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An obvious hiatus amidst the abundance of Pacific War studies is the story of Indonesia during that period. The richly illustrated "Encyclopedia of Indonesia" in the Pacific War, edited under the aegis of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, now fills that gap. This state of the art work reflects the different experiences and historiographic traditions of Indonesians, Japanese, and Dutch. The aim is to present the developments in the Indonesian archipelago in as much a rational and dispassionate way as possible, taking into account regional and social variations and interpreting them within the international context of pre- and post-war trends. With due acknowledgement of different perspectives, ambiguities, unresolved issues and conflicting views, it sets out to enhance mutual understanding and academic dialogue.

All aspects of the ancient site of Ras Shamra (Ugarit) are treated in this compendium: discovery, decipherment of script, interpretation of literary, diplomatic and legal texts, as well as analysis of languages, history, religion and iconography. Cyrus Gordon called its archives 'the foremost literary discovery of the twentieth century' and they have undoubtedly revolutionized our knowledge of the background to Greek, Phoenician and Israelite culture.

Dedicated to the study of Chinese epistolary literature and culture from the early empire to the twentieth century, the twenty-five essays of A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture discuss a wealth of epistolary topics and provide numerous translations.

This volume puts together a first-of-a-kind handbook, and contains the most important termini technici, expressions, and techniques connected to the traditional art of Persian calligraphy, calligraphy as well as related arts, like illumination, historiated painting, book binding, etc. The content is based on thirty prominent classical Persian treatises, composed between twelfth and twentieth centuries.

Volume 6 of Walter Spink's monumental and continuing study of the Ajanta caves, with over 350 illustrations, explains the gradual evolution of the site's architectural and sculptural features during Ajanta's remarkably brief development (462-480 CE).

A Dictionary of the Kedang Language presents the first extensive published record of an Austronesian language on the remote Eastern Indonesian island of Lembata, a region on the boundary between Austronesian and Papuan languages.

The Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Ancient Kashmir and Its Influences is a stylistic study of the corpus of stone sculpture, mostly fragmentary, in the Sri Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar, and elsewhere in Kashmir, in comparison with other examples in collections both in India and abroad.

The Ocean of the Soul is one of the great works of the German Orientalist Hellmut Ritter (1892-1971). It presents a comprehensive analysis of the writings of the mystical Persian poet Far d al-D n At t r who is thought to have died at an advanced age in April 1221 when the Mongols destroyed his home city of N sh p r in the north-east of Iran. The book, which resulted from decades of investigation of literary and historical sources, was first published in 1955 and has since remained unsurpassed not only as the definitive study of At t r's world of ideas but as an indispensable guide to understanding pre-modern Islamic literature in general. Quoting at length from At t r and other Islamic sources, Ritter sketches an extraordinarily vivid portrait of the Islamic attitude toward life, characteristic developments in pious and ascetic circles, and, in conclusion, various dominant mystical currents of thought and feeling. Special attention is given to a wide range of views on love, love in all its manifestations, including homosexuality and the commonplace s f adoration of good-looking youths. Ritter's approach is throughout based onprecise philological interpretation of primary sources, several of which he has himself made available in critical editions.

The historical and cultural role of the Aramaeans in ancient Syria can hardly be overestimated. The aim of the handbook "The Aramaeans in Ancient Syria" consists in giving precise and up to date information on different aspects of Aramaean culture. To that end, history, society, economy and law, language and script, literature, religion, art and architecture of the Aramaean kingdoms of Syria from their beginnings in the 11 cent. B.C. until their end ca. 720 B.C. are covered within the handbook. The wide survey of Aramaean culture in Syria is supplemented by overviews on the Aramaeans in Assyria, Babylonia, Phoenicia, Palestine, Egypt, North Arabia and on the Aramaean heritage in the Levant.

This book complements A Grammar of the Bedouin Dialects of the Northern Sinai Littoral: Bridging the Linguistic Gap between the Eastern and Western Arab World (Brill: 2000) thus completing the author's description of Bedouin dialects of Sinai. Earlier and new data are synthesized in a dialectometrical approach for a subdivision into eight groups.

The book provides an up-to-date overview of the structure, organization and evolution of the pharaonic administration from its origins to the middle of the first millennium BCE. General descriptions are supplemented by specific analysis of key archives, practices and institutions.

This second volume on Christianity in China covers the period from 1800 onwards up to the present, divided into four main periods, and dealing with the complexities of both Catholic and Protestant aspects. Also in this volume the reader will be guided to and through the Western and Chinese primary and secondary sources by a careful selection of major scholars in the field. With financial support from the Ricci Institute at the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim.

"Ajanta: Year by Year" is planned as a biography of this remarkable site, starting with the earliest caves, dating from some two thousand years, to its startling renaissance in the brief period between approximately 462 and 480. Concentrating on the excavations of the later period, during the reign of the Vakataka emperor Harisena, it attempts to show how, after a surprising gap of some three hundred years, Ajantaa (TM)s proud and pious courtly patrons and its increasingly committed workmen created not only the greatest but the latest monument of Indiaa (TM)s Golden Age. Nearly three hundred illustrations, in color and black and white, reveal the exuberant flowering of Ajanta and related Vakataka monuments, as well as the manner of their sudden demise.

The art history of South Asia covers a time span of roughly four and a half thousand years. During this period, a vast number of animal stone sculptures has been produced, ranging from the pre-historic period till today and covering a great variety of motifs and imagery in different regions and religious traditions. Even so, the number of studies devoted to these animal sculptures has remained extremely limited. The present book aims at filling this knowledge gap. With this richly illustrated book, the first of its kind, Van der Geer offers a comparative study of the ways in which various animals have been depicted and a lucid analysis of the sculptorsa (TM) treatment of their a oemodelsa: living animals. The art history of sculptured animals is contextualized with a description of the use of animals as can be read from ancient texts, archaeological evidence and contemporaneous culture. In doing so, parallels as well as differences in style or iconography are highlighted, elucidating the variety of animal depictions across regions, religious contexts and through time. The corpus of discussed material ranges from Indus seals, stupa panels and railings, monumental temples from North and South India, non-religious palace and fort architecture to loose sculptures in museum collections.

This volume, the only up-to-date study of its kind in any language, reviews the foundations of Ancient Egyptian chronology before presenting a relative and an absolute chronology for the time span from prehistoric times until the Hellenistic Period.

This volume adopts a multidisciplinary approach with contributions from archaeologists, linguists, an architect and lawyers to the many challenges This comprehensive volume on Afghanistan's cultural heritage with contributions from archaeologists, linguist and lawyers, dealing with the many issues involved in its protection, provides an insiders' reassessment of the situation and well-considered lessons for the future.

This study offers a comprehensive look at warfare -- its meaning, culture, technology, tactics, and organization -- in an area of the world previously neglected by military historians.

This up-to-date grammar of Egyptian Aramaic of the middle of the first millennium BCE is meant to replace P. Leander's grammar of 1928, but also has a substantial section on syntax, which was totally lacking in Leander's grammar. The grammar is based on a much greater amount of texts than is the case with Leander's grammar, but also on an edition of texts incorporating a personal fresh study of them as presented in Porten and Yardeni's "Textbook of Aramaic Texts from Ancien Egypt" (1986).

Kurt Behrendt in this book for the first time and convincingly offers a description of the development of 2nd century B.C.E. to 8th century C.E. Buddhist sacred centers in ancient Gandhara, today northwest Pakistan.

This volume contains all the known Old Syriac inscriptions from Edessa and the area around Osrhoene in Northern Mesopotamia from the first three centuries C.E., the number of which has substantially increased over the last decades. The texts are given in estrangelo script and are accompanied by an extensive philological and historical commentary. The originals are presented in photographs and line drawings. The volume also contains chapters on the script of these inscriptions, on the language and on the history and culture of Edessa.Two appendices offer the texts of three parchments written in Syriac and originating from the same area, and of known but still unpublished inscriptions. The book concludes with indices of words and proper names, which are complement to the "Dictionary of the North-West Semitic Inscriptions ("Brill, 1995), and with a full bibliography.