For a long time students of China have held the view that ancestral cults formed one of the pillars of the Imperial state, that they were the backbone of family life and provided the ideological source for the political class. In a vague and general way this is no doubt true. However, from an anthropological perspective, the position of the dead in Chinese society is not well known. China is a vast country with a great variety of ecological circumstances and ethnic substrata, which have contributed to differences in ritual articulation. The most important of the regional differences may have been the divide between the rice-producing areas in the south and those producing wheat and millet in the north. China was sinicised in a slow process by the acceptance of hegemonic influences under shifting political conditions, and we must expect rich and diverse strands within the substrata lingering in the mix that we sometimes superficially designate ‘traditionally Chinese’. Furthermore, we must realise that there have been shifts in these ancestral cults through the ages, and that what was conducted in earlier dynasties might in some important aspects have been rather different from what went on in the later days of the Empire. In this article I wish to continue earlier work on the Chinese cult of the dead in terms of time – cyclical, calendrical and linear.

1969 was a time of some introspection for the architectural profession in India. The vision of bold architecture that Nehru had nurtured so personally was now in full bloom. It was, after all, a decade since he had urged architects to break the shackles of tradition in support of Chandigarh – an experiment to embolden the spirit of New India. There was a general sense of relief from professionally trained architects, because for them this political support meant that they could now do what they did best. Not out of choice, but training, they were freed from the burden of addressing tradition, and they could now address foreign design. This was also the time when many were ‘returning home’ after training in European and American schools, and were putting into practice what they had learnt abroad. The ‘foreign-returned’ were the ‘real’ architects who took upon themselves the task of educating their clients, and changing the face of India. They were ‘real’ also because only they had had first-hand experience of what was being taught from books in architecture schools all over India. With scholarship schemes set up by the Nehru government facilitating architects to study in America, it was there that many young architects went to complete their education. Once back they would set their euphoria in concrete and glass. And by 1969 there were already quite a few examples of American-inspired designs in the portfolio of Modern India, and its novelty was beginning to wear off.

In 1973 a cache of silk manuscripts was discovered in Mawangdui tomb number three in Hunan province. This was the first extensive collection of silk manuscripts unearthed from such an early period: 168 BCE, during the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 202 CE). Guodian village in the province of Hubei was the site of another exciting discovery in October of 1993. Here archaeologists uncovered a tomb they labelled M1 from 300 BCE in the pre-Qin state of Chu that contained texts written on 804 bamboo strips. These two tombs are separated by one of the most significant period-defining events in ancient history, Qin Shihuang's unification of China. Excavated manuscripts now bridge this historic divide. Some are early editions of major works known from the received tradition. Others were previously unknown having been lost for over two millennia. Of the received texts, the Daodejing has been translated into English based on each of the editions found in Mawangdui and Guodian. The only other text that appears in both of these tombs is “The Five Aspects of Conduct”, which will be made widely available to an English speaking audience for the first time at the end of this article.

Up until the British departure from India, in 1947, hundreds of Indian princely states succeeded in maintaining a semi-autonomous existence beneath the wide umbrella of British paramount power. These states, which were scattered over the whole subcontinent, ranged from large and imposing to tiny and insignificant, and were dominated by Hindu, Muslim and Sikh ruling elites.

This article argues for a radical revision of later Gupta chronology based on a review of the primary evidence. The paucity of dated material has meant that historical reconstructions of the period have been based on late-Victorian assumptions about the nature of society and kingship. Removing this ideological framework allows not only for a revision of chronology — a traditional historical concern — but for a new understanding of Gupta kingship and the constitution of state.