Within the last decade, many publications have appeared in South Asia (especially India) and North America on subjects relating to women. Scholars concerned with the study of South Asia have generally neglected these publications instead of integrating them into research and teaching on South Asia. This neglect results from a “false specialization” on both subject matter and scholars interested in research on women, which has led to a “purdah of scholarship” or segregation of the new scholarship on women. The reasons for this segregation include prejudice, the absence of an emphasis on family and kinship in current South Asia studies, neglect of research on Muslim populations, the complexities of gender in the Hindu tradition, and the nature of institutional support for research on women. Advocacy for women's equality is characteristic of the new research on women in South Asia, both by North American and South Asian writers. The core of the substantive argument presented in the article is as follows: Gender differences are among the fault lines along which the effects of major social, economic, political changes are distributed within populations. Gender relations are proving to be vulnerable in the face of rapid change. The increased consciousness of women's issues in South Asia is the result of accelerated changes within these societies which have affected gender differences and gender relations. Gender is increasingly understood to be a factor in accelerating class differentiation and in other processes of change.

New contributions to the research literature on women and gender in South Asia are reviewed under three headings: (1) “complementary” studies that highlight forgotten sectors of the population; (2) stocktaking assessments that summarize data about women and government activities; (3) “integrative” studies that aim to develop social theory and methodology. The final section of the review suggests new lines for future scholarship, particularly with regard to control over female labor deployment.

Although Māra, the Buddhist symbol of evil, has been the subject of a number of books and essays, little has been written about the numerous Pali and Sanskrit textual references to a plurality of Māras. In Buddhist literature there are passages, more characteristic of the Pali canonical texts, which can be interpreted as references to a general, often unspecified plurality of Māras, while other passages, more frequently found in the Sanskrit treatises, specify four Māras and designate a name for each. The purpose of this study is to show how the four Māras function as a summary formula for the diverse ways in which the term “Māra” came to be used, and following that, to consider the meaning this plurality of Māra symbols has for the Buddhist understanding of evil (pāpa).

Although India presents a scene of great local cultural diversity, in the study of religion the subcontinent may be viewed as a single large field of social action. Within this field new movements are constantly arising, whose practices and ideas interact with others and penetrate from one section of the subcontinent to the other, filtering across deep political and social barriers. Thus in ancient times Brahminical Hinduism spread south from the Northwest, and Hinduism and Jainism, originating in the Northeast, followed closely upon its path. In medieval times the various bhakti movements which arose in South India spread northward, but have continued to play an important part in the life of all regions. Similarly reform Hinduism, born under the impact of contact with the West, affects areas far from its points of origin.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries two Americans, E. S. Morse and N. G. Munro, did much to open Japanese eyes to dirt archaeology as one of the historical tools for elucidating Japan's past. Thereafter Japanese researchers published some English or German summaries on Japan's ancient remains and for a few decades Westerners wrote with much interest of new discoveries concerning Jōmon, Yayoi, and, occasionally, Tomb cultures. But Western interest was short lived and Japanese archaeology went out of fashion in Western journals for more than a quarter century. Japanese research went ahead, however, and has given rise to radical reinterpretations which have not found their way into Western language literature. My purpose here is to present briefly a review of the periods prior to the first flourishing of Buddhism in Japan and to offer some suggestions toward fitting these findings into the larger picture of Asiatic cultural development.

Since the early twentieth century, groups of Burmese Buddhist sorcerers and their followers have taken on the duty of guarding the Buddha's sāsana from colonial, ideological, and Islamic threats. Sāsana (broadly, the teachings of the Buddha and the institutions and practices that support them) and how it should be sustained in the face of its inevitable demise have been central concerns of these societies, expressed in both their textual and oral representations. To illustrate this tension between endurance and change, this article explores ideas of the life cycle of the sāsana and how ideas about its responsibility to wider communities of Burmese Buddhists became expressed through the intersection of sāsana and sorcery. Examining the ways these associations understood themselves to be protecting and propagating the sāsana through various means demonstrates how sāsana vitality gave their beliefs and actions a distinct collective and collectively ethical tone.

During the mid-1870s, fearing the legal innovations of a “civilized” state, geisha and their employers recast Tokugawa-era practices of civic engagement and educational attainment in the language of enlightenment. Proprietors built schools intended to transform geisha into productive and moral mothers, and geisha donated to local educational institutions and suggested that their own studies would lead to self-sufficiency and freedom. These efforts associated geisha with the values of productivity and enlightenment, although similar strategies proved less successful for prostitutes. However, by the 1880s, both geisha and prostitutes were increasingly denied access to education and excluded from ideals of enlightened femininity that were predicated on marriage. This article considers how a group of unlikely actors deployed the Tokugawa past to become civilized, and in the process promoted ideas about the purpose of women's education that would later be expressed by an icon of Meiji modernity: the “good wife, wise mother.”

Public health in China has become a global concern as a consequence of the outbreak and worldwide spread of COVID-19. This article examines the historical place of China in international and global health. Contrary to prevalent narratives in the history of medicine, China and Chinese historical actors played key roles in this field throughout the twentieth century. Several episodes illustrate this argument: the Qing organization of the International Plague Conference in 1911; the role of China in the work of the interwar League of Nations Health Organization and postwar establishment of the World Health Organization; Cold War medical diplomacy; and Chinese models of primary health care during the 1970s. These case studies together show that Chinese physicians and administrators helped shape concepts and practices of “global health” even before that term rose to prominence in the 1990s, and current events are best understood in the context of this history.

The Moros are those natives of the Philippines who are Mohammedans. They did not give themselves this name, nor do they use it among themselves; but they recognize it when applied to them by others.

Misnomers are often validated by time or history. The ancient Romans took a small community of the Hellenes for the whole population and called them Greeks. A Mediterranean sailor thought the New World was India and called its people Indians. In extreme western Europe the Christian Iberians, in seven bitter centuries, drove their Mohammedanized Berber cousins back to their native Mauretania, and in the process made Mohammedan a synonym for Moro, or Mauretanian. And so, although the appearance of the Iberians two-fifths of the world around in the extreme fringes of eastern Asia in the 16th Century was a remarkable feat, it was not strange that they called the Mohammedans they found here, Moros.

Since the end of World War II there has been a nation-wide burgeoning of academic interest in South Asia, that is to say, in India, Pakistan, Ceylon, and Nepal. The pioneering teaching and research program in South Asian Studies was established at the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 with substantial support from the Carnegie Corporation. This program comprised a balance of humanistic and social science studies supported by the teaching of the appropriate classical and modern languages of South Asia as tools of research. Concerted efforts were early made to acquire adequate library materials to support all aspects of the program. These efforts which involved direct contact with the highly disorganized Indian book trade were initially frustrating but eventually met with success. Problems of processing and cataloging followed on those of acquiring the books but by the end of the first decade Pennsylvania had what seemed then to be quite adequate library support for its pioneer program in South Asian studies.

All forms of nationalism profess belief in the uniqueness and value of their particular national quintessence. But not all nationalist sentiments germinate in the decay of a tradition convinced of the cultural superiority and universality of its values. Chinese nationalism did. It developed, moreover, in a context in which the bungling monopoly of power of the alien Manchus as well as foreign aggression constantly tempted its exponents to appeal to racial distinctiveness. And it matured amidst the frustrations of prolonged political and societal chaos surrounding the Republican period, which provoked many nationalists eventually to resurrect the old assumption that a country's greatness should be defined in cultural terms, and to reassert the conviction that Confucian values were cosmic. Tai Chi-t‘ao was such a pioneer nationalist, whose career in politics was spent trying to create national unity through revolution, and whose efforts as an ideologue were directed at defining national unity in terms of Confucian universals. This made him a “conservative revolutionary,” whose commitment to nation found expression alternatively in militant action and in rationalizations for action in the name of traditional values.

The interconnected body of stories about Ch'un-ch'iu-Warring States times, known to most Chinese and embodied in a wide variety of verbal forms both oral and written, was a secular mythology—secular because it concerned men acting in the datable past, mythology because it was invested with a special authority for the culture at large. In my study of the sources and transmission of one small part of this mythology, the matter of Wu Tzu-hsii, I conclude that in the period down to the Former Han regional epics and hero stories were important vehicles for the transmission of Wu Tzu-hsü's story and of other stories like it. This part of Chinese verbal culture underwent a profound transformation during the imposition of centralized national rule in Ch'in and Han times. The epic tradition gradually disappeared and the old stories that survived were infused with a new meaning by historians who were driven by what can only be called a didactic imperative. Thus, epic was overwhelmed by history—China's secular scripture. The early literary versions of the matter of Wu Tzu-hsü provide compelling evidence of this.

On December 4, 2016, Jatupat Boonpattararaksa, known by his nickname “Pai,” then a law student at Khon Kaen University in northeastern Thailand, was arrested and accused of violating Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code, or defaming, insulting, or threatening the king, queen, heir-apparent, or regent. Two days prior, he had shared to Facebook a biography of the new king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, or Rama X, who became king following the death of his father, Bhumipol Adulyadej, Rama IX, on October 13, 2016. The BBC Thai biography was candid and highlighted Vajiralongkorn's string of wives, his four abandoned sons, and his conferral of a military rank on his pet dog, as well as his recent bike rides for charity (BBC Thai 2016). Over 2,600 people shared the BBC Thai link, but Pai was the only person to be arrested in December 2016 and the only person to be prosecuted to date (TLHR 2017a). The complaint that led to Pai's arrest was filed by Lieutenant Colonel Phitakphon Chusri, a Khon Kaen–based soldier who has followed him closely.

China's trade and financial surpluses, exchange rate, and currency reserves make headlines, daily, around the world. As such, it is more imperative than ever to understand the inner workings of currency policy in China. Yet the exercise of power and decision making in these areas has received surprisingly little attention in Chinese politics, political economy, and, arguably, economics.

The four articles in this “Catastrophic Asia” collection, while showcasing distinct disciplinary approaches to the subject of what anthropologist George E. Marcus (1994) might identify as “technopolitical” catastrophes, are united in the attempt to uncover the sociopolitical resonances of “manmade” damage in what we take to be regional Asia. In his book Technoscientific Imaginaries, Marcus recognizes that science is deeply political and already embedded in events. In this special section of JAS, anthropologists join with scholars in the physical and natural sciences to apply this idea to catastrophic phenomena, continuing a transdisciplinary conversation that began in April 2014 at the Catastrophic Asia Symposium at the University of Colorado. Here, I contribute to this transdisciplinary enthusiasm by sharing with readers of an Asia-focused journal my own perspectives on catastrophe as a scholar of Brazil and a cultural anthropologist interested in medical anthropology and critical science studies. Specifically, I consider how experts working on issues related to the Angra dos Reis nuclear energy plant in Brazil—the site of my current research—viewed and discussed the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown of 2011. By reading the current articles through the lens of my own research, I seek to situate catastrophe within a broader anthropological literature on environmental toxicity.

This comment on Leon Hollerman's stimulating article on international economic controls adopted during the Occupation of Japan focuses on his thesis that a contradiction existed between SCAP's professed policy and its actions. After a brief discussion of some problems of Occupation research and the need to integrate the period more fully into Japanese and American history, the comment attempts not to challenge Hollerman's thesis but to explore it in other spheres of SCAP's activities. It is argued that the inconsistency noted by Hollerman ran through many Occupation reform policies, and that its origins are to be found in the sharp divergence of views among American policy makers in the summer of 1945 concerning pre-war Japan and Japanese militarism, and different assumptions about the extent of change necessary to achieve American objectives in the postwar period.

After her disastrous defeat by Japan in the war 1894–95, China turned tardily to introduce such economic reforms as would facilitate her defense. She was pressed by concession hunters of many nationalities, who desired economic and political advantages which she was nearly helpless to withhold. Obliged to look abroad for capital to finance needed railway construction, Chinese leaders at the same time saw their empire's dominions threatened by their potential creditors: by Russia in Manchuria, by France in the South, by Germany in Shantung, by Japan in Fukien, and by England in the Yangtze Valley. That Americans claimed no political accommodations in return for monetary advances was an inducement to the Chinese to seek money in the United States. Furthermore, in the railway field, Americans had gained valuable experience through the construction of their own great transcontinental lines.

Independence was an old question in Philippine-American relations, free trade a middle-aged one, and sugar production a very young one when all three converged in 1929. They remained tangled until an independence bill, a redefinition of Philippine-American trade, and the combined limitation and allocation of Philippine sugar production straightened them out again by 1935. The struggles of the intervening years involved every phase of American colonial policy and every phase of Philippine public life. Here I single out for examination the Philippine place in America's sugar market and the place of sugar in the Philippine political economy.

The historian and the philologist who study the written record of China's past in different ways and to different ends both face the problem of intractable Chinese texts. The mutual sympathy that this engenders is not unmixed with complacent condescension on the part of each toward the way the other goes about solving questions that are the concern of both, especially in the realm of translation. The historian's habit of translating the names of offices functionally (Imperial Chancery rather than Sanctum of Penetralian Scriptures for chung-shu sheng) and of simply not translating such terms as era names (nien-hao) outrages spirited philologues, who declare that the characters of which these era names are composed are words with “very transparent meanings” which can and should be captured in translation. Some years ago, having been impressed with this argument, I decided to try to translate the name of an era I was studying. What happened was that my search led me to a philologically sound, but, as it turned out, entirely erroneous interpretation.