In the autumn of 1773, the Panchen Lama of Tashilhunpo, Lobzang Paldan Yeshes, sent a letter to Warren Hastings in Calcutta. He was writing to ask for clemency on behalf of his vassal, the rajah of Bhutan, who had recently been defeated by the East India Company's soldiers in a border war. For some time, the officials of the company had been discussing how they might open relations with Tibet, and to Hastings this seemed the opportunity they had been waiting for.

The 1951 meeting of the Far Eastern Association will be held at the University of Pennsylvania on March 27, 28, and 29 in conjunction with the American Oriental Society. Members wishing to present papers should send titles of topics to the Program Committee Chairman, Hyman Kublin, Brooklyn College, N. Y., as soon as possible. Members should understand that the committee has complete freedom to select and solicit papers which will best fit into the pattern of the program planned.

Among Melanesian stone implements there is a group of axes, . of rather limited distribution, that differ fundamentally from all the other Melanesian axes. They are relatively flat; some have a rectangular outline; others are pointed at the upper end and have a rounded, in some cases broad, cutting edge. At about the upper third or the middle, a shallow groove runs around these axes. This leads to the protrusion of slight swellings of the sides or of actual trunnions, some of them being 2 cm long, 2 cm broad and 1 cm high. These axes have been recorded in Bougainville, Buka, Nissan, Carteret, the Shortland Islands, northern Choiseul, Vella Lavella, and Guadalcanal, as well as on the French Islands, Cape Willaumez, and the South Cape of New Britain (see illustration).

It is a commonplace that the great majority of the world's inhabitants are concentrated within a few demographic areas covering only a small portion of the surface of the earth. Of these, perhaps only three are of a first order of magnitude, while easily the greatest of these, the agglomeration in Monsoon Asia, may contain as much as 50 per cent and certainly more than 40 per cent of the world's population. Within this crescent of favored littorals and archipelagoes, certain areas – Japan, China, Java, India, and Tonkin in particular – demonstrate the most delicate and potentially disastrous balance between the physical endowment of an area and the ability of men to win a livelihood and to increase their numbers.

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

The meiji period (1868–1912) in Japanese history is known traditionally as an era of bustling reform during which the leaders of the restored imperial government sought to discard a feudal and backward civilization and to replace it with the modernity of the West. No people, however, notwithstanding all their persistence, talents, and hopes can have worked as great a transformation in their national life as has been claimed for the Japanese during this period. There is no doubt that great and far-reaching reforms were inaugurated, but it is especially necessary, in assessing them, to distinguish between the initial plans and hopes of the Japanese, on the one hand, and the actual achievements, on the other. The fundamental institutional changes which were projected required in most instances the passage of at least a generation before a reasonable stage of progress was attained. Failure to bear in mind the gradual nature of these changes has often resulted in the presentation of distorted and anachronistic treatments of modern Japanese history.

In a political tradition conditioned to stress personal aspects of government administration rather than rule of law, the scope and the nature of executive power assume great significance. Government under men rather than government under law presumes intentional absence of clearly defined areas of administrative discretion and equally intentional haziness surrounding controllability of administrative officials by the citizenry.

During the last 150 years numerous Chinese documents were sent from Chinese government officials to American ministers and consuls in China; the latter, in turn, shipped many of them to the secretaries of state in Washington. The frequency of shipment varied according to the degree of importance of the documents, i.e., whether they related to political, economic, social, or cultural matters. They were shipped either (1) as enclosures with diplomatic dispatches and consular reports, or (2) sent separately, segregated as to category, and packed in paper boxes or bound separately in volumes.

From a purely objective point of view, the study of the political novel in any period of history is useful because of the inherent value of that particular type of novel – portrayal of the political ideology of its time and presentation of its authors' political opinions. This is especially true with reference to the political novel in Japan's Meiji era. The Restoration had shifted the balance of power; Western influence was strong; Japan was emerging from her self-imposed seclusion. In the first flush of her breakaway from previous restraints – and before new ones could be devised and stringently enforced – Japan's political thought as expressed in the literary vehicle specifically designed for it presents perhaps a truer index of the feelings of the literate classes than does the governmental mechanism which was evolved at that time, inasmuch as one of the avowed purposes of a novel is to appeal to its audience, a point not included in Japanese governmental tradition. This being the general trend in the Far East, the most important medium – even the only medium – through which the articulate could register their objections and their own thoughts has been literature. Certainly one of the most important causes for the Western belief that the Oriental is phlegmatic and mysterious is that so little study has been made of his writings, the only possible channel for his outpourings.

It has often been stated that the core of Japan's social structure is the family system. Research on any aspect of Japanese life is likely to lead to that subject sooner or later, because of its importance. The Japanese themselves, particularly the conservative groups, understand this fact more clearly than do most Westerners. They find in the family system the essence of Japanism, contrasting it to individualism, which forms the basis of Western culture. In more recent times, individualism was presented as a menace to Japan's “national polity” and as a “dangerous thought.” It became the ideological whipping boy of Japanese nationalists. The term “individualism” itself assumed the abhorrent qualities which the words “nihilism” or “anarchism” had in Europe at the turn of the century. Even today “individualism” means hardly more to many Japanese than selfishness and an antisocial attitude.

If the differences in the milieus which foster distinct philosophies are kept in mind, a comparison of ideas drawn from widely separated eras and environments can be profitable to the student of political thought and institutions. Social and environmental changes, and even technological revolutions, have altered but have not displaced the fundamental and still largely unsolved problems of human adjustment. Many formulas considered as peculiarly modern had their counterpart in antiquity, and concepts regarded as typical of Western culture have frequently been encompassed in the thought of Eastern peoples. A case in point is offered by the utilitarian political creed, which, while most famous and influential in England during the nineteenth century, was partially anticipated in one of the philosophical schools of ancient China. Utilitarianism was understandably a suitable vehicle for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English reformers, but it seems remarkable to find the principle expounded in tradition-bound China of the later Chou dynasty, when, as afterward, appeal to authority and reverence for the past were strongly embedded. Not only was a utilitarian concept vigorously and logically developed by the philosoher Mo Ti (approximately 468-382 B.C.), but his disciples constituted a flourishing school for more than a century after his death and were formidable competitors of the Confucianists. Mencius, the greatest exponent of Confucianism at the opening of the third century B.C., denounced as the two most dangerous heresies the extreme individualism of Yang Chu (fourth-century hedonistic anarchist) and the indiscriminate altruism of Mo Ti, both of which doctrines he regarded as tending to undermine social decorum and a proper respect for authority. The rivalry between Confucianists and the champions of Mo Ti took on the nature of a partisan conflict. On many fundamentals the two schools were not so utterly irreconcilable as the heat of controversy made it appear. Both appealed to the example of ancient sage-kings for justification; both accepted as a political norm a benevolent, paternalistic system with power and initiative descending from above, although Mo's conceptions were more authoritarian and theocratic than those of the Confucians; both regarded politics and ethics as synonymous and believed that the creation of the good society would go hand in hand with the improvement of the individual's moral character. They shared the common ground of a logical, matter-of-fact approach to human problems, in contrast to the mysticism of the Taoists. Nevertheless, the Confucianists campaigned uncompromisingly against their rivals and finally won such a complete victory that Mo Ti's influence was extinguished and his teachings remained almost unknown for some 2,000 years.

A. The peninsula before the conquests by Funan. The first known contact of the Khmer Empire or any of its antecedents with what is now called the Malay Peninsula1 occurred when Fan Shih-man of Funan conquered a considerable portion of that peninsula early in the third century; although it is believed, from the terms in which the account of his voyage are expressed, that Hun-t'ien, or Hun-shen (Kaundinya), who conquered the native queen, Liu-yeh (Willow Leaf), and founded the kingdom of Funan about the middle of the first century, came from an Indian settlement on the eastern side of that peninsula.

On May 18, 1948, the Archivist of the United States accessioned from the Foreign Documents Branch of the Central Intelligence Agency a collection of over 30,000 volumes of official records which had been seized in Japan by the United States government. Known as the “World War II collection of seized enemy records: Japan,” these volumes now form part of record group 242 and occupy some 3,450 cubic feet of space in the War Records Division of the National Archives. Being in good condition and unrestricted, they form basic sources for any study of modern Japanese military history. They are one of the largest bodies of primary Japanese materials on any subject available in the United States and can be expected to shed light also on various phases of Japan's modern social, economic, political, and diplomatic development.