1. INDIA IN A WORLD: DILEMMAS OF SOVEREIGNTY

Azfar Moin's The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam prompts a consideration not only of the histories of Islam and early modern connected histories of Central and South Asia, but also of current debates about local and global history‐writing. Moin's work intersects with a strand of comparative world history—following Victor Lieberman's Strange Parallels—but also engages strands of historical anthropology, bringing to light a range of compelling stakes for global historians, historians of South Asia, and scholars of nationalism alike. Though Moin's work pushes the boundaries of connected histories centered on South Asia, his focus on a trans‐regional millennial science avoids questions of the local within new global histories.     

Re-writing Protestant history in the novels of Glenn Patterson

This article considers the representation of the history of Belfast in Glenn Patterson's 2012 novel The Mill for Grinding Old People Young. It situates this novel within the context of Patterson's previous work and the history of the Northern Irish novel, as well as with the representation of maritime Belfast in the Titanic centenary year. This novel will be read as a recovery and rehabilitation of a Protestant history which could be problematic for Patterson, an avowedly liberal writer, but instead this context allows for an exploration of the uses of history in contemporary Northern Irish cultural and political discourse.     

3. THE QUESTION OF HISTORY IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

This essay considers an important and enduring problem in the writing of Indian history: how do we historians approach precolonial narratives of the past? A rich and suggestive new study of South Indian modes of historiography, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600–1800, by Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, has positioned itself at the center of this debate. For a variety of reasons, precolonial narratives have been demoted to the status of mere information, and genres of South Indian writing have been dismissed as showing that South Indians lacked the ability to write history and indeed lacked historical consciousness. Textures of Time responds to this picture by proposing a novel historical method for locating historical sensibility in precolonial narratives of the past. The authors ask us not to judge all textual traditions in India, especially narratives of the past, on the basis of the verifiability of facts contained in them. Rather they suggest a radical openness of the text, and they argue that a historical narrative is constituted in the act of reading itself. They do this by examining the role of genre and what they call texture in precolonial South Indian writing. This essay examines the strengths and limitations of their proposal. It does so by examining the formation of colonial archives starting in the late‐eighteenth century in order to understand the predicament of history in South Asia. Colonial archives brought about a crisis in historiographical practices in India; they not only transformed texts into raw information for the historian to then reconstruct a historical narrative, they also delegitimized precolonial modes of historiography. A better understanding of these archives puts one in a better position to assess the insights of Textures of Time, but it also helps to highlight the problems in its solution. In particular, it reveals how the book continues to use modern criteria to assess premodern works, and in this way perhaps to judge them inappropriately.     

Towards Eurasia: remapping Europe as ‘upstart peripheral to an ongoing operation’

In order to heed the call in world literature studies to work against disciplinary Eurocentrism by refiguring both what constitutes world literature and how this is read, in this article I propose world literature as an archive of world-making practices and as an impulse for the articulation of alternative methodological approaches. This takes world literature from the postcolonial South as, following Pheng Cheah, instantiating a modality of world literature in which the need for imagining worlds with alternative centres to those determined by coloniality is particularly acute. A response to this is facilitated and illustrated by a reading of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore’s Letters from Russia (1930), and South African writer/activist Alex La Guma’s A Soviet Journey (1978). By drawing forward connections between the postcolonial South and the former Soviet Union, this complicates traditional colonial arrangements of the colonial ‘centre’ as cradle of civilisation and culture, as well as postcolonial scholarship’s cumulative fetishisation of ‘Europe’, by allowing a reshuffling of the co-ordinates determining ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’ and a more nuanced grasp of ‘Europe’ simultaneously. These imaginative journeys destabilise ‘Europe’ as closed category and call forth Eurasia as a more appropriate categorical–cartographical framework for thinking this space and the connections and (hi)story-telling it stages and fosters.     

The Yellow Turbans

This article investigates the historical arguments found in the Da Song sengshilüe, an important work on the history of Buddhism in China by the vinaya monk Zanning. Throughout a life that spanned the turmoil of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period as well as the imperial consolidation of the early Song, Zanning proved adept at developing close relationships with important political figures and prominent literati. He was widely praised for his literary skills, and he established a reputation as an erudite scholar of both Buddhist and Confucian learning. His fame attracted the attention of Emperor Taizong, and in the late tenth century, Zanning was ordered to write a text on the history of Buddhism in China, which he called the Da Song sengshilüe. In this work, Zanning described the institutional relationships that developed between Buddhism and the state as well as the manner in which these changed over time. His historical analysis revealed that Buddhism needed to maintain a relationship with the government and that this relationship should ideally be one of mutual assistance and support. In addition, Zanning used the Da Song sengshilüe to advance a polemical argument on the proper stance that the state should adopt towards Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism. Based on an historical analysis of the causes underlying the vicissitudes in the political fortunes of the Three Teachings, he contended that Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism should be treated equally, and that the holders of political power should refrain from establishing policies advocating either favoritism or persecution towards them.     

A GIS Atlas of the Fossil Pollen and Modern Records of Ficus and Related Species for Island South–East Asia,Australasia and the Western Pacific

Ficus has been described as a keystone genus in the tropics. This paper reviews the Quaternary palynology literature, and vegetation research literature in Island Southeast Asia, Australasia and the Western Pacific with the aim of increasing the knowledge of the distribution history for Ficus and related species within this area. Specifically, this paper describes a GIS atlas designed to aid further analysis of the history and spread of Moraceae species. This research project synthesises the knowledge of the distribution and history of Ficus and related species in the greater Australasian area through the production of a GIS atlas, and describes the project, specifically focusing on the data collation and production of the GIS.     

Inventories and the Analysis of Wealth and Consumption Patterns In St. Mary's County,Maryland, 1658–1777

Abstract. This article is the first systematic attempt to measure the existence and degree of dowry inflation in South Asia. The popular press and scholarly literature have assumed dowry inflation in South Asia for some time, and there are now a number of theoretical papers that have attempted to explain the rise of dowries in South Asia. Despite these advances, there has been no systematic study of dowry inflation. Using large-sample retrospective survey data from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal, researchers assess the empirical evidence for dowry inflation. They find no evidence that real dowry amounts have systematically increased over time in South Asia.     

The archaeobotany of Indian pulses: identification,processing and evidence for cultivation

Abstract

Pulses are a significant component of traditional subsistence in South Asia. Reliable identification criteria for identifying these from archaeological seed remains are reviewed. The botanical evidence relating to the wild progenitors and their distribution, especially of Indian natives (Macrotyloma uniflorum, Vigna radiata, Vigna mungo) is summarised, including new evidence from primary botanical research. The problem of seed size increase in pulses is reviewed through a focused study on Vigna spp., in which it is shown that seed enlargement is delayed by 1–2,000 years after initial cultivation. The taphonomy of archaeological pulses is considered in the context of crop-processing of pulses, in which an important distinction can be drawn between free-threshing and pod-threshing types. The total archaeobotanical record for pulses in South Asia (India and Pakistan) is summarised and key regional differences are highlighted.     

Languages as Women: The Feminisation of Linguistic Discourses in Colonial North India

This article locates and analyses the gendered discourses of Hindi and Urdu linguistic identity in late nineteenth‐century colonial north India. Using a new concept of language woman, it characterises the multiple discourses of feminisation through three distinctive terms of linguistic femininity, linguistic morality and linguistic patriarchy. These three modes of representation and articulation of feminised discourses over Hindi and Urdu languages are explored using the concept of heteronormativity as a political, ideological and social–cultural construct. The paper argues that language woman established an intimate bond between nationalisation and feminisation of the dominant Hindi linguistic identity in private and public domains as not mutually opposed but complementary and reproducible of each other.     

The Lore of Liu An and the Authorship of the Huainanzi

This article provides an alternative approach to the issue of the Huainanzi's authorship by exploring how it was related to the Liu An lore emphasizing him as a talented writer. Beginning with a redefinition of the concept of the author in early Chinese literature, the article first examines how Liu An as the author of the Huainanzi functions as the key to our understanding of the text in previous scholarship. The article then moves to investigate the materials relied upon by previous scholarship in defining Liu An as the author of the Huainanzi. The investigation reveals the conflicting messages in different sources regarding when and how Liu An was hailed as a talented writer, what the neipian would likely be, and whether or not Liu An presented the Huainanzi to the Han court. Finally, this article examines the formation of the Liu An lore, in which he is portrayed as a prolific writer especially associated with esoteric writings of the time, and argues that it is this Liu An lore that has defined the Huainanzi's authorship.     

Sewn Boats of Southeast Asia: the stitched‐plank and lashed‐lug tradition

This article updates research into the sewn‐boat traditions of Southeast Asia with recent finds that provide evidence of the transition from stitched planks with lashed‐lug frames to planks fastened with dowels and locked dowels alongside lashed‐lug frames. The differences between Southeast Asian, East Asian, and Indo‐Arabic boatbuilding are discussed and the meaning of anomalies, such as the Maldivian dhonis, examined. Considering the known history of trade and exchange throughout the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, the lack of hybridization between boatbuilding traditions is noted.     

The Transition to History in Southeast Asia: An Introduction

Studies of the transition from prehistory to history in Southeast Asia have traditionally relied primarily on documentary sources, which tend to emphasize foreign influences, rather than on the archaeological record, which suggests a series of indigenous developments. The papers in this journal issue and the next discuss strategies for using both documentary and archaeological evidence to study the transition to history and the emergence of early states in the region. These papers investigate how political units were structured and integrated in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and South China, and illustrate how historical and archaeological data can cross-check each other to inform on Southeast Asian sociopolitical and economic developments during the early historic period.     

独树一帜的藏传佛教觉域派尼僧

The Joyul tradition, which was founded in the 11th century; was one of the most important sects of Tibetan Buddhism. This tradition may trace its origins back to Pha Dampa Sangye, a well-known monk who was a native of South India, and was founded by Macik Labdron(ma-cig lab-sgron), a famous Tibetan Yogini (a female practitioner of the Yogachara schooD. It was the only sect founded by a female in the history of Tibetan Buddhism, and this is also rarely seen in the world history of world religions.     

The Ethical Question in Postwar Central America and the Mutilated Good in Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s El Cojo Bueno

This article examines how the novel El cojo bueno (1996) by Guatemalan writer Rodrigo Rey Rosa posits an ethics that reconstellates the motifs and assumptions that have informed the revolutionary and transition-to-peace efforts of Central America. Through a careful reading of the text, I demonstrate how the novel pushes against the limits of the neoliberal ‘culture of peace’ and gives expression to an ethics that is attuned to the complex sociopolitical conditions of the postwar period. More specifically, I show how the novel develops a moral vision that registers but also resists the impunity, violence, and social disaffection that have devastated the region. The novel dramatizes what the moral life has come to mean in postwar Central America, namely, that it is a matter of grappling with the antinomies of freedom and unfreedom, of compassion and cold survivalism, and refusing to rest easy with either option. Ultimately, El cojo bueno marks a key moment when a new conception of ethics begins to take shape in postwar Central American literature.     

从《世说新语》与《晋书》对东晋道佛二教的不同书写论曲笔

《晋书》与《世说新语》是研究东晋历史的重要历史文献。东晋道佛二教并盛,而《晋书》与《世说新语》各有侧重。《世说新语》崇佛抑道,《晋书》崇道抑佛,其直接原因在于其书写者心目中二教有优劣之分。其淡化或湮没的一方,可以命名为"第二教"。这是另一种"曲笔"。这种现象存在的深层背景在于传统书写中独立的史料意识的缺失,而独立的史料意识是中国古代史学向现代转型的首重之事。正视第二教缺席的现象,也能给历史研究诸多有益的启示。     

THE ENDURING PUBLIC STRUGGLE TO CONSTRUCT,CONTROL, AND CHALLENGE HISTORICAL MEMORIES

Sumit Guha's History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200–2000 develops important arguments about the public significance of historical knowledge and the essential role of historians in public life. All societies need collective memories to sustain their cultural identities, as Guha shows in this wide‐ranging account of how such memories have been constructed in South Asian societies since the thirteenth century. The knowledge of historical experts is increasingly challenged or derided by contemporary social groups and political activists, who circulate their own historical narratives via new networks of communication. Political uses of historical knowledge are not new, however, as Guha shows in detailed accounts of how Hindu, Muslim, and British imperial regimes all used historical narratives to justify their own power. He also explains how other social groups challenged official historical narratives with their own popular stories about the past. This book contributes to recent work in global intellectual history by comparing similarities in the historical practices of premodern Europe and South Asia, discussing the cross‐cultural exchanges in colonial‐era institutions, and describing postcolonial challenges to European ideas. Guha thus offers an insightful analysis of how social and political forces influence and respond to the cloistered institutions that produce historical knowledge and construct collective memories. He concludes that evidence‐based historical narratives must be continually defended amid current public assaults on historical knowledge in both South Asia and the United States. More generally, Guha's book suggests the need for ongoing analysis of how public events, social conflicts, and new communication systems can reshape or discredit the work of historical experts.     

Masculinities in Asia: A Review Essay

Abstract:

Masculinity as an analytical concept has received limited attention in historical and cultural studies of Asia, and particularly of South and Southeast Asia. Only a small number of works produced in South and Southeast Asian studies address the historical construction and evolution of masculinities in the regions and even fewer offer in-depth inquiries into the extent to which historical forms of masculinity governed social relations. The specific dynamics of the relationship between ideologies and the ways that manhood is interpreted, experienced and performed in daily life in the past and in present times remain underexplored. This essay reviews three recent publications that demonstrate that masculinity has been crucial to ideologies and techniques of rule in colonial, national and globalised contexts and, as such, needs to be placed at the centre of analyses of empire, nation and globalisation. It directs attention to promising areas for future comparative research on masculinities in Asia.     

On Not Reading The Soldier’s Pocket-book for Field Service

This essay focuses on Garnet Wolseley’s controversial war instruction manual, The Soldier’s Pocket-book for Field Service (1869). While the Pocket-book’s contribution to discussions of reading and soldiers’ education has carved out a significant place for it in Victorian military history, in its day it was constantly contested and undermined by contradictory representations, as a book much talked about but little read. This essay is an exercise in tracing these eccentric reception histories, as an acute reminder that books may well have vibrant intellectual lives without actually being read. To examine the literary and material circulation of the Pocket-book in the late nineteenth century, it draws on archival research in the Macmillan Archive and Wolseley’s private papers to discuss the genesis of the text not just as a compendium of information but also as an object that is handled, carried, and exchanged. I juxtapose these considerations with episodes in the representation of the Pocket-book: in an anti-war pamphlet; an anonymous satirical drawing found in Wolseley’s personal scrapbooks; and in Kipling’s short stories about British soldiers in colonial South Asia. In all of these, the Pocket-book is characterized as a dubious, even dangerous text – one that was neither read, nor should be. The examples demonstrate three of the different trajectories through which the Pocket-book emerged as an unread book in the Victorian imagination: through encouragements not to read, rejection, and misappropriation.     

TWO CONTRASTING FRENCH APPROACHES TO HISTORIOGRAPHY

This essay reviews two books in the French Que Sais‐je? series by Charles‐Olivier Carbonell in 1981 and by Nicolas Offenstadt in 2011 on the topic of historiography. Offenstadt's volume is intended to bring Carbonell's up to date, but goes in very different directions. There is general agreement among historians that a fundamental reorientation has taken place in historical thought and writing in the past half century, about which quite a bit has been written in recent years in the West, including in Latin America, East Asia, and India. But this is not the theme of either of these volumes. Carbonell tells the history of history from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth‐century Annales; Offenstadt is not interested in examining major trends in historiography as much of the historiographical literature has done, but in analyzing the changes that the key concepts that guide contemporary historical studies have undergone. For Carbonell's chronological narrative of the history of historical writing, theory has no place; for Offenstadt, who proceeds analytically, history and theory are inseparable. He deals specifically with changes in conceptions of historical time, of the role of documents, of the place of history within the social sciences, of the centrality of narrative, and finally of historical memory.