This paper examines the role of the Hindu Epic Rāmāyaṇa in the historical and cultural contact between India and the rest of Asia. The Rama legend—rather legends—are prevalent in almost all countries of Asia, namely China, Tibet, East Turkestan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaya, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Burma. The contact was not only close but it was also general and widespread. By no means was it confined to the Brahmanical values which were upheld by Vālmīki in the Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa and shared by the upper strata of Hindu society. The Rama legends prevalent in Asia, except those in China, do not agree in content and emphasis with the Vālmīki version. A close examination of the Rama story in India itself reveals that in addition to the Vālmīki version, a number of Rama legends, differing from the Valmiki story, were prevalent in vernacular and Jain Literature all over the country. All diese versions provided the diverse and complex source material for the Ramayanic legends of Asia. Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical elements appeared in different mixtures and emphasis. While China accepted the more orthodox ethical values, the countries of Soudieast Asia adopted Rāmāyaṇa mostly for the epic qualities of romance, adventure, and valor.

In die pre-modern Chinese codes, Yoshimune (8th Tokugawa Shogun, 1716–1745) found much of use to him in his attempt to reform the administration of justice in early eighteenth century Japan. Building on an interest kindled by studies of Ming law in his native han, Wakayama, Yoshimune gathered about him a cluster of confucianists, including Ogyu Sorai and his brother Hokkei (Kan), and they in turn developed a new Chinese-based jurisprudence with new legislative concepts and roles for law generally. Hokkei did a recension of die Ming penal code supplied with diacritics, and Sorai did a commentary to the code, explaining its meaning in simple Japanese; together these two works vastly increased die accessibility of Ming law to Japanese scholars especially after these works came out in a wood-block publication.

Also, Yoshimune put several other groups of scholars to work on other Chinese legal sources—the T'ang codes, the Ch'ing codes and the eighth century T'angderivative Japanese codes (ritsuryō). At die same time the largest daimyo, Maeda Tsunanori, built up his own extensive collection of Chinese legal sources and encouraged their study in Kanazawa han. Similar studies and uses of Chinese law are found in several han later, notably Kumamoto, Wakayama, Aizu and Hirosaki. Thus a minor reception of Chinese law in Tokugawa Japan has been heretofore largely overlooked between the major eighdi century reception of T'ang law and the massive nineteenth century reception of European law a millcnium later.

Political culture in India is not merely a reflection of community life-style. It is also the link between historical experiences of politics and model identities, on the one hand, and the needs of new political forms, on the other. Defined thus, it becomes not only an emergine national idiom, but also a cultural vector diat is gradually entering the community's life-style as a legitimate force of social change.

There are four historical stages in the development if the culture of Indian politics. The contemporary political culture also consists of four strands, each with its own psychological problems of adaptation and their typical cultural expressions. These strands are related, on the one hand, to the four corresponding historical stages and, on the other, to different levels of personality functioning in the model Indian. Within this framework, a new approach can be taken to the analysis of the major themes and symbols in Indian politics. It is possible, for example, to decompose some of the major themes into their stage-specific contents which, again, can be related to the larger adaptive problems faced by the community at different historical phases.

Vietnamese historians in North and South Vietnam have, in writings since 1954, given considerable attention to the problem of reassessing and interpreting developments during the nineteenth century. For historians in Hanoi the test of Vietnamese nationalism has been whether or not an individual resisted the French. Saigon historians have not applied such a restrictive standard of judgement. The approach of the two schools of history is exemplified in dieir respective treatment of two notable nineteenth century figures; the linguist and journalist Truong Vinh Ky, and the mandarin Phan Thanh Gian. Both these men are condemned by Hanoi historians for their failure to work against the French. Saigon historians are more ready to consider sympathetically the factors which led to these men acting as they did. Resistance-oriented scholarship along the Hanoi model presents a grave risk of distortion. In the case of Truong Vinh Ky it tends to disguise the extent to which his views on Vietnam's future development were echoed in the twentieth century. For Phan Thanh Gian condemnation of his failure to fight to the death against the French diverts attention from the extent to which his decision represented an important reflection of a widespread attitude among many members of the mandarinate.

The Sino-Indian boundary dispute provides an interesting test case to determine the willingness of mainland China, a revolutionary regime, to argue its position within the framework of traditional international law. Judging by Peking's official rationale for its claims in that dispute, one must conclude that its leaders demonstrated an awareness of the law's uses and limitations, and a willingness to rely upon it as an important support for its position. Thus, though the issue was viewed as a political question, Peking chose to argue that the correct answers to it should rest upon such legal or quasilegal considerations as: (1) the boundary had never been delimited through a process recognized by international law and (2) Chinese claims to contested territory were based upon historical evidence such as administrative control and official records. At the same time, China's diplomate skillfully interspersed nonlegal theses, e.g., that India was seeking to gain by the imperialist activities of the British, and underlined all of their propositions with a show of military strength on her southern frontier.

This paper is an attempt to assess the influences of the Jurchen Chin dynasty (1115–1234) on the Chinese political system, with emphasis on the bearing of alien rule on the establishment of a highly centralized despotism. The thesis is that the Jurchen solutions to the political problems arisen from the conquest situation seem to require measures of centralized control. During the initial phase of conquest, the political struggles between the bureaucrats and the aristocrats entailed the brutalization of the political process. Subsequently the need for centralized control led to wholesale sinicization. There are, however, several aspects of Jurchen rule in the formation of a centralized despotism: the establishment of a prototype of the provincial system, the abolition of important government councils, the monopoly of state affairs by a single administrative organization, the degradation of scholar-officials by inflicting corporal punishment, and the transformation of the censorate into an imperial instrument. The alien rules also adopted and modified the Chinese civil service examination system to stabilize their regime. The Chin, as a successor state of the Northern Sung, served as an important link in Chinese cultural and political developments, and transferred its institutions to later conquest dynasties.

In Thailand and Laos modernization may lead to replacing multipurpose synaptor roles (such as displayed by village headmen) by more specialized, or differentiated synaptor roles.

The observation of modern irrigation projects in Sayaboury, Laos supports this view. In one small irrigation system a new role of “lateral chief” has been created to act as a link (synaptor) between a small group of water users supplied from a common lateral and the extra-local irrigation agents of the national government. This specialized role links a subgroup of the village (a group of water users) with one unit of the government (the irrigation agency) and represents an initial differentiation of the multipurpose synaptor role of the village headman. That is, there are now two formal synaptor roles in the village in place of the formerly exclusive role performed by the village headman.