Poetry and History: Bengali Maṅgal-kābya and Social Change in Precolonial Bengal analyzes Bengali maṅgal-kābya, a genre of narrative literature. The first essay argues that the didactic purposes of maṅgal-kābya and the performative pleasures based upon satire make them rich sources for historians of precolonial Bengal. Three essays focus on Caṇḍimaṅgal texts, especially the version by Mukunda Cakrabartῑ, probably written before 1600 AD. They argue that Mukunda uses a ‘scale of transactions’ to describe normative roles...

Mongolian Short Stories, edited by Henry G. Schwarz: My students rightfully complain that they need an anthology of unabridged and representative samples of Mongolian literature. There is at present only one source for such materials, the magazine, Mongolia. Unfortunately, the magazine, like most other periodical publications of its kind, scatters its literary samples across scores of issues. Moreover, it is probably true that this useful magazine is still little known in the United States where...

The field of Mongolian Studies in North America has had its ups and downs over the past decade. While some universities, like Indiana and Brigham Young, have expanded their offerings and others, like Saskatchewan and Western Washington, have entered the field, there has also been some contraction. In several ways, the most regrettable casualty of the budget axe was the fine program at the University of Washington which had been founded and guided by Nicholas...

Son of Heaven and Heavenly Qaghan: Sui-Tang China and its Neighbors by Pan Yihong: The conquest of the last of the Southern Dynasties by Sui in 589 brought to an end the Period of Disunion which had started with the collapse of Han in 220 C.E. The Sui dynasty was short-lived but laid the foundation for the Tang (618-907), an age of outstanding political and cultural achievement to which later generations looked back with nostalgia....

The sixty-four years of the life of Prince Demchugdongrob saw the devastation of two world wars. Invasion of Asia by imperialists was gradually checked by the rise of nationalism. Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 restored Asian self- confidence. But this victory also created strife within. The founding of the Republic of China in 1912, which ended monarchical rule, and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 marked the beginning of a new era. The...

Subjects and Masters by Michael C. Brose answers the question, “Who really ran the Mongol empire?” The common stereotype of "leadership" during that period of world history most likely consists of a band of savage horse­ mounted nomads, led by the fearless and powerful Chinggis Qan, sweeping down from the steppe to conquer and rule with brutal force over the most powerful Eurasian empires of the time. But while the Mongol tribesmen were certainly effective...

The Price of Rice by Sui-wai Cheung investigates the grain tax, canal transportation, and market integration, to give a complete picture of the long-distance rice trade in China during the eighteenth century.

UndocuStudents: Our Untold Stories is a collection of essays, poetry, photographs, and artwork created by members of the Blue Group, an Associated Students Club at Western Washington University, whose mission is to provide undocumented students the opportunity to meet other undocumented students, find resources and services, and to build community. As the Blue Group has grown from just a few students meeting informally into an official Western Washington University Associated Students club, into an organization...

Women of Color in Speculative Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography is tertiary electronic resource which focuses upon authors who are women of color (i.e., non-Caucasian) and who write speculative fiction for adult and young adult audiences. Examples of these authors include Octavia Butler, N. K. Jemisin, Daina Chaviano, Jewelle Gomez, and Malinda Lo. For some background, “speculative fiction” is an umbrella term for science fiction, fantasy, and some horror, all of which have literary and popular...

This book contains a survey of the twenty-one minorities of Northern China. Northern China comprises the provinces or autonomous regions of Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hubei, Anhui, and Jiangsu. The survey also takes into account small groups of minorities living in Southern China but whose majorities are resident in the North, such as Mongols, Manchus, and Hui. Conversely, Tibetans living in Qinghai, Gansu, and other...

An Uyghur-English Dictionaryby Henry G. Schwarz: As the initial foundation of my dictionary I chose the Uyg̃urçä-xänzuçä lug̃ät which, in its manuscript form and after 1982 in published form, had been my steady companion in Xinjiang. If I ever considered doing nothing more than translating it into English, I rejected this option almost from the start. For one thing, I often found the dictionary to be inaccurate in many respects, both large and small. More...

Opuscula Altaica : Essays Presented in Honor of Henry Schwarz, edited by Edward H. Kaplan and Donald W. Whisenhunt: We are pleased to present herewith a largely Mongol miscellany in honor of a most remarkable man, Henry Schwarz. I first met Henry Schwarz in the winter of 1967 at a meeting of the Inner Asia Colloquium of the then Far Eastern and Russian Institute at the University of Washington. Attending were the bright lights of...

The Love of Nature: Hsü Hsia-k'o and his Early Travels, by Li Chi: I have enjoyed the diaries of Hsü Hsia-k'o for many years; never dilettantish, he was a veteran traveler and a thorough observer. The factual quality of his writing convinces me that his information is reliable as much as his disdain of affection, although often suggesting simplicity, ensures that his writing will always be fresh. Although all his diaries can be read with...

Han River Chulmuntogi: A Study of Early Neolithic Korea by Sarah M. Nelson: Scattered throughout the Korean peninsula are about 100 known sites which contain handmade pottery decorated with parallel incised lines. First described by Japanese archaeologists in the early part of this century, the pottery was thought to resemble Central European ceramics decorated with a multiple toothed tool, and so was designated in Japanese Kushimemon Doki, a translation of Kammkeramik (comb-pattern pottery). Translated into...

The Korean Peasant at the Crossroads, by Willard D. Keim: Since the advent of written history at least some four millennia ago, the world has been to a large degree a peasant world. There are still nations among those newly independent since World War II with 80 percent of their populations living in the countryside. And it has not been so many decades ago that the major nations of Europe were composed predominantly of a...

The field of Mongolian Studies in the United States is poorly served in bibliographical matters. Scholars in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Studies have long since had several aids, such as bibliographies, union lists, and shelf lists, at their disposal. By contrast, Mongolian Studies has only one reasonably up-to-date bibliography of Western-language works (Bibliotheca Mongolica, published by this university's Center for East Asian Studies in 1978), but no union lists nor shelf lists. The absence of...

Ikkyū Sōjun: A Zen Monk and his Poetry by Sonja Arntzen: Some eight years ago when I had just started my first course in Japanese, I heard Professor Katō Shūichi give a lecture about Ikkyū in a general survey course. Even though no translations of Ikkyū's poetry existed at that time, Professor Katō was eager to introduce his students to this unusual figure in Japanese literature, a "Japanese John Donne," as Katō described him then....

An Economic History of China by Chou Chin-sheng: Subjective idealism, whether Chinese or European, boils down to spiritualism. Pre-Marxist materialism boils down to the reduction of man to a thing, as it fails to recognize that not only does the natural environment (sunspots, China as a continental rather than a seacoast-dominated geographic entity) act on man, but that man reacts on his environment too. The same is true of the school of social or economic...

Ten Great Years: Statistics of the Economic and Cultural Achievements of the People’s Republic of China by the State Statistical Bureau: The aim of this book is to describe, through extensive statistical data presented systematically, the great economic and cultural achievements of the People's Republic of China during the past decade, 1949 – 1958.

This book, Five Seasons in Ecotopia: Rainforest Immersion and Conservation Action in Costa Rica, is an effort to share our perspectives from five years of experience studying and teaching in Costa Rica through the intersections of geography, ecology, and political science. These reflect the dominant pedigrees of more than one-hundred students who annually spent five weeks in Huxley College of the Environment’s RICA program in Costa Rica. The RICA program was designed to foster global...

Most math books for college students start out reviewing “rules” in an introductory chapter. The review usually goes like this: here are the “rules”, here are some examples of using those “rules” and here are 10 to 100 exercises where you will practice using those “rules” and then you’ll be tested on them. The problem with that approach, even if it seems familiar and comfortable to you, is that people learn, in part, by connecting...

The idea for this guide, Freshwater Algae in Northwest Washington, began in 2006 when the Institute for Watershed Studies (www.wwu.edu/iws) expanded its Northwest Lakes monitoring project to collect water quality samples from more than 70 local lakes. This volume, Cyanobacteria, is part of a series describing freshwater algae in Northwest Washington, and includes simple algal keys that can be used by students with little experience in taxonomy, as well as members of the general public....

The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century is a shortened version of the three volumes of Igor de Rachewiltz’s similarly-titled work published by Brill in 2004 and 2013. It includes the full translation with a few notes, but omits the extensive introduction explaining the nature and origin of the text, the detailed commentary concerning linguistic and historical aspects of the text, and the exhaustive bibliography of the original....

Workers and Commissars: Trade Union Policy in the People’s Republic of China by Merton Don Fletcher: This study is not an organizational or sociological work on trade unions in China. It is primarily a case study illustrating how changes in Chinese Communist Party political and economic orientations over time have been reflected in the Party's policy toward trade unions. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions and its branch organs ceased to function in December 1966,...