Asian Literature

Reviewed by SAN DUANMU, University of Michigan 1. Chinese morphology Morphology deals with two main problems: the definition of the morpheme and the inflection and derivation of words. In Chinese the morpheme mostly corresponds to an orthographic character (a single syllable), and there is no apparent distinction between roots and affixes. Thus, Chinese presents a special problem: the notion of the word is very hard to define, and without it there is no way to study derivation or inflection (this is not to imply that that there is no problem in defining the morpheme or the word in languages like English; I will return to this issue below). It is also worth noting that, although the linguistic tradition in China dates back to the earliest written records, the notion 'word' did not exist in the Chinese vocabulary until it was translated from western grammar in the 20 th century. The properties of Chinese have given rise to two views. According to one, languages can be different. Some languages have morphology, such as English, and some do not, such as Chinese. Similarly, some languages have the category word, and some do not. According to the second view, all languages are fundamentally similar. All of them have morphology, and all of them have the category word, if we study them carefully. The first position is the conventional wisdom. The second position is what Packard takes. (There is also a third view, which is not considered in Packard's book and so will not be considered here: all languages are fundamentally similar, and in none of them is the word a real grammatical category.) I want to say at the outset that Packard's book is a remarkable achievement in a very difficult field. I will review the contents of the book first and offer some comments.

This presentation is a brief introduction to Edwin Thumboo's postcolonialist poetry and the sociohistorical background of Singapore which gives provides it with context.

A short deconstructive analysis is undertaken of Thumboo's poem, Ulysses by the Merlion (1979), with insight from Said's theory of orientalism (and the derivative "re-orientalism").

While Thumboo strives to reject the orientalist poetic paradigm of the colonial era through his poetry, he unintentional reperpetuates them and fails to escape them through the reflection of the vague "East" and "West" in his work.

Xiangzi is the metaphoric camelthe camel, Xiangzi. For Lao She, to introduce Xiangzi's tragic fate entails a comparison between camels and his life. Both, needless to say, share the harshest environment known to mankind: as one bears the deathly condition of the desert heat, the other suffers the socioeconomic realities of Chinese society in the 1920s. This association between Xiangzi and the camels is first introduced in the novel when Xiangzi is abducted by a band of soldiers who, after stripping him off his belongings including his rickshaw, are leading camels as they wander in unfamiliar land. The presence of camels, however, awakens Xiangzi's familiarity of the rural area. As he succeeds in escaping from the soldiers one night, Xiangzi brings the camels with him, though not knowing what to do with them.

Bjarke Frellesvig describes the development of the Japanese language from its recorded beginnings until the present day as reflected by the written sources and historical record. Beginning with a description of the oldest attested stage of the language, Old Japanese (approximately the eighth century AD), and then tracing the changes which occurred through the Early Middle Japanese (800-1200), Late Middle Japanese (1200-1600) and the Modern Japanese (1600-onwards) periods, a complete internal history of the language is examined and discussed. This account provides a comprehensive study of how the Japanese language has developed and adapted, providing a much needed resource for scholars. A History of the Japanese Language is invaluable to all those interested in the Japanese language and also students of language change generally.

Literally named light or torch, The Tomoshibi captures a prevailing concept in contemporary Japan that establishes this culture of longing for a past, to retrace steps back to a more distant time in hopes of discovering the country’s roots, and reminiscing the days of old. In this small bar nostalgia permeates throughout, placing the patron in a trance of calmness; one where childhood dreams, fairy tales, and miracles abound. The Tomoshibi is almost invisible in the commercial district of Tokyo, yet its patrons and staff respect it and treat it like a sanctuary.

Part of the "Shortlists" series from Asia Art Archive. Shortlists offer thematic selections from AAA’s Collection, including overviews and annotations by invited contributors. The following Shortlist by Display Distribute focuses on zine and independent publishing cultures in East and South East Asia, and departs from a Western-dominated narrative by locating alternative trajectories in the region, as developed through their practice-based perspective called the “Semi-Autonomous Zine.”

Padmasambhava is remembered in Tibetan tradition as the teacher of the Tibetan emperor, Tri Songdétsen (khri srong lde brtsan; 742–c.800), and for spreading Esoteric Buddhism at the apex of the imperial period (7th–9th centuries) – an era increasingly eulogized as a “golden age” of Dharma translation, conversion and practice. The tradition of his religious biography has its roots in southern Tibet and it matured within the Nyingma (rnying ma) tradition, which claims to possess an unbroken lineage dating back to the imperial period. However, this biographical tradition has exerted a huge influence on later historiography across the traditions, as well as the ecumenical and foreign policy of the Dalai Lamas. Over time, Padmasambhava came to be known by many names and in the guise of numerous manifestations. The surviving representations in literature and art reflect only a fraction of the multiple traditions and practices existing at one time or another. Yet mythological themes common from the earliest to the latest sources on Padmasambhava include his role in pacifying and converting local worldly deities, especially in the Himalayas; his status as a cultural hero of tantric ritual; and his preference for highly advanced forms of Esoteric Buddhism. The biographical and iconographical traditions on Padmasambhava create not just another saint, but the founder of a religious lineage and embodiment of tantric Tibetan Buddhism akin to the Buddha and founders of other world religions.

Probabilmente perché in Italia mancano scuole a livello universitario idonee a stimolare – come avviene per l'India, il Tibet, la Cina, il Giappone, per non citare che i paesi che più richiamano l'attenzione dei nostri orientalisti – l'interesse e lo studio della Birmania, delle sue genti, della sua civiltà, è già arduo attendersi di reperire, anche nelle migliori biblioteche, un minimo di opere fondamentali per iniziare una ricerca seria nel campo della birmanologia. Per ovviare a questa carenza, altrimenti inspiegabile, ho pensato di far cosa utile pubblicando la bibliografia che segue per offrirla al lettore interessato a questi studi, perché in poco tempo possa avere a disposizione un panorama bibliografico ch'io ho potuto ottenere soltanto a prezzo di non pochi anni di ricerche, soprattutto all'estero, spesso per la cortesia di autorevoli amici che mi hanno inviato a prestito opere della loro biblioteca o fornito utili indicazioni per poterle consultare.
Mi sembra, oltre a ciò, che in lavori simili non esista un corredo bibliografico così ricco e, credo, anzi, che molte opere qui citate siano state talvolta del tutto trascurate, forse perché ritenute superate dal tempo, mentre a parer mio, sono da ritenersi basilari per uno studio documentato.
Perciò mi auguro che il seguente “contributo ad una bibliografia generale sulla Birmania” sia accolto come il coronamento di tutto il lavoro, addirittura la base di esso.

Renzo Carmignani,  1971 “Birmania storia arte civiltà”: 303

This article views the historical phenomenon of “Asianism” through the critical lenses of network and fantasy. A chance encounter in the late 1880s between José Rizal and Suehiro Tetcho offers one snapshot of an early link in the “Asianist” network. The article explains how and why that link gave rise to fantasies about Asianist solidarity on the part of Suehiro as seen particularly in the comic travelogue Oshi no ryoko (1889), but not on the part of Rizal. It also looks at the historical trajectory taken by Asianism, and the different kinds of “social daydreaming” and projects encoded by subsequent scholarly and popular accounts of the Rizal-Suehiro meeting.

This paper traces Hindu-Sanskrit influences in precolonial Philippine literature; examines intangible elements such as superstitions and filial piety in ancient literary forms; and discusses their influences on regional literatures particularly in the literary traditions of Muslim Philippines. CABRERA, Jaime-Seminar in Philippine Literature 1

This article describes the impact of the Internet on contemporary Vietnamese-language poetry.1 In the early 21st century, the Vietnamese literary landscape regained its momentum after its decline of the Đổi Mới (Renovation) period that began in 1986 with the boom of online literary magazines such as talawas, Tiền Vệ (Avant-garde), Da Màu (Colored Skin), eVăn, and others. As a form of deterritorialization, these online literary magazines opened a transnational space for Vietnamese literature, challenging orthodox censorship while competing with traditional forms of publishing under the control of the state. These journals created a carnivalesque playground for avant-garde poetry, which not only questioned the definitions and conventions of literature but also inspired political resistance. Since 2010, the state’s censorship has placed restrictions on these poetic experiments, causing their decline. Nonetheless, it is necessary to review what the Internet has contributed to the development of Vietnamese poetry while considering the possibilities and limitations of avant-garde poetry in online Vietnamese literary magazines.

I began this study and my graduate school work with Professor César Braga-Pinto"s class on friendship and community which led me to my own project. I completed this journey because of his unflinching support throughout my time at Rutgers. To him, I owe the biggest thanks. Prof. Abena Busia shared her intellectual and creative passions with me all the while leading me to unraveling knots in my project. I owe her for her rigor, generosity, and support. A mere thanks does not do justice to the enormity of her affection and tutelage. Prof. Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui always shared texts and advice at crucial moments. Conversations with him are fused with light, in terms of acuity and hope. Prof. Sonali Perera introduced me to the right texts at the right time. Since these texts are longtime companions now, my debt to Sonali continues. I consider myself fortunate to have studied under such a remarkable committee. Prof. Alessandro Vettori provided the administrative acumen and supervision, shepherded me towards completion, and reminded me of the felicity underpinning all such undertakings. Thanks are due to the following faculty for advising me at key moments in my graduate studies: Prof.

Naturalist, translator, littérateur, and political activist, Minakata Kumagusu, in his many endeavors, offers an intriguing series of parallelisms with patterns of non-linear development and network relationships found in the field of study that was his primary focus: botany, more specifically mycology. In contrast to models of cultural and political development imported from the West during the Meiji Restoration and extended during the Showa and Taisho eras, and the strong orientation toward centralized vertical hierarchy that in Japanese culture and governance of that period, Minakata offers an understanding in terms of dispersed non-linear networks. As botanist, folklorist, and environmental activist, Minakata refused engagement with academic and governmental institutions, conducting his life and work in the remote Kii Peninsuala. In doing so, he engaged with a variety of significant horizontal networks: elite aristocratic networks, demotic press networks, ascent pan-Asian political networks, domestic folkloric and literary networks, and international intellectual networks. He argued forcefully against the monocultural tendencies of that period, providing an example of the ways in which understandings of ecological and physical cultures and the corollary social, intellectual, and spiritual cultures arising from that base validate cultural and political counter-narratives that might otherwise be seen as subversive and alien by centralized institutions and those beholden to those institutions. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Though it has felt at many times like a very solitary pursuit, the truth remains that without the kindness and support of many other people, I would not even have approached completion. First and foremost, I must thank my parents, who made every effort to insure that I grew up surrounded by books, trees, and high expectations. For the gesture of kindness to a small boy that seeded my interest in Japan, my father's colleague, Jun Okasaki. As my instructors in Columbia's Department of East Asian Languages and Culture later taught me, "On no shiso wa, yama mo takai, umi mo fukui." I hope that this in some ways repays his kindness and their efforts.

Desde o século 19, as abordagens orientalistas sobre a literatura asiática criaram um paradigma literário marcante: os 'clássicos do Oriente' - ou, grosso modo, quais eram os livros 'orientais' mais importantes para serem lidos e que permitiram, por conseguinte, acessar e compreender a 'mentalidade oriental'. Obviamente, esse ponto de vista foi construído numa época em que pouco se conhecia as literaturas asiáticas, e o trabalho de tradução apenas iniciava.
Atualmente, esse referencial deveria estar superado. Os 'clássicos do Oriente' já foram ultrapassados por um grande número de traduções de textos asiáticos, e hoje é possível ler a tradução de um romance chinês apenas um ou dois anos depois dele ser lançado.
Todavia, gostaríamos nesse texto de discutir a noção de 'clássicos orientais' como um instrumento pedagógico de abertura para os estudos asiáticos - ao menos, no campo da história, literatura e filosofia.

Rong Wongsawan (1932-2009) was a major Thai writer during the late 20th century. He wrote primarily about social life in his native Thailand, but one of his favorite subjects was California where he lived, wrote, and bartended in the 1960s. The story presented here is about his trip to California in 1976 to show his new wife Malee where he had spent so many happy years. Published in Thai in 1978, On the Back of the Dog is a description of how a Thai writer viewed California of that era. As he points out early in the book, behind his observations are questions: Why are the Americans the way they are? Why are issues such as father-son relationships so rancorous, race relations so poisonous, attitudes toward money so greed-focused, and advertising so preposterous, especially for Thai sensibilities? Thus, in writing about San Francisco in particular, Rong is also writing about Thai culture. This article introduces Rong Wongsawan's writing to an English-speaking audience. Rong spoke idiomatic English and was well versed in American literature. However, Rong's own writing was almost completely in Thai and addressed only a Thai audience. Yet, he highlights issues of American culture and society which are of enduring interest. Presented in this article are extended translations of his writing from On the Back of the Dog, including vignettes involving a chicken executive, the tensions between white and black, actor Peter Fonda, and even Jack London's views of the great San Francisco earthquake. President Kennedy and Linda Lovelace make appearances, too. The issues Rong raises are understood in the context of Thai Buddhism and karma, Thai views of family and race. Rong Wongsawan (young man!) was an important Thai writer from the second half of the 20th century. 1 His published work began in the 1950s, with a photo-essay of the people living in Bangkok's garbage dumps, and continued until his death in 2009. Through it all, he signed his name as "young man!" in the belief that he had stopped aging at age twenty-eight. As with all great writers, Rong's work dealt with the human condition as he 1 There are few English language sources about Rong Wongsawan's life, except for an obituary in The Guardian newspaper in 2009, and an analysis of his early book Soi sanim (Unwilling to Endure) in Janit Feangfu's (2011) PhD dissertation. While Rong used this English spelling for his surname, his family now prefers Wong-Savun.

Translating Novels in Romania: the Age of Socialist Realism. From an Ideological Center to Geographical Margins. This article uses quantitative research methods to explain the situation of novel translation during the first decades of communism in Romania. The widespread ideas about the period imply that realist-socialism was a univocal ideology that did not permit real cultural development, as it happened in Western countries. However, as the statistics on literary translations in Romanian during the 1940s and the 1950s show, this was one of the first periods of reevaluation for cultural peripheries. Even though it was a result of a strong propaganda mechanism, this kind of cultural program puts a minor self-colonizing culture " as theorised by Alexander Kiossev, " in front of an impressive international diversity. The main objective of this article is to discuss the morphologies of novel translation during socialist-realism from an objective, quantitative point of view. REZUMAT. Traducerea romanelor în România: Epoca realismului socialist. De la centru ideologic la margini geografice. Acest articol foloseşte metodele cercetării cantitative pentru a explica situaţia romanului tradus în primele decenii ale comunismului românesc. Viziunile cu circulaţie largă asupra perioadei tind să înfăţişeze realismul socialist ca rezultat al unei ideologii univoce care nu a permis o dezvoltare cultural reală – asemănătoare ţărilor vestice. Dar aşa cum reiese din statisticile făcute pe traducerea romanului în anii '40 şi '50, această perioadă a fost una dintre primele care au reevaluat periferiile culturale. Deşi venea ca rezultatul unui program propagandistic intens, acest tip de program cultural a pus o cultură mică, autocolonială, faţă în faţă cu o imensă diversitate cultural internaţională. Scopul principal al acestui 1 Ştefan Baghiu is an MA student at Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. He has published several articles in very influential Romanian cultural journals: Cultura, Vatra, Steaua, Familia, Echinox, Trasilvania. He is interested in the policies of contemporary and recent literatures, particularly in Romanian literature during the communist and the post-communist age.

sources alone.) In reality, any reliable intertextual study based on Mahāyāna Sūtras might be several decades away and may require the aid of computers, in addition to the sort of modeling coming out of the digital humanities, to deal with the multiple languages in which Mahāyāna Sūtras are preserved and to sort through masses of literary data. But one does not need to read through every Mahāyāna text to be able to identify patterns. Even a casual acquaintance with them makes it abundantly clear that they repeat themselves and share a great deal of material. Given the fact that Mahāyāna Sūtras, like most Buddhist literature, tend to use similar vocabulary and abound in common formulas, repetition, tropes, numerical lists, and so on, these texts share almost as much as they do not. In this light, it is probably prudent to view Mahāyāna Sūtras as products of related religious communities, not as the literary works of individual, "creative" authors. 1 A thorough

José Rizal, rightfully called the First Filipino, is the only author to have written an entire nation into being. His Noli Me Tangere is considered the Bible of a nation and helped inspire the 1896 Philippine revolution. The novel is not just an indictment of the ills of a nineteenth-century Spanish colony, but also a moving critique of power, whether wielded by the tyrant or the slave.

This bilingual sesquicentennial edition reproduces the edicion principe (first edition) in its entirety. Philologist Isaac Donoso has supplemented it with over 1,200 notes on both the published Berlin edition and the original manuscript, highlighting Rizal's additions, deletions and emendations, including definitions of filipinismos and literary allusions replete in the work.

The original Spanish text has been printed in parallel with Charles Derbyshire's classic English translation—now in its third edition. Expurgated passages have been restored, thus carefully maintaining its fidelity to Rizal's text. The textual lines of the novel have been consecutively numbered to serve as a tool for future scholars in establishing a definitive concordance. This collector's delight also contains an extensive bibliography, tracing the history of its manifold translations and editions. Juan Luna's original and evocative illustrations accompany the text.

This book is complemented by Rizal scholar Ambeth Ocampo's introductory essay on the history of the Noli's publication. Isaac Donoso provides a fresh and contemporary look into the life and works of the seminal thinker, while National Archives director Ino Manalo reframes the novel by tracing its sources in classical and Philippine art, as well as biblical and folk literature.

With its scathing and humorous attacks on tyranny, hypocrisy and false religion, and its pioneering call to individual virtue and national unity, Noli Me Tangere transcends its political agenda to become a true work of art, thus securing its rightful place in the pantheon of great world literature. It remains as fresh, vivid, moving, and subversive as on the day it was first published.

Author(s): Shingavi, Snehal Ashok | Advisor(s): Jan Mohamed, Abdul | Abstract: AbstractThe Mahatma Misunderstood: the politics and forms of South Asian literary nationalismbySnehal Ashok ShingaviDoctor of Philosophy in EnglishUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Abdul JanMohamed, ChairSouth Asian nationalism has been dismissed as a Eurocentric derivative, as elite, as unwilling to solve the problems that it finds in colonialism, and as politically incapable of warding off the problems posed by newer transnational circuits of power and exchange. This dissertation contends that in the novels of the 1930s and 1940s middle-class nationalists developed different notions of the nation and nationalism than their elite counterparts, and that even as they stood behind the banner of Gandhi and the Indian National Congress Party, they marched for more radical interpretations of and independent interventions into the nationalist project. Despite Gandhi's heavy presence as the dominan...

This article thinks through the Buddhist sutra as a mode of world literary production from the second century CE to the present. I argue for understanding the sutra as a site of remediation and as a massively open-ended textual project aimed at articulating expressions of insight.

When the avant-garde writer Mu Shiying was assassinated in 1940, China lost one of its greatest modernist writers while Shanghai lost its most detailed chronicler of its demi-monde nightlife. As Andrew David Field argues, Mu Shiying advanced modern Chinese writing beyond the vernacular expression of May 4 giants Lu Xun and Lao She to even more starkly reveal the alienation of the cosmopolitan-capitalist city of Shanghai, trapped between the forces of civilization and barbarism. Each of these five short stories focuses on the author's key obsessions: the pleasurable yet anxiety-ridden social and sexual relationships of the modern city and the decadent maelstrom of consumption and leisure in Shanghai epitomized by the dance hall and the nightclub. This study places his writings squarely within the framework of Shanghai's social and cultural nightscapes.

This is a complete concordance of Dīvān-e Ghālib, the Urdu works of Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan Ghālib (1796-1869), the preeminent Indian Urdu and Persian poet known for his ghazals. The ghazal, a traditional genre of Arabic, Persian, Urdu poetry is comprised of independent two line poems called shi'rs that follow a rhyme and are in one meter. This concordance-a complete index-is a digitally compiled work that uses his traditional divan, known in Urdu as muravvaj dīvān, as a reference point. This divan has two hundred and thirty four ghazals in total. The ghazals, however, are not traditionally numbered but they follow the same traditional sequence in all editions of the muravvaj dīvān.

Rabindranath Tagore has stood out prominently in world literature for more than a hundred years. Although his literary works are primarily in Bengali-one of India's many languages which is also the world's seventh most widely spoken languagehis output in English too is plentiful. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for his English Gitanjali (1912), a collection of reworked versions of mostly devotional and spiritual poems written in Bengali, and became the first non-European to receive this accolade. Tagore's own English translations of his original Bengali work consolidated his literary acclaim. His literary and non-literary writings have been extensively read and assessed. This latest edited anthology of essays by Mohammad A. Quayum is a welcome addition to this scholarship. With four volumes of books on Tagore, including criticism and translations, to his credit, Quayum is a knowledgeable hand at Tagore. In a comprehensive Introduction to this collection of fourteen essays, including

This article is based on a research project funded by the University of Tasmania, titled: An Investigation into Teachers’ Use of Asian Literature. In preparing for this research, we investigated the academic literature about both Asian literature and teachers’ responses to the cross-curriculum priority. Two central problems were raised in respect to these ideas. The first issue was that of representation of Asian peoples and cultures in literature, and the second, related issue, was teachers’ uncritical acceptance of this representation. To investigate exactly what teachers were doing, we conducted a national survey on teachers’ selection and approaches to Asian Literature, followed by in depth interviews with Tasmanian teachers from early childhood, primary and secondary and senior secondary classrooms. 

Overall, our research findings demonstrated that primary teachers were actually engaging students in creative and critical approaches to literature, though they tended at times to devote a significant amount of time on response to literature and critical thinking in a very generalised manner, rather than examining texts for their ideological messages with children. In this article we will share two of the stories from primary school teachers to highlight their choices and practices around addressing the national cross-curriculum priority “Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia” through using Asian Literature. In these stories we will highlight the excellent work teachers are already doing, and we will also add suggestions for how teachers might take their work and elevate it to adopt a more critical stance in their work with children.

Author(s): Shingavi, Snehal Ashok | Advisor(s): Jan Mohamed, Abdul | Abstract: AbstractThe Mahatma Misunderstood: the politics and forms of South Asian literary nationalismbySnehal Ashok ShingaviDoctor of Philosophy in EnglishUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Abdul JanMohamed, ChairSouth Asian nationalism has been dismissed as a Eurocentric derivative, as elite, as unwilling to solve the problems that it finds in colonialism, and as politically incapable of warding off the problems posed by newer transnational circuits of power and exchange. This dissertation contends that in the novels of the 1930s and 1940s middle-class nationalists developed different notions of the nation and nationalism than their elite counterparts, and that even as they stood behind the banner of Gandhi and the Indian National Congress Party, they marched for more radical interpretations of and independent interventions into the nationalist project. Despite Gandhi's heavy presence as the dominan...

The article deals with the idea of rediscovering three basic images of Indonesian culture: the sea, the volcano and the tiger, with the help of folklore and splendid literary works of modern Indonesian writers as well. Novels by Mochtar Lubis (Harimau! Harimau! 1975), Eka Kurniawan (Lelaki Harimau, 2004), and Budi Sardjono (Sang Nyai, 2011) are taken as a source. The enriched traditional meanings of some animistic symbols appear in different light in each novel, rediscovering the layers of main plot and characters connotations in different ways of Neo-Traditionalism, Deconstruction and Remythologization.

I am very thankful to my committee members for all their help and support-George Hart for his intellectual freedom and openness, Lawrence Cohen for his ideas and stimulating conversation, Dorothy Hale for her professionalism, her readiness to help and responsiveness and Catherine Gallagher for her intellectual support. I am deeply indebted to my dear friend Nikhil Govind whose ideas and suggestions were crucial to this dissertation. I would like to thank my brother Prashant Keshavmurthy for reading through my chapters and giving me suggestions for improvement. I would like to thank my parents and dear friend Aniruddhan for supporting me and making the dissertation writing process bearable and fun. I would like to thank M. Kannan from the French Institute, Pondicherry for all his reading suggestions and generosity. I would like to thank Kausalya Hart for her generosity and kindness and her translations. I would like to thank Mangai and V. Arasu from Madras University for their intellectual support and suggestions. I thank V. Geeta for her ideas and suggestions.

THE SHADOW is a play by Rosa Jamali. The police are looking for a murderer, a woman who has supposedly killed her husband. Later, the police find eleven women who are quite alike. The setting is a room. Two women, dressed in black and covering their hair with black headscarves, confront each other in one spot. They were born on the same day and share the same name. They both married a man named Parviz.

A challenge of identity forces them to kill each other. In the last scene, a third woman, identical to the previous two, enters the same room and finds a piece of paper which says: ‘The police have arrested 13 women who are quite alike, but two have been found dead.'

Regarding the issues of women in Iran, THE SHADOW questions polygamy, which is quite prevalent and legal, and intensifies women's obstacles in society. The play happens in a metaphoric setting of a house and puts doubt on cliché roles of women in the society: housemaker, cook, nanny, beauty queen and so.... ‘Women against Women' is a frequent attitude taken by the male-dominated society to suppress them. In terms of style, the play diverges between different genres and can be categorized as absurd, tragicomedy, or crime.
THE PLAY HAS WON INTERNATIONAL ANTHRU LITERATURE AWARD.
Rosa Jamali (Born 1977) is an eminent Iranian poet, playwright, literary critic, and translator with prolific works.
She studied Drama & Literature at the Art University of Tehran and holds a master's degree in English literature from TEHRAN University. Jamali is acknowledged as the most influential and pioneering poet of Iran since the 90s. Her works have opened new landscapes and possibilities to Persian contemporary poetry. Rosa Jamali's works have been subject of numerous University thesis and Scholarly articles in Persian.

from the perspective of the analytical category, 'syncretism,' which is vulnerable to a number of key objections, I examine several resources in the repertoires of three highly influential scholar-officials-Li Hua (ca.710-ca.767), Dugu Ji (725-777), and Liang Su (753-793)-who dominated intellectual circles during one of the most pivotal periods in Chinese history. Unlike early Tang scholars, for Li, Dugu, and Liang, wen (literary culture) was no longer the central concept. Dao was. Drawing on diverse sources from different traditions, these men claimed that to reach, preserve, and illumine the dao, one should stimulate the mind (xin) so as to follow principle (li) and rectify the nature (xing). They taught that in the end, one would realize that "to recover the nature fully" is also "to accord with the dao." One of the best treatments of the thought of the eighth-century scholar-elites is Peter K. Bol's account in the fourth chapter of his far-ranging and seminal "This Culture of Ours". 5 But as Benjamin A. Elman and others have pointed out, 6 Bol conveniently excludes Buddhism in his analysis while acknowledging that "leading scholars in all traditions influenced each other and that intellectual change did not respect boundaries." 7

Author(s): McCombs, Jason Matthew | Advisor(s): Schopen, Gregory R. | Abstract: This dissertation examines the theory and practice of a crucial aspect of the premodern religions of India: gift giving. Although much has been written on gift giving in India, rarely have the theory and practice of giving in India been considered simultaneously. I focus in particular on the role of the gift in Indian Mahâyâna, a Buddhist movement that appeared around the beginning of the Common Era and lasted until the disappearance of Buddhism from India in the late medieval period. Very little attention has been paid to gift giving and Indian Mahâyâna Buddhism, in part because the scholarship on Indian Mahâyâna has concentrated largely on its origins and early sources. Mahâyâna gift theory is analyzed through a close reading of a range of textual sources, including both Sutra and Shâstra, two major genres of Indian Mahâyâna Buddhist texts. As part of this project, I categorize the various types of dis...

Chapter 2: "The Mahatma didn't say so, but …": Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable and the sympathies of middle-class nationalists 53 Chapter 3: "The Mahatma may be all wrong about politics, but …": Raja Rao's Kanthapura and the religious imagination of the Indian, secular, nationalist middle class 106 Chapter 4: The Missing Mahatma: Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi and the genres and politics of Muslim anticolonialism 210 Conclusion: Nationalism and Internationalism 306 Bibliography 313 iii Acknowledgements First and foremost, this dissertation would have been impossible without the support of my parents, Ashok and Ujwal, and my brother, Preetam, who had the patience to suffer through an unnecessarily long detour in my life. There are neither sufficient words nor gestures to demonstrate just how grateful I am for all of the things that they have done for me over the years. I am also greatly indebted to the intellectual support, advice, and mentorship provided to me by the members of my committee: Abdul Jan Mohamed, Vasudha Dalmia, and Gautam Premnath, and to temporary but still invaluable members of my committee, Priya Joshi and Marcial Gonzalez. Abdul Jan Mohamed, the chair of this project, stood up for me in ways that can never be repaid at times when no one else would. Vasudha Dalmia opened more doors for me than I ever knew could be opened; to her I especially credit my love for Premchand. Gautam Premnath and Marcial Gonzalez are model scholar-activists whose examples I strive to follow. Priya Joshi introduced me to the world of Indian Writing in English and I have not turned back since.

The literature became more linked to philosophy, reasonable, deep thought, inner wisdom and meditation.
  “The Legend of the Shaman” (2010. G.Ayurzana) is one of his very appealing novels that depicts the destruction of the Buryat people's ethnicity and culture on the theme of shamanism, as well as the theme of love in the hidden space of the human mind.
This novel is based on the real story of a famous, hereditary shaman, Tseren, who lived in Buryatia, until recently.  He was the one who has preserved the roots of ancient shamanism, and the author has visited him and made a profound study of the meaning behind shamanism.