The values and premises underlying the Chinese family system can be seen as an amalgam of several partially contradictory strains of thought, each with its own history and vocabulary. While ideas tied to the classical tsung model remained at the level of high ideals, seldom even emulated, notions related to the family (chid) and the continuity of the patriline were highly pervasive and would seem to account for much of the uniformity in Chinese family practices. In this article the ways these strains of thought reinforced or countered each other is examined through an analysis of texts written in the Sung (960–1279) period, a time of social and intellectual ferment when it was common to write on family matters with considerable candor.

The linguistic history of the Chinese of Java sketched here focuses on two periods of creative linguistic effort by the Chinese in the development of varieties of Malay/Indonesian. The first period is from 1880–1910, when the Peranakan Chinese—together with Dutch and Eurasians who were writing in Malay at the time—developed a literary language from Low Malay that was primarily an oral language with many regional and social variants. Soon after this period, the Dutch (and many Eurasians and some Chinese) abandoned Malay as a literary language in preference for Dutch. Only later, in the 1920s and 1930s, did Indonesian nationalists become interested in developing Malay as the national language. The second period of creative linguistic activity among the Peranakan Chinese is the period that followed Indonesian independence in 1945, which is characterized by the departure of the Dutch, the almost complete disappearance of the Dutch and Low Malay languages on Java, and the increased prominence of Javanese as the language of power and politics. During this period Peranakan of the Javanesespeaking areas of Java developed a Javanese-based mixed language (Indonesianized-Javanese) as their home language. The switch from a Malay-based to a Javanese-based language was not a radical change because the Peranakan community had been bilingual for many centuries, but it points out new social uses of languages already in their linguistic repertoire. This last period of linguistic creativity is significant because it is a break in the pattern of acceptance of another's language by the Chinese of Java, and it demonstrates their desire to create a distinctive dialect, a phenomenon reflecting the social reality of an unassimilated minority that has lived in the midst of the Javanese majority for centuries.

The author of this article examines the role of Sinhalese Buddhist deities within the long Sinhalese tradition of using Buddhism to support political authority. Extensive contemporary information on deity territories suggests that because state political integration involves territorial integration localized deities have both reflected and been used to bring about an integration of local people into state administrative structures. However, this integration is not brought about by having the territories of the deities parallel administrative units (which they do not); it is brought about by having people think that they do, think that the territories of the gods correspond level by level to the administrative villages, districts, and provinces. As the relationship between these levels and the state has changed historically, that is, when center-hinterland integration has gone from strong to weak to strong again, people's understanding of the pantheon appears to have changed as well.

The film Gandhi is one of several events that have recently brought Gandhi's ideas to public attention in India and the West. In this review of the field of Gandhian studies, the author looks at the literature that probes beneath the popular images of the man. The author identifies some of the landmark works in the field and assesses recent publications. He finds that in India, especially, the emphasis is on the application of Gandhian ideas to movements for social and economic change.