Volume 70, Issue 1 -

The historical continuity of Chinese culture from the early dynasties to modern times is a common topic in Chinese “culturalist discourses”. The intellectuals who wanted to defend the legitimacy of a Chinese culture compatible with modernity almost never put it into question. Zhang Junmai (1887–1969), in a short book entitled the Chinese culture of tomorrow (1936) had the same attitude toward the problem. He spoke about the ‘four thousand years of Chinese civilization’. However, taking this stand is not without raising issues, for Zhang begins his text by building his theory of cultures upon many ideas defended by Arnold Toynbee, in his major work A study of History (1931). As a matter of fact, Toynbee used to divide the history of China into two periods: the Sinic society, and the Far Eastern society. In introducing Toynbee’s studies in China, did Zhang purposely change important aspects of the Study or was he simply lost in translation? Incidentally, was quoting Toynbee simply instrumental in Zhang’s discourse? These are the main questions this research note aims at tackling.

Based on the monastic code entitled Chixiu Baizhang qinggui (Imperial Edition of Baizhang’s Rule of Purity), this article discusses the relations between Chan-monasteries and the state during the Yuan dynasty. The first chapter shows the state’s attitude towards religion and the ranking of the different Buddhist schools as well as the liturgical ceremonies for the emperor and the State and their rewards in form of financial and land donations. The second chapter explores to what extent the state’s veto in the elections of an abbot, its financial restrictions, and limited edition of ordination certificates could have been part of a repressive policy towards Buddhism. Conclusively, the inability of the monastic management to cope with their increased social and financial responsibilities impaired the Essential Teaching and further development of Chan-Buddhism.

This study focuses on component sharing across product categories, in contrast to earlier studies which examined component sharing within a specific category. Cross-category component sharing creates the potential for diversified product functionality by transferring new knowledge between categories, in addition to streamlining development, as previously noted. We collected evidence for this proposal from the Japanese digital audio-visual products market in the late 2000s. Panasonic not only shared software modules and the design of large scale integration (LSI) among products in the same category, but also shared them among televisions and DVD recorders. Its competitors, Sony and Sharp, used shared software and the design of LSI only within a product category. Panasonic products were functionally more advanced than those of Sony and Sharp. This study revealed two types of functionality diversification – simple functional diversification and linked operations.

Based on her sharp, cutting-edge analyses of a wide range of theoretical and aesthetic texts, Rey Chow deconstructs the ideological surface of the world’s configuration of political power structures and social processes under the global neoliberal capitalist world order. In particular, her attention is directed to the objects of aesthetic reflection, which according to her reside both within and beyond the film, literary text, or work of art. Lost, found or fleeting, these objects ground human consciousness and are a major constitutive of cultural memory, knowledge production, and creativity. Her work includes analyses of the interventions of postcolonial intellectuals, who after decades of anticolonial struggles still find themselves confronted with the West’s colonial-imperialist attitudes, policies and poetics. Studying the objects of postcolonial world-making, Chow concentrates on the peripheries and contact zones, where ethnic inequalities cannot fully be hidden underneath glossy transcultural fassades. In order to shed light on the unintended side effects of western universalizing theories, she scrutinizes the displaced meanings of widely used concepts such as language, translation, mimesis, melancholy, visuality, or entanglement when applied in postcolonial aesthetic contexts. New meanings are unearthed from modernist, post-colonial, post-structuralist and other theories when shifted onto the plane of alternative models of worlding and community formation in sinophone writers’ and film directors’ works.

This study investigates the internal factors of excessive product proliferation. Since empirical literature on product over-proliferation focused on how to optimize existing product portfolio, the causes of excessive product proliferation have so far attracted little attention. This study employs a case study of Shiseido, a famous Japanese cosmetics company, with particular attention to product proliferation in the Shiseido chain store channel, because external factors are mostly absent from this case. My results indicate that intra- and inter-organizational inertia affects product line management. Due to Shiseido’s effort in the 1990s, the company could maintain the advantage it and its cosmetics store channel held with much the strategy as had been used until the mid-1970s. This strengthen intra-organizational inertia at Shiseido. Inter-organizational inertia with cosmetics stores makes Shiseido’s strategic change more difficult, which causes excess proliferation.

By contrast to the majority of the Muslim authors of Chinese origin who composed their literary works in the Chinese language, the authors of the Jahriyya Sufi order, a still active branch of the Naqshbandiyya network rooted mainly in the provinces of Gansu and Ningxia, have produced a small number of texts in the Arabic language and through this means they have recorded the conflict-ridden history of their menhuan and left behind a description of their belief-system. The main focus in this article lies on the sanctity ( wilāya ) of Ma Mingxin Wiqāyatullāh (died 1781), founder ( daozu 道祖) of the Jahriyya order, as remembered and construed by his hagiographers in general and by the author of the Kitāb al-Jahrī , Manṣūr Ma Xuezhi (end of 19 th and beginning of 20 th c.), in particular: in their construction, Mingxin’s sanctity manifests itself in miracles, predictions, exorcisms and spiritual states. The text of the K. al-Jahrī which is the most comprehensive of the hagiographical writings of the Jahriyya as well as the other works of this group (e. g. Manāqib; Rashaḥāt ) have all been transmitted in manuscript form within the Sufi order, they have been published in facsimile and been partly translated into Chinese. Hence a second focus has been laid on the codicology of the manuscript of the K. al-Jahrī , the basis of this study. Although the article mainly takes a codicological, philological and phenomenological approach to the subject of Mingxin´s sanctity, the historical background to his career as portrayed in the Chinese and Western-language studies has also been taken into consideration.

Despite the shoreless output of scholarly publications on the Thousand and One Nights in general, research on the textual history is comparatively limited. Given the small number of early Arabic manuscripts, evidence from early translations is crucial for any reconstruction of the Mamluk version of the Thousand and One Nights , written approximately between 1425 and 1500 CE. For some time, the existence of an early Turkish translation, extant in two manuscripts and dated to the fifteenth century CE on linguistic grounds, has been known. The two manuscripts cover the first 56 nights of the work. A later Turkish version, written in the seventeenth century CE, extant in a nine volume manuscript, has been known for a long time too. In this contribution, the discovery of further parts of the oldest Turkish translation is indicated for the first time. Text samples are edited, translated and compared to the oldest Arabic version of the Thousand and One Nights . A collation with the nine volume manuscript has shown that parts of it contain the earlier translation of the fifteenth century. Furthermore, some Turkish versions of single stories also belonging to the Thousand and One Nights are discussed. Among these are the story of the Queen of the serpents ( Cāmaspnāme ) and the story of Sayf al-Mulūk . Based on the new evidence from Turkish manuscripts and their numbering of the nights, an overall view on the puzzle of fragments is given. The same is done for the early Arabic manuscripts. As a result, it has turned out that both groups show the same sequence of stories. There are inserted stories, but no reversed order of stories is found. This suggests that a stable tradition of the overall structure of the work existed. Finally, the contribution contains an inventory of 62 Turkish manuscripts of the Thousand and One Nights and of single stories.

Between the Great Elect and Westminster – Some Reflections on Aung San Suu Ky’s Concept of Democracy. In view of the elections in Myanmar held on November 8, 2015, the article investigates the concept of democracy set forth by the country’s best known politician, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. She invokes two traditions of “democracy” that contradict each other in terms of the role of the opposition. The Buddhist concept of the Maha-sammata , the Great Select, that the Burmese leader invokes as a Burmese model of democracy is elected unanimously and for life. The relevance of this model for Burma’s and Myanmar’s political culture is substantiated by empirical evidence like the outcome of elections since the beginning of the twentieth century until the recent elections held in 2015. On the other hand, the leader of Myanmar’s most successful party looks at a Westminster style democracy based on the idea that a loyal opposition controls the government as a model for the country’s future political development. Even after the free and fair elections in 2015, it will be one of the most important tasks of Myanmar politics to solve this “opposition dilemma”.

Myanmar is facing a phase of change. The opening of the country in 2011 has consequences on the political, economic and social level. This phase is very complex and not yet thoroughly explored and understood, therefore, there is a growing number of scientists who do or plan research in Myanmar. The conference “Myanmarforschung 2015 – Interdisziplinäre Tagung zur Vernetzung der deutschsprachigen Myanmarforschenden” (Myanmar research 2015 – interdisciplinary conference for networking of German speaking Myanmar researchers), which was held from July 23 th to 25 th 2015 at the University of Zurich, had the aim to give a platform to these scientists for sharing their knowledge. This paper gives an overview and background information about this conference and it reports about the presentations, which were held in Zurich.