Showing papers in "Modern Asian Studies in 1972"

Images of the village community: a study in Anglo-Indian Ideology

Abstract: To a degree exceptional even in that age of historical recovery and sociological discovery, awareness of the village community was a creation of the later nineteenth century. With due allowance for the contribution of the German historical school, it was—within the English-speaking world—an Anglo-Indian creation. In England, save for a handful of ‘survivals’, the village community was a purely historical phenomenon, studied by historians; but in India it was an omnipresent reality, utilized by revenue officials in assessing and collecting the land revenue. From the efforts of these groups—historians and revenue officials—to comprehend substantially similar institutions two intellectual traditions derived. Originating in complete independence of one another, both traditions converged in the third quarter of the nineteenth century for a brief, intense, period of cross-fertilization—only to separate as totally again. What made their convergence possible was the rising popularity of evolution and ‘comparative method’—which insisted on the essential identity of the defunct English village community and the living Indian village, separate in space and time, but co-existent in the same phase of social evolution. Then disillusion with unilinear evolutionary schemes and the exhaustion of comparative method—its apparent inability to produce any fresh discovery—drove them apart.

Chinese Overlordship and Western Penetration in Maritime Asia: A Late Ch'ing Reappraisal of Chinese Maritime Relations

Abstract: Historians have attached a great deal of importance to Wei Yuan's geopolitical work, the Hai-kuo t'u-chih (The illustrated treatise on the maritime kingdoms), because of its use of Western source materials and its treatment of the West. While its importance as the first major Chinese study of the West should not be minimized, this should not obscure the fact that the Treatise was primarily a reassessment of the history of China's relations with the Asian maritime world, particularly South-east Asia and India.It was as much a rediscovery of China'spast involvement in this tributary sphere as it was a discovery of the West. This paper will attempt to describe the way in which Wei Yuan became involved in the problem of the West and to analyze and describe his view of the traditional Asian maritime world and the implications of Western expansion into this sphere.

Sun Yat-sen and the Japanese: 1914–16

Abstract: The First World War changed the pattern of international relations in East Asia. What had previously been another arena for the European power struggle became the cockpit for two regional forces, Japanese expansionism and incipient Chinese nationalism. The confrontation between the two, which was to last for a quarter of a century, began as a most unequal contest. Great power rivalry had enabled China to balance off her enemies and to maintain her status as a sovereign entity. But with Europe distracted, China was helpless, and Japan had a unique opportunity to pursue an independent expansionist policy. Instead of cooperating with England and the other powers in order to get a fair share of the China spoils, after 1914 Japan could make her bid for the grand prize, exclusive access to China's resources. Thus the European powers’ pre-occupation with mutual slaughter exposed China to extreme danger, greater than that which she had faced during the heyday of classical imperialism.1 But Japan was not alone in welcoming the European retreat. Japan’s opportunity was also Sun Yat-sen's opportunity.

Landlords and Lords of the Land: estate management and social control in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1920

Abstract: THE problem of controlling and taxing the countryside is one which has remained with all governments in Asia, or indeed in the whole developing world, up to 1972. Government has inevitably tended to be essentially urban-based, centred on military power-bases, whether they be 'Pacified Areas', towns or mud forts, backed by military power normally concentrated in these centres. Outside the towns, however, lived the great mass of the population, and the great mass of the potentially taxable wealth, and it is upon its ability to control the rural areas that the credibility and survival of any regime must ultimately depend. It is perhaps an indication of our preoccupations with the problems of pacification and control in Asian societies that increasing interest is being shown in the patterns of rural control, in systems of traditional deference, which are usually seen as surviving much longer and much more strongly in the countryside than in the towns, and in problems of income distribution through social structures based on land. In such a situation, then, the role of the 'estates'-of traditional and institutionalized systems of dependence and of control, of systems which were commonly used and hence studied by governments-is one which demands to be considered. The role of the estates, in particular as concentrations and concatenations of otherwise unconnected men, has become a fair field of study within Indian historiography. As we have become more deeply involved in the study of Indian history, we have been increasingly constrained to jettison, or at least to qualify almost out of existence many of the organizing principles upon which earlier generations of scholars have been used to base their discussions of society. Disaggregationl has

The limits of reformism: Wei Yüan's Reaction to Western Intrusion

Abstract: Three other articles in this issue of Modern Asian Studies endeavour to trace conceptual changes in the years surrounding the Opium War, and particularly those arising out of works appearing in Chinese on world geography and related Western knowledge. One such work, the Hai-kuo t'u-chih (Illustrated Gazetteer of Maritime Nations), has received mixed reviews since its original publication in 1844. Although read in its various editions by many late Ch'ing modernizers, it provoked sharp criticism on its suggested methods of handling foreign affairs and the outdatedness of its materials. Feng Kuei-fen (1809–74), for example, maintained that ‘only one sentence of Wei Yuan is correct: Learn the strong techniques of the barbarians in order to control them.’ Despite such criticism—generally less totally condemnatory than Feng's—this work not only influenced early modernizers in China but also proved popular among Japanese of the Bakumatsu period, illustrative of its importance in studies on initial East Asian reaction to Western in-trusion. The previous paper dealt with the Hai-kuo t'u-chih's perception of European imperialist expansion in South and South-east Asia. This paper will briefly analyze its significance in a different vein, namely through a more intensive examination of its place in the career and thought of its compiler, Wei Yuan (1794-1857). The acknowledgement that he was less typical than illustrative of his times must accompany the choice of Wei Yuan as a subject for study. A number of the scholargentry minority, he belonged to that even smaller group which rose above mediocrity by serious dedication to the political-intellectual roles traditionally accorded that class. He was specifically untypical in his combination of radical views on Confucian orthodoxy, intense concern for domestic administrative problems and finally relatively enlightened perspectives on the new Western presence in China. Though untypical, this very combination of unique qualities suggests Wei's significance. Tracing his relationship to domestic intellectual and political developments will provide a convenient approach to analyzing, again through this one individual example, the actual interplay between Western intrusion and conceptual change in mid-nineteenth-century China.

Vietnamiens et Minorités en Cochinchine Pendant la Période Coloniale

Abstract: L'histoire a legue au Vietnam meridional des particularites economiques, sociales et culturelles qui n'ont cesse de peser sur l'evolution de la nation vietnamienne.

Protestant Expansion and Chinese Views of the West

Abstract: Confrontation with the British during the years 1839 to 1842 jolted the Chinese into a more realistic perception of the wider world. Before the Opium War, the Chinese took little notice of the world beyond the traditional Chinese realm; during the course of the war China's inadequate knowledge of overseas countries proved to be a strategic disadvantage. In the 1840s, knowledge of the wider world was important to China's defense against Western intrusion, and a handful of Chinese scholar-officials who shared this view engaged in the serious study of foreign nations. A small but influential group of Chinese set out to expand China's knowledge of the West; they did so in the belief that this was essential to China's survival. The comprehensive accounts put together by Wei Yuan (1794–1857) and Hsu Chi-yu (1795–1873) and shorter works by other authors suggest the importance of this new perspective in the decade after the Treaty of Nanking.

The Myth of the Deccan Riots of 1875

Abstract: In the early summer of 1875 agrarian rioting occurred in the Bombay Deccan. The disturbances began at Supa, a market village in Bhimthari taluka of Poona District, where on 12 May an unruly peasant mob attacked the houses and shops of the local Gujarati moneylenders. ‘The combustible elements were everywhere ready’1 and the riots spread through the poor, eastern regions of Poona and Ahmednagar Districts. The riots were directed entirely at the village sowkars (moneylenders), to whom most of the peasant agriculturists of the area were indebted.

Innovation Adoption in Indian Agriculture—the High Yielding Varieties Programme

Abstract: Whilst reading agricultural economics for the postgraduate Diploma in Agricultural Science at Cambridge University, the author's attention was caught by two reports on recent developments in Indian agriculture. These were the ‘I.A.D.P. Third Report 1965–7’, and the ‘First Evaluation Study of the High Yielding Varieties Programme for 1967–8’. Although the information was generalized and the samples involved biased towards most successful areas, certain trends and conclusions emerged relating to the progress of innovation adoption in simple agricultural communities and the influences at work on the mechanism. Subsequent field work in north-west India provided firstly some of the detail lacked by the All-India statistics and, secondly, some insight into the problems faced by economically progressive districts of relevance to less developed ones.

The Rise of Business Corporations in India, 1851–1900 . By Radhe Shyam Rungta. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970. Pp. xviii, 332. £5. $16.00.

Abstract: cessions were too little and too late. By March 1969 the situation was getting out of hand—and the army withdrew its support from Ayub. On 25 March, Martial Law was declared once again. President Yahya Khan announced a 'caretaker' government and promised restoration of democracy. It was perhaps an unrealistic promise in the light of political reality in Pakistan. The ruling elite—army and civil service from a minority province— could not withdraw from the political scene without the very real possibility of its being radically modified, for East Pakistan could not be expected to tolerate the continuance of the threat posed by such an army. Moreover, the 1965 war had made it clear that East Pakistan's defence needs could not be adequately met under the existing arrangements. A constitutional solution based on the Turkish prototype (with the army in the background safeguarding national integrity) could not work for the same reason—the army was not broadly based. An impasse was inherent in the situation. Without parties willing to compromise no smooth democratic solution could be possible. Ayub's greatest failure was his failure to bequeath a workable constitution to Pakistan. He left a situation fraught with tragedy.

A Mid-nineteenth-century Discovery of the Non-Chinese World

Abstract: FOUR years after the publication of Wei Yuan's Hai-kuo t'u-chih, Hsu Chi-yui *2,t&i (I795-I873), while governor of Fukien, composed the preface to his ten-chuan history-geography of the non-Chinese world. A product of the immediate post-Opium War period, Hsu's ring-huan chih-lueh jit (A short account of the maritime circuit, I848) is another example of Chinese intellectual response to Western intrusion and the challenges of a new era.' Indeed, while Hsu and Weifagreed on the fundamental necessity to learn more about the outside world in order to protect China, the tone of their books, the ring-huan chih-lueh and the Hai-kuo t'u-chih, differed to such an extent that the former came to represent the views of Chinese 'moderates', while the latter did likewise for the 'conservatives'.

Effects of the ‘Green Revolution’ in South and South-East Asia

Abstract: The increasing use of the new high-yielding varieties of cereal seeds during the past decade has undoubtedly brought about immense agricultural and social progress in the developed world. Contrary to all expectations, however, the application of these technological innovations, commonly known today as the ‘green revolution’, has not resulted in similarly favourable developments in the underdeveloped countries, particularly of South Asia, but rather seems to have shaken the economic foundation of their agricultural populations and given rise to unexpected developments. Some observers still maintain that the very momentum of the green revolution will eventually be strong enough to bring about the gradual transformation of agriculture which is an essential precondition for development. Considering the structure of the prevailing agrarian systems, however, it seems more likely that rather than improving rural conditions such a transformation will primarily benefit the already privileged farmers while bypassing the bulk of the rural people and even reducing their chances of gaining a livelihood in agriculture.

Why Indonesia's Attempt at Democracy in the Mid-1950s Failed

Abstract: Before embarking on an analysis of Indonesia's attempt at democracy, a working definition of this term is required. This is particularly necessary in view of Herbert Feith's contention in his monumental work, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia, that the period of democracy stretched from December 1949 till March 1957.

The Russo-Japanese Agreement of 1907: Its Causes and the Progress of Negotiations

Abstract: Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 changed the balance of power in the Far East, and there was a shift from opposition between Japan and Russia to one between Japan and the United States. One result of the new tension between the United States and Japan was the conclusion of a Russo-Japanese Agreement on 30 July 1907. Financial and political difficulties within Russia and Japan also helped to bring about this Agreement.

The Vietnamese Élite of French Cochinchina, 1943

Abstract: It is well-known that the French colonial theory of assimilation, even though it could never be carried out completely in practice, implied the development in French colonies of an indigenous elite of people prepared to accept both French culture and a (subordinate) role in the running of the colony In French Cochinchina, this elite was especially important owing to the circumstances of the conquest, between 1860 and 1867, when most of the Vietnamese scholar-officials who had ruled the area previously, withdrew and refused to co-operate with the Europeans The French had no choice but to create an elite of their own, and begin to educate it in French ways The process has been discussed in detail in a recent study by Dr Milton E Osborne, which takes the story of colonial rule in southern Viet-Nam down to about 19051 During the first four decades of the twentieth century, this elite continued to grow and develop, so that by the 1940s it had become the key element in Cochinchinese society so long as colonial rule might last The purpose of the present article is to examine the composition and role of this elite about the end of the period in which France could take its presence in Indochina for granted

The struggle for sucession: rebels and loyalists in the Indian mutiny of 1857

Abstract: In the summer of 1857 British power throughout much of northern India was suddenly and violently subverted. Yet in spite of the fact that the uprising has perhaps commanded more attention than any other single event in Indian history the debate over its nature and causes still rages and 1857 remains a sensitive and highly controversial issue.

The Ayub Khan Era: Politics in Pakistan 1958–1969 . By L. Ziring. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1971. Pp. x, 234. $10.00, £4.50

Abstract: Okamoto proceeds to describe some of the influences to which the leaders were subjected: the press which had been whipping up a campaign to fight Russia; the expert pressure groups on foreign affairs who wanted Japan to take a stronger policy overseas; and, probably most important, the Kogetsukai, a secret alliance of high and middle ranking officers in the armed forces and officials of the Foreign Ministry. If the oligarchs were swayed by these groups in varying degrees, there is little evidence that their action was affected by the views of the political parties, the Diet or the anti-war groups. The leaders, conscious of Japan's limited capacity for a long drawn-out campaign overseas, entered the war in a surprising spirit of pessimism. When the war went so much in Japan's favour from the start, the people were buoyant; and the oligarchs, afraid of the effect that any bad news might have on the jubilant public, did not disclose it and kept their fears to themselves. The fact that it was Japan, at the insistence of her general staff, which asked in May 1905 for the good offices of the United States to bring an end to the war was treated as a closely guarded secret. Okamoto describes how the public called for the stifFest terms to be imposed. Bending before this demand, the government announced terms (including an indemnity) which it had little confidence in obtaining; the decision-makers knew that the peace conference at Portsmouth would be ' \"the time to reap the harvest\" of their previous secrecy in war and peace making' (p. 148). When the Russian peace negotiators were obdurate and refused to yield on the Japanese terms, the Tokyo government agreed (because of military desperation) to withdraw the most harsh of its demands. As the emasculated terms of settlement leaked out in Tokyo, a formidable movement calling for the outright rejection of the peace treaty developed, led by 'an indignant press and a few nationalistic agitators' (p. 195). The government ignominiously failed to cope with the resulting demonstrations, the most prominent of which was the Hibiya Park riot on 5 September. The oligarchs were more skilled in handling the international situation than their own people.

British Policy in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago, 1824–1871 . By Nicholas Tarling. Oxford University Press: Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, 1969. Pp. 236, £2.10.

Abstract: logic-chopping glosses, unsupported by actual historical evidence, occupy much of Dr Rungta's argument. At the opposite extreme from general analysis, the book is rich in specific examples and specific incident. But they seem chosen, as often as not, for picturesque effect, rather than to support more general theses. And none ever achieves the status of a case-study. Dr Rungta has written a book about the rise of the business corporation in India without ever actually consulting the records of a business corporation, or studying the working of a single company in depth. What the book lacks, accordingly, is any sense of how companies actually worked—from the inside. Reliance on official commissions of inquiry and newspaper reports has led to an excessive concentration on businesses that failed—on the minority of concerns whose affairs became a matter of public scandal. No fewer than three of Dr Rungta's chapters—and those probably the best chapters in the book—are devoted to waves of speculative flotation and collapse. But the companies that failed in the Bombay cotton boom, the tea mania, and the south Indian gold rush were less important than the companies which survived: and the companies that survived get much terser treatment in general chapters on the development of the business corporation.

Mishima Yukio and his Suicide

Abstract: Mishima Yukio killed himself on 25 November 1970 at the age of forty-five in the traditional Japanese warrior manner of seppuku after a vain attempt to incite a unit of the Self-Defence Forces to a coup d'etat. The event shocked and alarmed not only the Japanese but also people abroad. Many were reminded of the 1936 coup by young army officers, and some, especially abroad, became worried about a possible revival of Japanese militarism. But the jeering by the rank and file troops whom Mishima tried to rouse to action proves that such a possibility is very slight. The Japanese Government, including Mr Nakasone, the Minister of Defence, positively disapproved of Mishima's action. The Prime Minister, Mr Sato, was anxious lest such scandalous behaviour on the part of an eminent writer might tarnish the reputation of the country founded on economic prosperity. Nevertheless, nothing seems farther from the truth than the Prime Minister's statement that Mishima had ‘gone mad’. In every detail Mishima's suicide was an act calculated well in advance. In its political implications it was a challenge to the kind of stability and prosperity of present-day Japan of which the Prime Minister himself is the representative. Mishima detested the progressive or left-wing Japanese intellectuals, but he did not align himself with the Liberal Democratic Party either. Nor was he prepared at all to link with the right-wing organizations, in spite of the ultra-nationalism of his own Shield Society. Ironically enough, Mishima could have agreed with the dissident students of the New Left who played the leading role in the 1968–69 university upheavals.

Rykūkyu's tribute-tax to Satsuma during the Tokugawa period

Abstract: In 1609, Satsuma, at the southern tip of Kyūshū, conquered Okinawa (then called the Ryūkyū Kingdom). Throughout the subsequent Tokugawa period, Satsuma was said to have kept the Ryūkyūans in a state of virtual slavery by plundering the profits of the lucrative Sino-Ryūkyūan trade and imposing an excessively heavy tribute-tax on the native products. This exploitation of Ryūkyū's trade and native resources was reported to have been one of the important financial resources for Satsuma; and one that made possible Satsuma's vigorous political and military activities in the middle nineteenth century leading to the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In spite of such claims, no study of this topic has been made except those that have been strongly colored by the sympathies of the writer.

Democratic Theories and Japanese Modernization

Abstract: Looking back at the path of modernization Japan has taken in the last hundred years, one finds the most serious failure to be the lack of development of democratic political theories. In our evaluations of the ‘modernization achievements’ of Japan, this is usually the focal point of disagreement between Western and Japanese scholars. Often in the name of ‘value-free’ political science, Western scholars try their best not to mix the issue of modernization with that of democratization. The failure of democracy in pre-War Japan is usually considered insignificant, though relevant, in the discussion of the success of her modernization. More often the failure is obscured by the presence of some democratic theories and movements during the Meiji and Taisho period. In contrast, Japanese scholars tend to consider modernization and democratization as inseparable. They refuse to accept the so-called ‘objective’ approach of Western scholars, not on the basis of the old Comintern formula of ‘modernization means development toward bourgeois democracy’, but because of their emphasis on the qualitative output of a political system.

Political Stratification and Unstable Alliances in Rural Western Maharashtra

Abstract: Among the characteristic features of local and state politics in modern India are a tendency to reach decisions by consensus procedures and the instability of factional alliances. Thus, Mayer notes that the ‘dislike of an open vote is widespread in rural Indian society’. 1 As to the instability of political alliances, Bailey has observed that in Orissa political allegiances are apt to change rapidly and there is a quite bewildering degree of impermanence at the lower levels, a constant stream of new recruits coming in, while others drift away to other bosses or out of the system altogether. 2

Javanese Villagers: Social Relations in Rural Modjokuto . By Robert R. Jay. M.I.T. Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1969. Pp. xiii + 468, $15.00.

Abstract: change, so that they might formulate policies effectively geared to the sociological realities of Indian village life.' However, only the contributions of Beals and Mencher are likely to be of much use to India's planners. Beals's essay clearly details the ways in which factory workers employed in and around Bangalore have effected changes in their home villages. Of particular interest is Beals's discussion of chit funds. Informal village government was traditionally vested in a committee of elders whose decisions were said to require unanimous consent. Funds for activities managed by the committee of elders came from contributions from each household. As the villagers have become involved in urban wage-labour, however, the elders have been replaced as village leaders by the factory workers. The chit fund enables these new leaders to organize ceremonies and carry out other village functions in the absence of consensus and at the same time to provide a new source of credit to their fellow villagers. In her paper on changes in village structure in Chingleput District, Madras State, Mecher demonstrates that the response of castes to new opportunities varies with their position in the social structure. She suggests that developmental programs ought not to be channelled through the formal village government, in deference to the false notion of the unity of the village, but rather should be aimed directly at the sections of the population which are most receptive. Programs to raise agricultural productivity could be aimed at landowning groups such as the Vanniyars while educational programs might be most usefully aimed at Brahmans and at such low castes as Paraiyans who see in education their only hope for economic independence. However, Mencher ignores the fact that development programs are also political patronage and does not consider the feasibility of her suggestions under Indian political conditions. The other essays in the volume are only marginally concerned with the implementation of development programs. Berreman's essay does not deal with contemporary social change at all, but is instead an analysis of variations in language, dress, house styles and so on within what he calls the 'Pahari culture area'. The book has no bibliography and, aside from a few references to Srinivas, little mention is made of important recent studies of change in India. There are no references to much of the work of Bailey, to that of Epstein, Obeyesekere, Brass, the Rudolphs or to any of the recent work on changes in the Indian family. The book is unlikely to be of interest either to to social scientists concerned with India or to planners.

South Korean–Japanese Relations Since the 1965 Normalization Pacts

Abstract: Since the South Korean–Japanese normalization pacts of 1965, the long-sought economic and political cooperation between the two countries is on its way. The pacts planted the seeds of mutual cooperation between the two countries which had been hostile toward each other for more than a half-century, and the South Korean and Japanese leaders have expressed their determination that the future relationship between the two countries would be to each other's advantage.

Press Freedom and the 26th Century Affair in Meiji Japan

Abstract: For a little over twenty years the Meiji press demonstrated a remarkable degree of vitality, resilience, and strength of purpose in the face of severely repressive laws of which the most onerous and irksome were those authorizing the government to ban and suspend publications. When, in March 1897, the 26th Century Affair culminated in the passage of revised press laws eliminating that dreaded power, the new freedom was largely the product of leadership which came from the press itself, and particularly from that part of the press often characterized as ‘conservative’, ‘right-wing’, ‘nationalist’ or even ‘ultra-nationalist’.

Kin, Clan, Raja and Rule. State-Hinterland Relations in Preindustrial India . By Richard G. Fox. University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1971. Pp. xiii, 187. $8.00, £3.60.

Abstract: papers relating to the intervening stage of enquiry and formulation of first drafts, which have not hitherto been available for study. In the category of unpublished papers there is a great deal of interest, by no means least being a report reproduced in Volume III (pp. 217-34), by the Constitutional Adviser, B. N. Rau, on his visit to the United States, Canada, Ireland and England, October-December 1947, to discuss the first draft of the Constitution with experts in these countries, most of them very ready with advice. 'Whatever else you copy from our Constitution' urged President Truman 'do not copy our provision for mid-term elections'. Mr de Valera told him that if he had a chance of rewriting the Irish Constitution he would inter alia do away with proportional representation in any shape or form and he would also make the right of property guaranteed in the Constitution expressly subject to laws enacted for the general welfare. He also vouchsafed the opinion that four years was far too short a period as the maximum lifetime of a legislature, since ministers under a parliamentary system required one year to acquaint themselves with the details of administration and one year at the end to prepare for the next election. In London Cripps, alas, was too preoccupied to comment. The volumes are clearly arranged, though an index to the Documents volumes would have been helpful, and collectively they provide a full and fascinating account of the making of an exceptionally complicated Constitution. Their long-term value to students of political science and constitutional law and history is not in doubt; Shiva Rao, with those associated with him in this enterprise, has placed them much in his debt. It is, of course, the case that constitutions are somewhat out of fashion and the Indian Constitution may well come to be regarded as among the last products of sanguine, liberal, constitutional expectation. What is fashionable is not, however, for that reason necessarily unwise. As Palmerston wrote to the British Ambassador in Vienna in 1841: 'You say that a constitution is but a means to an end and the end is good government; but the experience of mankind shows that this is the only road by which the goal can be reached and that it is impossible without a constitution fully to develop the natural resources of a country and to secure for the nation security for life, liberty and property'. Shiva Rao, one suspects, much as he might deplore some other Palmerstonian sentiments, would echo these and for posterity he has placed on record the detail, as viewed in long historical perspective, of a constitution-making experiment which in itself is a substantial monument to the great age of liberal-nationalconstitutional thinking.

The Buddhist Revival in China . By Holmes Welch. Harvard University Press Cambridge, Mass. 1968. pp. x, 385. £5.75.

Abstract: 'the ethos of secular Burmese culture is worldly to the core', and its paramount values are prestige, especially prestige derived from wealth, charismatic power, and authority. (In a neat piece of scholasticism he juxtaposes these to suffering, impermanence, and nonself respectively.) He does not explain the cognitive status of this 'secular' value system; and of its relation to the Buddhist value system he says briefly that the former values 'comprise the desires of their id and ego', the latter 'characterize their ego-ideal'. 'The former represent what the Burmese are; the latter what they think they ought and would like to be—but aren't.' (p. 475) I see nothing peculiarly Burmese about the former; but at the end of a marvellous book Professor Spiro and I are in harmony.