The foreign relations of Iran from 1800 to 1921 have on the whole been discussed in terms of diplomatic relations between states, of ‘Great Power’ policy, and of the impact of the world economy upon a comparatively weak and traditional society. A brief survey of the existing literature reveals that Iran's lack of progress has been attributed among other factors to her form of government, foreign interference and to her predicament as a buffer state between the British and Russian empires. The traditional power structures of Iran, as dominated by an absolute monarchy intent on personal interest with a concomitant lack of realism when engaging in war, was, in Ramazani's view, the origin of the country's weakness. Kazemzadeh saw the subject from the point of view of Anglo-Russian rivalry at the highest levels, and argued that both powers sought to impose hegemony on Iran by a variety of means, including, putting pressure on the Shah and chief ministers, using commercial concessions and exercising intimidation. The competition of Britain and Russia was so intense that each was determined to undermine any plan of development proposed by the other, opportunities were numerous, as, for example, in the introduction of railways. Yapp, to some extent, questioned this argument by pointing out that British interests were more complex than those of the Russians; on the one hand a stronger Iran was a more efficient buffer-state, but on the other hand it could undermine British influence in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. Yapp also noted that the British and Russian presence gave advantages to Iran in terms of the development of international trade, the control of internal disorder and in the imposition of regional security. Greaves saw Britain's diplomatic connections with Iran as dominated by her preoccupation with the defence of India, and believed that its attitudes to Iran were neither consistent nor strong. Issawi, in his study of economic development, also presented a more complex picture which emphasises the variety of the factors involved, and also the fluctuations in the economy over the period. He pointed out that trade did grow steadily, that the country benefited from new technology, for example the telegraph and the construction of the Suez Canal, and that it lived within its means. On the other hand, involvement in the international economy from 1890–1914 led to rapidly increasing foreign financial and political factors, which undermined the county's independence. Wright provided a different approach in that, while acknowledging the baleful effects of aspects of Anglo-Russian rivalry on Iran, he was more concerned with the experiences of a variety of ‘English’ amongst the Iranians, and thus offered a study of interaction between foreigners and Iranians at a level below that of international politics.

For a long time students of China have held the view that ancestral cults formed one of the pillars of the Imperial state, that they were the backbone of family life and provided the ideological source for the political class. In a vague and general way this is no doubt true. However, from an anthropological perspective, the position of the dead in Chinese society is not well known. China is a vast country with a great variety of ecological circumstances and ethnic substrata, which have contributed to differences in ritual articulation. The most important of the regional differences may have been the divide between the rice-producing areas in the south and those producing wheat and millet in the north. China was sinicised in a slow process by the acceptance of hegemonic influences under shifting political conditions, and we must expect rich and diverse strands within the substrata lingering in the mix that we sometimes superficially designate ‘traditionally Chinese’. Furthermore, we must realise that there have been shifts in these ancestral cults through the ages, and that what was conducted in earlier dynasties might in some important aspects have been rather different from what went on in the later days of the Empire. In this article I wish to continue earlier work on the Chinese cult of the dead in terms of time – cyclical, calendrical and linear.

This paper invites discussion on the proposition of compiling a Palestinian Arabic emotive lexicon that would incorporate in its entries, in addition to cognitive definitions, the emotions, associations, connotations, metaphors, idioms, and non-verbal expressions that are commonly associated with a given word. My main working hypothesis is that semantics must address emotions, i.e., that words, and not only their peripheral elements, carry emotive content. Ignoring these, empathies (temporary term), the manner in which expression is “understood” within a given culture, is partial, at best. Research is to be carried out both quantitatively, in field research, and qualitatively, by literary analysis. The many theoretical, as well as the practical, pitfalls of this suggestion are taken into consideration. The paper's appendices include a sample entry and a sample questionnaire.

1969 was a time of some introspection for the architectural profession in India. The vision of bold architecture that Nehru had nurtured so personally was now in full bloom. It was, after all, a decade since he had urged architects to break the shackles of tradition in support of Chandigarh – an experiment to embolden the spirit of New India. There was a general sense of relief from professionally trained architects, because for them this political support meant that they could now do what they did best. Not out of choice, but training, they were freed from the burden of addressing tradition, and they could now address foreign design. This was also the time when many were ‘returning home’ after training in European and American schools, and were putting into practice what they had learnt abroad. The ‘foreign-returned’ were the ‘real’ architects who took upon themselves the task of educating their clients, and changing the face of India. They were ‘real’ also because only they had had first-hand experience of what was being taught from books in architecture schools all over India. With scholarship schemes set up by the Nehru government facilitating architects to study in America, it was there that many young architects went to complete their education. Once back they would set their euphoria in concrete and glass. And by 1969 there were already quite a few examples of American-inspired designs in the portfolio of Modern India, and its novelty was beginning to wear off.

“The natives of all unknown countries are commonly called Indians” Maximilian of Transylvania, De molucco (1523)

Tanjore in South India during the reign of Raja Serfoji II (1798–1832), is a hitherto unexamined episode of both colonial science and of ‘Enlightenment’ in the non-western context. If Joseph Banks, a product of the English Enlightenment, was a metropolitan ‘centre of calculation’ directing and controlling a collecting network in India between the 1770s and 1820, it is argued that Raja Serfoji was his native counterpart, exhibiting similar formal properties, and drawing on those very same ideas and networks of metropolitan practice to systematically produce useful knowledge. This case study demonstrates strongly (among other things) the weaknesses of the centre-periphery model of scientific practice. It shows how the ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ are not determined by virtue of the geographical location, but by the nature of practice, which is a combined effect of social, scientific and power relations. Thus, this article examines the ways in which it became possible for a small quasi-Indian state in early nineteenth-century South India to leap onto the threshold of modernity, by generating an intellectual ferment of the kind that it did, as a unique native response to the western encounter.

In 1973 a cache of silk manuscripts was discovered in Mawangdui tomb number three in Hunan province. This was the first extensive collection of silk manuscripts unearthed from such an early period: 168 BCE, during the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 202 CE). Guodian village in the province of Hubei was the site of another exciting discovery in October of 1993. Here archaeologists uncovered a tomb they labelled M1 from 300 BCE in the pre-Qin state of Chu that contained texts written on 804 bamboo strips. These two tombs are separated by one of the most significant period-defining events in ancient history, Qin Shihuang's unification of China. Excavated manuscripts now bridge this historic divide. Some are early editions of major works known from the received tradition. Others were previously unknown having been lost for over two millennia. Of the received texts, the Daodejing has been translated into English based on each of the editions found in Mawangdui and Guodian. The only other text that appears in both of these tombs is “The Five Aspects of Conduct”, which will be made widely available to an English speaking audience for the first time at the end of this article.

Inhabitants of the Mongolian Plateau have been staunchly nomadic. Cities rarely existed before the Russian hegemony, and at that point they first attached themselves to pre-existing Buddhist monasteries. The exception to this general pattern was the Uighurs, who had an empire in the eighth and early ninth centuries. They built several cities, extended and maintained a flourishing trade network, established sufficient agriculture and developed urban manufacturing. Although historians have pointed out these significant distinctions, few have fully considered the thoroughly revolutionary impact of this Turkish group on steppe culture. One result in the Orkhon Valley was the foundation for Karakorum, the only permanent seat of the imperial Mongols in the thirteenth century. That city occupied the same site and, in the early seventeenth century, served as building material for the major religious centre of Erdene Zuu accompanying the re-introduction of Buddhism. Therefore, the Uighurs affected the physical heartland of their empire for a millennium and the habits of the people to this day.

On November 17, 1307, the Armenian king, Het'um II, was assassinated by a Mongol, recently converted to Islam, the noyan Bularghu. In this paper I will look at this assassination, which has often been seen as significant in the context of the conversion of the Mongols of Persia to Islam, and also at the effects, or perceived effects, of that conversion, especially regarding Ilkhanid foreign policy. I shall consider the attitude of the Ilkhans to the small Armenian kingdom centred on Cilicia, now in south-eastern Turkey, which, by 1307 had shrunk from the size and importance it had enjoyed in the middle of the thirteenth century. First, I intend briefly to describe Armenian relations with the Mongols, from the irruption of the latter until about 1307; then I shall discuss the assassination, the sources and reasons for it; next I shall look at the conversion of the Mongol rulers of Persia to Islam, and any effects that this may have had on Ilkhanid foreign policy; finally I shall consider how both this conversion and the assassination have been interpreted by historians, and what this event actually shows us about the effects of the Mongol Ilkhans' conversion to Islam on their relationship with their subject, Christian, Armenian satellite.

On 20 February 1582 when Alessandro Valignano, Visitor to the Jesuit missions in the East Indies (the geographical area from Goa eastwards, to Japan, and southwards, to the Indonesian archipelago) left Japan, the country had been in a state of civil war, (the sengoku jidai) for more than a century. That was about to change. Oda Nobunaga had succeeded in uniting the central and western parts of Honshu under his rule and was intent on imposing his rule over the rest of the country. The Jesuits considered him if not quite a patron, then certainly someone sympathetic to Christianity and their mission in Japan. Yet on 22 June Nobunaga died, the victim of an attack by an ambitious rival, and ironically, considering the previous esteem in which he had been held, unlamented by the Jesuits who believed that during the final months of his life he had transformed himself into a megalomanic tyrant, a Nebuchadnezzar.

Up until the British departure from India, in 1947, hundreds of Indian princely states succeeded in maintaining a semi-autonomous existence beneath the wide umbrella of British paramount power. These states, which were scattered over the whole subcontinent, ranged from large and imposing to tiny and insignificant, and were dominated by Hindu, Muslim and Sikh ruling elites.

The interpretation of the Rigveda presents enormous problems for Vedic scholars, as Stephanie Jamison recently acknowledged in a paper on translating the Rigveda delivered at the Eleventh UCLA Indo-European Conference held in 1999. “It is discouragingly common to find passages in the Rig Veda that do not make sense without the silent supplying of additional material”. (2000: 13)

Dr Mildred Archer who died on February 4th 2005 aged 93 was the wife of Dr William “Bill” Archer OBE, MA (Cantab), D.Litt who died in 1979. For several decades she had been Curator of the Prints and Drawings Department at the old India Office Library before it amalgamated with the British Library. It was through her pioneering work on cataloguing those diverse and unknown collections that a new branch of art history came into being, an art form she called “Company” painting; art that had been drawn by European or Indian artists during the time of the East India Company.

This article argues for a radical revision of later Gupta chronology based on a review of the primary evidence. The paucity of dated material has meant that historical reconstructions of the period have been based on late-Victorian assumptions about the nature of society and kingship. Removing this ideological framework allows not only for a revision of chronology — a traditional historical concern — but for a new understanding of Gupta kingship and the constitution of state.

In the autumn of 1929, a Kyôto-based journal for popular medicine reported that the dean of sexology, Habuto Eiji, had committed suicide after having suffered from neurasthenia (shinkei suijaku) for a long time. A practicing gynaecologist, Habuto had been the editor of the sexological journal Seiyoku to Jinsei (Sexual Desire and Humankind), the author of numerous books on sexual issues, and the co-author, together with Sawada Junjirô, of an abridged Japanese version of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, entitled Hentai Seiyokuron (1915). He also was involved in the translation of Havelock Ellis's Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1901–1928), the twenty Japanese-language volumes which were advertised under the title Sei no Shinri as early as in 1927. Among other sexologists, Habuto had been a chief theorist on the causes of neurasthenia. Physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, pedagogues, and sexologists agreed with him that neurasthenia primarily afflicted men and was caused by overpowering exhaustion that was in turn the result of certain sexual practices. Modern commentators like Habuto speculated that neurasthenia was the result of masturbation or – even worse – homosexuality.