The ’go ba'i lha – usually translated with “personal protective deities” – are often approached as an integral part of Tibetan popular or folk religion. Typically five in number, these gods are said to be born with an individual, to reside in his or her body, and to protect various facets of his or her existence. As for the etymology of ’go ba'i lha, while “protective deities” is the dominant translation, it remains a highly communicative and contextual gloss of ’go, whose attested meanings do not include “to protect”. The present contribution offers a new analysis of the verb ’go based on attestations in Old Tibetan texts from Dunhuang from the ninth and tenth centuries. In doing so, the article not only proposes a new etymology of ’go ba'i lha, but also touches on the changing relationship between Tibetans and their gods over time.

This article compares the ways in which two major textbook publishers in East Asia – namely Kinkōdō in Meiji Japan and the Commercial Press in early twentieth-century China – practised the Western model of corporations to build a new kind of publishing business in their respective societies, which were undergoing significant transformation. The study suggests that, although the use of the model could imply global business convergence, its transplantation process was largely shaped by entrepreneurs who negotiated the Western model as an alternative newly opened to them and brought to light variant forms of practice tailored to serve their own aspirations in corporate directions such as industrial integration and ownership structure. The two cases present two distinct patterns of developing a new textbook publishing business under the same corporation model.