The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries tempted several European nations to exploit the opportunities for overseas trade by expanding their influence in distant seas and lands. When Vasco de Gama discovered a new route between Europe and South-East Asia during the last decade of the fifteenth century, Europeans increased their search for new colonies and for new trade routes. Like many other nations of the region the people of Balochistan also felt the impact of this new phenomenon. The Portuguese were the first European Colonisers to reach their shores.

In 1917, Kasai Zenzō (1887–1928) wrote With the Children in Tow (Ko o tsurete), a short story of approximately eleven pages in its original Shinchōsha edition. Kasai's work, paralleling the actual events that took place in his household from August 9th to 11th of the year of its publication, is exemplary of the shi-shōsetsu genre, I-novel or autobiographical narrative where the author recounts details of his personal life through a thin guise of fiction.

Javanese literature can boast a distinct genre of works about the adventures of wandering students/scholars, who travel about the countryside in pursuit of esoteric knowledge. Journeying and undergoing various trials and tribulations on the way is regarded in Javanese culture as an ascetic practice, preparatory to ultimate enlightenment. An early, pre-Islamic representative of this genre is the Kidung Subrata, dated 1541. The best-know examples, at least by name, i.e. the Cĕnṭini and Jatiswara, probably originate from the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the course of time these two stories were constantly reworked until by the beginning of the nineteenth century they reached massive proportions and were made into storehouses of encyclopaedic knowledge of all kinds of things Javanese. The so-called Major Cěntini, compiled in 1814 at the Surakarta Crown Prince's court, has hitherto received most attention. Quite a few scholars, guided by Pigeaud's table of contents, have tapped this source for information on many topics.

With this fourth volume Mme. Brunner-Lachaux completes her richly annotated translation of the influential eleventh-century book of rituals of the old pan-Indian Śaiva Siddhanta by Somaśambhu. The first of these volumes appeared in 1963, among the first fruits of the study of the Sanskrit texts of the Śaiva Siddhānta pursued by the French Institute of Pondicherry (hereafter IFP). Since then much has been discovered about the history of the development of the Śaiva Siddhānta (a great deal through the efforts of Brunner-Lachaux herself) and a number of its texts have seen publication, so that it is only to be expected that there should be a gulf between the first and fourth volumes (hereafter SP1, SP4, etc.). It is therefore excellent news that Brunner-Lachaux intends to produce an entirely revised SP1 (announced on p. lxv).