Reviews: Life and Society in The Hittite World
Reviews: Life and Society in The Hittite World
Reviews: Life and Society in The Hittite World
TREVOR BRYCE:
Life and Society in the Hittite World.
xiv, 312 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. £45.
Trevor Bryce has already given us a valuable overview of Hittite history with
his earlier book The Kingdom of the Hittites (Oxford, 1998) and his second
book, Life and Society in the Hittite World, complements this earlier work. The
author’s focus has shifted from the political and military history of the Hittites
to a broader study of Hittite life and culture in Anatolia from the seventeenth
to the twelfth century BC. The people known as the Hittites were major politi-
cal players in the Near East during the Late Bronze Age but for many centu-
ries they were underestimated and little understood. This book is a welcome
corrective and combines a scholarly approach with a tangible enthusiasm for
the subject.
The author’s methodology is to draw on a wide range of ancient sources,
predominantly textual but some archaeological, in the light of modern scholar-
ship, and to combine this material with personal speculation deemed to be
‘within the bounds of possibility’. Although the book’s aim is an overview of
Hittite life and society, its scope is largely determined by the available written
records. As the author points out, the limited range of texts and each text’s
original purpose are fundamental constraints.
The book is unusual in its avowed aim of communicating the essential
experience of being an individual in ancient Hittite society. A vivid writing
style suits this empathetic approach. The emotions projected by the author can
occasionally be intrusive, as in the discussion of Hittite religion and in the
emphasis on the tedium of scribal training, but the author successfully narrows
the gap between the modern reader and the ancient Hittite by focusing on our
common humanity.
The introductory material sets out the chronological and geographical
framework and includes two maps. The problems of Hittite geography are still
manifold but a more detailed map of ancient Anatolia would have been
helpful, given the number of toponyms in the text. The main body of the
book consists of fourteen chapters, each on a particular aspect of Hittite life
and society: ‘King, court, and royal officials’; ‘The people and the law’; ‘The
scribe’; ‘The farmer’; ‘The merchant’; ‘The warrior’; ‘Marriage’; ‘The gods’;
‘The curers of disease’; ‘Death, burial, and the afterlife’; ‘Festivals and rituals’;
‘Myth’; ‘The capital’; and ‘Links across the wine-dark sea’. A snapshot of
a key incident or a pertinent quotation introduces each chapter. A useful
bibliography and general index close the book.
The following selected notes include references to inconsistent renderings of
Hittite cuneiform in Roman script.
pp. 16, 253–4: hazannu or Hazannu for HAZANNU.
p. 20: GIŠkalmuš for GIŠkalmus. b
pp. 21–2: MEŠEDI for MEŠEr DI.
p. 23: GAL (LÚ.MEŠ) GEŠTIN for GAL (LÚ.MEŠ)GEŠTIN. The develop-
ment of the role of this high official can be compared to that of the Assyrian
rab šar qê, ‘Chief of the Cupbearers’.
Volumes II and III continue the massive project (for a review of the first
volume see BSOAS LIV/1, 1991, 234–5), in which every known ancient Greek,
Latin and Syriac philosopher is dealt with, whether his name appears merely as
The title of this volume as explained by the blurb on its back cover promises
the reader a stimulating survey of the concept of space in modern Arabic
literature, focusing on one principal issue: ‘l’espace palestinien’. Upon opening
the book, however, the reader is in for a surprise. Only one of the thirteen
desert dwellers and the desert itself. Just as the son fuses back into the body of
the father in the story analysed by Sleiman so the virgin Tazdirat becomes one
with the desert by willingly offering her young body to one of its perennial
floods instead of to a man. The negation of procreation implied in this act
thereby parallels the ‘negation of creation’ in Sleiman’s story and also evokes
echoes of the ‘sacrifice of the son’ in the tale analysed by Hafez. Together the
three contributions provide a telling insight into the immense and distinctly
sombre world of this remarkable author, in which the desert does indeed
appear to figure, in Deheuvel’s image, like a ‘black hole’: an all-consuming
entry-point into a world beyond time and space, and hence a place of salvation
from what al-Kawni, in his contribution to this volume, calls ‘l’enfer de cette
vie’ (p. 100).
For anyone concerned with the work of this author the pages containing
his personal testimony, though few in number, must be of greatest interest.
They comprise an interview as well the text of a brief allocution to an interna-
tional colloquium held in Paris in 1997 where al-Kawni was the guest of
honour and which provided the forum for the papers gathered in this volume.
Considering al-Kawni’s great mastery of Arabic as an artistic medium it comes
as a surprise to read that, having grown up in a remote region of southern
Libya, he only spoke the Tuareg language until the age of twelve and had until
then not benefited from any formal education.
However, even before becoming fully literate he had felt the urge to
compose ‘la parole du désert’ (p. 96) which, in his view, had yet to be uttered
and would have to be novelistic and epic; mere poetry, such as that of pre-
Islamic Arabia—or, indeed the prolific poetry of the Tuareg often mentioned
in al-Kawni’s works—would not do. The urge to write was tantamount to a
prophetic calling and, like Jonah and the Prophet MuhD ammad, he had initially
tried to abscond from it, in his case by immersing himself in other activities
which led him to long sojourns abroad, especially in Poland and Russia. These
were not, however, in vain: he learnt foreign languages, read widely, parti-
cularly in Russian, and developed a ‘special and intimate relationship’ with
Dostoyevsky whom he considers to be his master. Finally he retired into the
seclusion of a Swiss mountain retreat resembling his native landscape in order
to fashion his personal vision of the desert, out of the vestiges of stories and
myths stretching back ‘some eleven thousand years’ to the age of the Saharan
rock inscriptions which adorn the covers of his books.
Al-Kawni asserts that while the great desert ‘has not known monotheism’,
the unity of the creator and his creation has always been a preoccupation of
his. In what is perhaps a key phrase he asserts that ‘God, man and beast
are united in a single body called Sahara’ (p. 98). Hence any destruction of
its animals or plants, any violation of its landscape or its natural features is
tantamount to self-destruction on the part of man. In a wider sense al-Kawni’s
entire work is to be understood as a lament for the world of nature which
human civilization has exposed to a well-nigh unstoppable process of destruc-
tion, driven by man’s illusion that he may find happiness outside himself. The
real treasure, the real paradise of peace, symbolized by the myth of War w, the
legendary desert city, can only be found inside the soul.
The contrast between two types of space that runs through al-Kawni’s
work—one external, natural or material, the other internal, spiritual or imagi-
nary—is discussed in several of the other contributions in the second part
of this volume, dedicated to studies on a range of modern Arab authors. Of
similar importance is the notion of ‘literary space’, introduced by a number
of contributors, which may be defined as the web of intertextual as well as
The book brings together revised versions of six articles published between
1999 and 2003, one (the introduction) originally in Japanese and another
(chapter 1) in Arabic. The main part of the book presents studies of poems: the
Bar ’iyyas of the pre-Islamic Imru’ al-Qays and ‘Alqama al-FahD l with their
horse descriptions (ch. 1), poems with descriptions of honey-gathering by the
Hudhali poets Sar ‘ida ibn Ju’ayya and Abur Dhu’ayb (ch. 2), poems describing
pre-Islamic Persian scenes, by Abur Nuwar s in a bacchic poem and al-BuhD turi
in his famous poem on Irwar n Kisrar (ch. 3), a poem on a singing-girl by Ibn
al-Rurmi (ch. 4) and Ibn Zamrak’s ode that contains a description of the
Alhambra (ch. 5). Full translations are provided; the Arabic texts are given in
an appendix. The translations are, on the whole, reliable and readable. Some
more philological commentary would have been useful at times. Reading,
for instance, that ‘my upset heart was thought to be mocking [dying]’ (Ibn
Zamrak, vs. 4), we are left to choose, oddly, between mocking and dying, the
latter apparently taken from Monroe, who, unaware that har ziyar stands for
what in prose would be har zi’an, and finding that hazar means ‘to depart’, con-
cluded that ‘dying’ was meant. In the same ode (vs. 19) it could have been
explained that ‘the sweet [saliva]/and flashing [teeth]’ are puns on place names,
al-‘Udhayb and Bar riq.
In the introduction the author explains her method, arguing that the
descriptive sections of Arabic poems are not, as thought by earlier generations
of Arabists, detached, objective, superficial, repetitive, and conventional. More
recent and more rewarding scholarship on Arabic descriptive poetry is hardly
discussed and some important contributions are not mentioned at all, includ-
ing some works in German (Thomas Bauer on onager descriptions and on love
poetry, or J. Christoph Bürgel on al-Ma’murni’s ekphrastic epigrams). A lack
of familiarity with European scholarship also makes her believe that the
‘oral-formulaism’ theory of Arabic verse is unrefuted (pp. 31 f.). Nor is the
author interested in how the pre-modern Arabic critics and theorists thought
about wasD f and how it fitted, or did not fit, into their generic categorizations.
We are only given a brief quotation from Ibn Rashiq’s ‘Umda and an equally
brief definition of wasD f from Lane’s dictionary, stating that it has two
synonyms, Ds inf and Dhar l (pp. 5 f.), which is neither helpful nor true. The
overriding influences on the author’s approach are the works of Suzanne and
Jaroslav Stetkevych, and recent work on ‘interarts theory’. Some valuable
insights are derived from these, although I would object to the thesis (p. 6) that
ekphrasis, according to ‘modern understanding’ is ‘the verbal representation of
non-verbal texts’. In literary studies dealing with texts one should not inflate
the meaning of the term by speaking of non-verbal texts. Worse, though, is the
artificial distinction made by restricting these non-verbal texts to ‘culturally
produced semiotic systems’, excluding nature. The horses and bees of the
Arabian poets are not ‘texts’, we are told, but Abur Nuwar s’s cup and Kisrar ’s
Hall are. This distinction, relevant in some contexts, is not essential in discuss-
ing descriptive passages. In the minds of the early poets such a dichotomy was
surely not present; it is doubtful whether ‘horse’ or ‘camel’ should be classified
as ‘nature’, since in the context of Bedouin life and poetry they belong to
human culture rather than nature. If the concept of ‘text’ has to be widened,
then the old metaphor of the ‘Book of Nature’ is more fruitful: Nature as Text.
This metaphor is derived from the Latin Middle Ages, says E. R. Curtius in his
famous book, but it is hinted at in the Quran (18: 109, 31: 27) and may be
traced further back.
This said, the actual analysis of the poems is generally illuminating and
readable, not marred by too much jargon or theory, and if the author’s book
is not as inventive, erudite and exciting as the best of the Stetkevyches’ works,
she at least steers clear of excess, implausibility and far-fetchedness. She is able
to demonstrate that wasD f is more than a merely pictorial description of objects
and conveys ‘some larger concepts in a metaphorical, emblematic, metony-
mical, psychological, spiritual, or symbolic manner’. The reader will not be
surprised to learn that the horse, in the poems by Imru’ al-Qays and ‘Alqama
(nicknamed the Stallion), has much to do with virility and sexual prowess, and
that the bees and honey in the Hudhali poems are associated not only with
purity and healing but also with eroticism, fertility and sex. The author’s
interpretations are valid, but tilted towards the metaphorical rather than the
technical, non-metaphorical aspects of the descriptions. One could argue that
this is justified because the technicalities of horse description have already
received much scholarly attention, from the early Arab philologists and com-
mentators to modern scholars. As for the Hudhalite honey-gathering, it should
be mentioned that the technical aspects have been studied recently in an article
by Giovanni Canova, ‘“Cacciatori di Miele”: dalla poesia hudalita alle
pratiche tradizionali nel Dhofar (Oman)’, Quaderni di Studi Arabi 20–21
(2002–2003), 185–206.
In the ‘Persian’ poems of Abur Nuwar s and al-BuhD turi the description serves
as a kind of panegyric; the former’s ‘objective’ description is contrasted with
al-BuhD turi’s ‘subjective’ description. Ibn al-Rurmi’s poem is striking, with its
‘synaesthetic fusion’, primarily of the visual and the aural but with suggestions
of the other senses. The Alhambra ode, finally, is interesting in that it is itself
partly incorporated in the palace’s decoration, thus becoming a self-descriptive
artefact that is at the same time an emblematic portrait of its builder, the
poet’s patron.
Some minor matters: batD i’ al-ifar qa does not mean ‘slow to get an erection’
(p. 28) but ‘slow to recover (i.e. to get it up again)’; mar huwa bi-ash‘ar minni
does not mean ‘What is more poetic than I in him?’ (ibid.) but ‘He is not a
fifteenth century. Various incidents in the stories dimly echo what was actually
happening at the time. The Genoese and Catalan role as villainous pirates
suggests this period. The capture of Genoa in the Sirah perhaps echoes
Barsbay’s successful invasion of Cyprus in the 1420s. The hostility to Qalawun
in the Sirah might dimly reflect at a popular level the attempts of Circassian
Sultans to disparage their Qalawunid successors. (For example, Qalawun’s
Maristan, or Hospital, is presented as a factory for manufacturing poisons.)
Barsbay’s brother, Baraka, may have furnished the model for Baybars’s fic-
tional sidekick, ‘Uthman. However, it is worth noting that Thomas Herzog has
argued in ‘The first layer of the Sirat Baybars: popular romance and political
propaganda’, published in Mamluk Studies Review 7 (2003), that the original
core of the Sirah dates back to the late thirteenth century, actually being
composed not long after the death of the historical Mamluk Sultan Baybars.
Even so, the Vatican manuscript, which dates from the seventeenth century,
is the oldest version of the Sirah to have survived. In Lectures du Roman de
Baybars, Herzog argues that there was no single mother text and that therefore
it is not possible to create a stemma. Instead of trying to conjure up a family
tree of manuscripts, it may be more helpful to think of their relationship as
resembling a rhizomatic tangle of roots.
This Sirat Baybars, though only very sporadically and loosely based on
historical events, is still more historical than any of the other siyar, such as
those of ‘Antar and Dhat al-Himma. It is also more urban in its setting and
concerns. It is possible to detect an esprit de clocher in some Syrian manu-
scripts, whose copyists or compilers gave either Damascus or Aleppo special
importance in the formation of the hero, Baybars. The Sirah has a pronounced
anti-authoritarian tenor and, Baybars apart, the other Mamluk emirs are
routinely abused and their imperfect Arabic parodied. Lentin is particularly
interesting on the language of the Sirah and he has cogent things to say about
Middle Arabic and, in particular what Middle Arabic was not. It was not a
deformation or inferior form of classical Arabic, nor was it used by people who
were incapable of using the fusha forms.
The French have pioneered the study of Paralittérature. In 1975 Marc
Angenot published Le Roman Populaire: Recherches en Paralittérature
(Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec.), a study of such popular yet
marginal works as Les Mystères de Paris and Fantômas. Subsequently Georges
May, in Les Mille et une nuits d’Antoine Galland ou le Chef-d’Oeuvre Invisible
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1986), reapplied Angenot’s insights
and sought to place the French version of The Thousand and One Nights within
the context of a somewhat trashy paralittérature. Éric Vial, the author of
the penultimate paper in Garcin’s volume, has been researching in the same
field and his wide-ranging contribution, ‘Entre Roman de Baybars et sagas
occidentales contemporaines, parallèles et convergences’ makes many stimulat-
ing comparisons between the medieval Arab epic and the modern Western
literature of escapist entertainment. One turns back to the Sirat Baybars
with renewed enthusiasm, once its similarities to The Count of Monte Cristo,
Tin-Tin and The X Files have been pointed out, and this despite the fact that
Vial is the only contributor to suggest that, for all the interest it may have for
academics, the Sirah is not much good as literature, as its narrative is both
breathless and repetitive and its characterization perfunctory. In a final essay,
Garcin notes that the Sirah is now better known in France than it is in the
Arab world.
ROBERT IRWIN
The Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar has acquired the objects published in this
catalogue within the last few years. In the foreword, Sheikh Saud al-Thani
states his intention ‘to develop Mamluk glass as a tour-de-force within the
collection’, and the illustrations demonstrate how well he has succeeded in this
aim. As Stefano Carboni points out, few museums outside Cairo can rival
the collection of ten mosque lamps ranging from the early 14th century to
mid-15th century. It is a particular joy that a pair of lamps made for Sultan
al-Nasir Muhammad have now been reunited. Secular vessels are less well
represented in the collection but include two magnificent examples of blue
glass. The museum’s enthusiastic acquisitions policy is matched by an energetic
programme of short exhibitions previewing the treasures which will be dis-
played when the new museum opens in 2006. This book is one of the lavishly
illustrated catalogues published to accompany these exhibitions (alongside
Gilded and Glazed: Mamluk Glass and Iznik Pottery, held at the Sheraton
Doha Hotel 2–13 March 2003).
Mosque lamps comprise the major part of the collection, and Carboni pre-
faces the individual catalogue entries with an essay on their development and
production under the Mamluks. He maintains (p. 24) that the distinctive vase-
shaped vessels developed as purely functional lighting devices within a domes-
tic setting in the early Islamic period. Although the mosque lamp has become
one of the best known visual symbols of Islam, there is material and visual
evidence that hanging vase-lamps of this type had already acquired a symbolic
holiness during the Byzantine period. Often produced in silver (and so obvi-
ously not intended as functional lighting devices) they are depicted hanging
in significant positions such as above the dying virgin or Christ at the Last
Supper.
Carboni rightly emphasizes that mosque lamps, which often bear the name
of their patron, provide essential evidence for the development of enamelled
glass under the Mamluks (although care should be taken to distinguish
between lamps in the name of living individuals and those with the name of an
emir described as deceased, which might have been commissioned some years
later). Dating of secular vessels, which rarely bear the name of their patron, is
much harder. While disagreement over the date of a major object such as the
Cavour Vase (catalogue no 2) varies by more than 100 years, it is impossible
even to attempt a discussion of these objects within their cultural context: was
the Cavour vase made in the 13th century for Ayyubid or early Mamluk
sultans or in the mid- to late-14th century for a European market? Carboni
continues to support a 13th-century date. I would argue for the other end of
the chronological spectrum, also on the basis of comparisons with inlaid brass
vessels (amongst many other possible comparisons, the distinctive phoenix
birds with splayed wings and long tails are regular features of metalwork
from the mid to late 14th century, notably a series of trays with European
shields).
The chronology of enamelled glass vessels is most likely to be resolved by
further study of technical developments. Analyses of enamelled glass over the
last ten years, by Julian Henderson, Ian Freestone, Mavis Bimson and Marco
Verità, have produced several important indicators for the development of this
material. For example Bimson has established an increase in the percentage of
silica in the body glass in later Venetian glass, and published analyses suggest
that the silica levels of contemporary Islamic glasses follow a similar trajectory
(the Cavour Vase being at the higher end of the range at 70.6 per cent further
supports a later 14th-century date for this vessel). The problem is that institu-
tions and collectors are understandably reluctant to risk damage to complete
vessels by allowing samples to be taken from them, and so most of the samples
have come from undated fragments. The analysis of the Qatar mosque lamps
was a rare opportunity to put those scattered results into a chronological
framework. This opportunity was recognized by Julian Henderson who states
(p. 29) ‘for the first time this has made it possible to compare the chemical
compositions of both enamels and transluscent body glasses for mosque lamps
of specifically different dates’. Why then has he not shared the results with the
rest of the scholarly community? Only the major constituents of the body glass
are given and these are placed within each catalogue entry although their main
interest is comparative and so they would have been easier to use within a
table. The trace elements are not provided even though it is similar levels of
two of these (manganese and iron oxides) which enable him to place the two
Barquq lamps within the same technological tradition. The analytical results
for the coloured enamels, usually the most interesting, are not published at all.
The lack of published data undermines his discussion of the results in a chapter
that is curiously situated between Carboni’s discussion of mosque lamp
production and the catalogue entries for them.
The design of the book is eccentric: printed sideways with a transparent
cover in imitation of glass (presumably). The quality of the photographs is
excellent and the number of views and details that accompany each object
make this catalogue a wonderful record of a small but first-class collection.
The Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar should be proud of its publication record,
at this rate a large percentage of the collection will be published before the
museum even opens. These beautiful and scholarly catalogues deserve much
wider distribution.
RACHEL WARD
BARBARA BREND:
Perspectives on Persian Painting: Illustration to Amir Khusrau’s
Khamsah.
xxvii, 324 pp. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon,
2003. £60.
An independent scholar, Barbara Brend’s main research has always been into
Persian painting. She has published what has been described as ‘the best
introduction to Islamic art’ (Islamic Art) and The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of
NizD ar mi, as well as many articles which have sought to illuminate the reader
as to what lies behind the painted image. She has sought to show what can be
gleaned from the form and the choice of subject, doing so by setting a book
into its historical context. The current book is based on her doctoral thesis
on which she has continued to work over the last quarter of a century. The
result is a deeply informed study of the copies produced of one work of a
man renowned as ‘the greatest poet of the Persian language of the Indian
(p. 81) immediately concentrate the reader’s eye on the point she is making,
and remain in the mind. It is where Brend’s own eye and her deep knowledge
come together that she is most illuminating. For example, she points out
that the use of a particular blue pigment makes it likely that a particular
manuscript is Indian rather than Persian (p. 80).
The ‘Afterword’ draws together her findings with subtitles such as ‘the
cycles’, ‘the web of traditions’, ‘patrons and purposes’, ‘artists and methods’.
Under ‘artists and methods’, the author comes to the conclusion that ‘the
greatest unity of style is shown by nameless painters working in a period of
tolerable stability on the Commercial Turkmar n manuscripts’ (p. 262), suggest-
ing that the evidence points to a close relationship between pupil and master.
This meshes well with contemporary metalwork, where a relationship seems
to have been not only stylistic but also familial. It seems likely that the craft
continued from father to son (Simone Sigoli, Viaggio al Monte Sinai, Parma,
1843). Brend believes that the painters were probably men rather than women
although she concedes that the ‘stability and independence of these workshops
would have made it relatively easy for daughters to illustrate manuscripts at
home’. This question lies at the heart of the book—so little is known about
the painters apart from their names that their work must speak for them. To
have as knowledgeable an interpreter as Barbara Brend to follow a specific
work by analysing content and context is both a rare pleasure and a worthy
compliment to the artists themselves.
SYLVIA AULD
way of preserving ‘order in the world’. In place of the executioner of the inno-
cent, the image of the sultan had to be that of a saviour ‘tranchant les têtes de
l’hydre hideuse de la division’ (p. 170). What is important here for Veinstein
and Vatin is that the ‘law of fratricide’ took the form of a fetva: ‘cette règle
abominable, dont le but est de préserver une conception proprement turque du
pouvoir royal, se doit pour ses auteurs de s’inscrire dans la cherî‘at, et non
dans le simple kânoun’ (p. 452).
This highly detailed study, centred round coming to and departing from
power, represents a considerable contribution to the understanding of the
position of the Ottoman sultan and of power in the Ottoman empire, and of
the shifts in the balance of power and of perception which occurred through
the six centuries of its existence.
KATE FLEET
SOUTH ASIA
Thirty years ago a book with ‘civilizing mission’ in its title, unqualified by
inverted commas, might well have been taken to endorse the idea that the
British had a mission civilisatrice in India, and deservedly so. But not any
more. It is clear from the outset that this book, far from being an endorsement
of colonial ideology and self-legitimation, is concerned with problematizing the
idea of a ‘civilizing mission’ and of exploring the meaning and assessing the
impact of such a concept on both the British and their colonial subjects.
Indeed, if one of the intellectual points of departure for this set of essays is
T. B. Macaulay’s now infamous claim in 1835 that the object of British rule
and the promotion of Western education was to create a class of ‘brown
Englishmen’, Indians who would be ‘English in taste, in opinion, in morals and
in intellect’, the other is Thomas Metcalf’s recent observation in a book dedi-
cated to examining the ideologies of the Raj that ‘the ideals sustaining the
imperial enterprise in India were always shot through with contradiction and
inconsistency’. But, as Michael Mann points out in his helpful introduction to
this diverse collection of essays, the term ‘civilizing mission’ was not so often
used by the British as an array of other expressions ranging from ‘improve-
ment’ (itself the bearer of many meanings) in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries through ‘moral and material progress’ in the heyday of
empire to ‘development’ in its lattermost phases. Not only did each of these
terms possess a somewhat different connotation, but also, as the contributors
effectively demonstrate, such ideas were often impracticable as imperial policy,
unwise or unenforceable in the face of Indian dissent, or as striking in their
internalization by Indians as in their formal enunciation by the British
themselves.
The thirteen essays in the volume, grouped into four sections, appear in
broadly chronological sequence. Michael Mann reviews British approaches
(and frustrations) in relation to ‘Oriental Despotism’ as represented by
jurisdiction and ‘improvement’ in late eighteenth-century Bengal, while
G. JAN MEULENBELD:
A History of Indian Medical Literature.
(Groningen Oriental Studies Volume XV/I–III.) Groningen: Egbert
Forsten (Ia and Ib) 1999; (IIa and IIb) 2000; (III) 2002. Ia: 1
frontispiece, xvii, 699 pp.; Ib: 1 frontispiece, vi, 774 pp.; IIa: 1
frontispiece, viii, 839 pp. (in addition: reprint of 19 pages defective
in Ia); IIb: 1 frontispiece, viii, 1018 pp.; III (Indexes):
1 frontispiece, ii, 549 pp. €600.
‘I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.’ This remark
by the critic Sidney Smith is a great comfort when approaching the task of
writing a review of G. Jan Meulenbeld’s gargantuan A History of Indian Medi-
cal Literature, published in five bound volumes totalling 4,020 pages, and
including over 36,600 footnotes. This work is a unique survey of traditional
Indian medical literature, born of a scholarly lifetime of reading the texts in
the original languages, and noting the important features of their contents,
their intellectual and medical innovations, the biographical details of their
authors, and very much besides. Few other branches of Indian literature
are served by a reference work of this completeness, substance and scope.
Pingree’s labours on jyotih D saar stra and Kane’s on dharma are perhaps of the
same order. And as with those works, one may turn to HIML for a wealth
of literary and historical information ranging far beyond the medical.
Meulenbeld’s HIML is truly a landmark work, not only for medical history,
but also for Indology as a whole.
Volumes Ia (text) and Ib (footnotes) are dedicated to the foundation works
of ayurveda, the Carakasam D hitar , the SusarutasamD hitar , the AsD Dtar ndgahr
D daya-
samD hitar and the AsD Dtar ndgasamD graha. The content of each of these major works is
summarized in detail, with frequent notes giving points of interest and further
reading. Full details are given of all the past discussions about the relationship
of these works to each other, and of the dates of their layered parts and the
identities of their authors. The identities and roles of the key contributors to
the text of the Carakasam D hitar , Ātreya, Agniveśa, Caraka and DrD dD habala, are
discussed at length. The persons called Susaruta and their identities are exam-
ined, as well Dhanvantari, Divodar sa, and the problem of the later revision and
expansion of the Susarutasam D hitar , including the role, if any, of a Nar gar rjuna in
this process, are all detailed. The relative chronology of these two works is
discussed. As in many other topics, Meulenbeld presents the evidence and past
argumentation comprehensively and fairly, and in doing so shows us that the
evidence presently available does not warrant a firm conclusion on the matter.
The over-confident pronouncements of past scholars, even great ones, are not
conclusive. A full survey of the AsD Dtar ndgasam D graha is given in a manner which
makes it simultaneously a verse-by-verse comparison with the Hr D daya. Follow-
ing this, Meulenbeld discusses the dates of these two works, the theories
concerning their authorship, and the identity of Var gbhatD a. This discussion is
extremely detailed, covering a mass of data from external sources such as the
Chinese Buddhist monk I-ching, and internal ones such as the large number of
common verses or ideas in the two works. Meulenbeld is certain that these
works are not by the same author. He examines and rejects the opinion of
Hilgenberg and Kirfel that the Sam D graha is an enlarged version of the Hr D daya,
in which verse passages have been changed into prose. Meulenbeld carries
the discussion of this problem forward decisively, showing that citations from
Could the hold that the Hindu goddess Kar li has taken over the Western imagi-
nation in recent times owe something to a false etymology? Any student of
Hindusim learns early on that we are currently living in the Kaliyuga, the last
and the worst of the four Yugas or ages of the world—an age of vice and
degeneracy. ‘Kali’ was primarily the name of the die or the side of the die
marked with one dot—the losing die. We are in a losing age: hence the adop-
tion of the term, which is probably Dravidian in origin. Durgar , wife of Saiva, in
her manifestation as the terrifying goddess Kar li, takes her name from Sanskrit
kar la, meaning ‘black’. It is terribly tempting to make a connection between
Kar li and the Kaliyuga, especially if one dispenses with the diacritics that are
such a bore to get right even with the best word-processing programs. Thus
Keith E. McNeal, in his fascinating contribution to this excellent collection of
essays on Kar li in the East and West, says of her devotees in Trinidad: ‘They
are aware of the cruel hardships their ancestors endured in coming to the New
World, and of the courage that survival through those times necessitated.
And their own experiences vividly suggest that the worldly degeneration of
the Kaliyug is here to stay. Thus it is clear to them that they should seek
the protection and blessings of Mother Kali, for it is her mysterious shakti, or
power, that liberates us from suffering in this turbulent age.’ The implied
connection here is not explicit enough to secure a conviction in a court of law,
but it does arouse suspicion... .
Yet the drift of the book as a whole, which has essays ranging from
Patricia Dodd’s close study of ‘Kar li the terrific and her tests: Sa ar kta devo-
tionalism in the Mahar bhar gavata PurarDna’ to Rachel Fell McDermott’s ‘Kar li’s
new frontiers: a Hindu goddess on the Internet’, and from Hugh B. Urban’s
‘“India’s darkest heart”: Kar li in the colonial imagination’ to Patricia
Lawrence’s harrowing piece on ‘Kar li in a context of terror: the tasks of
a goddess in Sri Lanka’s civil war’, is that such a connection, whether
Of the sixteen essays in the book, five (all in its central section on ‘Compli-
cating literary traditions’) are on Tagore’s novels, especially The Home and
The World and Gora. This is safer territory than the poetry, for those who
don’t know Bengali, though not without dangers, as anyone who has com-
pared Surendranath’s translation of The Home and the World closely with the
original (Ghare Bar ire) will know. The encouraging thing about these essays is
that they all accept these two novels as great and complex works: unlike earlier
generations of critics, they feel no need to apologize for Tagore, or to find
incompetence in him as novelist. Especially interesting are Kathleen Koljian’s
essay ‘Mythology, nationalism, and patriarchal ambivalence in The Home and
the World’, which tellingly associates Sandip’s worship of Bimala with ‘the
Bengali belief in women’s sakti [sic] as the motivating power behind national-
istic action, and with the worship of Durga [sic] and Kar li as representations of
this force’; and Patrick Colm Hogan’s convincing concatenation of Gora with
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.
Other essays that will be a useful resource for future writers on Tagore are
Kathleen M. O’Connell’s lucid appraisal of Tagore’s educational theory and
practice (derived from her full-length study of this subject, published in 2002 by
Visva-Bharati), and Judith Plotz’s piece on the performance in the Warsaw
Ghetto in 1942 of Tagore’s play The Post Office by Jewish orphans under the
care of the famous paediatrician and writer Janusz Korczak. I am only sorry that
in preparing this excellent essay she did not, it seems, come across my own trans-
lation of the play, which was done for a production in 1993 that incorporated the
Korczak connection, and was published in 1996 by the Tagore Centre UK with
beautiful photos of the young performers and extracts from Korczak’s diaries.
But the best and most seminal essays in the collection are those on Tagore
and science—especially those by Jonathan Shear and Brian Josephson, who
grapple profoundly with Tagore’s insistence in his probing conversations
with Einstein that ‘the world apart from us does not exist; it is a relative world,
depending for its reality upon our consciousness’. As with the ‘inconsistency’ of
Tagore’s political ideas, what might initially seem preposterous solipsism
becomes fully reconcilable with philosophic rigour if one understands what
Tagore actually meant by his abstract terms. Why does mathematics work?
Shear argues that the answer to this question must lie in the fact that both mind
and matter are expressions of one underlying reality. That was what Tagore was
saying—and his view was informed not just by his poetic and religious intuitions
but by an interest in science and mathematics that he pursued throughout his
life. This is not the only reason for taking Tagore seriously, but it is a strong one.
WILLIAM RADICE
IGOR DE RACHEWILTZ:
The Secret History of the Mongols.
A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century.
Translated with a Historical and Philological Commentary.
(Brill’s Inner Asian Library, 7/1 and 7/2.) 2 volumes with
continuous pagination. cxxvii, 1347 pp. 10 plates. Leiden and
Boston: Brill, 2004. €179.
This is the third English translation of the Secret History of the Mongols I have
reviewed. I enter here my usual disclaimer: apart from some terminology, I do
BRYAN J. CUEVAS:
The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
xi, 328 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. £40.
Ever since its publication in 1927, The Tibetan Book of the Dead has attracted
wide interest among scholars, psychologists, spiritualists, and academic dilet-
tantes. It was promptly followed by translations into other European langu-
ages, and by studies of its nature and purpose. Some scholars interpreted
correctly its significance, but many intellectuals misconceived and distorted its
teaching. The various misconceptions about this book are largely due to a lack
of awareness of its textual and doctrinal history. It is this unawareness of its
history that Cuevas dispels in his excellent and scholarly study.
The small set of funerary texts called Bar do thos grol chen mo / Great Lib-
eration upon Hearing in the Intermediate State (immortalized as The Tibetan
Book of the Dead) is derived from a larger collection of texts called Self-
liberated Wisdom of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities. The original authorship
of the Bar do thos grol is attributed to the Indian teacher Padmasambhava
who visited Tibet in the eighth century. He is said to have concealed it before
returning to India. This concealment was discovered in the fourteenth century
possible to interact with the intermediate being (or consciousness), change its
course, and help it through rituals and other devices to gain a better rebirth.
Yet another strand of speculation led to the theory that, upon death, the mind
temporarily dissolves into the primordial luminosity understood as perfect
buddhahood. If upon death one recognizes and unhesitatingly embraces this
luminosity, the state of enlightenment is realized and further rebirth is severed.
If one fails, the karmic force agitates and reverses the whole process towards
rebirth. During this reversed process there appear visions of peaceful and
wrathful deities to coerce visionarily one’s return to luminosity. If one fails to
recognize the significance of those deities, there follow further karmicly deter-
mined visions, and then, as they fade away, the intermediate being is born
and speeds for karmicly determined rebirth. This dissolution into luminosity
and various visions form the post-mortem imagery of the Bar do thos grol. The
unprecedented and unique claim of this book is that upon mere hearing of
its instructions at any point during the process of dissolution or return to
existence, the dead can easily gain the ultimate liberation.
Cuevas soundly explains the Abhidharma teachings on the intermediate
state, the mahar siddha and tantra innovations on the post-mortem state, and
some developments in Tibet which contributed to the doctrinal complexion of
the Bar do thos grol. There are, however, some factual and conceptual lacunae
in his linkage between the Abhidharma and tantra doctrines. Otherwise, his
book is a major contribution in the field of Tibetan studies.
TADEUSZ SKORUPSKI
PETER MORAN:
Buddhism Observed: Travelers, Exiles and Tibetan Dharma in
Kathmandu.
(Anthropology of Asia Series.) vii, 224 pp. London and New
York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. £65.
means to be a Buddhist,” so too have Tibetan exiles been hailed by the discur-
sive practices of modernity with regard to nation, religion and identity’
(p. 156). But if you can swallow the occasional sentence like this, the book
offers a valuable, well-organized, and persuasive picture of an important
relationship in the history of modern Buddhism, one key part of the complex
transnational nexus that has launched Tibetan Vajrayana as a global
phenomenon.
DAVID N. GELLNER
This book was published in conjunction with the exhibition of religious sculp-
ture, painting and ritual objects entitled ‘Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure’
organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and presented in the museum from 5
April to 17 August 2003. The exhibition was also presented at the Smithsonian
Institution, Washington DC, from 18 October 2003 to 11 January 2004.
As the title of the book and exhibition implies, the primary criterion for
choosing the objects (many of which are well known and have been published
before) is aesthetic. The author makes no bones about the fact that his purpose
has been ‘to encourage the viewer first to look and enjoy the beauty of the
objects and then to explore their spiritual import’ (p. 10). This concentration
on aesthetics as an ‘entry point’ to Himalayan art, reflected by the pre-
ponderance in the exhibition of objects from private collections, of course
runs counter to some earlier academic and curatorial attitudes which regard
the majority of such objects as ‘certainly not works of art’ (P. H. Pott, in A. B.
Griswold, Art of the World 13: Burma, Korea, Tibet, London, 1964, p. 154).
Also at variance with the primarily aesthetic approach is the opinion of many
of those from Himalayan cultures, including some artists: ‘[through] a deep
understanding of the Buddha’s teaching ... one comes to distinguish clearly the
uses served by a work of religious content, as distinct from a mere plaything
or, for instance, a carving representing a monkey such as one might find deco-
rating a table’, (L. S. Dagyab, Tibetan Religious Art, Wiesbaden, 1977, p. 25).
Whatever stance one takes in this debate, which is briefly mentioned on page
18, it has to be admitted that the works selected for such an aesthetic block-
buster as this may be quite untypical of Himalayan art as a whole. Nor does
the aesthetic criterion make it easy to display a sequence of works to develop
any connected theme, whether religious, historical or even stylistic. This is
perhaps why the objects are assembled into three groupings on regional lines:
Nepalese; Western (Gilgit, Western Tibet and Himachal Pradesh); and Eastern
(Central Tibet, Eastern Tibet and Bhutan). The first two groups include
both Buddhist and Hindu (though no Islamic) objects; the third only Buddhist.
Within each group, the order of objects is chronological, and each object, or
sometimes a group of two or three, is treated largely on its own terms.
Each group has a three- to five-page introduction. In three appendixes the
inscriptions found on many of the objects from Nepal, Kashmir and Tibet, are
EAST ASIA
NICOLA DI COSMO:
Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East
Asian History.
ix, 369 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. £47.50.
The book is divided into four sections, each divided into two chapters. Section
1 traces the early evolution of the cultures facing the Chinese states on their
northern frontier. It deals with the non-literary evidence, and does an excellent
job of synthesizing known facts drawn from archaeology and geography with
various theories on the emergence of nomadic steppe culture. Particularly valu-
able is the extensive use of Chinese-language archaeological reports, and the
map on pp. 60–61 is an excellent aid, showing the locations of the various digs.
From the ninth to the seventh centuries BC nomadism was not the general
pattern, but there was a noticeable increase in horse-related materials amongst
burial goods. These semi-nomadic pastoralists seem to have moved to full
nomadism during the sixth to fourth centuries. From the third to first centuries
there was a noticeable increase in luxury goods and a sharper differentiation in
burial goods, pointing to the emergence of new social structures.
Section 2 examines evidence from Chinese literature. The various foreign
peoples, such as the Rong and Di, were in many ways similar to their
Chinese neighbours, and the sharp division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ was slow
to emerge; Di Cosmo shows that various passages normally used to show
such divisions are often ambiguous. By the fifth century, the Rong and the Di
had been culturally and politically absorbed by the Chinese states. This expan-
sion brought the Chinese into contact with a new kind of people whom they
referred to as Hu: the classic nomad peoples who fought as mounted archers.
The second chapter of the section explores the relatively late emergence of
such peoples in Chinese literature, and their significant impact during the late
Warring States period. Di Cosmo provides a brilliant analysis of Chinese wall
building of the period, and shows that it was not part of a defensive policy
against Hu attacks, but rather a means of seizing nomadic territory and
alienating it from its original owners. He rejects the simplistic (but often
repeated) notion that the nomadic economy was dependent on Chinese pro-
duction, and that they were compelled either to ‘trade or raid’ to meet this
need. He shows clearly that farming was being practised in areas of the north
outside of Chinese control (and perhaps in agricultural communities subser-
vient to nomadic masters), and the evidence suggests that it was the Chinese
who sought to develop trade in the north, not the Hu.
Section 3 seeks to explain the emergence of the Xiongnu empire, the Chi-
nese response to it, and in particular the aggressive policy adopted by Han
Wu-di. In typical nomadic cultures warfare was on a small scale, and tribal
armies emerged only in times of crisis. Di Cosmo theorizes that it was the loss
of the Ordos region and pressure from the Yuezhe and Eastern Hu that led to
the emergence of a supra-tribal leadership under Maodun. With permanently
mobilized armies and a supra-tribal administration, the new leadership
required constant activity to acquire the means to reward its followers. He
goes on to explain why Chinese attempts to deal with the Xiongnu by negotia-
tion were doomed to failure. Treaty relations (he-qin) were first established by
Gaozu, but despite the payment of tribute and the dispatch of a Chinese prin-
cess for each new Shanyu, Xiongnu raiding continued. This was largely due
to the ‘confederate’ structure of the Xiongnu, which left the ruler essentially
unable to command his subordinate kings not to raid. During the reign of Han
Wu-di the Chinese shifted from a defensive to an offensive posture. The chap-
ter contains a detailed analysis of the campaigns of this period, and it is shown
that the scope of Chinese campaigns and expansion went far beyond anything
that had been envisaged at the beginning of the war. All of it, including the
expansion into the western regions, needs to be seen in the context of an all-out
effort to destroy the economic and diplomatic base of the Xiongnu.
The shift from section three to four is abrupt. Chronologically, the chapter
and the book end at this point, at the end of Han Wu-di’s reign. From an
historical point of view it seems an arbitrary point to finish, and the decision
was clearly linked to the fact that Sima Qian’s Shiji also finishes here. An
additional chapter is needed, taking Di Cosmo’s analysis down to (at least) the
close of the Western Han period.
The final section deals with the historian Sima Qian and his motivations.
There was no precedent for his extended description of the Xiongnu, and Di
Cosmo explains this by an interesting means: it was chiefly his astronomical
and astrological training that led to Sima Qian’s careful collection of observa-
tions and records. The Xiongnu had clearly emerged as a major challenge to
the Han Dynasty, and they needed to be rationalized into the flow of Chinese
history.
This is an excellent book packed with information and insightful analysis,
but occasional typos interfere with the material. For example, the peace treaty
mentioned at p. 114 was made in 569, not 562 BC (compare Zuo Zhuan, Xiang
4 and 11); n. 74, p. 188 should read Shiji 5.207, not 6.207; at p. 165 articles by
Meng Wen-t’ung and Huang Wen-pi are mentioned without footnote or refer-
ence in the bibliography; the Chinese character for the Di people does not
appear in the character glossary at the back; p. 244 says that the commandery
of Jiuquan was established before 110 BC, but p. 246 says it was in 104 BC. Shiji
30.1493 and 110.2913 appear to date it at c. 112 BC. At p. 269 it says that
Zhonghang Yue ‘fled to the Xiongnu’, but this is not correct. The excellent
map at pp. 60–61 is missing Yulungtai. It would have been better if Di Cosmo
had provided some explanation of his use of the more correct (but less
common) form chanyü instead of shanyü for the Xiongnu leader, particularly
Both ceremony and descendants are further explored in essays in this book.
The form of worship and ritual status of Confucius were contested. Wilson
states that ‘these debates need to be understood as a mode of negotiation that
had implications for social relations within literati culture and for Chinese
society as a whole, as well as relations between scholar officials and the sover-
eign’ (p. 54). Two essays focus on a radical reform that took place in 1530.
Through the intervention of the Jiajing emperor, the images of Confucius
were, as Deborah Sommer puts it, literally ‘liquidated’, dissolved in water
(p. 95). She sees this iconoclasm against the background of Chinese religious
history, where images occupied a liminal status as intermediaries between
the living and the dead. But she also documents an ‘aniconic’ reflex that Con-
fucianism shares with other religious traditions. Not least, it seems, writers
were worried that a sitting image of the Sage implied that he would suffer the
indignity of crawling forward to receive offerings. Three-dimensional images,
moreover, were sometimes seen as tainted by Buddhist influences. A comple-
mentary, political, perspective to Sommer’s article is provided by Huang
Chin-shing. Huang persuasively sees the iconoclasm politically, as reflecting an
autocratic imperial suppression of bureaucratic autonomy, symbolized by the
ritual exaltation of Confucius, in effect the patron saint of bureaucrats. There
were other, less politically fraught, features of the cult that produced changes
over time. Joseph Lam describes a tension between a standardized liturgy
and the ‘individualistic heart/minds of musical Confucians’ (p. 136), who inter-
preted the musical aspects of the ceremony idiosyncratically. This tension
produced significant variations in performance regionally and historically over
the period from Ming to the Republic.
Aspects of Confucius’s lineage and biological descendants are explored in
the remainder of the book. In a bravura piece, Lionel Jensen writes of the
matrix of myth and lore that surrounds the Sage’s ancestry and immediate
posterity. His view is sceptical. He sees Confucius as a ‘figure produced by
competitive systems of representation’ (p. 176) and impugns his historicity:
Confucius, he claims, is ‘a symbolic rather than historic artifact’ (p. 215), or
even a ‘free-floating signifier’ (p. 214). Jensen provides a fascinating romp
through the apocryphal traditions concerning the Sage, including his role as
the object of a fertility cult. Yet this virtuosity smacks, too, of reduction and
parti pris. What does Jensen mean by the claim that the ‘sound and sense,
graph and text’ concerning Confucius are ‘analyzable only by us’ (pp. 215–6)?
Much later, from mid-Ming times, again it is suggested under Buddhist influ-
ence, a genre of narrative pictures of Confucius’s life came into being. These,
according to Julia Murray, were exercises in moral education rather than
works of art. They were intended to promote orthodox behaviour rather than
to be artistic statements. Interestingly, women featured in domestic representa-
tions in the late Ming, though they subsequently largely disappear, reflecting
an ‘implicit rejection of the growing tendency to “familize” the official cult of
Confucius in the late Ming’ (p. 254). Murray sees the genre as a whole as
‘a means of reaffirming ancient values and ethical codes in times of political
turbulence or social change’ (p. 257).
Confucius’s more remote biological descendants are the subject of the
last three articles. Abigail Lamberton shows how, though it produced neither
statesman nor scholars (p. 300), the Kong clan of Qufu, Confucius’s birth-
place, possessed strategies for preserving its cultural pre-eminence that,
unsurprisingly, exploited its descent from its famous ancestor. It also devel-
oped a monopoly of the office of county magistrate and tax exemptions based
on a close and mutually beneficial relationship with the imperial house. The
The first of these two new contributions to Zen studies, a collection put
together by an acknowledged authority on the Chan/Zen tradition, comes as
something of a surprise, since one might have expected a North American
publisher to have snapped up a work of this nature long ago. Yet the rather
out of date academic affiliations of some of the contributors, and the fact that
FA-TI FAN:
British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural
Encounter.
xii, 238 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard
University Press, 2004. £32.95.
This is in one sense rather a timely book, should a reawakened interest in the
history of plant collecting in China result from the simultaneous publication,
in a print run no doubt much longer than that allotted to Fan’s study, of a
mass market novel by Elizabeth McGregor, The Way through the Mountains
(London: Bantam, 2004), which has at its heart the researching of a biography
of the famous collector E. H. Wilson (1876–1930)—in fact Fan’s work reveals
intriguingly (p. 239, n. 3) that such a biography was published by HMSO in
1993. But in another sense it is already long overdue: as the author points out
(p. 169), his only predecessors specifically concerned with China have been E.
Bretschneider (1833–1901) in 1898 and E. H. M. Cox, in 1945. Yet the former
composed his work in China itself, at some distance from British archival
sources, while the latter, though claiming no doubt justifiably to have based
every assertion on documentary evidence, explains in his Preface to Plant-
Hunting in China that the provision of any footnotes has been eschewed on the
grounds that it tends to interfere with the narrative flow of the story. This is
fortunately not Fan’s way, for not only has he made use of a fair number of
archives, listed on p. 167, but he has also read widely in the current histori-
ography of the period relating to both China and Britain—and, indeed, to
wider questions of science and empire. The lack of any provision, therefore, of
a bibliography is much to be regretted, for rapid access to Fan’s broad reading
would be a boon indeed.
In some respects, too, the focus of this study is somewhat narrower than its
predecessors, since it is primarily concerned only, as the title indicates, with the
British: there is little, therefore, concerning the Russians, on whom of course
Bretschneider was well informed, and the Jesuit pioneers in the field are only
treated in a summary fashion. In this case at least it is worth noting that a
more detailed summary of our current understanding of the knowledge gained
by the early missions has been provided by G. Metallié on pp. 803–8 of N.
Standaert (ed.), Handbook of Christianity in China: Volume One (Leiden: Brill,
2001); one might add also that the forthcoming volume on botany in the series
Science and Civilisation in China will be by the same author, since Fan clearly
finds the treatment by Needham himself of Chinese learning about the natural
world (p. 210, n. 51) insensitive in its imposition of modern categories on the
Chinese past.
On its home territory, however, of discussing the evolving British know-
ledge of the natural world in China, this book is hard to beat, both on the early
period during which all would-be naturalists were almost completely confined
to Canton and Macao, and on the later years of the Qing when those bold
enough to do so could wander much more freely. True, the tale is somewhat
simplified by the fact that, as Fan observes, there was very little interaction
with the learned Chinese tradition in this area—unlike, for example, the
case of chemistry, recently discussed by David Wright, Translating Science
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000). There was, perhaps, a self-confident feeling amongst
the Englishmen of the day, if not all the British, that the countryside was a
book that could be read without assistance from local interpreters. The glori-
ous, sumptuously produced outcome of this approach, published just in time
to squeeze inside Fan’s chronological limits, was the second edition of H. T.
Wade’s compilation, With Boat and Gun in the Yangtse Valley (Shanghai,
1910), which does, as Fan notes (p. 223, n. 68), publish an article or two by
Chinese contributors, but is overwhelmingly dominated by a veritable surfeit
of contemporary Englishness, from learned topographical notes by an Angli-
can archdeacon to no-nonsense practical advice on dog parasites and how to
deal with them. But whilst our gardens are still brightened by a host of imports
from China, volumes like Wade’s (with some exceptions, such as the 2001
reprinting by Kegan Paul of one of Robert Fortune’s early collections of
reports) may only be found in the deep shade of the more discriminating anti-
quarian bookshop. Fan has done an excellent job of throwing light once more
on these writings and their authors, and has taken the very important further
step of relating them to our current understanding of the imperialist enterprise
of the times. If there is to be a broader revival of interest in this perennially
fascinating area, one hopes that those writing with an eye to popular success
will also take on board the considered and thought-provoking analysis made
available here.
T. H. BARRETT
The most innovative feature of the volume under review is to be found in the
title; accepting a hypothesis set forth by the Ming commentator Wang
Chongqing and supported by Yuan Ke (Shanhai jing jiaozhu, Shanghai, 1980,
pp. 181–3), the author decided to translate the character jing not as ‘classic’
but as ‘guideway’. The proposal sounds quite reasonable and is corroborated
by sound arguments—such as the nature of the book, which can be viewed as
a sort of travel guide, the appearance of the character jing in the heading of
each section, and its verbal use (‘go through’) in a controversial passage
appended to book V (see Yuan Ke, Shanhai jing, p. 179)—but its acceptance is
far from being obligatory and seems bound to remain a matter of individual
choice. I personally faced the question years ago, while working on my
translation of the work, and in the end—considering that the Shanhai jing
has undoubtedly become a classic and that the character jing was probably
added in Han times to enhance its authority—decided to solve the problem by
JAMES H. COLE:
Twentieth Century China: An Annotated Bibliography of Reference
Works in Chinese, Japanese, and Western Languages.
2 vols. xxxii, 1427 pp. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2004.
£189.
Cole’s first venture was neither indexed nor well distributed it is perhaps
fortunate that its somewhat different principal focus on late imperial China
renders the problem of deciding which works may be absent as a result of the
policy of avoiding overlap in this case a relatively minor one.
Indeed for the majority of users the problem is more likely to be one of
choosing the most suitable research aids from amongst an intimidating
plethora of references—over 12,200, we are told, even though some are simply
cross-references to the same work under different categories. It is well worth
reading carefully through the prefatory matter, however, in order to under-
stand the scope and limitations of the work, and also well worth learning how
to make good use of the author and title indexes at the back, after the charac-
ter index—the bulk of the work has Chinese and Japanese in transcription
only, but for the most part titles of reference works are stereotypical enough
for consultation of this particular index of nearly two-hundred pages to be less
of a priority. Not least of the lessons that need to be learned from the prefatory
material is that this massive ensemble of information represents no more than
a part of a larger project: all full consideration of reference works of a bio-
graphical or topographical nature has been deferred until the appearance
of further volumes, following the scheme of organization already used in
Updating Wilkinson, though in fact some works classifiable under these head-
ings may be found in the volumes under review, in which the emphasis is by
and large bibliographical.
And there are, of course, a number of errors and omissions. The former
appear to be rare enough when the author is dealing with works that he has
personally examined, and for which he duly indicates the library or libraries
whose exemplar he consulted. He does admit to some uncertainties over the
reading of Japanese names, though I cannot see why he has omitted the per-
fectly British co-author’s name, Doreen M. Wainwright, from his account of
Noel Matthews, A Guide to Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles
Relating to the Far East, on each of its appearances, on pp. 66, 704, and 964.
In one case I checked he turned out to have been fooled by an individual in
America whose Korean name (contrary to expectations) is recast in the con-
ventional American order, namely Sung Yoon Cho, author of the bibliography
of Japanese studies of Chinese law treated in entries 60–52 and 63.70–7. Here
and throughout, the first element in these codes for entries indicates topic and
(in the second case) sub-topic, the second the number of the work concerned
in alphabetical sequence: since Cho’s work is based on the holdings of one
particular library, it appears both in the main topic of law and in the topic of
library catalogues, as subdivided by institution, listed in alphabetical order.
Very unfortunately, however, Cho is identified as the author’s family name
only on the verso of the title page of his catalogue.
One may expect more trouble in the rather large number of instances of
publications that Cole was not able to examine in person. These may be distin-
guished not simply by the absence of any indication of a specific library copy
consulted but also by duly cautious phrases such as ‘said to contain’ and the
like. In at least one case, 89–32, a publisher’s announcement must have been
used, since that date ‘2001?’ is supplied: unfortunately, the work in question
was not published in that year and I have yet to see it, though when it does
appear it will no doubt be every bit as excellent as its advance publicity claims.
This particular example comes from the section on Religion, which to my eye
is marked by a number of omissions for which the compiler certainly cannot be
faulted—that would be a sign of gross ingratitude—but which he might like to
consider for a supplementary listing; others with other interests will no doubt
recommend their own selection of missing titles. For while there are certainly
SIEW-YUE KILLINGLEY:
Usage of Pronouns, Address and Relationship Terms in Chinese.
(Second Edition.) 54 pp. Newcastle upon Tyne: Grevatt &
Grevatt, 2003. £10.
ANDREA LOUIE:
Chineseness across Borders: Renegotiating Chinese Identities in
China and the United States.
x, 246 pp. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
Cloth £57, paper £16.95.
Those who have read and enjoyed the numerous works of fiction-
cum-documentary which have come from the entertainingly talented pens of
Chinese American men and women (but mostly it seems women) over the past
twenty years will have deduced for themselves that roots-seeking is an occupa-
tion which does not necessarily assuage its own thirst for clarity and certainty.
This book attempts to analyse the problems through examining the reactions
of the author and her fellow members of a small group of ten young Chinese
INOUE NOBUTAKA (ed.), ITOr SATOSHI, ENDOr JUN and MORI MIZUE
(trans. Mark Teeuwen and John Breen):
Shinto—A Short History.
xvi, 223 pp. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
SUSAN L. BURNS:
Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in
Early Modern Japan.
(Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society.) x, 282 pp. Durham
and London: Duke University Press, 2003.
his contemporaries to the work of scholars after Hirata Atsutane and, in the
last chapter, in the 1890s—prove more problematic.
Burns begins her analysis by examining the ‘pervasive sense of crisis’ (p. 20)
of the eighteenth century, highlighting the role of the growing publishing
industry in encouraging widespread discussion of contemporary problems. She
then turns to the intellectual world of scholars of the ancient texts, emphasiz-
ing the transcultural, transhistorical focus on ethicality that had characterized
Neo-Confucian and Buddhist interpretations of the Divine Age narratives un-
til the late seventeenth century. With the rise of historical thinking, Burns then
sees a new awareness that the ancient texts and their language could ‘reveal a
system of ideas and values fundamentally different from those of the present’
(p. 53). She also sees, with the work of Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), the
demise of ethical interpretations in favour of the study of how people formed
communities—especially Japanese communities.
In the next four chapters, Burns analyses the work of Norinaga and
three scholars who reacted to his work. She examines their attitudes toward
language, orality, kami, and the relationship of Japan to China, Buddhism and
Confucianism, in order to understand their ideas of community and, in par-
ticular, the boundaries they posited between the public and private realms—
where she locates the political significance of their work in opposition to
Tokugawa ideology. Burns shows how Norinaga found in the Kojiki depictions
of an original, now lost, community, thus validating ‘natural’ emotions and
desires that could resist (at least in private life) the rigid, hierarchical values of
Tokugawa society. Ueda Akinari (1734–1809), in contrast, used the inconsis-
tencies of the texts to question both Norinaga’s ideal Japanese past and the
official narratives of his own day. Fujitani Mitsue (1767–1823) read the narra-
tives of the Divine Age as instructions concerning the proper relationship
between superiors and inferiors, while Tachibana Moribe (1781–1849) used the
Kojiki to highlight the role of the emperor and imperial rites in maintaining the
border between the hidden and revealed worlds.
As Burns explains, consensus on the meaning of the ancient texts was only
created later, when ‘Japanese learning’ became part of the university curricu-
lum in the 1890s. Whereas Tokugawa-era kokugakusha had set themselves
against the established hierarchy, however, Burns emphasizes that the
kokugakusha of the Meiji era were themselves part of the ruling elite. Thus,
they not only redefined kokugaku for a ‘modernizing Japan’, but enshrined the
Hirata schools’ ‘four great men’ genealogy of kokugaku, against which Burns
organized her book.
Herein lies the main weakness of Before the Nation. The first five chapters
of the book constitute a solid work in their own right, examining scholars’
diverse interpretations of the ancient texts in the context of eighteenth-century
thought. However, because Burns deliberately eschews what became the
mainstream of later kokugaku—in particular, the work of Hirata Atsutane—
the absent Atsutane looms over the last two chapters of the book. While Burns
devotes a few pages to Hirata’s work at the beginning of her chapter on
Tachibana Moribe, relying heavily on the analysis of Harry Harootunian, the
ensuing interpretations suffer without her own detailed treatment of Hirata’s
writings.
Interestingly, Burns’ avoidance of the mainstream narrative in her final
chapter—on developments during the Meiji era—highlights a significant
scholarly lacuna: studies of the man whom Burns rightfully calls ‘the most
prominent kokugaku scholar in the immediate Restoration era’, Yano
SOUTH-EAST ASIA
ANN R. KINNEY
Worshiping Siva and Buddha: The Temple Art of East Java.
303 pp. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003. £60.
This volume focuses on the temples and sculpture of East Java dated between
the tenth and sixteenth centuries. In addition to providing a much-needed
survey of the art of the kingdoms of Kadiri, Singasari and Majapahit, the
descriptions are set out in a manner that is accessible to the general reader.
Section 1, ‘Introduction to the religion and art of East Java’, adds to the
book’s utility in this regard with two extended essays. The first, entitled
‘Hinduism and Buddhism in Indonesia’, was written by Marijke J. Klokke and
succinctly discusses the arrival and development of both Hindu and Buddhist
teachings to Indonesia from the fifth century CE. The international orientation
and documentation of the transmission of Buddhist teachings is contrasted to
the difficulty in tracing the more localized adaptations typical of Hindu deities
by Javanese rulers. This theme of localization is then carried further with an
introduction to Buddhist and Hindu adherence in the context of East Javanese
developments. These include the merging of Hinduism and Buddhism, the
importance of asceticism and the cults of deified ancestors, mountain venera-
tion and the production of sacred water. The second essay of section 1, ‘The
architecture and art of Ancient East Java’ by Lydia Kieven, defines the various
forms of architecture often subsumed under the term ‘Candi’, ranging from
ritual bathing places to hermitages and gateways. Some of the iconography of
the narrative reliefs is also described, such as the animals with long floppy ears
illustrated later in the book (p. 217) in the description of the Majapahit com-
memorative temple of Candi Rimbi. The importance of place in the context of
sculpture, such as images of Garuda and Ganesha, is noted, one example being
a 1.9 metre statue of King Airlangga as Vishnu on his mount Garuda found at
the mid-eleventh century Candi Belahan (p. 65).
The site descriptions make up much of the book: section 2, ‘A new begin-
ning in East Java 929–1222’; section 3, ‘The Singasari period, 1222–1292’;
and section four, ‘The Majapahit period, 1293–1519’. Each opens with a
CLAUDINE BAUTZE-PICRON:
The Buddhist Murals of Pagan: Timeless Vistas of the Cosmos.
xiv, 242 pp. Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2003.
There are few books on the eleventh to fourteenth century AD wall paintings of
Pagan, making this a welcome contribution. These paintings, on the interior
walls of the city’s many remaining temples, are unmatched elsewhere in South-
East Asia, and provide a wealth of information on the legacy of Pagan. Bautze-
Picron’s volume is organized into seven chapters: 1. The murals of Pagan,
presentation; 2. The miraculous life of the Buddha; 3. The previous lives of
the Buddha; 4. Dipankara and the Buddhas of the past—Mettaya, Buddha of
the future; 5. Iconographic ornamentation; 6. The ornamental decoration;
and 7. The murals of Pagan, a guide. To give an idea of the range of topics,
chapter 1 covers depictions of the life of the Buddha, the multiplication of
images and the flamed and the cosmological Buddha. Also dealt with are some
of the complexities introduced by scholars such as Luce and Ba Shin in focusing
analysis of the murals on their ink glosses in Mon and Burmese. The guide
in chapter 7 consists of descriptions of thirty-six temples. A number of these
have only received brief mention in English-language sources such as Pichard’s
Inventory of Monuments at Pagan (Vols 1–8, Paris/Gartmore: Unesco/Kiscadale
Ltd, 1992–2001). However, they unfortunately do not include the various
temples at Sale (Hsale) that are such a useful part of Bautze-Picron’s work. The
descriptions are followed by a conclusion, endnotes, bibliography, glossary,
index of monuments, and a general index.
The book (A4 in size) has 254 colour plates. None of these are full-page,
but many are at least half a page and give good detail from the scenes.
Sometimes the division of the text makes them less effective than they might
have been had they been arranged by temple. For example, the plates from the
Loka-hteik-pan are well lit, which is difficult in this temple; however, they are
scattered throughout the book, so that when one comes to read the description
of the temple, finding the references disrupts the author’s aim of presenting the
inner space ‘globally’ (p. xiii). The plus side of the plethora of examples is that
a number of parallels incorporate paintings at smaller or lesser known temples.
On the whole, the book is more useful in this regard, linking various details,
than in its thematic aspects. For instance, the concept of a ‘cosmological’
Buddha is referred to in the foreword and conclusion, as a ‘cosmological being’
(p. xiii) and in the context of the ‘cosmological nature of the Buddha’ (p. 208).
Both visual and textual evidence for this would have benefited from clarifica-
tion. This ‘cosmologic understanding’ (p. 5) is placed within a Theravar da
context although, as has been pointed out by Handlin elsewhere, cosmographic
inquiries concerned not the Buddha’s nature but soteriology.
Not only the emergence, but the flowering, of Pagan has yet to be fully
documented and we lack much information about how the varied temple plans
related to local sponsoring sects or to more international contemporary move-
ments in Buddhist thinking. Bautze-Picron makes some reference especially to
this second aspect in her repeated mention of contact with Bihar and Bengal,
resisting the notion that this interchange also brought adherence to Vajrayar na
practices then developing in north-east India. Here the author acknowledges
the work of Frasch in documenting the architectural links to the Bodhgaya
pyramidal spire seen in the temples and votive tablets of Pagan. Bautze-Picron
also discusses the ‘Mon’ temples and ink glosses at Pagan, along with the
traditional bringing of Theravar da texts to Pagan from the Mon city of Thaton
in the late eleventh century. However, little else is said about the nature of the
Buddhist legacy from Thaton, although the reviewer’s research on the walled
sites of the Mon State links many of these with the Asokan missionary tradi-
tion and the development of hierarchies from which the later reputation of
Thaton could well have emerged. Another route of Buddhist influence dis-
cussed by Bautze-Picron is that of Sri Lanka, which despite the assistance of
Anawratha in sending monks and other aid for the resuscitation of the monas-
tic community, has provided little in the way of stylistic affinities to explain the
wall paintings of Pagan. Inclusion of at least reference to these varied inter-
changes at Pagan is important, for in common with many of the region’s
other monumental cities, the contemporary texts are relatively scarce; with the
material remain significant sources from which to try to reconstruct ancient
practice.
It is easier to find fault with a volume of this sort than it is to put one
together. At times the book reads as if it suffered from editing or perhaps
translation, for Bautze-Picron is able to draw links from a wide range of the
paintings at Pagan and would have found it difficult otherwise to devise the
book’s chapters. In the documenting of the subjects covered in the murals,
therefore, Bautze-Picron’s book offers much that has not previously been
published. And to have this compressed within one volume, while compro-
mised in certain respects, makes this book a very useful reference. It can only
be hoped that it will encourage more scholars to address the many important
facets of Pagan yet to be fully understood.
ELIZABETH MOORE
AFRICA
MICHAEL JACKSON:
In Sierra Leone.
xiv, 226 pp. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2004. £15.50.
gently into that good night, that explains why we go back, stumbling
through the darkness, in search of the light that flooded and filled our first
conscious years. The days of wine and roses. When our lives stretched
before us like a field of dreams... (p. 64).
If only that were a one-off; but examples of redundant, space-consuming
over-writing abound here. This journal’s word limit allows me only one more
quotation but that must be:
That I found consolation in Epictetus says something about the mood of
disenchantment that gripped me at that time (p. 129).
The late S.B Marah wins hands-down when it comes to being straightforward
and, by so doing, rescues this book.
RICHARD RATHBONE
GENERAL
MICHAEL PEARSON:
The Indian Ocean.
(Seas in History.) xi, 330 pp. London and New York: Routledge,
2003. £50.
Reflecting the growing interest in entangled histories in general and the Indian
Ocean in particular, Michael Pearson has now written a story of the Indian
Ocean since the beginning of history. His work is the latest in a series of
monographs on this ocean, and is particularly remarkable for the scope of
themes it covers in addition to its time span. Pearson contrasts this ocean with
the (North) Atlantic, which was dominated by the Europeans, and the Pacific,
which he considers to be a Euro-American creation. According to Pearson the
Indian Ocean, by contrast, boasts a long history of contacts between its vari-
ous shores through travel, trade and the exchange of peoples and ideas. As for
the Europeans, he argues that their dominance is mainly a phenomenon of the
past 200 years, i.e. only a fraction of 6,000 years of history. This places the
Indian Ocean closer to the Mediterranean in the Braudelian sense, even if
Pearson cautions the reader against any easy comparison. He points to the
different sizes of these seas, adding, however, that this may be ‘a difference of
scale, not a generic difference’ (p. 4). Furthermore, Pearson dramatically limits
the extension of the connections between the different countries bordering the
Indian Ocean, or indeed any sea, by arguing that only narrow strips of
the littoral, in addition to the port cities, formed part of any oceanic system.
He thus claims to ‘look from the sea to the land’ (p. 5), a topic he takes up
again in his second chapter which discusses people who live on and by the sea.
Thus, Pearson accepts that the main orientation of Africa, the Arabian
Peninsula and India was inland. South-East Asian differences are noted, but
ULRIKE FREITAG
Indian Ocean Migrants and State Formation in Hadhramaut:
Reforming the Homeland.
(Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and
Asia, 87.) xv, 589 pp. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003. €150.
Freya Stark, exploring ‘the southern gates of Arabia’ in 1935, remarked that
one could as easily get about in the castellated towns of the Wadi Hadhramaut
speaking Malay as Arabic. By the early twentieth century some 25 per cent of
Hadhramis lived outside Arabia around the Indian Ocean littoral, much the
largest proportion in the Netherlands East Indies and British Malaya. There
they traded, moved back and forth to the homeland, became wealthy, sent
remittances—and new ideas—home, helped establish mosques, schools and
newspapers for their Muslim co-religionists, and, as few Hadhrami women
travelled, established local families. It is the significance for the homeland of
this diaspora, along with other imperial connections, that provide the main
focus of Ulrike Freitag’s important and remarkably well-documented study of
modernization and state formation in the Hadramaut proper between about
1850 and 1950.
There is a considerable range of earlier and more recent literature on the
modern history of the Hadhramaut and its complex social organization to
which Freitag has already contributed, notably as co-organizer (with William
G. Clarence-Smith) of a major international conference at SOAS in 1995,
whose proceedings were published as Hadrami Traders, Scholars and States-
men in the Indian Ocean 1750s–1960s (Leiden: Brill, 1997). Three of the partici-
pants in that conference have since published monographs bearing on the
subject of the present book, Natalie Mobini-Kesheh’s The Hadrami Awaken-
ing: Community and Identity in the Netherlands East Indies, 1914–1942 (Ithaca,
NY, 1999), Linda Boxberger’s On the Edge of Empire: Hadramawt, Emigration
and the Indian Ocean, 1880s–1930s (Albany, NY, 2002), and Friedhelm
Hartwig’s Hadramaut und das indische Fürstentum van Hyderabad. Hadram-
tische Sultanatsgrundungen und Migration im 19. Jahrhundert (Würzburg,
2000) which looks at the role played in the homeland by Hyderabadi
Hadhramis. Freitag’s study, magisterial in scope and execution, draws this and
much other material together and utilizes a wide range of additional published
and unpublished Hadhrami sources, along with fieldwork in Yemen and
South-East Asia, for what must be, for the time being at least, the definitive
account of twentieth century Hadhrami experience.
Central to Freitag’s careful historical account of the intricate processes by
which the Hadhramaut made the transition from a rivalrous, segmentary tribal
The Bahar ’i faith belongs to the few ‘old’ new religious movements which have
managed to establish themselves permanently in the religious scene. Having
its origins within the confines of messianic Shiism in nineteenth-century Iran, it
ROZINA VISRAM:
Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History.
xii, 488 pp. London and Sterling, Virginia: Pluto Press, 2002.
£14.99.
Following her pioneering Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain 1700–
1947 (London Pluto Press, 1986), a much-needed study which established her
reputation in the field, the author, working throughout as an independent
scholar, has now expanded her coverage beyond these three major groups of
Indian immigrants and into earlier periods. The present work, again painstak-
ingly produced and elaborately documented with copious notes, as is appropri-
ate for a historical study of this kind, traces the trajectories of South Asian
people in Britain from 1600, a time when trading contact between Britain and
India first began, with the founding of the East India Company. Very soon
thereafter, the first Indians were brought to Britain, often to be baptized (we
know from church records that they existed) and equally often to disappear
without trace thereafter. Thus, the first Indian that we encounter in Britain
from Visram’s researches is a youth by the name of Peter, baptized in London
on 22 December 1616 in the presence of ‘the Privy Council, the Lord Mayor
and Aldermen, and the Governors of the East India Company’ (p. 1). Match
that with Prince Charles attending the first new citizenship ceremony in
London in 2004!
Amazingly, we also learn that Peter had been brought to London in 1614
by a priest, who had taught him to read and write and found him able to learn
fast. He then accompanied the priest back to India in 1617, and wrote some
letters from there in Latin. Then this transient, as Visram calls him (p. 2),
vanishes from the radar and others appear, to settle and eventually die in the
UK, where the author seems to have roamed many old graveyards, enlisting
the help of private researchers by drawing attention to her work in local
newspapers.
A snippet is often all we get, as the majority of early Indians in Britain led
an anonymous existence (p. 8). But one cannot blame the author, and should
instead admire her method of trawling through these old records and dragging
to light all kinds of quaint detail that might be (and are indeed) of interest to
certain people. This book is clearly a labour of love, and the reviewer learnt a
lot about too many fascinating little things to record here. One of our multi-
racial students at SOAS found her great-grandmother, married to a man from
Peshawar, in the pages of this book and has been able to start a personal
journey of discovery that helps to explain her unusual family name. Such snip-
pets are often highly intriguing, making this book a potentially delightful feast
for a very wide and varied readership. There is something for every taste, not
least the culinary details. We learn that by 1784 ‘curry and rice had become
house specialities in some fashionable restaurants in London’s Piccadilly, the
Norris Street Coffee House advertising it as such as early as 1773’ (p. 6). And
Madhur Jaffrey and other queens of spicy foods had an early predecessor in
Hannah Glasse and her 1747 cookbook, which ‘contained a recipe “to make a
curry the Indian way” as well as for making “a pellow” (pilau)’ (p. 6).
SHORT NOTICES
MATHIEU TILLIER:
Vies des Cadis de MisD r 237/851–366/976. Extrait du Raf’ al-isD r ‘an
D agh ar al-’Asqalar ni. (Preface by Thierry
qudD ar t MisD r d’Ibn H
Bianquis.)
(Cahier des Annales islamologiques 24.) xviii, 212 pp. Cairo:
Institut Français d’archéologie orientale, 2002.
Extracts from Ibn H D ajar (d. Cairo, 852/1449), Raf’ al-isD r ‘an qudD ar t MisD r, were
first published by Rhuvon Guest as an appendix to his edition of The Gover-
nors and Judges of Egypt by al-Kindi (d. Old Cairo, 350/961), E. J. W. Gibb
Memorial Series 19 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1912). Tillier has translated most of
them with introduction and notes. The whole of Raf’ al-’isD r, rearranged alpha-
betically with some additions by a disciple to Ibn H D ajar, is at last available as
edited by ‘Ali MuhD ammad ‘Umar (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khar nji, 1418/1998).
Tillier’s introduction and notes are efficient, with a certain stress on adminis-
trative history (as opposed to, inter alia, the history of Islamic law). The transla-
tion seems unexceptionable. I regret only that Tillier cites nothing in German.
Three outstanding works occur to me: Heinz Halm, Die Ausbreitung der
šar fi’itischen Rechtsschule von den Anfängen bis zum 8./14. Jahrhundert,
Beihefte zum tübinger Atlas des vorderen Orients, B (Geisteswissenschaften), 4
(Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1974), replete with lists of qadis; Gerhard
Conrad, Die Qud D ar t Dimašq und der madhab al-Auzar ’i, Beiruter Texte und
Studien 46 (Beirut: Franz Steiner, 1994), largely concerned with the literary
history of qadi lists but also with important remarks on the Awzar ’i school to
which one of Tillier’s qadis allegedly adhered; and Baber Johansen, ‘Wahrheit
und Geltungsanspruch: zur Begründung und Begrenzung der Autorität des
Qadi-Urteils im islamischen Recht’, La Giustiza nell’Alto Medioevo, Settimane
di Studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 44, 2 vols. (Spoleto:
Presso la sede del Centro, 1997), pp. 975–1074, with important comments on
Egypt in particular, although especially just before Tillier’s period.
CHRISTOPHER MELCHERT
from seventy of his students and colleagues. It begins with an account and
a bibliography of his extensive works together with reviews of his books. The
contributions include letters from Maxime Rodinson, Laurence Lentin and
Michel Gauthier-Darley, and articles on a huge range of topics. Articles
deal with aspects of several varieties of Arabic, including Classical Arabic, the
Semitic and the Indo-European language families, and on the following extant
and extinct languages: Zway, Ge‘ez, Amharic, Tigrinya, Afar, Akkadian,
Aramaic, Sabaean, Biblical Hebrew, Berber, Beja, Thai, Modern South
Arabian languages, French, German, Greek, English. The topics dealt with
include: lexicography, diglossia, dialectology, historical linguistics, phonology,
morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, literature, and mathematics.
The huge diversity within this set of articles reflects the vital diversity of
David Cohen’s own research interests, interests which themselves celebrate
diversity not only in subject matter and language variety, but also in linguistic
approach and application.
JANET C. E. WATSON
Tanzania is the only African country where all of the continent’s four linguistic
phyla are represented: alongside around 100 Bantu languages (of the Niger-
Congo phylum), there are Cushitic (Afro-Asiatic), Nilotic (Nilo-Saharan), and
Khoi-San languages, in addition to a number of Asian and European lan-
guages. This linguistic complexity has long attracted researchers in linguistics
and associated disciplines, and a fairly large body of works on Tanzanian
languages is currently available. The present volume aims to provide the inter-
ested researcher with up-to-date bibliographical information about published
and unpublished linguistic research on Tanzanian languages—with the excep-
tion of Swahili, which provides a research tradition of its own, and for which
separate if somewhat dated bibliographical information is available (Marcel
van Spaandonck, Practical and Systematical Swahili Bibliography: Linguistics
1850–1963, Leiden: Brill, 1965). In addition to linguistic works, the biblio-
graphy includes related studies mainly from anthropology and history, but no
attempt to be comprehensive is made. The book is divided according to
linguistic phyla, with an additional chapter on general reference works. The
layout is pleasing and easy on the eye, with each new entry beginning on a
separate page with a small map indicating where the language is spoken. The
introduction sets out the editorial principles and explains how Maho and
Sands have dealt with more problematic cases, such as cross-border languages,
which are spoken only partly in Tanzania. This is a very useful reference work
for anyone with an interest in the area.
L. MARTEN