In this paper a unified account of the syntax of temporal phrases with the locative morpheme hou 後 followed by a NPtemp, a measure NP, is presented. Identical to bare noun phrase temporal adverbials, hou-phrases predominantly occur in sentence-initial/topic position and establish the temporal frame for the situation the predicate refers to; by default they refer to a point of time. According to the analysis presented, hou explicitly serves to relate one situation to a previous situation in the narrative; the NPtemp measures the interval, the period of time, elapsed since the previous situation took place, and accordingly the NPtemp is analysed as an appositional measure phrase. This analysis of the NPtemp yields an analysis of hou 後 as an adverbially employed noun which syntactically retains its nominal characteristics and thus permits the addition of an apposition. Additionally, the nominal analysis of hou is the only one which accounts for all syntactic variants of the hou-phrase in Han period Chinese.

This article will discuss two attempts at the romanisation of Indian languages in the twentieth century, one in pre-independence India and the second in Pakistan before the Bangladesh war of 1971. By way of background, an overview of the status of writing in the subcontinent will be presented in the second section, followed by a discussion of various earlier attempts in India to change writing systems, relating mainly to the situation in Bengal, which has one language and one script used by two large religious groups – Muslims and Hindus (in modern-day Bangladesh and West Bengal, respectively). The fourth section will look at the language/script policy of the Indian National Congress in pre-independence days, and attempts to introduce romanisation, especially the work of the Bengali linguist S. K. Chatterji. The penultimate section deals with attempts to change the writing system in East Pakistan, i.e. East Bengal, to (a) the Perso-Arabic script, and (b) the roman script.

In all cases, the attempt to romanise any of the Indian scripts failed at the national – official – level, although Indian languages do have a conventional transliteration. Reasons for the failure will be presented, in the final section, in terms of İlker Aytürk's model (see this issue), which proposes factors that may allow – or may not lead to – the implementation of romanisation.

This article seeks to explain the traditional celebration of Cold Food and some other springtime customs in the mid-Yangzi basin in central China. In these rituals the ancestors and their influence in the production of new rice were highlighted while, at the same time, social reproduction through women was temporarily suspended. Female generative energy was not allowed to compete with the creative force of the ancestors in the fields. Cold Food is seen as a trope on seasonal agricultural tasks. The myth of moral constancy, which accompanied the festival, was on another deeper level an iconic exploration of the preparation of the agricultural fields. Death was seen to propel life, ancestral energy being transferred to the living through rice.

This article uses archival material, including personal correspondence, to chart General Sir Ian Hamilton's changing attitudes towards Japanese nationals, Japanese military leaders and Japanese military personnel, during and after the Russo Japanese War.

The alphabet (rōmaji) has never been considered a serious contender for the national script in Japan, although at several points since the country's modern period began in 1868 supporters have made a case for its adoption on varying grounds, most notably those of education, democracy and office automation. Although such advocates have included influential scholars and bureaucrats, their combined intellectual gravitas has never been sufficient to allow their arguments for romanisation to outweigh the strong cultural traditions and ideologies of writing centred on the existing three-script writing system. Even today, in the face of pressures imposed by modern keyboard technology, discussion of the issue is not on the national agenda. This article considers the place of romanisation in Japan today and offers a short history of the rōmaji movement since the late nineteenth century.

This article examines the significance of Buddhism in the insurgency that followed the annexation of the kingdom of Burma in 1886, demonstrating that Buddhism was a critically important part of the Burmese polity and identity. Moreover, it indicates that opposition to the British after the full colonisation of Burma was not only instantaneous, but also fuelled primarily by Buddhist sentiment. This challenges the prevailing notion that anti-colonialism in Burma – Buddhist-inspired or otherwise – was a twentieth century phenomenon. Beginning with the pre-colonial era, the article explores the intimate connection between Buddhism, the Burmese polity and the national psyche. The critical importance of the Buddhist king is emphasised in particular. When the kingdom of Burma was annexed in 1886, opposition to the British manifested itself instantaneously in the form of rebellions and insurgency. This period, sometimes referred to as the “pacification”, has been often ignored in studies. The article, using British colonial documents, shows clearly the importance of Buddhist sentiment in these uprisings as a response to the abolition of Burma's last Buddhist king. Buddhist themes present in translated rebel proclamations, as well as the widespread participation of Buddhist monks corroborate this.

This special issue of the Journal has been given over to papers presented in September 2007 at Bilkent University, Ankara, during a workshop entitled ‘Romanisation in Comparative Perspective: explaining success and failure’. These contributions explore in a number of different historical and geographical contexts – Turkey, the ex-Soviet Central Asian states, South Asia and Japan – the factors that have influenced attempts at implementing script change and what explains the relative success or failure of these ventures. As İlker Aytürk points out in his editorial introduction, little work has yet been done on the comparative aspects of these processes of (attempted) romanisation. But, as he argues, the significance of the topic calls out for a framework to enable precisely this kind of analysis to take place, and so he provides one at the end of his own article, something, it is hoped, that will stimulate further discussion in other forums.