the service
of men.
Part 2 focuses on the sociology of contemporary migrant communities in
Japan, at home and in the workplace. Yamanaka employs her own survey
data to paint a compelling picture of the Nikkeijin, the offspring of the
Japanese diaspora in Latin America who took advantage of official favour
(and relative public acceptance) as migrant workers during the boom years of
the late 1980s, but now share disproportionately in the burdens of recession,
and the disappointment of rejection. They display a hesitant pattern of
circular and repeat migration between two countries and continents, in neither
of which are they totally at home. Adopting a novel approach, Pollock
examines the everyday negative characterization of Asian migrants in the
pages of a comic book, World apartment horror, where people whose
qualifications and competences would make them respectable and ordinary in
another world are reduced by racist depiction to a status below that of
common criminals. Machimura explores variations in settlement patterns
between different foreign groups in Greater Tokyo, stressing the significance
of the legal status of workers and the local importance of their employers as
key determinants of incorporation into local communities, with Nikkeijin
living in company towns occupying the least disadvantaged position, though
with plenty of problems to contend with. Murphy-Shigematsu reflects on the
lives of people whose very existence challenges the rigid boundaries of race
and culture: those of mixed birth and multi-ethnic identity. While in principle
the naturalization process can accommodate diversity of background, in
practice officials exert strong influence to defend the orthodoxy of a
homogeneous society, by encouraging the use of acceptable Japanese surnames
for example, a practice honed in earlier dealings with the Korean minority.
In the concluding part of the book, three authors examine aspects of
government policy and community responses to the facts of migration.
Terasawa highlights the contradictions between labour law, civil law and
immigration law which place foreign workers at a hopeless disadvantage if
left without proper legal support. Tegtmeyer Pak demonstrates that the
national framework of policy and its implementation can be tempered,
however, when local governments seek alternative solutions through ‘local
internationalization’ as a means to create space for foreign workers within
the structures of mainstream society. Finally, Roberts explores the non-
governmental support infrastructure for foreign workers, an infrastructure
which remains small and is dominated by the immediate concerns of unfair
474 

dismissal and exit from Japan, rather than advocacy for a sea-change in
attitudes towards the other in Japanese communities. For women seeking
escape from the excesses of the sex industry, however, this is surely a
welcome start.
The book paints an unsettling picture, of a future which cannot help but
include workers from abroad, the promise of a multicultural society, but no
clear map of how to get there. Perhaps the critique to underpin real change
will come from outside, from amongst the new generation of Japanese who
have spent years in education abroad, and observed that the mindset of
American segregationism and the absurdly racist self-justifications of European
empire have had their day, and that diversity creates opportunities for more
richly textured and genuinely harmonious communities, not just the threat of
riots and the despoilation of cherished myths. If nothing else, this book is a
clear demonstration of the distance that Japanese society still has to travel
from a present that is uncomfortable for migrants and natives alike.
 

 :
The oracles of the three shrines: windows on Japanese religion.
xvii, 142 pp. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000. £45.
In Japan the term sanja takusen (oracles of the three shrines) normally refers
to a hanging scroll depicting three Shinto deities (usually Amaterasu,
Hachiman and Kasuga) along with oracular texts. Brian Bocking argues in
this short book that, through a study of these scrolls (examples of which can
be found from the early fifteenth century to the present), one can gain insights
into the nature of Japanese religion in general. His particular intention is to
open up the ‘hitherto unknown field of sanja takusen studies’ (p. 9) and to
use the iconography and texts of the scrolls as a means of analysing Shinto
and commenting about its interactions with other traditions and about the
general nature of Japanese religion. Bocking argues that, because the sanja
takusen scroll motif has existed as a distinctive iconographic form over many
centuries, ‘it can provide a fixed point and focus of study for certain strands
of Japanese religion (including "‘Shinto’')’ (p. 15), and one of the strengths
of the book relates to the ways in which it outlines and demonstrates the
variations in the depiction of the scroll motif over the centuries, and how this
fits in with changes in the broader patterns of Japanese religion.
Bocking, who dates the origins of the sanja takusen to the early fifteenth
century, argues that the scrolls were heavily influenced by esoteric Buddhism.
Certainly the virtues (honesty, purity and compassion) that they promote (and
that are associated with the deities they depict) are closely associated with the
kenmitsu system of esoteric Buddhism in Japan (pp. 40–41). As such, they
(and Bocking's research) provide backing for the well-known thesis pro-
pounded by the Japanese historian Kuroda Toshio, that Shinto in the medieval
period was largely a product of, and heavily influenced by, esoteric Buddhism.
Bocking also provides us with a broad overview of the scrolls and the
differing iconographic forms they have taken at different eras. Even in
exploratory contexts this involves covering a large field, and the task has been
made more difficult because the scrolls appear largely to have been ignored
by art historians, whose tendency to focus on objects because of their aesthetic
value may at times (as Bocking points out with regard to the sanja takusen
 475

scrolls) lead them to ignore items that might be stylistically deficient yet
possess great religious significance. Overall, too, there seems to have been
very little historical research on the association of the three shrines themselves
(normally these are the Iwashimizu Hachiman, Ise and Kasuga shrines) and
the oracles, with Bocking knowing of only one modern Japanese article in
this area—and this, according to the bibliography, is a mere four pages long.
This of course makes further historical studies essential, if only to ensure that
the brief article by Nagashima Fukutaro: (itself a revision of an earlier article)
which Bocking cites frequently and on which he clearly relies a great deal, is
dependable enough to build a historical account upon.
This, in a nutshell, is a major problem of the book. Bocking is at pains to
assure us that this is an exploratory book—and at not much more than 100
pages of text there is little scope for much more than exploration and the
mapping out of themes that require fuller research and analysis. The decision
to go for brevity and exploration has the merit of enabling a book to be
produced sooner rather than later, and for us to be alerted to the potential
importance of the subject. The downside, of course, is that in order to examine
the ways in which the sanja takusen have been depicted, received, used and
commented upon at different eras—all issues that are critical if they are to be
used in any comprehensive way as a window into Shinto and Japanese religion
in general—one needs rather more than an exploratory work. The problem is
that this book leaves many unanswered questions and does not provide the
sort of depth of coverage and analysis that some people (such as this reader)
would want to see before they would allow themselves to be swayed by
arguments about the supposed importance of the scrolls.
A good example here is the translation Bocking provides of what appears
to be the first full commentary on the oracles. Dating from 1650, this gives
us a valuable insight into how someone in that era viewed the oracles and, as
such, the translation is extremely valuable. Yet it also appears somewhat
isolated and lacking in contextual perspective, because little material or
discussion is provided to answer such questions as: to what extent did this
commentary influence subsequent ones? Indeed, did it at all? Can this text be
taken as a representative example of the ways in which the oracles were
viewed and interpreted at that time, or was it a one-off ? Without the further
study of other commentaries, such questions are left hanging in the air,
leaving us unable to assess the true significance of the translated commentary.
There were certainly other commentaries from a similar era (a point Bocking
recognizes when he alludes to other commentaries of the period, including a
Buddhist one from 1679 (p. 78), which, as a footnote informs us, he has not
been able to pursue) which might have provided such context and/or examples
of how attitudes changed during the critical Edo period when the scrolls,
according to Bocking, became so widespread and popular.
The lack of historical data available to the author at the time the book
was written leads, somewhat inevitably, to some rather speculative assump-
tions. For example, we are told that in its heyday the sanja takusen commanded
instant attention (p. 15), although what evidence there is for this as presented
in the book is slight. Elsewhere we are told that ‘there is evidence that the
bushi were, like everyone else, aware of the sanja takusen and that they
engaged in religious practices related to the shrines and their oracles’ (p. 79),
but again, with little evidence and few references provided to justify this
statement. Such criticisms do not mean that I am denying the importance of
the sanja takusen cult, so much as asking for substantive evidence to justify
the assertions Bocking makes about it at different periods in history.
476 

The book certainly attempts to cover a lot of ground in the context of

how the oracles relate to the wider pantheon of Shinto deities at different
periods, and how the scrolls were popularized by Yoshida Shinto, and
especially by Yoshida Kanetomo, whose adoption and use of this motif
provides yet another example of his religious entrepreneurship. The study
takes us through the Meiji Restoration, the ‘invention’ of a formalized, state-
sponsored Shinto, and the problematic issues facing Shinto in the modern day
as it struggles to maintain support in an era when it has effectively lost the
raison d'être of its post-Meiji, pre-1945 past (i.e. providing identity to the
state) and has struggled to find a new identity (p. 108). At the end of the
book Bocking also offers an intriguing suggestion that Shinto (because of
such weaknesses) might even develop a new rapprochement with Buddhism
that would mirror the integrative nature of the two prior to the Meiji
Restoration (p. 109). This point, interesting as it is, is of course highly
speculative and in its apparent emphasis on the weakness of Shinto in the
modern day it contradicts the assertions of other recent authors (notably John
Nelson in Enduring identities: the guise of Shinto in contemporary Japan,
Honolulu, 1999) who have argued that Shinto has performed more effectively
than the other major traditional religion (Buddhism) in Japan in recent times.
I am unconvinced by both arguments: I have already questioned Nelson's
claims as to the current strength of Shinto (Reader, Review of Nelson,
Enduring identities, Monumenta Nipponica, 55/4, 2000, 609–11) and here I
also question the speculation that Shinto is so weak that it will seek a
rapprochement with Buddhism. I would certainly require some cogent evidence
before I could begin to consider Bocking's speculation as remotely possible,
and as yet I have seen none. Nonetheless, here is another topic worthy of
debate that will hopefully be subjected to some focused academic research
before long.
The book has a number of minor faults in bibliographic terms (various
missing or misplaced macrons) and in the references, where a number of
chapters and journal articles lacked page numbers, years of publication
and/or, in the case of some Japanese references, journal edition numbers.
There was one particularly confusing footnote (Footnote 345—all notes being
numbered consecutively throughout the book) which thanks a colleague for
‘this reference to the work of Togawa Ansho’, but which provides no mention
Togawa's work, which is listed neither in the references nor elsewhere.
The references themselves exhibit some large gaps, with very little cited
that was published between 1995 and 2000 (including a number of recent
works on Shinto—including Nelson's—that surely ought to have been
considered, especially in the light of the claim made (p. 2) that Shinto has not
been as well covered in the academic literature as have other strands of
Japanese religion).
Overall, the strength of this book lies in its attempt to provide an
introductory study that opens the sanja takusen up to wider discussion, while
its main weakness is its failure to provide enough evidence to underpin the
argument that this is a topic worthy of more detailed research. While Bocking
has succeeded in alerting me to the possibility that the scrolls might be a vital
avenue for exploring wider issues in Japanese religion, he has not done enough
to convince me of his argument. Certainly the topic requires a more developed
and detailed study—especially in terms of how the scrolls have been used and
treated over the centuries, and of the ways in which commentaries on them
have influenced their use—in order to substantiate such arguments. As such,
I hope that Bocking will take forward the discussions and arguments set out
 477

in this book, by examining the various historical materials and commentaries

that relate to the sanja takusen over the centuries, so that he can produce the
sort of in-depth study that this subject would appear to require.
 

 :
Individual dignity in modern Japanese thought: the evolution of the
concept of jinkaku in moral and educational discourse.
(Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, 35.) xi, 262 pp.
Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of
Michigan, 2001. £37.50.
Every society struggles to find a balance between collective ‘well-being’ and
individual needs. And such a struggle is perhaps most clearly demonstrated
in moral education provided by the state. Thus Kyoko Inoue traces this
conflict in Japanese society by examining the transformation of the meaning
of jinkaku as it occurs in essays by leading intellectuals, in government
documents, and in school textbooks since the late nineteenth century. A word
invented to define the new social arrangements after the Meiji Restoration,
jinkaku was destined to guide and be guided by collective definitions of
individualism and social order.
The author begins by pointing out the tension between hierarchy and
egalitarianism inherent in the word itself. Thus even as jin means person(s)
and kaku status/rank, jinkaku nonetheless emphasizes moral worth, a quality
that makes a person a respected individual in society. Yet this usage, a legacy
of the Taisho democratic movement, is barely 100 years old: egalitarian forces
emphasize status in moral terms.
The book is divided into four chapters, arranged chronologically: chapter i
considers the pre-war period during which jinkaku became a key word in
Japan's shu: shin (moral) education; chapter ii describes American efforts to
reform Japanese education during the occupation period; and chapters iii and
iv examine the post-war period when the word reappeared in government
reports and textbooks to transmit the idea of a ‘public’ man desirable for the
country's economic recovery, only to be replaced by more definite words to
assert individualism such as kosei (individuality) and ningensei (humanity).
The fact that the author begins by debating moral education and ends with a
discussion of textbooks on social and civic studies reveals the close connection
between the role of morality and politics in Japan.
Jinkaku first appeared in around 1889, and translated the concept of a
legal person to be used in the civil code, according to the author. This highly
technical term soon acquired moral connotations. Inoue Tetsujiro: , the author
of the Chokugo Engi, an official commentary on the Imperial Rescript on
Education of 1890, was the first textbook writer to use jinkaku in 1897. In his
usage, Inoue echoed the major civil strategy of the Meiji leaders: to encourage
individual talents in order to ensure social progress. Thus ‘Perfecting jinkaku
was the most important purpose in life, which could only be accomplished
within one's own state and society’.
As the author points out, such ‘public’ morality does not always sit easily
with American concepts of democracy. Jinkaku and human rights appear in
478 

different chapters of the same textbooks in the 1950s, with the former assigned
to ‘social’ problems and the latter to politics and the Constitution.
Nevertheless the word jinkaku began to disappear from government guidelines
in the late 1960s, and from the textbooks in the 1980s. Yet communal morality
is still present. Thus the author concludes her final chapter as follows:

At the end of the twentieth century, what has emerged in Japanese

textbooks is a sense of communitarian democracy emphasizing social
rights. They teach that the central idea of democracy is respect for
individuals and protection of their fundamental human rights. ... But they
do not encourage people to protect their rights against the government.
Rather, they indicate that cooperation between the government and people
is the key to bringing about a just and a fair society for all people.

This conclusion—social unity promoted by government and people, the image

confirmed by the textbooks—may be supported by many observers of
Japanese society. A number of historians and political scientists have pointed
out the prominent role of ideologies, including moral education, in modern
Japan in ensuring social cohesion.
Nonetheless the book offers a broad and illuminating picture of Japanese
political thought and social history in the twentieth century. In particular it
records ways in which the Japanese looked at their ‘common’ life in response
to social and political change. For instance, during the Taisho period workers
began to use the word to defend their rights and to demand better working
conditions (ch. i). After the war Japanese educators debated fiercely whether
the aim of education should be ‘perfecting jinkaku’ or ‘developing ningensei’
(ch. iii). They were searching for new words and reassessing old ones in order
to formulate and share ideas. Thus the concept of jinkaku evolved because of
changed perceptions of the relationship between collective and individual
needs.
Here I have a few minor caveats. The author appears to me to give scant
attention to the evolution of the tension between hierarchy and egalitarianism,
particularly as it relates to the social and political background the book itself
describes. Instead the tension is described as being inherent in Japanese
society, and changes are often subsumed into a general failure to recognize it.
Similarly, in order to make more telling the final emphasis on communitarian
democracy, the author might have demonstrated more fully how the conceptual
differences between Japanese and American attitudes are manifested in the
textbooks. The book does point out that American textbooks focus on actual
court cases, whereas the Japanese introduce personal accounts to explain
human rights. It would have been helpful, however, to include further such
specific examples so that the reader could appreciate more clearly the Japanese
failure to recognize the tension. It might also have been beneficial to identify
the writers (or editors) of the textbooks described in ch. iv; their views were
reflected in the textbooks they wrote, and the author mentions the various
nuances the textbooks transmit. For example, the writer of the Osaka Shoseki
textbook of social studies in 1972 was clearly challenging ‘communitarian
democracy’ when he said: ‘Fundamental human rights are eternal, inviolate
rights. They must not be arbitrarily infringed in the name of public welfare’.
Naming these authors would help us better to understand the Japanese failure,
or struggle, recognizing that it is people, not traditions and cultures alone,
who are ultimately responsible for shaping the common life.
 -
 479

 ' :

Mélanges offerts à Li Ogg et Daniel Bouchez.
(Cahiers d'Études Coréennes, 7.) 549 pp. Paris: Collège de France,
2000.

The articles collected in the book under review have nothing in common other
than that they were written and dedicated to the two ‘old masters’ of Korean
studies in France, Li Ogg and Daniel Bouchez. The book honours the two
men (both born in November 1928) who not only initiated Korean studies at
university level, but with their scholarly works set high standards for the
study of Korea's history and literature.
Li Ogg (who passed away two days after the book's dedication ceremony)
specialized in the history of Koguryǒ, and opened with his research new
methodological avenues for approaching Korea's ancient history. In contrast,
Daniel Bouchez devoted his scholarly life to the study of classical Korean
literature, in particular to the novels of Kim Man-jung (1637–92). Both Li
and Bouchez, moreover, were instrumental in founding the Association for
Korean Studies in Europe (AKSE) and served as council members and
presidents.
The collection contains sixteen contributions in English, German, and
French, and seven in Korean (with French and English summaries). Each
article features, where appropriate, a glossary and a bibliography. The
chapters are arranged alphabetically according to the authors' surnames—an
arrangement that made a more meaningful clustering according to themes
impossible.
In view of the wealth of themes addressed, issues raised, and interpretations
offered in this volume, it is impossible to review each article in detail. Because
the titles provide a fairly good idea of the contents, it suffices here briefly to
introduce the articles by title only, grouped around subject matters:
André Fabre's (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales,
Paris) article entitled ‘La Terre de Pak Kyǒngni, problèmes de traduction’
opens the collection by raising the problem of translating modern Korean
literary works into French. A similar subject is discussed by Helga Picht
(Humboldt-Universität Berlin) in ‘Probleme der Übersetzung Koreanischer
Lyrik (Ein Vorschlag zur Diskussion)’ in which she tries out ways of
translating poems by strictly keeping to the number of syllables. Patrick
Maurus (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris)
analyses the early poems of Ch'oe Namsǒn in ‘Sur les premiers poèmes de
Ch'oe Namsǒn’. Shim Seung-Ja (Institut National des Langues and
Civilisations Orientales, Paris) analyses proverbs in ‘La conception de la vie
des Coréens à travers des proverbes’. The contribution of the late Frits Vos
(Leiden University) is entitled ‘Latent Dutch in Modern Korean’.
L. R. Koncevich (Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow) studies problems of
the Hunmin chǒngǔm in ‘Some problems raised by the study of "‘Hunmin
Chǒng'ǔm’'’.
Three articles are devoted to mythology: James H. Grayson (University of
Sheffield), ‘A preliminary study of the structures of the foundation myths of
ancient Korea’; Marianna Nikitina (University of St Petersburg), ‘The "‘Bowl
with a Sandal’' (National Museum of Kyǒngju) in the Light of the Myth of
the Female-Sun and her Parents: on the problem of the ritual embodiment of
the heroes of the myth’; and, finally, A. F. Trotsevich (Institute of Oriental
480 

Studies, St Petersburg), ‘Towards a study of the mythological background of

some Korean literary works’.
Historically oriented are the contributions of Werner Sasse (Hamburg
University), ‘Trying to figure out how kings became kings in Silla’; Boudewijn
Walraven (Leiden University), ‘The River of Living History: Sijo, history and
historical consciousness’; Henrik H. Sørensen (National Museum,
Copenhagen), ‘Problems with using the Samguk Yusa as a source for the
history of Korean Buddhism’; and Zdenka Klöslová (Prague), ‘Introducing
Korea in Bohemia and Czechoslovakia: from the mid-19th century to
the 1950s’.
Finally, there are three contributions treating miscellaneous subjects: Keith
Howard (SOAS, London) ‘North Korea: Songs for the Great Leader, with
instructions from the Dear Leader’; Alexandre Guillemoz (École des Hautes
Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris), ‘La descente d’un chamane Coréen’; and
Bernard Vincent Olivier (Université de Montréal), ‘Les Coréens de la Chine
de Deng Xiaoping: difficultés d'Adaptation’.
The articles in Korean were contributed by Kim Sǒktǔk (Yonsei University,
Seoul), ‘The system and meaning of adverbs in Korean’; Chang Yunik
(Inch'ǒn University, Inch'ǒn), ‘Baudelaire's influence on Korean symbolist
poetry in the 1920s’; Chǒng Kyubok (Korea University, Seoul), ‘The
relationship between the Changsǒn'gamǔirok, the Wǒn'gamnok and the
Hwajinjǒn concerning the Preface and the Epilogue’; Yi Hǔijae (Sungmyǒng
Women's University, Seoul), ‘The weaknesses of early printing in Korea’;
Martine Prost (Université Paris 7), ‘On the acquisition of the Korean: where
do the real difficulties lie for French speakers?’; Hǒ Man (Pusan University,
Pusan), ‘The Basis of North Korean diplomacy and perspectives for change’;
and Hong Chaesǒng (Seoul National University, Seoul), ‘Two uses of yaksok:
promise and appointment’.
The chief editor of this voluminous multinational and multilingual
publication, André Fabre, must be congratulated for the care with which he
has seen this complicated enterprise to a happy end.
 

- 

  (ed.):

The canon in Southeast Asian literatures: literatures of Burma,
Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and
Vietnam.
Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000. £45.

This anthology is a welcome addition to the small collection of works on

modern literature in South-East Asia. It also is an excellent source of
information on works available in English translation, although it is by no
means limited to these. All of the essays were originally written as papers for
a workshop on ‘The canon in South East Asian literatures’ convened at
SOAS in 1995. The anthology reflects both the strengths and the weaknesses
of its origin: superb essays are found alongside unremarkable ones; and
authors have chosen to write papers about issues that most interest them, so
 481

that the intended theme of ‘canon’ is predominant in some, perfunctorily

addressed in others, and all but absent in a few.
An introduction would have been welcome in place of the brief preface in
which the diffuse subjects of conference papers are simply listed: ‘literary
historiography, literary criticism, the reception of prose fiction, colonialism
and Western influence, literary debate, censorship, literary prizes and state
involvement, literary studies and the education system, gender issues and
indigenous aesthetics’ (p. viii). Despite the absence of a critical introduction,
this is a remarkable collection of essays which will be of great interest to
scholars of both insular and mainland South-East Asia, and a valuable source
of materials for those who are teaching courses in literature, cultures,
anthropology and history.
We begin with what seems to this reviewer the outstanding essay of the
collection: Anna J. Allott's ‘Continuity and change in the Burmese literary
canon’ is clear, elegant, and accessible to the non-specialist. She presents the
relationship between the Burmese government, writers, and their audience
over the past several decades with a perfect balance of thoroughness and
concision. Allott outlines and explicates censorship policies that have grown
ever more stringent over the past four decades, particularly the military
dictatorship's concerns with ‘decadence’ (thayok pyet in Burmese): ‘...all those
aspects of the western way of life and culture which were not acceptable to
the Burmese regime—"‘decadent, degenerate, corrupt, immoral, not con-
forming to the norms of Burmese culture’'. ... All such "‘decadent’' writings
were felt, and are still felt to present a threat to the Burmese way of life.’
Decisions as to what, in the eyes of this politically fundamentalist regime,
constitutes ‘decadence,’ are entrusted to government censors. Only a few
courageous and creative writers manage to evade the censors by dint of
ingenious and subtle satire.
It is difficult to realize that the same country is being discussed by
Annemarie Esche, in ‘Myanmar prose writing’. Not a single mention of the
dictatorship's stranglehold over the arts, or the labyrinthine system of
censorship described so well by Allott, mar Esche's contention that ‘principles’
for writers, designed by the government, ‘prevent nothing and give no
guidance’. Then follows a list of ‘possibilities’ generously provided to
Burmese writers, including frequent book publication, a proliferation of
magazines, lending libraries, annual government awards ‘to educate and to
propagate knowledge to the general public’, and writers' seminars, all
organized and controlled by SLORC (at the time of her writing), or its
successor.
There is only one essay on Vietnamese literature, but it is very good: Dana
Healy's brief but informative ‘Literature in transition: an overview of
Vietnamese writing of the renovation period’. Healy begins by describing the
literature of socialist realism in the North after 1954, and in all of Vietnam
after 1975, then describes the gradual transition to the character-driven,
realistic ‘renovation literature’ that faithfully mirrors the post-war Vietnamese
experience. By the early 1980s, writers were emboldened to write fiction
exposing corruption, poverty, despair, and the bitter fruits of the victory of
1975 head-on. Readers responded to these works with passion and gratitude.
Writers were supported by pressure from outside Vietnam to advance freedom
of expression, and even from some strong-minded Vietnamese officials who
believed that their cause was just. Predictably, however, ‘Surprised and
frightened by the alacrity and vigour with which writers started exploring the
new situation, the Party felt compelled to re-think its [newly tolerant] line’
482 

(p. 43). Leading writers were imprisoned, including Duong Thu Huong,
author of popular novels that had already been translated into English
(Paradise of the blind, Novel without a name), and were being widely read in
the West. But it was too late to return to iron controls over all artistic
productions including fiction and poetry. Writers were grudgingly released
from jail, and a stand-off ensued that continues to the present day.
Luisa J. Mallari's ‘Literary excellence as national domain: configuring the
masterpiece novel in the Philippines and Malaysia’ is a fine comparative study
of literature as an expression of nationalism. She argues that the ‘masterpiece
novel in the Philippines and Malaysia is constructed not simply as a "‘major’'
work that signifies literary excellence, but also as a reconciliation of the
multiplicities that allow it to be a national treasure’. Lisbeth Littrup's
‘Development in Malay criticism’ is an orderly, well-constructed depiction of
‘the interplay between literary criticism, literary institutions, and the Malay
writers in the new Malaysia with particular emphasis on "‘feminist’' criticism’.
While Littrup focuses on writing by women, the appreciation of women's
writing in Malay society, and feminist criticism, she also addresses the literary
debate over ‘Islamic literature’. The essay is grounded in a discussion of the
‘new’ literature of the early twentieth century, and the considerable influence
of Abdullah Munshi, who ‘came, during his boyhood, under the influence of
Sir Stamford Raffles’. (author's bold.)
The same individual is the sole subject of Ungku Maimunah Mohd.
Tahir's thoughtful essay, ‘The construction and institutionalisation of
Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munsyi [spelled ‘Munshi,’ in Littrup's essay] as
the father of modern Malay literature: the role of westerners’. This paper
presents a detailed description of the life, work and legacy of Munsyi, whose
best known works are the memoirs he was encouraged to write by his Western
mentors, and reviewed by them in manuscript form to give him the benefit of
their expertise in matters of memoir writing and autobiography. Despite the
disdain of some Malay colleagues who called him by the ‘derogatory
sobriquet, tali barut Inggeris or "‘the stooge of the English,’'’ (p. 100) Munsyi
has survived into the twenty-first century as the generally recognized ‘father
of modern Malay literature’.
‘The regulation of beauty: J. Kats and Javenese poetics’ is a meticulous
essay by Bernard Arps. His discussion of Kats's work on traditional Javanese
literature and poetics begins with a description of tembang, ‘stanzaic,
melodico-metrical verse forms, which require that verse lines consist of
specified numbers of syllables, contain word boundaries in particular position,
and end with specified vowels’ (pp. 116–7). Tembang was considered by many
(including virtually all foreign scholars, and those Malay who wished to
emulate Western literary conventions) to be unsuitable for the expression of
twentieth-century ideas. Although the essay is quite detailed, it is accessible
to the non-specialist. Arps concludes that Kats, a very influential Dutch
scholar in Java, could only write a ‘poetics’ of Javanese literature that was
solidly grounded in Western literary aesthetics, his ‘first language’, however
he might admire the subject to which he devoted his intellectual energies.
George Chigas and Peter Koret's essays on Cambodia and Laos begin
with an exploration of the pre-modern canon in each country, consisting
primarily of Buddhist works, versions of the Ramayana and other dance
dramas, and folk tales that were located almost exclusively within the oral
tradition. In the colonial era, the French were relatively indifferent to the
literary arts in these countries, by comparison with their considerable interest
in the development of literature in Vietnam, which had been accumulating an
 483

impressive literary history for a thousand years, and required only an alphabet
and French models of fiction and poetry in order to take its place on the
world literary stage.
Chigas describes the evolution of Kambujasuriya, the periodical of the
Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh, from its founding in 1927, as an expression
of the ‘French academic study of things Khmer’, to its evolution, by the
1960s, into a journal concerned with the contemporary writer as an individual.
Cambodian authors' resentment of French deprecations of their native
literature, and their simultaneous desire to emulate Western prose and poetry,
showing themselves capable of ‘real’ novels and short stories, are revealed in
poignant excerpts from their writings and correspondence.
Peter Koret's essay, ‘Books of Search: convention and creativity in
traditional Lao literature’ is not only interesting in itself, but important
because so few finely researched and thoughtful essays have been written on
Lao literature by either Lao or foreign scholars. Koret describes the ways in
which the oral tradition exerts a continuing force in Laos: the Lao, he says,
are of the opinion that there are no new stories, only old stories well told. He
focuses on the paramountcy of theme and formula in story-telling; and also
on parallelism, a stylistic device that increases in complexity and ingenuity
with the skill of the author. Parallelism is described in wonderful detail. The
only drawback, in my opinion, is Koret's use of a comparatively uncommon
system of transliteration that readers may find daunting. He concludes with
the assertion that Lao literature has been unfavourably compared with Thai
literature for too long, and that when Lao creativity is better understood, Lao
composition will be better appreciated on its own merits.
The most aptly titled essay in the anthology is Muhammad Haji Salleh's
‘Shot by foreign can(n)ons: retrieving native poetics’. While it may be most
appreciated by readers familiar with Malay literature, Salleh's essay will also
be of special interest to those who translate poetry from other languages. The
concept of language called patut, conveying the meaning ‘suitable’, ‘appro-
priate’ and ‘fitting’, is described and exemplified in several poems which are
presented in Malay and in English translation. Salleh concludes that beautiful
language and graceful metaphors remain important elements in the definition
of excellent Malay literature. There is an interesting point of comparison
between the Cambodian point of view on ‘originality’, described by Chigas,
and Salleh's remark that in traditional Malay literature, ‘the modern concept
of plagiarism did not exist. Things were to be shared, taken, improved...[and]
the writer often asks for forgiveness for his faults and begs the reader to
improve upon [his work]’ (p. 252).
David Smyth begins his essay on Thai literature with a telling remark:
‘For decades ... Thais have compared their novels unfavourably with foreign
novels; indeed, even today to boast "‘I never read Thai novels’' is accepted in
some circles as a sign of discerning taste’. Indeed, these are the Thais one
sees in international airports with a Booker Prize winning novel tucked under
one arm, who would never think of travelling with the latest work by a Thai
novelist. Short stories have somewhat more cachet.
Smyth emphasizes the low estate in which modern fiction is held with the
fact that many excellent novels written forty or fifty years ago, now considered
to be ‘classics’, are out of print, difficult to acquire, and falling apart when
one is lucky enough to find them. I can attest to his assertion: I treasure a
collection of xerox copies of old Thai novels that I have tracked down in
libraries from Bangkok to Berkeley.
Smyth's essay is perhaps the best available introduction (in English) to
484 

the course of modern Thai literature over the past century, and his analysis
of Thai attitudes toward literature, whether ‘wanakhodii’ (respected pre-
modern poetic works) or ‘wanakam’ (less respected contemporary, derivative,
Western-style fiction) is perceptive, and deft.
This is, in the main, a very fine anthology. I would like to have seen at
least one essay dealing with translation as it has affected the idea of ‘canon’
in modern South-East Asian literature. Which authors have been translated
into Western languages, by whom, for whom, and why, is a subject of
immense importance that is addressed indirectly, at best, in some of the
essays. Another under-represented subject—not represented at all, here—is
the influence and meaning of television, and of films, most of which are now
‘consumed’ at home, via television, in VCR and DVD form. Reading
audiences have never been very large in most South-East Asian countries, and
the ubiquitous TV has shrunk that audience even further. ‘Good’ fiction and
poetry tends to be read by a predictable, educated slice of society, including
writers who faithfully read each other's work, and award each other literary
prizes. Meanwhile, bookshelves in South-East Asia, as elsewhere in the world,
are now more likely to be filled with videos and DVD discs than with books.
Scholars today decry the fact that fifty years ago, not one scholarly Thai
book on ‘literature’ contained any mention of contemporary works. I wonder
whether fifty years from now, researchers will remark, with amazement, that
although most of the production and consumption of ‘story-telling’ in South-
East Asia, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, occurred via electronic
media, it was dismissed as an ephemeral trend, beneath the notice of scholars.
 



  ø:

A reliable account of the Coast of Guinea, 1760.
(Translated and edited by Selena Axelrod Winsnes.) xxx, 290 pp.
Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2000. £35.

Between 1739 and 1749 Ludewig Ferdinand Rømer worked for the Danish
West India and Guinea Company; for much of that time he lived on the Gold
Coast. Despite being employed by the Danes, he was a north German by
birth. Not especially well-educated nor well-read, he nonetheless seems to
have had English, French, Latin and Dutch as well as his birth and adopted
tongues; the imperatives of trade also pressed him to go on to learn some
Portuguese, Gã and Twi. His intellectual narrowness has the virtue of ensuring
that his work, unlike so much of the pre-modern literature on this coast, is
not much influenced by and still less copied from the texts of others. Following
this extended period on the coast, he returned to Copenhagen where he
remained a trader and also succeeded as the owner of a large sugar refinery.
He was obviously knowledgeable about West African trade and was keen
to share this knowledge, along with extremely partisan views about the
conduct of the trade, with a wider public. In 1756 he wrote a 64-page booklet
 485

on the subject with a long eighteenth-century title which is almost as long as

the text. Four years later he published a much longer (386 pp.) work. Selena
Winsnes has translated and edited a conflated edition of both of these works,
neither of which has previously been translated into English in its entirety.
As might be expected in a work whose intention was largely that of self-
interested special pleading, a fair amount of Rømer's account is devoted to a
critical description of the management of the trade. While this has considerable
interest, his own bias clearly informs the disparaging remarks he makes about
the mercantile interests of some of the other European powers on the West
African coast, even if he seems to have regarded the English as almost saintly.
Most modern readers will instead cherish the informed observations of this
unusually long-term resident on the coast; few of the sadly small group of
pre-modern writers on West Africa had spent so long in situ. Intriguingly
Rømer's knowledge straddled both Gã (he was based in Christiansborg
Castle) and Twi-speaking zones. He was not a remote observer but was almost
certainly married into an important Gã family with whom he maintained a
strong relationship after his final return to Copenhagen in 1749.
To some extent his intimacy with Gã society, and especially with a
powerful spiritual and temporal figure from Accra, prompts the thought that
some of Rømer's ethnographic observations are, like so many ethnographic
observations about pre-literate peoples, in reality the descriptions and
explanations of his informants. This, Winsnes suggests, accounts for the
unusual depth and frequency of Rømer's writings on African cosmology and
history; whether these also have the virtue of accuracy is, of course, another
matter. The fact that some of his observations are to be found in subsequent
accounts and even in oral accounts might owe more to his abiding influence
on these sources than to his acuity.
Winsnes has produced a very readable translation of these useful texts and
has again provided her readers with valuable editorial guidance throughout.
As with so many other volumes in the British Academy's Fontes Historiae
Africanae, including Winsnes' fine edition of Paul Issert's letters (1992), this is
a very scholarly and beautifully produced edition for which scholars of this
and subsequent generations have much to be grateful.
 

  (ed.):

Africa: arts and cultures.
220 pp. London: British Museum Press, 2000. £16.95.
Amongst London's most successful millennium projects is the renovation of
the British Museum (BM), wherein the Great Court complex, like its
counterpart the Tate Modern, has extended and invigorated opportunities to
experience the visual arts. Probably the most challenging venue is the
Sainsbury African Galleries (SAG) with their special suite of spaces to display
objects by ‘Africans’ selected from the BM's vast ethnographic holdings,
numbering 200,000 items. For about thirty years these had been housed in the
Museum of Mankind and were presented by particular aspects of expressive
culture (BSOAS IV, 1992, Part 2).
486 

Relocation to Bloomsbury—for a vastly enlarged audience (up 95 per

cent) and into the SAG's spatial configuration with the entrance midway
between two wings—energized a timely reconsideration of African art. In
terms of taking on an entire Africa and a contemporary Africa, this was
already underway through the BM's extensive involvement in the africa95
season, particularly by the now Senior Keeper John Mack, whose expertise is
the western Indian Ocean (and eastern Africa), and the Curator for West
Africa, Nigel Barley. They were joined in the setting out of Africa: arts and
cultures by another anthropologist Julie Hudson, Curator for North Africa,
and artist Chris Spring, former Curator for North Africa, now in charge of
the SAG.
Their co-authored volume is more of a companion text than a guide to
the new installation of 600 objects. These are organized by medium (such as
forged metalwork, wood carving and ceramics) and by topic (such as
contemporary art, power objects and masquerade) but neither by nation nor
ethnicity, though with the provocative exception of the Royal Benin brass
and ivory masterpieces. The introductory entry features a highly contrastive
group of modern works in differing media with each projecting its own
regional sensibility. These works exemplify the themes of diversity and
contemporaneity; they ‘dispel perceived divisions between traditional and
modern and emphasise the continuing dynamism of African art’ (Prospectus,
07.00). Throughout the SAG, objects are presented as works of gallery art
regardless of their original function. This avowedly aesthetic arrangement has
extensive descriptive labels often with photographs and, in five locations, with
videos. Historical relationships are revealed through the positioning of displays
which suggest links and overlapping features like those between masquerade,
personal adornment and textiles. Another example is the apperception of
formal and social relationships in ceramics, initiated by Madgalene Odundo's
contemplative Untitled, an asymmetrical, unglazed vessel, expanded with a
massive assemblage of large domestic pottery and then refined by close
resonance with the prestige ceramics of the Mangbetu and Buganda, for
which Odundo penned an essay (pp. 212–14). For months, Time Out's Art
listings have recommended ‘Sainsbury African Galleries: this is museum
display at its imaginative best’.
While the reception of Africa: arts and cultures has been less remarkable
than that of the SAG, the book represents a considerable achievement: a
handy volume in both in size and message which consolidates recent trends
in African art studies. It is arranged by four cultural-geographical regions.
North-Northeast-Sahara; West; Central; and East and Southern Africa. This
approach redresses the prevailing imbalance where the focus is fixed on works
from west and central Africa (e.g. the scope of Re-visions: new perspectives on
the African collections of the Horniman Museum, London, 2000 comprises
exclusively west and central Africa and the Yoruba disapora, and omits
holdings from eastern and southern Africa). Mack's introduction to Africa:
arts and cultures locates the BM book squarely in the ethnographic collection
‘... of unrivalled human ingenuity and achievement on the African continent’
stating an aim ‘to open up a new gateway into a collection that can be mined
in very many ways to show something of the African varieties of life and
thought’ (p. 16). Attention is drawn to the complexity of the ‘whole
contemporary field’ (p. 23).
Each regional section comprises a summative essay, by a BM curator,
which outlines a region's cultural history with samples of key art practices.
These are supplemented by descriptions for fifty-six exemplar objects (around
 487

10 per cent of those displayed) which are written from different viewpoints by
artists, anthropologists, historians and curators. How encouraging that about
two-thirds of the authors are either from Africa or are overseas Africans.
These short essays are the book's distinguishing feature; the range of authorial
voices offers fresh insights with clarity and vibrance. There are two versions
of the BM's efforts to construct a broad overview that encompasses the
diverse artistic practices of the entire African continent from many historical
periods.
Given the book's advantages: it is topical, portable, readable and contains
fine reproductions, it is a shame that its major drawback is its design. The
layout interferes with smooth reading, in that the regional narratives, averaging
45 pages, are interspersed with up to thirteen object descriptions. Further, it
is difficult to tell the difference between narrative and these descriptions since
the page tint is too subtle. One example of this is the confusion, indeed
dissonance, I felt in reading the ‘East and southern Africa’ section. The
regional narrative relates the distribution of Bantu-speaking peoples in the
first-century .. with reference to their creation of the unusual Lydenburg
heads, not illustrated so I was visualizing one (and laterally other antique
terracotta heads); then, on turning the page, my thoughts were interrupted
firstly by a large fearsome image of a generic Makonde initiation mask,
secondly by a smaller image pertaining to Kikuyu-Maasai wooden ornaments
and thirdly by three pages of explanantory text for these initiation objects,
before continuing with the region's overview. Any reprints or new editions
would benefit from situating the object essays together by region. One other
concern is the lack of attention to major issues that are clearly problematic
to the BM. Of particular significance is the omission of the basic facts about
the acquisition of the Benin objects and the current debate about their
ownership. These could have been provided, possibly in cameo, like the object
essays (e.g. M. Hall, African Archaeology, 1996).
Certainly, Africa: arts and cultures can serve as the point of departure for
introductory teaching about African art; and is the required text on a
foundation art history course I teach. But, even for a general audience, the
information level in the regional essays is lean, sometimes partial and in need
of augmentation, some of which is provided in the object essays. Furthermore,
despite all the claims for a contemporary outlook, most of the references pre-
date 1990. On the plus side, the parallel texts make feasible a variety of
internal analyses within the book; obvious units of analysis are region, local
culture, object, time, discipline, medium and display. Lecturers with access to
the BM can explore the assumptions of the text directly: are the objects
(indeed is art) best served by the SAG's thematic arrangement or by the text's
regional approach?
Africa's dual homecoming at the BM is registered by major achievements.
These are the construction of an artistic overview for an entire Africa,
contemporary expression with dynamic traditions, plural modernities and the
possibility of interpretation by reflexive anthropology with regard to the artist,
his/her culture and ourselves. Mack and his colleagues have developed a
holistic model for the study of African art which needs assessment in order
to reckon the efficacy of a regional approach and a general theory of diversity.
Their product, despite its drawbacks, is currently the best starting point for
the arts and cultures of Africa. It offers good value for scholarship and best
value for cost at £17 while comparable jointly-authored books cost £50 such
as the recent A History of Art in Africa, New York, 2001.
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