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Published as a companion to and augmentation of the bibliographical work in Professor Jettmar's The Religions of the Hindukush (Orchid Press 2022) the present volume documents some 1200 additional references, both earlier works omitted in Jettmar's original bibliography and a large volume of subsequent publications on various aspects of Peristan studies, up to 2022. Thus, Cultures of the Hindukush after Jettmar provides the scholar with an ind...

In order to master the Thai language, one must become adept at reading Thai. Students who rely on books with phonetic transliterations of Thai will make limited progress. In addition, some sounds in Thai have no direct equivalent in the Roman alphabet, so even the best transliterations cannot capture all the nuances of the language. Learning to read Thai is the path to a more profound grasp of the language. This book is based on years of exper...

Growing interest in tantric Buddhism worldwide has resulted in an explosion of literature on the subject, despite this, there still remain many voids in our understanding of this complex practice, with its proliferation of gods and saints, bodhisattvas and demons. R. H. van Gulik was one of the pioneer Western scholars of the tantric deities, having completed a highly acclaimed doctorate on the subject of the tantric god, Hayagriva, in 1935, w...

Bertil and Hseng Noung Lintner, and their baby daughter, born enroute, spent one and a half years traveling through northern and eastern Burma, from 1985-87. Throughout their account, they describe, with rare and deep insight, the struggle by northern Burma's ethnic groups against brutal Burmese army rule, and record the decline and fall of the Communist Part of Burma. During their incredibly arduous 2, 275 kilometre trek, mostly on foot and...

A detailed first-hand account-and critical analysis-of the impact of the first contingent of American Peace Corps volunteers to live and work in Nepal, arriving in 1962 just following the King's seizure of absolute power and the tentative opening of the country to the outside world. The account not only explores the successes and failures of the volunteers in their efforts to have a positive effect on Nepalese development, but also the reverse...

Compiled in the 13th century, the T'ang-Yin-Pi-Shih is a record of 144 criminal and civil court cases judged in the courts of ancient China, spanning some 1, 400 years of the country's history, commencing about 300 BC. During this period, China's judiciary was chosen from among the ranks of the country's scholar-officials, who, dispatched to various parts of the Empire often with little or no prior training in the legal arts, fulfilled the rol...

Lao is the native language of the southeast Asian country of Laos, and is also spoken by much of the inhabitants of northeastern Thailand, an area known as Isaan. Mastering a language as different to English as is Lao may first seem to be impossible, with its strange looking script and its multitude of tones and vowels, the task can be decidedly intimidating. Compounding the problems, many native Lao language teachers don't fully understand ho...

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen was one of the most loved and respected poetic voices in modern Portuguese literature. Throughout her long career, her writing, like the life and history of her people, returned to and revolved about the sea. In this new anthology of 42 poems, in original Portuguese and English translation, the reader may sample the words of this eloquent yet approachable literary voice, drawn from works written over a span of ...

This field guide to commonly cultivated trees in Southeast Asia is beautifully illustrated by the author's watercolours, and will be an invaluable help for those interested to know more about the domesticated trees and fruits which one finds all over Southeast Asia. The book contains useful diagrams and explanations of the botanical characteristics of different groups of trees, key characteristics of each tree and maps showing their geographic...

To practising bonpos, Bon simply means the true religion of Tibet, while to Tibetan Buddhists, Bon refers to the false teachings and practices that were prevalent before Buddhism finally succeeded in gaining a firm hold on the country. The present study resulted from a period during which the author, a renowned scholar of Asian languages and cultures, was engaged in intense contact with practicing bonpos. It consists of the translation of fund...

Diplomat, Asian scholar, author, calligrapher, polyglot, polymath, passionate lover of life in all its forms, Robert van Gulik researched and wrote prolifically on a diverse range of Asian subjects, such as--but certainly not limited to--Chinese scroll mounting, sexual life in ancient China and the Chinese lute--an instrument that he also mastered as a musician. In addition to his more esoteric writings, van Gulik achieved world-wide popular f...

The lute, ch'in or guqin is one of China's oldest and most revered musical instruments. Records indicate that it has been a favourite of the literary classes for more than 2, 500 years, Confucius himself was a great lover of the instrument. Over the centuries, it became representative of the life, taste and pastimes of the Chinese literati. In addition to its contributions to solo and orchestral musical arrangements, a wealth of symbolic meani...

The artist Sappho Marchal was the daughter of the renowned French conservator of Angkor, Henri Marchal. She spent the early years of her life in Cambodia, surrounded by the magnificent ruins of the Khmers, and produced the present study at age 23. Her fine line drawings present the myriad details of ornament and costume depicted on the stone reliefs of Angkor Wat with a clarity that could not be captured, even then, on film. Since that time, m...

In this groundbreaking work, the author presents a full translation of, and commentary on, the Hevajra tantra, providing not only deep insight into arguably the most important surviving tantric Buddhist text but also placing the entire corpus of such works into a more accurate context. Snellgrove presents the Hevajra tantra, and tantric texts of this class, not as degenerate products of a faith at the time in terminal decline in India-as has o...

A new edition of a classic on Malay weaponry and war, originally published in 1936 in an extremely limited printing now virtually impossible to find. In addition to his work in description and classification of all sorts of Malay weaponry, Gardner spent significant effort in discussions on the origin of the keris (or kris) and its close association with occult beliefs among Malays, an interest of Gardner's which was to have a huge effect on hi...

Written to meet the need of students and teachers of the Thai language for information on the more advanced sentence structure of the language.Each point is illustrated with characteristic sentences written in both Thai script and romanized Thai, with easy-to-read phonetics and tone symbols for improved pronunciation.The book will be welcomed by anyone learning the language past the beginning level and is an essential reference work for librar...

Classical Tibetan, with origins dating to the ninth century, is the script found in a huge corpus of surviving Tibetan texts, mostly of Buddhist content, native Tibetans still employ this language, to this day when writing on religious, medical or historical subjects. The aim of this book is to provide a rapid introduction to the main elements of Classical Tibetan, so that students may begin to access for themselves the vast amount of written ...

Twenty five years after he left Vietnam and his Montagnard tribesmen, Australian Barry Petersen wrote this thoughtful story of his life among the Rhade and other ethnic groups of Darlac Province. He went there to train and lead the local tribes to defend their villages and homes against the Viet-Cong, this book is the story of the Truong Son-Tiger Men-who became the most respected and feared self-defence force in South Vietnam. But it is also ...

Historically defined as "Negrito" because they physically resemble small Africans, these forest peoples may have the most ancient ancestry in Asia. Captured for slavery, exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, nearly exterminated by disease and a cataclysmic volcano, they survive in a few places: Malaysia, the Philippines and India's remote Andaman Islands. Some are armed with spears and blowpipes, a few with cellphones and graduate degr...

The year is 1917. The self-acclaimed Emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, died the previous year and Sun Yat-sen returns from exile to form a new Nationalist government. China declares war with Germany, in support of the Western efforts in Europe-but China itself is on the brink of descending into feuding factions, and eventually its own civil war. For the moment, though, all is calm, and life goes on in the Middle Kingdom much as it has for thousan...