One of the most influential European printed sources on South-East Asia at the turn of the eighteenth century was the Scottish sea-captain Alexander Hamilton's memoirs. The picture he paints of the Portuguese communities that had existed since the period of Portuguese ascendancy in the sixteenth century is overwhelmingly negative. But a close textual and empirical analysis of his text shows that not only was he frequently misinformed in terms of the historical developments relating to that community, but that he merely conforms to a set of standard rhetorical tropes we can associate with the Black Legend, which had grown up in Protestant countries of northern Europe since the 16th century to denigrate Portugal and her achievements. This article urges that this key text consequently be used with far greater circumspection than has hitherto been the case.

The purpose of this study is to present a historical review of the Bible translation of Baptist missionaries in China before the publication of the Chinese Union Version (CUV) in early twentieth century, especially the significance of the Baptist translations in this period. This study will also discuss the differences in translation approaches and practices of the Baptists from other denominations.

The history of Chinese Bible translation by the Baptists started when English Baptist missionary Joshua Marshman (1768–1837) and his Armenian helper Johannes Lassar (1781–1835?) published their translation of the whole Bible in 1822 in Serampore. In the 1840s, the Protestant missionaries from different countries and missions decided to translate the Bible into classical Chinese with standardised terminologies for the names and terms in the Bible. This version was known as the Delegates’ Version and was the most important project of common Bible before the CUV. However, it uncovered heavy hiccup and disputes in translating, especially the difficulties in translating religious terms into Chinese. Their biggest point of contention was which, Shen or Shangdi, was the suitable translation of the word “God.” Furthermore, the Baptists insisted Shen as well as Jin (which meant “immerse”) for baptism, while the others recommended Xi (which meant “wash”). In the end, the Baptists withdrew from the translation committee and translated several versions in classical Chinese only by themselves between the 1840s and the 1870s. Until the early twentieth century, Baptist missionaries dedicated themselves to translating the Bible into various Chinese dialects.

Although the Baptists had excellent achievements in the history of Bible translation, they had only played an insignificant role in the project of the CUV and shared the consequent of the CUV after its publication. This paper aims to investigate the work of the Baptists in several aspects, including their translation approaches and problems as well as their significance in the history of Chinese Bible translation.

The literary and genealogical accounts produced at the Kachvāhā court of Jaipur, addressing the relationship between Aurangzeb and the Kachvāhās, post-date Aurangzeb. Three of these are introduced, one of them in Sanskrit, two vernacular. While all these writings are informed by archival records, they serve the end of glorifying Kachvāhā kingship as it had started visibly defying Mughal authority from the late 1660s. The last of these accounts was written in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Jaipur was a British protectorate, and reflects an attempt to represent the sum total of Kachvāhā Rajput ethos and history at the critical point when the Jaipur state was overhauled by administrative reforms.

When the Tang dynasty took power in 618, it inherited the multicurrency system of earlier dynasties. The zuyongdiao tax system, in effect from the start of the dynasty, required each taxpayer to submit taxes in grain, labour and cloth. At the same time, the government also minted coins, which constituted some 10 per cent of the total money supply. A persistent shortage of copper limited the number of minted coins the government could issue. Accordingly, officials tried to ensure that sufficient coins and textiles circulated so that both forms of money remained in use. They displayed no consistent preference for one form of money over the other but devised policies to encourage the use of whichever form was then in short supply.

Turkic Runic inscriptions, discovered in Mongolia during the second half of the 20th century and especially in the last decade, are remarkable. The Bombogor, consisting of five-lines, is one of them. This article is an attempt to re-read the mentioned inscription which was first published by Ts. Battulga. According to my proposed reading, the text was written on a tombstone which was erected in honour of a Turkish qunčuy (“princess”) who might have been married into the Karluk tribe.

The imperial bestowal, as a major way of distributing the Buddhist canon, profoundly affected the contours of Buddhism in late imperial China. But why did the inner court engage in the distribution? How did it choose the recipient from the outside world? How was it possible for an aspirant to the canon to win out among the competitors? These questions concern the dynamics and mechanism behind the diffusion of the canon. They also cast new light on the relationship between Buddhism and the state and local society by revealing how the two otherwise separated worlds interacted. This paper is intended to tackle these unexplored questions by examining the extensive bestowal of the Ming Beizang during the Wanli court (1573–1620). It first makes a survey, revealing how uneven the distribution was in terms of both time and region. It then explores the motives of the imperial members as patrons in the context of court politics. Its focus, however, is on the agents and elements working behind the selection of the beneficiaries, and how their interplays conditioned the influence of the canon in local societies. In the process, the roles of the emperor, court women, eunuchs, officials, monks, and local elites are all examined.

George Mak's article ‘Laissez-faire or Active Intervention? The Nature of the British and Foreign Bible Society's Patronage of the Translation of the Chinese Union Versions' p.171 paragraph 2; ‘On the eve of the Shanghai Conference 1890, in addition to Morrison's version, which had long been out of circulation by that time, the Delegates' Version was the only Chinese translation of the entire Bible.

In an unprecedented show of efficiency, workers of the New Delhi Municipal Corporation worked overnight on September 3, 2015 to change signposts of Aurangzeb Road to A. B. J. Abdul Kalam Road. This renaming had been decided on roughly a week earlier, prompted by a proposal from Members of Parliament from the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party). The move proved popular, but was followed by a degree of soul-searching in the Indian press about whether Aurangzeb's image as a villain is justified. Discussion of the figure of Aurangzeb in South Asian history has not abated since then, with scholars intervening in the debate. The popular reaction to such interventions has been equally contentious, with vituperative web-based responses too numerous to cite.

This article examines gender representation in early Chinese histories with a focus on Shiji 史記 (Records of the Historian). Presenting beautiful and evil women, rather than male rulers, as responsible for political crises is a long-standing practice of Chinese historiography. Previous scholarship contends that this practice began with such depictions in Shiji and thus stems from its model impact upon subsequent histories. By scrutinising the interplay between the two genders within royal houses, this article extends the scope of previous scholarly examination from women to their husbands, i.e. the male rulers. Comparison of the causation chains of political disasters as built in Zuozhuan 左傳 (Zuo Commentary), Guoyu 國語 (Discourses of the States), and Shiji shows that Shiji diminishes women's agency, describing them as neither the original cause of political crises nor a tool to shield rulers from criticism. Unlike its predecessors, Shiji presents political catastrophes as ruler-dominant consequences resulting from their own unrestricted desires and cross-boundary misbehaviour, explaining the rise and decay in history.

This article first briefly examines the textual structure of the Brāhmaṇa Saṃyutta of the Pāli Saṃyutta-nikāya in conjunction with two other versions preserved in Chinese translation in Taishō vol. 2, nos 99 and 100. Then it compares the main teachings contained in the three versions. These three versions of this collection on the subject of the Brāhmaṇas represent three different early Buddhist schools within the Sthavira branch. This comparative study of these three different versions focuses on three major topics: the outcaste, the dharmas that are good for a layperson, and alms. It reveals similarities and significant differences in structure and doctrinal content, thus advancing the historical/critical study of early Buddhist doctrine in this area.

This essay examines the theme of inter-religious translation in the context of early modern India. More specifically, it considers the prominent 18th century Sufi master and scholar Mirzā Maẓhar Jān-i Jānān's (d.1781) translation of Hindu thought and practice as reflected in his Persian letters on this subject. Through a close reading of the content and context of his translation project, I show that while according the Hindu ‘other’ remarkable doctrinal hospitality, Jān-i Jānān's view of translation was firmly tethered to an imperial Muslim political theology committed to upholding the exceptionality of Muslim normative authority. Interrogating his negotiation of hospitality and exceptionality and the notions of time that undergirded that negotiation occupies much of this essay. I also explore ways in which Jān-i Jānān's translation of Hinduism might engage ongoing scholarly conversations regarding the rupture of colonial modernity in the discursive career of religion in South Asia. In the Euro-American study of religion, many scholars have shown the intimacy of modern secular power and the reconfiguration of religion as a universally translatable category. But what conceptual and historiographical gains might one derive by shifting the camera of analysis from the colonial reification of religion to the inter-religious translation efforts of a late 18th century thinker like Jān-i Jānān who wrote at the cusp of colonial modernity? This question hovers over the problem-space of this essay.

The extensive documentary evidence collected and analysed in the previous studies in this issue suggest a preliminary conclusion that can be summarised as follows: from the collapse of the Han dynasty to the glorious days of the Tang dynasty, the peoples living in the Western Regions along the Silk Road used multiple co-existing forms of money – grain, cloth and coins – with one of these three items becoming predominant according to changes in political and/or economic circumstances. However, this multicurrency system did not outlive the political, economic and fiscal upheavals that shook the Tang empire from the mid-eighth century onwards. As far as the materials from Turfan and Dunhuang are concerned, the latest evidence for this monetary system is provided by a manuscript found at Dunhuang (P 3348 V°), already quoted in Arakawa Masaharu's article, which permits us to see how such a complex monetary system worked in real life once the silk shipped by the Tang government arrived in the Western Regions. In particular, a subsidiary account (P 3348 V°2 B) inscribed in this accounting report reveals how a local official called Li Jingyu 李景玉, who was vice-commissioner in the army stationed in that region, received his salary for the first semester of the year 745 ce.

ʿAbdallāh ibn Sabaʾ is a figure generally regarded as Islam's first heretic by Sunnī scholars and also vilified by Shīʿī scholars. In this article an anonymous, esoteric work known as Umm al-Kitāb is examined as it contains an exceptional narrative that adopts a strikingly sympathetic approach to Ibn Sabaʾ. It is also argued that the work's unique take on the Ibn Sabaʾ legend sheds considerable light on the date and elusive provenance of this early Shīʿī text.

This essay argues that the rise and circulation of large numbers of Sanskrit literary anthologies as well as story traditions about poets in the second millennium together index important changes in the ‘author-function’ within the Sanskrit literary tradition. While modern ‘empirical authorship’ and external referentiality in Sanskrit has long been deemed ‘elusive'by Western scholarship, the new forms of literary production in the second millennium suggest a distinct new interest in authorship among wider literary communities. This new ‘author-function’ indexed a shift in the perceptions of literary production and the literary tradition itself. Focusing on the famous sixteenth-century work known as the Bhojaprabandha as both an anthology as well as a storybook about poets, this essay further argues that the paradigmatic courts of kings like Vikramāditya and Bhoja (but particularly the latter), placed not in historical time but in an archaic temporality, became the mise en scène for the figure of the poet in the second-millennium literary imagination. They were courts where the finest poets of the tradition appeared and where their virtuosity could be savored and reflected upon by generations of readers.