During the reign of Patriarch Timothy I (780–823), the Church of the East continued to expand into Asia. Metropolitans were consecrated for various places to the east of the Patriarchal see in Baghdad. One of these was the enigmatic Metropolitan of the Turks, about whose location scholars have disagreed for decades. This article seeks to answer the question “Which Turks received the Metropolitan appointed by Timothy?” by systematically examining the different Turkic groups living in Central Asia at the time. Textual and archaeological evidence is considered in support of the conclusion and the various motives and external factors that may have played a role in the conversion are discussed.

This article criticises the conventional interpretation of the first English translation of the Qing penal code by George Thomas Staunton, and proposes a different reading that stresses its role in promoting a positive image of the legal order in Canton on behalf of the East India Company. It suggests that in viewing the translation as a product of growing confrontation between two incompatible legal and cultural systems, our historical literature has radically diminished the scope of Staunton's comparative enterprise and his method of translation. Not only did Staunton exploit contemporary debates on penal reform to emphasise practical arrangements which overlapped across Chinese and British jurisdictions, he more importantly sought to valorise the Company's role in maintaining the jurisdictional status quo in what was patently an unstable and hybrid legal environment in Canton. However, the latter prerogative promoted a flattering and partial conception of jurisdictional ambiguity in Canton. It elided the Company's role in proliferating instability in Canton, and presented legal accommodation as a unilateral concession by the Qing from the severity of their own laws. This article addresses the intimate connections between the pluralist and pragmatic aspects of Staunton's project. It shows how, even though its pluralism has been forgotten, its pragmatic conceits concerning the origins of extraterritoriality have left a lasting impact on the historiography of Sino-Western relations.

This paper investigates the nature of the British and Foreign Bible Society's (BFBS) patronage of the translation of the Chinese Union Versions (CUVs), the largest Chinese Protestant Bible translation project initiated by the western Protestant churches in the nineteenth century. Drawing on André Lefevere's concept of patronage, it delves into how the BFBS served as a controlling factor of the translation of the CUV by examining the BFBS's financial support to the translation project, conferment of honorary titles to the translators and ideological influence on the translators’ choice of Greek text as the basis for the CUVs New Testament translation.

The problem tackled in this article is ambitious. Through examination of how certain fundamental teachings of the Buddha originated – the author argues that those teachings must indeed go back to the Buddha himself. Thus the author builds a chain of argument which creates hypothetical links rather than declaring ‘a priori’ that links and connection cannot be established.

This article argues that the Alagaddūpama Sutta, an important early Buddhist text, portrays the Buddha in the process of formulating his thoughts. If so it contradicts the myth that the Buddha awakened to the entire Buddhist Dharma on one occasion, and should be dated to the fourth century bce. Such an antiquity, and peculiar didactic structure suggests that the text contains authentic teachings of the Buddha.