This has been an important year for the Association for Asian Studies. With a membership of over 4700 we have become by far the largest organization for foreign area studies in the U.S.—and probably in the world. This growth in size has brought with it new problems of organization and new responsibilities for leadership in our profession. So as not to lose touch with our membership, we have undergone a major reorganization with the adoption of our new Constitution. This provides for four area councils, through which leadership would be shared with a much larger number of elected officers, and greater individual initiative would be allowed in the development of studies in each area.

The emergence of an historiographical tradition in Ceylon was caused by the importance of an unbroken succession of ordinations in the Sangha for the survival of Theravada Buddhism and by the emergence of the Sinhalese nation. One of the main factors of this nation-building process was the acceptance of Buddhism as the national religion. The survival of Buddhism depended on the state of the Sangha. History of Theravada Sangha is largely a history of efforts towards monastic reforms, and most reforms were implemented by the worldly power. The description of Asoka's religious politics in Sinhalese chronicles laid a basis for state-Sangha relations. Political thinking shows a dualism of ideological concepts based on religious values and of a tradition of practical political science. The impact of historical factors in the development of Sangha structures becomes visible from a comparison of these structures is the predominantly Buddhist countries and in the Buddhist minority community in Bengal. In this context, recent changes in state-Sangha within society, and the interrelations of Buddhism and popular cults can be analyzed as a result of the interaction of ideological, historical and political factors.

What were the reasons for the development of a right-left division of South Indian castes? Why has this division become less of a focus of rivalry in modern times? This article uses observations collected in the Coimbatore region of Madras State between 1964 and 1966 to suggest that this earlier opposition expressed a fundamental economic principle: the distinction between castes who held direct or indirect rights in land and those who were primarily dependent on renumeration for specific professional services. This contrast was expressed symbolically by the use of the terms “right” and “left,” and in day-to-day activity by the opposition of instrumental to ritualistic values in the evaluation of social status. Use of the terms right and left had gradually become outmoded, due to substantial changes in economic organization. The social correlates of this earlier opposition, however, have continued to endure in certain regions. It is hypothesized that this persistence of social contrasts is related to the absence of Brahmans as an important land-owning group in such areas.

The decline of the central authority of the Mughal empire during the first half of the eighteenth century resulted not only in a change in the power relationship between the center and the provincial government of Bengal, but also in changes in the relationships between the leading military, administrative, and economic groups within Bengal. Shortly after 1700, Murshid Quli Khan, first as Diwan and later as Nawab of Bangal, began a series of revenue and administrative reforms. By increasing revenue collections, he was able to satisfy the demands of the central government for more money from Bengal, and at the same time to pay adequately his mansabdar followers within Bengal and Orissa. He also began to ehnahce his control by acquiring many of the most important official positions in the provincial government for himself and his relatives, and by retaining within Bengal a following of mansabdars who were loyal to himself.

Since many of the smaller and/or less efficient zamindars were unable to pay the increased revenue demand, they lost their zamindaris. Consequently, the pattern of many relatively small zamindaris was replaced by one of relatively few and much larger zamindaris. The result was that the more powerful zamindars tended to become more influential, and to act increasingly ai partners in the Mughal provincial government.

A third element, the bankers, also became important within the ruling group of Bengal after 1700. The Jagat Seths became bankers for the provincial government, and also supplied loans to zamindars to cover their revenue payments.

Thus, by 1739, Bengal was ruled by a loosely organized coalition of military, landed, and monied interests, who provided a reasonably stable alternative to the centralized Mughal government of earlier days.

This is a study of the social and economic functions of Chinese secret societies between the age of rebellions, 1850–1878, and the Boxer Uprising. The rebellions and their ensuing peaceful reconstruction of Chinese society brought important changes to both the secret societies and Chinese society at large. These are analyzed in detail in this essay. By so doing, the essay attempts to throw some light on the mechanism and processes of the structural changes of Chinese secret societies. It also attempts to correct some methodological defects which seem to exist still in the study of Chinese secret societies. One of these is that historians tend to focus their attention only on rebellions while neglecting the activities of the rebel elements in peace time; another is the reluctance to make better use of popular literature as a reliable source of historical information. Widi emphasis on the social and economic functions of these societies in peace time, the essay also helps to dispel the belief that all Chinese secret societies came from one mother body—a monistic myth created by the nationalist revolutionaries of the 1900's.

As one means of uniting the people behind the new regime, Japanese government authorities employed a series of ethics (shushin) textbooks in the schools during the Meiji period (1868–1912) and beyond. With the appearance of fully government-produced texts in 1903 and their first revision in 1910, ideological patterns were established which were influential down to the last revision of the series in 1941. The 1910 revision fused old and new socio-ideological patterns and values under the designation of “national morals,” retrospectively known as the “family state” (kazoku kokka) ideology. This was comprised of (1) a German “state organism” theory of state sovereignty, as the intellectual superstructure; (2) Confucian-like familyism, as the ethical base; and (3) ancient Shinto imperial mythology as the religious sanction. Progression of thought in the textbooks placed crucial emphasis on the extension of loyalty from home and parents to nation and emperor through the absolute equation of filial piety and emperor-loyalty. The frondine soldier, however, found difficulty reconciling the call to die for the emperor with his filial obligation to live for his parents. This may be one reason why in successive revisions (especially 1941) the familial approach to national loyalty was downgraded in favor of a direct national-imperial appeal.

This is a study of the role played by Ch'en Ch'eng, who for almost thirty years was Chiang Kai-shek's most trusted and powerful lieutenant, in the relations between Chiang's “Central” government and the so-called tsa-parh or noncentral military forces. The study illustrates both the complexity and importance of Chiang's dealings with the tsa-parh and suggests that Ch'en had the responsibility of coopting them into Chiang's service. This was especially true with respect to militarists from Kwangtung and Kwangsi, who felt that their leadership of the Nationalist movement had been usurped by the Chekiang-Kiangsu group, led by Chiang Kai-shek. Ch'en also emerges as an advocate of fundamental social and economic reform, as well as an important proponent of resisting Japan and, therefore, the united front with the Communists, although, after 1945, he became chief-of-staff to Chiang Kai-shek and, in this capacity, directed Nationalist efforts to destroy the Communists. The article concludes by suggesting that Nationalist efforts to impose a “modern,” meaning a unitary and organically centralized, state on what traditionally had been a politically fragmented society provoked unprecedented antagonism toward the central government on the part of the provinces and prevented Chiang Kai-shek from achieving even that degree of control enjoyed by China's emperors in the past.

One hundred years of Brooke rule in Sarawak seem to present a stark contrast to the political and social foment in Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam. Cognizant of the ill effects of European domination in the archipelago, the Brookes established a paternalistic rule whose policies were designed to curtail European economic investment in the area and to protect the indigenous inhabitants from internal and external exploitation. However, despite the fact that Brooke rule was structured for maintaining traditional order, not development, the European interlude in north Bornean history may have been more of a deviation than is apparent. The suppression of “piracy” in the area and the political domination of the Brookes over most of the northeastern part of the island had several important results. First, the area trade patterns—if piracy can be seen as a form of luxury trade—were altered to the ultimate economic advantage of the Chinese who came to dominate retail trade. Second, the natural northeastern expansion of the Iban people was halted to the chief benefit of the indigenous Malays who gained significant political advantage under die Brookes. Finally, an inevitable depersonalization of rule occurred as the administration of the state became increasingly complex. If, in a “modern” world, a rule of law, not economic development per se, is the essential ingredient for political stability, Brooke rule made a significant contribution to the political viability of northern Borneo by fostering a White, civilized way of settling disputes.

Beginning in 1892 Prince Damrong as minister of the interior in King Chulalongkorn's reformed government began a reorganization of provincial administration. At that time the country was divided into provinces of four different classes and vassal states. The latter were recognized as quasi-independent under their own hereditary ruling families, and many of the former, although in theory completely subordinate to the capital were in fact ruled by local elite families in which the governorship remained from one generation to the next. Over this structure Prince Damrong established the monthon as a supra-provincial unit headed by an appointed official from the central government bureaucracy, and within a few years was able to replace the old-style hereditary governors with appointed officials changed at frequent intervals. The elite families of the different regions appear to have been affected in different ways. The old rulers of the vassal states kept their nominal positions until death. Many of the governing elite of the southern provinces maintained themselves in the national bureaucracy in positions of comparable rank. The greatest change was in the northeast where the governing elite families lost their old positions and were unable to integrate into the reformed bureaucracy.

This is a brief descriptive and explanatory paper about the use of the computer in Asian linguistic studies. Schemes for the use of autocovariance and fast Fourier transforms are presented, with their application to the question of literary structure and author identification. These results suggest that changes in the scale of resolution of the analyses could furnish the basis for the description of the human information emitter.