Volume 71, Issue 1 -

This article aims to discuss Kang Youwei’s 康有為 (1858–1927) position on democracy and republicanism in China through the analysis of two major works of his late production: Datongshu 大同書 ( Book of Great Concord , drafted in 1902, but only published posthumously in 1935) and Gonghe Pingyi 共和評議 ( Impartial Words on Republicanism , 1917), seemingly presenting two opposite views on the same issue. Whereas in his most “esoteric” production, represented by the Datongshu , Kang prophesied the spread of democracy on a global scale (China included), he remained loyal to the prospect of a Chinese constitutional monarchy in his public appearances after 1911 – the same he had abortively sponsored during the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. In 1917, playing an active role in the short and somehow farcical restoration of the last Manchu emperor on the throne orchestrated by warlord Zhang Xun, Kang published Impartial Words on Republicanism , a significant essay through which he intended to explain the apparent contradiction between his republican utopia on the one hand and his “imperial” project on the other. Through the translation and discussion of some extracts from the two aforementioned works, I will try to shed more light on Kang’s complex views on the issue and on the ambivalence of his political and theoretical agenda. Finally, I will also suggest that Kang’s reflections may appear to have been successively echoed by later intellectuals in the debate on the possibility and nature of a “Chinese democracy”.

Abstract: The poet known by the moniker Sumayka (“little fish”) is arguably one of the most bad-mouthed poets of the eighth/fifteenth century. At least this is the impression one gets when reading the zajal and several epigrams about him by Ibrāhīm al-Miʿmār, the distinguished zajjāl and author of epigrams from Cairo. As his foe Sumayka, al-Miʿmār died in the plague of 749/1348. This paper introduces Sumayka as a minor poet of the Mamluk times who made his way into some bio-bibliographies and historiographic works of his time and got famous especially for his defamatory verses. It includes his complete works of which there are only a few and all the poems that Ibrāhīm al-Miʿmār, his favorite enemy, wrote on or rather against him.

The following article argues that vintage postcard photographies from Russian Central Asia before 1917 could be read as “conventional” historical sources. The way that provides access to their historical contents beyond the photographers’ intentions and no matter how staged the photographies were could be the praxeology, i. e. the conception that vintage postcards images are a manifestation of both local and central social practices in the Central Asian region under Russian rule. Using the example of the debate on childhood in traditional society initiated by French historian Philippe Ariès in his book The Child and Family Life in the Old Régime (1960) the author discusses theoretical and methodological approaches to his topic based on the praxeology.

Abu Bakr al-Asamm’s (d. 200/816 or 201/817) commentary of the Qur’an is one of the oldest of its genre. It originated in Basra but seems to have become a “book” only when, in the middle of the 3rd century H., it was transferred from Baghdad to Eastern Iran. There it was used by a number of authors, Sunni as well as Shii. The greatest number of quotations is found in Maturidi’s (d. 333/944 ?) Ta’wilat. The article deals with the material found in this source, its tendency as well as its relationship to quotations in later authors up to Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 606/1210). The work has not survived, and we can only speculate where and for how long several copies, complete or incomplete survived.

This paper focuses on the logic of categorization of three Chinese « encyclopedias » ( leishu 類書), and the influence the categories have on the texts they contain. The choices made by the compilers are in fact not always easy to understand, and are indeed often quite subjective, which leads to think that leishu may not always prove reliable when used for research on specific topics. In order to exemplify this idea, I present here the case of a short narrative which can be found in three different leishu , namely the Yiwen leiju , the Taiping guangji and the Taiping yulan . Despite the text’s different versions being roughly the same, I argue that its meaning is modified by the way it is categorized in each of these books. By their choices, the compilers therefore influence our perception of the writings found in leishu , which are one of our most important sources concerning ancient Chinese literature.

This paper focuses on « workplace novels », a literary genre which emerged in the 2000s in Mainland China, as well as on the various discourses surrounding these works by editors, publicists, and scholars. Even though some novels of this category have enjoyed a significant popular and commercial success, the attention they attract in the academic circles seems out of proportion when compared with the actual production of the genre. Moreover, the advertisement and academic discourses concerning these texts have proven to be highly congruent, even stereotyped, as they all describe workplace novels as the career guides of the young urban white-collar workers who are supposed to read them. This congruence is all the more surprising when considering that the information and advice that these novels are supposed to offer do not seem specific nor concrete enough to be applied in a real situation. This paper proposes to address this ambivalence, as well as its origins and implications.

Tankuang was a Chinese monk active during the eighth century. His texts were found in Dunhuang at the beginning of the twentieth century, and only then included in the Taishō canon. Tankuang wrote several commentaries on numerous Mahāyāna sutras, and two of these texts are commentaries on the Dasheng qixin lun . This paper focuses on the influence of two Korean monks, Wonch’uk and Wonhyo, on Tankuang’s commentaries. Whereas it seems clear that Tankuang was affiliated to the Ximing lineage of Wonch’uk, there is no such evidence concerning the influence of Wonhyo. But it appears that Tankuang is taking over some of the concepts introduced by Wonhyo, and there are some clear cases of textual and doctrinal evidence of this influence that I will present in this paper.

Since the 1980s, Chinese cinema has attracted considerable critical attention at international festivals. The films have been received and interpreted according to “art cinema” criteria and compared to those of other famous “auteurs”. However, these concepts were not widely used by film critics in the People’s Republic of China at the time. The analysis of articles published in two film journals, Dianying Yishu 电影艺术 and Dangdai Dianying 当代电影 between 1979 and 2001 revealed that the label tansuopian 探索片 or “exploration film” is used to refer to these films instead. In this paper, different theoretical conceptions of “art cinema” are briefly presented, in order to highlight the similarities and points of difference with the Chinese critics’ “exploration film”. As a conclusion, I argue that the concept of “art cinema”, in spite of its relative absence in the Chinese critics’ writings of the 1980s, can lead to a better understanding of Chinese cinema in its specific social, economic and political context.

This article examines the Tibetan version of the Ṣaḍakṣara-vidyā , an apotropaic text extracted from the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna , and discusses its position in early Buddhist rakṣā literature as well as the effects of its mantra , which was employed for healing purposes. The diseases, sores, and different kinds of fever against which the mantra shall be efficacious are given in a long list, which became a common feature throughout Buddhist protective texts. It is the sound substance of the mantra , which brings about the desired effect only when recited correctly. Thus the precise wording of the spell is essential, and this article therefore offers next to a full translation of the Tibetan sūtra also an edition of the mantra s.

This article explores the negotiation of permeable personhood and human health and well-being in the healing rituals ( belian ) of the Luangans, a group of indigenous people of Indonesian Borneo. I describe different techniques employed in the rituals relating to the soul and other components of the self and to extraneous, unbound spirit agencies. Luangan rituals express a relational ontology according to which the constitution of personhood and human well-being is based on the condition of the notoriously volatile human soul or life-force ( juus ) and the nature of social relations with human and nonhuman beings. Rituals most centrally seek to advance well-being by increasing the fixity and hardness of souls and by improving the relationship with spirits and humans. These efforts are closely interconnected; the condition of the soul is inextricably bound up with the condition of relations with others. This entails a constitutively dual and contextually variable aspiration to both reinforce and open up the boundaries of persons and to associate and dissociate with others. While well-being is generally contingent on containing the soul within the body and alleviating the harmful influence on it of spirits and other humans, it is also adversely affected by alienation and neglect of relations and obligations, and dependent on the help of spirits and human shamans and consociates. The article describes the ambiguous and convoluted nature of Luangan human-spirit relations and how the unpredictability of these relations and the volatility of the soul is reflected in the structure of ritual performances.

The Shuhi of Muli County, Sichuan Province, are one of multiple ethnic groups inhabiting the river gorges of the Qinghai-Gansu-Sichuan corridor between the Tibetan plateau and the Chinese lowlands. The Shuhi have grown paddy rice since times immemorial at an unusually high altitude (ca. 2,300 m above sea level). This article aims to explain this conundrum not merely through the ecology (as is common among Tibetan area specialists), but by researching the cultivation and consumption of rice as a historically-evolved cultural practice. According to a recently formulated agro-archaeological hypothesis regarding the macro-region of Eurasia, it is possible to identify two supra-regional culture complexes distinguished by their respective culinary technologies: rice-boiling versus wheat-grinding-and-baking. The hypothesis posits that the fault line between the two supra-regional cultural complexes is precisely along this river gorges corridor. In this article we provide support for this hypothesis arguing that Shuhi ritual and kinship practices have much affinity with those of other rice-boiling peoples in Southeast Asia, whereas certain of their current religious practices are shared with the wheat-grinding Tibetans.

In Thai folk thought, human life is believed to be sustained and animated by a life essence or soul spirit called khwan . At certain times of crisis, the khwan tends to leave the body, and its temporary absence causes suffering including sickness and misfortune. Thai people therefore perform rituals to recall the khwan to their bodies when they are in a state of suffering. They also perform rituals to bind the khwan to their bodies in order to contain it within the body and prevent it from leaving when they are in a state of transition. This article explores these rituals concerning khwan in northern Thailand. The focus of anthropological studies on khwan and the related rituals has been on the meaning of the words and the function of the whole process of the rituals. In contrast to this, I demonstrate the importance of the body techniques, routines, and sensory experiences as well as the spoken messages of the recitations in the rituals. In these rituals, elders or healers bind khwan to the body of the participants by tying a piece of cotton thread to each of the participant’s wrists. I argue that this action – mat mue , which means “tying the hand” – forms the heart of the ritual.

For the Ifugao of Northern Luzon, the Philippines, life, health and well-being depend on the containment of the life force called lennawa within the body. The life sustaining lennawa-body relation is, however, inherently unstable. Hence, there is a need to engage in practices that sustain the lennawa-body relation. While, as also previous studies have shown, exchange and sharing are ways in which this is achieved, I argue that the containment of the life force within and its eventual release from the body depend on the sensorially enacted relations with other humans and spirits. I describe how the Ifugao use olfactory, auditory and tactile techniques to manage relations with other humans and spirits and how performing these sensorial techniques properly stabilizes the lennawa-body relation. When this relation is weakened, the Ifugao I worked with engaged in elaborate therapeutic rituals, the purpose of which was to retrieve the lennawa and ensure that it was rejoined with the body. The rituals took the form of exchange of lennawa between humans and spirits, and this exchange too was brought about by various multi-sensorial means. In sum, I discuss how Ifugao techniques of containing life must be understood within a framework that acknowledges the sensorial enactment of relations.

The Shuhi of Muli County, Sichuan province, inhabit the Tibetan-Chinese borderlands. In this paper, we focus on Shuhi kinship practices that accord the house the importance it appears to have for the Shuhi themselves. We demonstrate that the Shuhi engage in kinship practices that are ‘hearth-oriented’ (Hsu 1998b: 67–99) in a dynamic process affected by the current political economic changes in reformist China and religious revivalism in Tibet. The ‘hearth-oriented’ kinship practices we discuss include issues of who among the offspring continues to live in the house of their parents, how places of worship in a house are oriented in relation to the physical environment and the divine landscape, and how practices regarding the naming of houses are changing from deictics of place to lineage and family names. Based on empirical data, gathered between 1996–2011, we show that there are significant differences in all practices, which reflect a Tibetan-Chinese gradient along the north-south axis of Shuhi settlements. But there are also striking continuities.

Whithin the last few years Myanmar has been attracting much international attention, which is reflected in the rising number of academic research papers on this country as well. Against this background the article gives a concise review of the history of worldwide Myanmar studies with due consideration of German traditions in this field. Thereby it is focussing on institutions, which follow a holistic approach combining research and teaching. Emphasising the need of language proficiency for acquiring authentic information it advocates the re-establishment of a permanent base, which comprises language instruction as well as area studies and can promote the coordination of research work.

Due to its internationally accompanied opening policies, Myanmar’s present economic situation is unique even on a global scale. The present contribution addresses the question if the ranking of Mynamar on position 150 of the UN Human Development Index indeed reflects the country’s economic situation. The paper investigates the historical developments in Myanmar after 1948, the Western sanctions regime after 1988, the integration into ASEAN, the present framework for ‘doing business’, and the dynamics of foreign capital and domestic labor conditions. The paper concludes that the years of political isolation and repression still inhibit the country’s fast economic progress. The future welfare of this politically disrupted country so rich in natural resources does not only depend on its government and its ascending civil society, but also on FDI by foreign companies.

In the “Greater Burma Zone”, an area that includes Myanmar and adjacent regions of the neighboring countries, there are two different systems of personal pronouns that occur predominantly: a grammatical one and one that we call “hierarchical system”. The aim of this paper is to explain the two systems and their development. A sample of 42 languages shows that smaller language communities have grammatical systems and the most dominant languages today have hierarchical ones. Besides these two groups, there are also some languages with a “mixed system”, which means the grammatical system is retained and only a few honorific terms are added as pronouns. An important question will therefore be why the systems are distributed just in this way. Several factors seem to play a role, among them sociocultural structures, historical developments and language contact.

Right now, Myanmar is a fascinating place to do research on a society as it moves from isolation to openness. During the time I spent in Myanmar doing qualitative field research, I noticed a gap between the literature about the position of women in Myanmar and the situation I came across in the field. This paper will first examine the existing literature on women in Myanmar including recent contributions, publications from the colonial time and during the time after the country gained independence. Secondly, I will expound on my field data relating to women in society and the power held by women within families and households. Finally, I will highlight the gap that arose in comparing literature and the data gained from my field research. I conclude that there is a sharp distinction between the different points of views of authors. Claims and statements of different authors can only be compared if attention is paid to the differing perspectives and their respective methodologies.