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Founded by Giuseppe Tucci

A QUARTERLY PUBLISHED BY THE ISTITUTO ITALIANO PER L’AFRICA E L’ORIENTE

IsIAO Vol. 58 - Nos. 1-4 (December 2008)

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EDITORIAL BOARD

† Domenico Faccenna Gherardo Gnoli, Chairman Lionello Lanciotti Luciano Petech

Art Director: Beniamino Melasecchi Editorial staff: Elisabetta Valento, Matteo De Chiara

ISSN 0012-8376 Yearly subscription: € 170,00 (mail expenses not included) Subscription orders must be sent direct to: www.mediastore.isiao.it

Manuscripts should be sent to the Editorial Board of East and West Administrative and Editorial Offices: Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente Via Ulisse Aldrovandi 16, 00197 Rome

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CONTENTS Michelina Di Cesare, New Sources for the Legend of Mu∆ammad in the West................

G.R.H. Wright, The A vatta Tree on the Vatican Hill .....................................................

Jacqueline Calzini Gysens, Interim Report on the Rabbathmoab and Qaßr Rabbah Project Simonetta Schiena, The False Smerdis. A Detective Story of Ancient Times: The Reconstruction by Ilya Gershevitch .............................................................................

Farid Ullah Bezhan, The Enigmatic Authorship of Tårikh-i Badakhshån ........................

Akira Miyaji, Iconography of the Two Flanking Bodhisattvas in the Buddhist Triads from Gandhåra. Bodhisattvas Siddhårtha, Maitreya and Avalokite vara ....................

Elisa Freschi, Structuring the Chaos: Bh円a M¤måæså Hermeneutics as Depicted in Råmånujåcårya’s ‡åstraprameyapariccheda. Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Forth Section ..................................................................................

Tiziana Lorenzetti, The Am®tagha†e- vara Temple in Tamil Nadu. A Complex Example of Cø¬a Architecture .....................................................................................................

Donatella Rossi, An Introduction to the mKha' 'gro gsang gcod Teachings of Bon.........

Saerji, The Inscriptions of the Great Stupa of Gyantse. A Review of Their Transcription in Giuseppe Tucci’s Indo-Tibetica and a Remark on the Calligraphic Conventions Used in the Inscriptions ...............................................................................................

Angelo Andrea Di Castro, The Mori Tim Stupa Complex in Kashgar Oasis ....................

Francesco D’Arelli, The Chinese College in Eighteenth-Century Naples .........................

Roberto Ciarla, The Thai-Italian ‘Lopburi Regional Archaeological Project’ (LoRAP).

Excavation at Khao Sai On-Noen Din 2008: Preliminary Report ...............................

Fiorella Rispoli, Off the Beaten Track: 2007 Italian-Indonesian Archaeological Investigations at Gua Made (East Java).......................................................................

9 33 53 87 107 123

157 185 213

235 257 283 313 337

Brief Notes and Items for Discussion Nicola Laneri, Hirbemerdon Tepe. A Middle Bronze Age Site in Northern Mesopotamia .....

Fabrizio Sinisi, Another Seal of a Sasanian D¤wån ............................................................

Rebecca Beardmore, Gian Luca Bonora and Zholdasbek Kurmankulov, Preliminary Report on the 2007-2008 IAEK Campaigns in the Syrdarya Delta .............................

Max Klimburg, A Former Kafir Tells His ‘Tragic Story’. Notes on the Kati Kafirs of Northern Bashgal (Afghanistan) ..................................................................................

Massimo Vidale, Post Scriptum to The Collapse Melts Down, June 2008 .......................

R.K.K. Rajarajan, Identification of Portrait Sculptures on the Påda of the Någe vara Temple at Kuæbhako∫am ...........................................................................................

Giuseppe Vignato, Chinese Edition of Giuseppe Tucci’s Indo-Tibetica ..........................

365 377 385 391 403 405 415

Obituaries Oscar Botto (1922-2008) (Lionello Lanciotti) ...................................................................

423

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Domenico Faccenna (1923-2008) (Pierfrancesco Callieri) ................................................

Grigorij Maksimovich Bongard-Levin (1933-2008) (Gherardo Gnoli) .............................

425 453

Book Reviews

by Alberto M. Cacopardo, Pierfrancesco Callieri, Lionello Lanciotti, Nicola Laneri, Erberto Lo Bue, Beniamino Melasecchi ....................................................................

457

Books Receveid ...................................................................................................................

482

List of Contributors ............................................................................................................

485

Table of Contents ...............................................................................................................

487

6

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AAA AAH ACASA ActaO ActaOH ADMG AION AJA AMI ArOr ASIAR BEFEO BMC BMFEA BMMA BSO(A)S CAH CAJ CHC CHInd CHIr CIInd CIIr CIS CRAI EW HJAS HR IIJ JA JAH JAOS

— Archives of Asian Art — Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae — Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America — Acta Orientalia, Copenhagen — Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae — Abhandlungen der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft — Annali dell’Istituto (Universitario) Orientale di Napoli — American Journal of Archaeology — Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran — Archiv Orientální — Annual Reports (Archaeological Survey of India) — Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient — Catalogue of Coins in the British Museum — Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities — Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — Bulletin of the School of Oriental (and African) Studies — Cambridge Ancient History — Central Asiatic Journal — Cambridge History of China — Cambridge History of India — Cambridge History of Iran — Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum — Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum — Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum — Comptes rendus des séances (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres) — East and West — Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies — History of Religions — Indo-Iranian Journal — Journal Asiatique — Journal of Asian History — Journal of the American Oriental Society

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JAS JASB JESHO JGJRI JIABS JISOA JNES JRAS JUPHS KSIA MASI MCB MDAFA MIA MTB NTS OLZ PSAS REI RepMem RHR RSO SA SAS SOR TOCS TP TPS VDI WZKM WZKS ZAS ZDMG

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— Journal of Asian Studies — Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal — Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient — Journal of the Ganganath Jha Research Institute — Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies — Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art — Journal of Near Eastern Studies — Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland — Journal of the Uttar Pradesh (formerly: United Provinces) Historical Society — Kratkie soobs̆c̆enija Instituta Arheologii — Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India — Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques — Mémoires de la Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan — Materialy i issledovanija po Arheologii SSSR — Memoirs of the Research Department of the Tôyô Bunko — Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap — Orientalistische Literaturzeitung — Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies — Revue des Études Islamiques — Reports and Memoirs (IsIAO [formerly IsMEO], Centro Studi e Scavi Archeologici) — Revue de l’Histoire des Religions — Rivista degli Studi Orientali — Sovetskaja Arheologija — South Asian Studies — Serie Orientale Roma (IsIAO [formerly IsMEO]) — Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society — T’oung Pao — Transactions of the Philological Society — Vestnik drevnej istorii — Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes — Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens und Archiv für indische Philosophie — Zentralasiatische Studien — Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft

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Book Reviews ARCHAEOLOGY Peter M.M.G. Akkermans and Glenn M. Schwartz, The Archaeology of Syria. From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies (ca. 16,000-300 BC), p. 459 (N. Laneri).

Elizabeth Errington and Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, From Persepolis to the Punjab.

Exploring Ancient Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, with contributions by Joe Cribb, Jean-Marie Lafont, St John Simpson, Helen Wang, edited by Elizabeth Errington, p. 465 (P. Callieri).

INDOLOGY Oskar von Hinüber, Die Palola #åhis. Ihre Steininschriften, Inschriften auf Bronzen, Handschriftencolophone und Schutz-zauber.

Materialien zur Geschichte von Gilgit und Chilas, p. 475 (Alberto M. Cacopardo).

CHINESE STUDIES Alfredo Cadonna, ed., Liezi. La scrittura reale del vuoto abissale e della potenza suprema, p. 477 (L. Lanciotti).

Michel Masson, ed., Grandi religioni e culture nell’Estremo Oriente. Cina, p. 477 (L. Lanciotti).

Carmen Coduti, ed., Liu Xiang, Biografie di donne, p. 478 (L. Lanciotti).

Stefania Stafutti and Federica Romagnoli, China. Storia e tesori di un’antica civilità, p. 478 (L. Lanciotti).

Mario Sabattini, I tesori di Pechino Imperiale, p. 478 (L. Lanciotti).

Fabio Fattori, Gli Italiani che invasero la Cina. Cronache di guerra 1900-1901, p. 479 (L. Lanciotti).

Stefania Stafutti and Gianmaria Ajani, Colpirne uno per educarne cento. Slogan e parole d’ordine per capire la Cina, p. 479 (L. Lanciotti).

Hong-Sen Yan, The Beauty of Ancient Chinese Locks, p. 479 (L. Lanciotti).

TIBETAN STUDIES Per K. Sørensen and Guntram Hazod (in cooperation with Tsering Gyalbo), Rulers on the Celestial Plain. Ecclesiastical and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet. A Study of Tshal Gung-thang, p. 480 (E. Lo Bue).

COLLECTING Vanna Ghiringhelli, The Invincible Krises 2, p. 481 (B. Melasecchi).

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ARCHAEOLOGY Peter M.M.G. Akkermans and Glenn M. Schwartz, The Archaeology of Syria. From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies (ca. 16,000-300 BC), Cambridge World Archaeology Series, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, xviii-467 pp., 196 figs., 9 pls. ISBN 9780521796668.

In their book, The Archaeology of Syria, Peter Akkermans and Glenn Schwartz have succeeded in delivering a thoughtful and wellorganized summary of an astonishing set of data recovered through the numerous archaeological work performed in the modern state of Syria, a very difficult task considering the close to 16,000 years of history it covers. The book has been divided into a series of chapters corresponding to each author’s area of specialization (i.e., the first five chapters, written by Akkermans, are dedicated to prehistoric periods, whereas Schwartz investigated the later phases in chapters 6 to 11). The separation of the tasks does not hinder the overall fluidity of the volume and the different approaches used by the authors are merged within trajectories that allow the reader to look at the archaeological data both from empirical and theoretical perspectives.

Obviously (and as mentioned by the authors at the beginning), it is very difficult to use modern geographies to set the limits for discussing ancient cultures. However, this is the request of the ‘modern’ archaeological system and the authors follow it crossing the modern geographic frontiers when the ancient material culture crosses them too.

In terms of the theoretical approach, most of the book is dedicated to a bottom-up theoretical framework in which the archaeological data are in ‘control’ of the theories used as interpretive tools. Within this perspective, the interpretive paragraphs (i.e., usually inserted at the end of each chronological section) present the author’s interpretation of the related data together with a brief summary of other scholars’ interpretations. However, the authors appear to embrace a main theoretical frame of reference that is represented by a multilinear cultural evolutionism first brought introduced by

Steward (1955) and more recently reframed by Johnson and Earle (2000). More specifically, the transformation of societies throughout a specific length of time can be seen as linked to phenomena of intensification of production, institutionalization of economic and political integration of the involved households, control over subsistence resources, and surplus production and social stratification by elite groups (ibid.: 29-32, fig. 3). This theoretical framework well represents the necessity for a thorough archaeological study and focuses on the socioeconomic transformation of complex societies with a particular attention on the political economy of the analyzed society.

Thus, it is well suited for the analysis and interpretation of the transformation of societies within a large chronological horizon as is the length of time passing between the earliest appearance of human societies during the Epipalaeolithic and the advent of Alexander the Great in Syria.

In terms of the structure of the book, after a first chapter (‘Introduction’, pp. 1-13) that briefly overviews the Syrian environmental, geographical, and chronological background, the second one (‘Hunter-Gatherers at the End of the Ice Age’, pp. 14-41) focuses on the first groups of hunter-gatherers that settled in Syria (and also the Levant) during the Epipalaeolithic. For this phase, Near Eastern prehistorians, as well as the book’s authors, consider the assemblages found at Levantine sites as the yardstick for determining the chronological differentiation among the Syrian societies too. Thus, it is possible to distinguish between a Geometric Kebarian (c. 1600012500 B.C.) and a Natufian period (c. 1250010000 B.C.) based on the difference in ‘stylistic and technological characteristics of […] stonetool industries, site-size, distributions of occupation and patterns of mobility’ (p. 14).

The former phase is marked by small and ephemeral sites (e.g., huts of hide and branches, and rock shelters)i(1) located along water sources that are left unused for long periods of time (i.e., seasonal camps), whereas the Natufian societies show a dramatic transformation in both settlement patterns and material culture with long-lasting sites that highlight a higher

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degree of sedentarization and an intense exploitation of local resources through hunting and foraging. According to the authors, it is during this later period that ‘the groundwork for the eventual emergence of farming villages in the Neolithic period’ is established (laid) (p. 15).

The passage between the Epipaleolithic and the Neolithic is characterized by a dramatic cooling of the temperatures (i.e., the so-called ‘Younger Dryas’) and Syria became ‘a cold and dry environment largely composed of a barren steppe’ (p. 42). Moreover, Chapters 3 (‘A Changing Perspective: Neolithic Beginnings’, pp. 43-98) and 4 (‘The Exploration of New Horizons’, pp. 99-153) are fully devoted to the Neolithic period that, following Kenyon’s chronology of Palestine, can be divided into three major phases: the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA, c. 10000-8700 B.C.); the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB, c. 8700-6800 B.C.); and the Late Neolithic (c. 6800-5200 B.C.).

The importance of the Neolithic in the interpretation of the evolution of ancient Near Eastern societies is usually associated with the so-called ‘Neolithic Revolution’ marked by the inception of farming and the consequential increase of sedentarism. However, the authors, using the most recent ecofactual data yielded from Neolithic sites in Syria, correctly point out that the process of transformation of economic subsistence (i.e., from foraging and hunting to agriculture and herding of animals) is a long one and ‘the full-scale adoption of agriculture and stock rearing occurred much later, in the late ninth and eight millennia BC’ (p. 45). This transforming socioeconomic landscape creates the foreground for new elements that are both social and economic with a society that is based on new values. These values are centered around the family house that: gives an increasing role to dead kinsmen, creates ceremonial centers for the whole community, and produces/stores staples for the long haul.

These elements are clearly visible in the archaeological data starting from the PPNA that shows small and dispersed sites in southern Syria as well as along the Euphrates river. However, as highlighted by the authors, it is after 7500 B.C. that we witness a dramatic increase in the

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number of small ‘villages and hamlets’ with scattered houses. In addition, the architecture of the PPNA sites is characterized by the use of round buildings that were internally subdivided ‘into smaller compartments for living, cooking, and storage’ (p. 50, e.g., the case of Mureybet)i(2); whereas the PPNB is marked by rectangular houses that can have a single-room plan (e.g., at Mureybet) or, as in the case of Abu Hureyra and Halula, have multiple rooms.

Although most of these buildings were used as private dwellings, the presence of ‘monumental’ ceremonial buildings typified the northern Syrian landscape (e.g., the subterranean circular building EA53 at the middle Euphrates site of Jerf al Ahmar) as well as that of southeastern Anatolia (e.g., Nevali Çori, Çayönü, Göbekli Tepe). These incredible structures, which also contain (that also present) anthromorphic and zoomorphic motifs engraved in stelae, are unique and probably functioned as points of congregation for feasts and ceremonies that involved the whole community and, probably, were led by a sort of religious authority.

Together with the architecture, the importance of a primitive form of religious dimension is also exemplified by the numerous human figurines (i.e., mostly female) found at many PPNA and PPNB sites. However, in this phase it is the family that is the main foci of the whole social structure, as demonstrated by the continuous use of the cult of the dead ancestors (i.e., through intramural funerary depositions and plastered human skulls) who were fundamental in tightening social solidarities among kinsmen.

Thus, as pointed out by the authors (p. 97), two fundamental elements characteristics can be recognized in the ideology of the Neolithic period: the importance of communal solidarity, and the reverence of dead ancestors.

The late Neolithic (c. 6800-5200 B.C.) is divided into different sub-phases that are named after sites located in Iraq and Syria (e.g., Hassuna, Samarra, Halaf). Among these phases, the Halaf period (c. 6000-5200 B.C.) appears to be as the most recognizable in the Syrian territory and best studied by Akkermans through his on-going (continuous) excavation at the site of Tell Sabi Abyad. Moreover, the settlement pattern of the late Neolithic (e.g., the

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Burnt Village at Tell Sabi Abyad) is marked by a combination of rectangular multi-room buildings that were mostly used as granaries or storerooms, tholoi (i.e., round features internally subdivided with a diameter of 3 to 5 m), and open spaces that were used for constructing (inhabiting) ovens, pits, and trash disposal areas. In terms of material culture, pottery production was a major innovation of this period with a high percentage of highly decorated vessels (figs. 4.20-22). Another important element of innovation is represented by ‘the development of a widely accepted, standardized system of administration in the form of seals and sealings’ (p. 133). In addition, ritual activities are widespread and more focused on the private dwellings where human and animal figurines are now discovered. Burial practices show the introduction of extramural cemeteries. Thus, the late Neolithic seems to show evidence of a higher focus on the household rather than the whole community and on control over surplus production as demonstrated by the use of administrative tools.

According to the authors (pp. 149-53), these elements are not clear indicators of social stratification and central control (i.e., early chiefdoms) because the distribution of objects of power (e.g., seals and sealings, figurines, painted pottery) is not restricted to specific sectors and it is almost impossible to recognize rank differentiation amongst human burials.

Chapters 5 (‘Continuity and Change in the Late Sixth and Fifth Millennia BC’, pp. 154-80) and 6 (‘The Fourth Millennium BC and the Uruk Intrusion’, pp. 181-210) are dedicated to the Chalcolithic period through a very detailed analysis of both the archaeological data and the socioeconomic transformation that occurred during this phase. In fact, this is a fundamental period in the history of the Near East because it brings about a new step in the development of complex societies through the phenomenon of urbanization, the adoption of new technological devices (e.g., turntable for pottery production, irrigation and sickles for agriculture, etc.), and consequentially, the control of surplus production by emerging (religious?) authorities.

Although the development of societal complexity probably started in southern Mesopotamia

where well-water lands favored agricultural and pastoral surplus, the northern Mesopotamian environ (including Syria) was also strongly involved in this long-term process of socioeconomic transformation that brought about a new network of cultural exchange between sedentary communities. In terms of chronology, the two different Chalcolithic phases are named after two southern Mesopotamian sites that show the best sequence of material culture (i.e., Ubaid period, c. 52004000 B.C.; Uruk period, c. 4000-3000 B.C.).

During the Ubaid period, the regional settlement pattern increases the level of complexity with a two-tier hierarchy system and sites located at a distance of about 10 to 20 km apart. The large sites have an extension of about 5-10 ha (e.g., Tell Kurdu in the Amuq plain; Tell Hamman et-Turkman, Tell as-Sawwan, and Tell Zaidan in northeastern Syria). The buildings can vary from single-room to multiroomed rectangular units with walls constructed with pisé or mudbrick. Moreover, the multiroomed units are divided into sectors dedicated to dwelling, working and storage purposes.

Among these units, the largest houses (c. 50-200 sq. m in extension) are marked by a tripartite plan ‘consisting of a large central hall flanked by parallel rows of smaller rooms on the two long sides’ (p. 161). In terms of material culture, the Ubaid period is characterized by flint tools necessary for agricultural and the processing of food (e.g., stone hoes, adzes, and sickle blades for clearing and harvesting the fields, slabs and mortars for grinding and pounding crop plants); painted pottery assemblages; stamp seals, clay sealings and tokens (calculi); and the results of first experiments with metallurgy. In terms of diet, although wild species appear in the archaeological data, cultivated plants typical of a dry-farming environment (e.g., wheat, barley chickpeas, flax, and lentils) and domestic herds (e.g., sheep and goat and, in lesser percentages cattle and pigs) are the primary elements of the Ubaid societies. The funerary practices of this period are more complex with simple extramural and intramural inhumations as well as built burial chambers (e.g., at Mashnaqa and Kashkashuk) with grave goods mostly consisting of a few painted pottery

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vessels. Moreover, scholars are still debating on how to define the type of social organization recognizable in the archaeological record of the Ubaid sites (i.e, egalitarian or hierarchical?).

The authors assert that ‘the Ubaid communities were largely egalitarian and unstratified […]; no centralized authorities [are recognizable]; leadership was temporary and in the hands of the elders’ (p. 178). However, the data in our possession (e.g., differentiation of grave types and funerary goods, larger tripartite buildings, presence of administrative tools, two-tier settlement hierarchy) call for a different type of social system that is probably closer to a chiefdom organization in which the larger tripartite buildings would have functioned as the centre of the dominating family.

The evolution of the social organization of Near Eastern societies into a more complex system is more evident during the 4th millennium B.C. (the so-called Uruk period)i(3) when we witness the emergence of the phenomenon of urbanization and the creation of large cities both in southern and northern Mesopotamia. Moreover, it is during the mid to late 4th millennium B.C. that Syrian sites, as well as Anatolian and Iranian ones, yielded a high number of material culture typical of the southern Mesopotamian tradition (e.g., beveled rim bowls, numerical tablets, bullae, cylinder seals and sealings, clay cones used for wall decoration, tripartite niched buildings). For the ‘Uruk phenomenon’, Algaze (1993) has borrowed Wallerstein’s ‘world-system’ theory to explain the establishment of the first large cities in southern Mesopotamia (e.g., Uruk with a 200 ha extension). According to this approach, due to an increase in surplus production resulting from an intensive use of agriculture and pastoral activities in southern Mesopotamia we assist to increased of the phenomenon of urbanization in southern Mesopotamia (e.g., the 200 ha Site of Uruk), and, consequentially, to a colonization of the ‘peripheral’ regions necessary to control access to numerous raw materials (e.g., timber, metals, semi-precious stones) lacking in southern Mesopotamia proper. However, the authors also present different perspectives in which the ‘periphery’ appears as already developed into a more complex societal

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organization prior to contact with southern Mesopotamian communities. In fact, the most recent archaeological data from Syria show that numerous sites (e.g., Tell Brak and Hamoukar) were very large (c. 100 ha and more) before the appearance of southern Mesopotamian material culture and that some of these sites have a long chronological sequence marked by local material culture before the advent of the ‘Uruk expansion’ (e.g., Tell Brak and Hammam etTurkman marked by the presence of Coba bowls). In addition, in northeastern Syria archaeologists have found together with clear colonial settlements (e.g., Habuba Kabira and Jebel Aruda along the Euphrates) a series of local sites that show local assemblages in association with southern Mesopotamian elements (e.g., Mashnaqa on the middle Khabur valley). Although the socioeconomic relationship between southern Mesopotamian culture and the neighboring regions is still difficult to understand, it appears clear from the archaeological data that the 4th millennium B.C. is a moment of dramatic transformation in which a more complex form of organizational hierarchy and division of labor, probably controlled by religious elites, will determine a change in type of settlement pattern (i.e., central planning) as well as in the production of material culture. Thus, this type of centralized organization introduces new technological devices fundamental for a better administration of the produced goods (e.g., numerical tablets, bullae, writing and cylinder seals) as well as lavishly decorated ‘public’ buildings, votive objects (e.g., the eye idols), mass produced pottery assemblages, and flint blades (i.e., the Canaanean blades).

The collapse of the Uruk system is more dramatic in the peripheral areas such as Syria than in Mesopotamia proper. As a consequence, the early 3rd millennium B.C. in Syria (Chapter 7, ‘Regionalization and local Trajectories’, pp. 211-32) appears to be marked by an initial decrease in terms of social complexity and urbanism and a more regionalized commercial network in which northern groups are more visible (e.g., Transcaucasian groups). The best available data for this period are recognizable in northeastern Syria where the so-called Ninivite 5

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culture (i.e., based on a painted, excised and incised pottery assemblages, fig. 7.2) is recognizable at numerous small rural sites.

Moreover, the phenomenon of ruralization comes with small villages that are ‘dominated by large-scale facilities for the storage and processing of grain’ (p. 218), workshops, and small-scale ceremonial and domestic architecture (e.g., Tell Raqa’i with its Rounded Building).

It is also important to notice that Schwartz’s previous work at the early 3rd millennium B.C. site of Tell Raqa’i clearly enlightens this chapter with a thorough interpretation of the available archaeological data.

However, it is during the mid to late 3rd millennium B.C. (c. 2600-2000 B.C.) that Syria enters in a new phase marked by the so-called ‘second urban revolution’ (i.e., the creation of large urban centers with archives, religious centers and monumental funerary complex).

This phase is discussed in Chapter 8 (‘The “Second Urban Revolution” and its Aftermath’, pp. 233-87) and is probably the most intense chapter of the whole book. The changes recognizable in archaeological data of this period are astonishing. In almost every region of the Syrian territory, numerous fortified city-states are established or developed (e.g., Ebla, Mari, Tell Leilan, Tell Mozan, Tell Sweyhat, Carchemish, and many others) and a complex system of three to four-tier hierarchical system of settlement pattern within a region is in use. The importance of this phase is not only witnessed from the archaeological data, but also from the appearance of written cuneiform texts. In fact, at the western Syrian site of Tell Mardikh (ancient Ebla) a large archive with more than 17,000 clay cuneiform tablets written in a local Semitic language have been found within palace G. According to the written texts, Ebla was the seat of a kingdom with a large territorial power, and the palace G with its large colonnaded throne room (i.e., ‘court of the audience’), the archive, the monumental stairway and the recently discovered religious sector well-describe the grandiosity of the royal family of Ebla.

Another important element emerging from the Ebla text and correctly highlighted by the authors regards the political organization of the

Syrian city-states that are based on the combined power of the king, royal officials, and the assembly of the ‘elders’, and consequentially, on ‘the concurrence of both kin-based and classbased institutionalized power’ (p. 239). Along these lines, a fundamental element for the consolidation of the societal structure of the elites in the Syrian city-states during the mid-3rd millennium B.C. is the use of monumental funerary complexes (e.g., at Tell Banat, Umm elMarra, Jerablus Tahtani) for structuring the physical and mental landscape of the people inhabiting this region. In terms of material culture, this period is marked by a standardized mass-production of mostly undecorated pottery (e.g., the so-called ‘caliciform’ assemblage in western Syria and the Euphrates valley, fig. 8.8), by an increasing production of copper-based and other metal objects, and by elite art objects that show clear elements of southern Mesopotamian influence (e.g., cylinder seals, the ‘Standard of Ebla’). These cultural exchanges between different regions are connected to longdistance exchange of commodities (e.g., lapis lazuli) that appears as a hallmark for this period.

At the end of the 3rd millennium B.C., the regional power of some of the Syrian city-states was brought to an halt by the advent of the southern Mesopotamian Akkadian state (i.e., the first territorial ‘empire’ of the ancient Near East) ‘which subjugated or raided large parts of Syria in the twenty-third century BC’ (p. 277).

The emergence of this subjugating power is recognizable both in the archaeological and written data and, among the Akkadian rulers, Sargon and Naram Sin are the most active in destroying/conquering the Syrian city-states. In terms of archaeological data, the northeastern Syrian sites (e.g., Tell Brak) are those with buildings showing clear traces of Akkadian domination.

The collapse of the urban centers in Syria during the late 3rd millennium appears as related to both climatic and political changes, as is indicated by the authors in a brief section of the paragraph (pp. 282-87). A ‘regenerative’ approach to a different settlement patterns of the early 2nd millennium B.C. is followed by the authors in Chapter 9 (‘The Regeneration of Complex Societies’, pp. 288-326) that focuses

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on the Middle Bronze Age period (c. 20001600 B.C.). This phase is dominated by the appearance ‘new ethnic groups’ (e.g., Hurrians, Amorites, p. 288) in the historical texts and by a combination of transhumant pastoralism and sedentary agriculture subsistence economy that fit the ‘dimorphic society’ emphasized by the authors. These elements are clearly recognizable in the ecofactual data recovered at numerous Syrian sites. In terms of political organization, large city-states have control over regional territory and are governed by newly established dynasties (e.g., the Shamshi-Adad family and the Mari’ Lim dynasty) and establish alliances and commercial exchanges with southern Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Anatolian political encounters. The material culture discovered at the major urban centers (e.g., Tell Hariri/Mari, Tell Mardikh/Ebla, Tell Leilan/Shekna) indicates that they are characterized by monumental architecture (e.g., palaces, fortifications, and religious buildings). Although this period is marked by the Old Assyrian Commercial Network (i.e., a long-distance commercial network organized by northern Mesopotamian merchants; Lrasen 1976), the authors briefly mention this fundamental moment of socioeconomic development of the Near Eastern societies, and, thus, they leave the readers with a lack of information about an economic and cultural phenomenon that dramatically transformed the economic organization of the involved communities. However, the authors’ analysis of the archaeological record yielded from the Syrian cities of the Middle Bronze is very thorough and allow us to get all the information regarding, for example, the palaces, temples, and royal tombs discovered at Tell Mardikh/Ebla or the magnificent ‘Zimrilim’ palace excavated at Mari and decorated with astonishing frescoes and statues (figs. 9.18-19).

And finally, an important element regarding the settlement pattern of this period is highlighted at the end of the paragraph (i.e., ‘a multi-tier settlement hierarchies of cities, towns, villages, and villages, but with many areas only sparsely occupied, [… and] less densely inhabited [cities]’, p. 321).

The following period (i.e., the Late Bronze period, c. 1600-1200 B.C.) is thoroughly

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described in Chapter 10 (‘Empires and Internationalism’, pp. 327-59). Although the authors introduce the changing political landscape of the whole Near East during the Late Bronze Age, the chapter focuses on the empires (e.g., the Mitanni and the Assyrians) that are strongly based within the Syrian territory. In order to do so, the authors analyze the transforming pattern of the few excavated urban centers that are mostly located in western Syria (e.g., Ras Shamra/Ugarit and Tell Atchana/Alalakh). This analysis regards both elite architecture (e.g., the in antis temples with a long-room plan that characterize Syrian religious buildings since the 3rd millennium B.C.) and the private dwellings (fig. 10.12 illustrates the different types of house plans of this period). In addition, the presence of columns in some of the palace gates (e.g., the Alalakh IV Palace and the Ugarit Palace) is an interesting innovation that will be typical of the Iron age buildings (the so-called bit-hilani). The political organization of this period seems to be looser in structure and built on the predominance of what the authors call ‘nonroyal communal authorities’ (p. 352). Extended families probably have a stronger, consolidated power as demonstrated by the presence of intramural funerary chambers in numerous houses and by the cult of the ancestors (kispum) as documented by written texts. Another important element of the Late Bronze Age is ‘internationalism’ as clearly visible in the numerous influences recognizable in the elite art of this period.

The last chapter of the book (11, ‘Iron Age in Syria’, pp. 366-97) focuses on the large empires (e.g., Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Achaemenid Persian) of the Iron Age (c.

1200-300 B.C.). This very long archaeological phase is distinguished by an earlier phase (i.e., the end of the 2nd millennium B.C.), characterized by the presence of what the authors name ‘Luwian-Aramaen States’ (pp.

366-77), and the final part of the Iron Age that instead shows a political control of the Syrian territory by the different emperors. Regarding the first phase, great emphasis is given to the tribal political organization of these small states that are centered upon households that refer ‘to

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eponymous group ancestors’ (e.g., Bit Bahiani that means ‘house of Bahiani’ in Aramaic, p. 367).

In terms of material culture, the capitals of these small city-states (e.g., Zincirli, Tell Taynat, Carchemish) show astonishing architecture that is decorated with stone orthostats and relieves created by local Aramaen artists. These local artists will then be absorbed by the ateliers of the Assyrian empires and the style will be recognizable in other elite art (e.g., carved ivories) also discovered at the southern Mesopotamian capitals (e.g., Nimrud). Moreover, the authors have strong difficulties in defining the material culture of the latest part of the 1st millennium B.C. This is due to the fact that whereas in the western region we have clearer manifestation of Phoenician and Greek art, it is more difficult to define a Neo-Babylonian and/or Achaemenid Persian cultural horizon in eastern Syria.

In conclusion, I would like to focus my attention to the end of the book (‘Conclusions’, pp. 400-402). Here the authors clearly state the fundamental problems and risks that Near Eastern archaeologists should keep in mind when analyzing the remains of ancient societies.

These are the followings: 1) Irregular geographical coverage; 2) Erratic chronological coverage; 3) Imperfections of chronological methodology; 4) The use of archaeological cultures; 5) The relationship between text and material culture; 6) Focus on urban/elite archaeological contexts, rather than non-elite/rural ones; 7) Use of ecofactual data combined with archaeological and textual records.

All these elements are clearly encountered and brilliantly used by Akkermans and Schwartz in the interpretation of the archaeological data recovered at ancient Syrian sites. Moreover, their interpretative trajectories are never imposed by static theoretical frame, rather their interpretations are based on a bottom-up perspective in which the archaeological data dictate the type of theory to be used.

As a whole, the book is an important tool for both scholars and students interested in the

archaeology of the Ancient Near East. In addition, the presence of geographical maps and chronological charts at the beginning of each chapter allows the reader to easily follow the description of the subjects discussed by the authors.

Nicola Laneri (1) It is interesting to notice that the most ancient building uncovered in Syria belongs to this period and consist of a semi-circular structure with stone foundations that has been excavated at the site of Umm el-Tlel 2.

(2) In some cases, these structures show ceremonial disposal of the dead.

(3) In terms of chronology, a more accurate terminology for the Late Chalcolithic (LC) has been recently defined and, as emphasized in this volume, focuses on common terms that can associate both southern Mesopotamian and ‘peripheral’ material culture (i.e., LC 1, c. 4400-4200 B.C.; LC 2, c. 42003900 B.C.; LC 3, c. 3900-3600 B.C.; LC 4, c. 36003400 B.C.; LC 5, c. 3400-3000 B.C.).

REFERENCES Algaze, G. (1993) The Uruk World System: The Dynamics of Expansion of Early Mesopotamian Civilization. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.

Johnson, A.W. & T. Earle (20002) The Evolution of Human Societies. From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. University Press. Stanford.

Larsen, M.T. (1976) The Old Assyrian City-state and Its Colonies. Mesopotamia, Vol. 4. Akademisk Forlag. Copenhagen.

Steward, J.H. (1955) Theory of Culture Change; The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. University of Illinois Press. Urbana.

Elizabeth Errington and Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, From Persepolis to the Punjab. Exploring Ancient Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, with contributions by Joe Cribb, JeanMarie Lafont, St John Simpson, Helen Wang, edited by Elizabeth Errington, The British Museum Press, London 2007, xx-268 pp., 193 b/w figs.

In the era of globalization is quite odd that one of the main museal institutions in the world

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should embrace the idea that a country should be self-sufficient in reconstructing the past of a part of its former colonial empire and neighbouring regions. This has been done by the British Museum in its publication From Persepolis to the Punjab, the subtitle of which should be ‘The British contribution to the exploration of ancient Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan’. From such a specific, and openly declared, standpoint the book would have been fully justified and have had an undeniable scientific validity.

Instead, in its ‘Preface’, we read that ‘In Part 2 (“Constructing the Past”), […] finds and collections – above all coins – are used as a starting point for a critical appraisal of current views and the sources now available for interpreting the history of these countries’ (p. xvii).

That is, a reader unfamiliar with the literature published all over the world on the areas dealt with in the book might believe that the current views and the sources now available are all included, and that the larger part of the knowledge was acquired during the period of British colonial domination.

As the director of an archaeological mission from another European country that has operated uninterruptedly in Pakistan since 1956, which has produced 18 final excavation reports and more than 200 preliminary reports all (with a considerable outlay in resources and time) rigorously published in English to ensure access to as wide a reading public as possible to the results of its work, and which finds in the bibliography of the book in review only 2 titles cited, I felt duty bound to inform the scientific community of this incredible situation and to fill in the inevitable large gaps that detract from a work that in other respects is of great interest and brings together praiseworthy contributions.

The main reason for me doing this is to avert the risk that the authoritativeness of the publishing institution might lead the hapless reader to consider the book as a reliable source.

The book contains a core that, following a praiseworthy method and with abundant details, describes the work of the early British antiquarians who operated in the vast area lying between Iran and the Indo-Pakistan sub-

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continent: this represents the main theme of the book and its fully justified principal raison d’être. We read in the ‘Preface’ that Part 1 of the volume results from an exhibition, From Persepolis to the Punjab: Coins and the Exploration of the East, curated by Elizabeth Errington and Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis in the British Museum in 1997. This exhibition hinges ‘on the pioneering discoveries of eight men, as primarily revealed by the collections in the Museums: Robert Ker Porter, Claudius James Rich, Henry Creswicke Rawlinson and William Kennett Loftus in Iran; Charles Masson in Afghanistan; Claude-Auguste Court and Alexander Cunningham in the North-West Frontier and Punjab; and James Prinsep at some distance away in Calcutta’ (p. xvii).

In Part 1, a first Chapter, ‘The Explorers and Collectors’, which describes the figures of these eight pioneers (pp. 3-16), is followed by a second one, ‘Deciphering Ancient Scripts’ (pp. 17-25).

Also Part 3, ‘Encountering the Past’, is dedicated to similar antiquarian themes and comprises several contributions collected from a workshop held at the British Museum on 1 November 1997. This is without doubt the most interesting section. It presents a documentation that is difficult to access and which on the contrary represents material of fundamental importance for the history of studies on this region.

Jean-Marie Lafont, in ‘From Taq-i Bustan to Lahore: French and Italian Officers in Persia and the Punjab 1816-46’ (pp. 141-52), after narrating the vicissitudes of a group of officers who, at the conclusion of the Napoleonic venture, entered the service of Persian and then Indian kings, presents us with a picture of the antiquarian contribution made by the explorations carried out in the North-West of the sub-continent, above all by Ventura and Court.

St John Simpson, in ‘Bushire and Beyond: Some Early Archaeological Discoveries in Iran’ (pp. 153-65), presents some very interesting materials referring to the sites of Reshahr, in the Bushehr peninsula in the Persian Gulf, and of Persepolis. Explorations by British officers at the first site are of interest above all for their

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contribution to the study of funeral customs in Sasanian period Iran: ‘the cemeteries found in the Bushire peninsula offer the first convincing archaeological evidence for stone and ceramic ossuaries within Iran at this date’ (p. 157), and represent a significant antecedent to the recent, and still unpublished, discoveries of the Iranian archaeologist Mehdi Rahbar. With reference to Persepolis, the article shows just how quickly the site fell prey to the greed of the West: when J.E. Alexander visited Persepolis in 1826, he found another British officer, Colonel MacDonald, ‘employing people in clearing away the earth from a staircase’. To speak of ‘early excavations’ as the author does seems unduly optimistic as, viewed through the eyes of the time, as a result of this work, in 1828 Sir John MacNeil was able to remove a relief depicting a sphinx, today conserved in the British Museum.

However, the West had begun plundering even before this date since MacDonald’s visits to Persepolis are recorded by his graffiti on the columns of Xerxes Gate beginning in 1808, and because the European private collections that could boast fragments of Persepolis included that of Sir Gore Ouseley, British ambassador to Persia from 1811 to 1814. I mention in this connection that Giuseppe Tilia, who led the IsMEO restorations at Persepolis between 1965 and 1979, had made an inventory of the Persepolis fragments contained in the museums and collections the world over and had vainly attempted to have returned what had been looted in the past. It is very interesting to note that in 1825, on the other hand, local peasants reburied ‘a number of sculptured stones, capitals of columns, etc.’ unearthed by another British officer, E.G. Stannus, blaming them for a sudden locust swarm (p. 159). Faced with the impossibility of removing the originals, Stannus became the first to make plaster casts of Persepolis reliefs. The same idea was later implemented by the Frenchman P.V. Lottin in 1844 and then by a British Museum expedition led by H.J. Weld, who, in 1892 had the modeller L.A. Giuntini make papier maché moulds for plaster casts and plaster pieces, from which two complete series of casts were obtained. Great interest was aroused by Weld’s excavations of several trenches both at

Persepolis and at Pasargadae, which have often been overlooked but are important for the information they provide on patches of colour and evidence of fires. Furthermore the survey Simpson makes of the bronze bucket from the Apadana (pp. 162-63) also represents a useful contribution to the study of Persepolis.

A harsher description of these antiquarian activities is provided by Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis in her interesting contribution ‘The British and Archaeology in Nineteenth-century Persia’ (pp.

166-78), in which she points out that ‘the term archaeology cannot be used for many of these early expeditions, which were often little more than treasure hunts’ (p. 166). The author here supplements Simpson’s contribution regarding the formation of Sir Gore Ouseley’s collection, the result of the treasure hunt carried out by his brother William, by J. Morier and by R. Gordon in 1811. We learn that, during a first visit in May, the local governor prohibited prosecution of the diggings that had barely begun, while in July the group returned to the site and succeeded in obtaining ‘some sculptures from the east wing of the northern stairway of the Apadana palace, which were immediately shipped to Britain via Bombay’ (p.

167). The article abounds in particular in details concerning the figure of R. Ker Porter, who was inspired by a true scientific interest, and his more accurate method for making a graphic representation of the ancient objects. Also of interest are the details concerning the difficult relations between A.H. Layard and W.K. Loftus with Persia and its people, and the interest of King Qajar Nasir al-Din Shah in the ruins of Persepolis, depicted in a photographic album produced by the Italian Luigi Pesce in 1858.

Joe Cribb’s article, ‘Rediscovering the Kushans’ (pp. 179-210), gives a detailed account of the laborious process that, in the second quarter of the 19th century, finally led European science to a correct attribution of the coinage of the Kushana kings unearthed in the contemporary explorations of the ancient monuments of the Gandhara region. The author emphasizes the importance of the identification of ‘Kanerki’ on the coins with the Kanishka of the Kashmiri Chronicles

by J. Prinsep in 1835. On the other hand,

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particular emphasis is laid on the figure of Charles Masson, for the modernity of his methodological choices in the numismatic field based on his ‘wisdom in choosing to assemble a firm statistical base for coin circulation in Begram’ (p. 208). An invaluable ‘Chronological bibliographic chart of discoveries’ (pp. 208-10) accompanies the contribution.

Elizabeth Errington, in ‘Exploring Gandhara’ (pp. 211-26), illustrates the various stages of the antiquarian discovery of the ancient treasures of the Gandhara region during the 19th century. Starting from the first phase of sondages in the st∑pas by the adventurers already mentioned in Chapter 1, through a second phase that began in 1851 when the British administration introduced an official system for documenting and conserving monuments, this discovery reaches its acme with the creation of the Archaeological Survey of India and the activity of Sir Alexander Cunningham, who directed it from 1871, concentrated in the North of the sub-continent.

Despite the profound interest all these figures felt for the antiquities forming the object of their attentions, their methods of investigation were characterized by total crudeness and they were attracted solely by the discovery of coins and other precious finds. The ‘stratigraphic’ sensitivity shown in 1851 by Captain Meadows Taylor during his investigations of the megalithic tombs in the State of Hyderabad (M. Wheeler, Archaeology from the Earth, Harmondsworth 1954, pp. 22-24) is unfortunately an isolated and unrepeated case!

Especially at the end of the 19th century the situation is one of all out plundering and the confiscation of finds carried out by the Political Agent Harold Deane is not enough to offset the damage caused to the monuments. It is enough to read the following chapter by H. Wang and the dramatic testimony of Lord Curzon concerning the British management of the Indian cultural heritage, dating to 1898 (p. 228), to realize that it was only the sensitivity of a small number of isolated officials of the British administration that made it possible for a part of these activities to produce some scientific results. With reference to the significance of the coin finds inside the st∑pas, the author admits

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that ‘coins provide only a terminus post quem’ (p. 221) and also emphasizes the unreliability of using coins found inside st∑pas using the example of Bimaran, where the Buddha images on the well-known reliquary suggest that it was produced ‘at least a century later than the coins found with it initially seem to indicate (Cribb 1999/2000; 2005a)’ (ibid.).

The final contribution, dedicated by Helen Wang to ‘Sir Aurel Stein: the Next Generation’ (pp. 227-34), illustrates the concluding stage of the path followed by this series of explorers.

The activity of the great scholar is scrutinized above all from the standpoint of ‘ethics’ and of the ambivalent relations that existed prior to the first expedition to the Xinjiang with the Chinese authorities, in which, when requesting Stein’s passport, the British authorities made no mention of any interest in excavations or the acquisition of antiquities (p. 229). The problems that arose in the course of the fourth expedition are attributed to a kind of arrogance on the part of the British explorer, whose approach had to come to terms with an enhanced awareness by the Chinese and with the request to participate jointly in the activities which was now considered unacceptable by Stein, after actually having been requested by him only six years earlier: this same joint participation was then later to allow the Sino-Swedish mission of Sven Hedin to take in the young Huang Wenbi, who then became the precursor of Chinese archaeology in Xinjiang.

This chapter brings the meritworthy Part 3 of the book to a close.

Where instead we detected the serious gaps mentioned earlier in this review is in Part 2, ‘Constructing the Past’, comprising the two chapters, ‘Empires and dynasties’ and ‘Religion’, which were evidently intended to provide the reader with a historical and historicalreligious background in which to situate the discoveries of the first adventurous scholars of Middle Asia. Although it is true that most of the latter’s activities are concentrated in the 19th century, Part 2 main draws upon a bibliography that by large has not moved beyond the admittedly great works or produced within the narrow confines of the British scientific world, which played a relatively marginal role,

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especially in field activities, after the colonial domination came to an end. Conversely, the activities of archaeologists and researchers from other European countries, above all France, Italy, Germany, USSR/Russia, as well as from the USA and Japan, have produced an impressive body of knowledge which is acknowledged only to a very limited extent in the volume under review.

Consequently, many of the sub-chapters present a reconstruction of the ancient history and culture of the region that is incorrect or at least only partial.

In particular, it is not possible nowadays to outline the history, the religion and the art of the North-West of the sub-continent without reference to the abundant discoveries made by the Italian Archeological Mission of IsMEO, later IsIAO, in Pakistan. These discoveries span a period from the protohistory to Islam and take in the investigation of the territory as a whole, the archaeology of the inhabited settlements and of the graveyards and above all the archaeology of the Buddhist sites.

The excavations carried out with painstaking stratigraphic methodology by Domenico Faccenna and coworkers represented the first specifically archaeological investigation in the field of Buddhist archaeology, in the wake of Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s contribution to the urban archaeology of the region. The results of this work exceed what was produced in previous periods even by such brilliant scholars as Sir John Marshall. The chronological and evolutionary study of the architecture of the Buddhist sites around Taxila was carried out a posteriori, after the monuments had been ‘dug up’ by dozens of workmen without any consideration being given to the stratigraphy, while that of Butkara I, Panr I, and Saidu Sharif I, is the result of a scientific excavation in which the physical links between monuments, and between monuments and floors, emerge within a stratigraphic framework that guides and at the same time constrains the researcher in his interpretation. The architectural sequence of Butkara I is therefore assessable not only in terms of an absolute dating of the coins found in the various contexts but must be studied as a relative ‘sequence’. It is therefore surprising

that the authors stop short at D. Faccenna’s first publicationi(1), already criticized by E. Erringtoni(2). In actual fact, after the latter contribution, Faccenna himself had deemed it necessary to provide some clarification to offset the misunderstanding of his work due to the obvious difficulty for non archaeologists to understand the concept of ‘stratigraphic sequence’, by contributing to volume 9 (3-4) of the review Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia, published by Brill, an article titled ‘The Butkara I Complex: Origins and Development’, which was part of a longer article ‘At the Origin of Gandharan Art. The Contribution of the IsIAO Italian Archaeological Mission in the Swat Valley, Pakistan’i(3): on p. 279 he specifically deals with the question, thus providing a complete response to E. Errington’s critique. The volume under review makes no mention of this contribution, and therefore again proposes (p. 129) a position which Faccenna had already proved to be groundless: it would have been more constructive to have acknowledged the clarifications suggested by Faccenna in a spirit of scientific debate that in any case presupposes the recognition of other subjects!

And in any case, of the three great excavations published by Faccenna in his masterful fashion, only Butkara I and Panr I are mentioned, overlooking the great importance of Saidu Sharif Ii(4), which yielded the first frieze of a Great Gandharan St∑pa known to us, dated to the mid 1st century A.D.i(5).

The mechanism of the spread of Buddhism is analysed with undue emphasis placed on the coin finds in the st∑pas, which leads to the statement that ‘the greatest expansion of Buddhism took place in the reign of the king Huvishka’ (p. 131). That is certainly true from the point of view of the actual penetration of the new belief of the whole of society in the Gandhara region, and corresponds to what was previously proposed also by G. Fussman in his masterly reconstruction of the dynamics of the spread of Buddhism through the North Westi(6) that the authors do not seem to be familiar with or do not deem worthy of mention: this is also apparently the case of the investigation carried out by the Italian Mission

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on the archaeological evidence referring to the spread of Buddhism in Swati(7), which corroborates precisely the picture traced out

by Fussman and which is also unknown to the authors of the chapter. But it should have been necessary to underline the importance of the previous stage, that of the patronage of the Indo-Scythians, which emerges also from R. Salomon’s investigation of the Gåndhår¤ textsi(8), as well as from the inscriptions of the kings of Apraca (p. 130): the initial moment of the art of Gandhara, which corresponds precisely to Phase 3 of the Great St∑pa of Butkara I and to the foundation of the Saidu Sharif I and Panr I st∑pas slightly later, actually corresponds exactly to the moment of literary production and makes it possible to identify an atmosphere of ferment as a time in which the bases were laid for the subsequent penetration and that is fundamental to an up-to-date analysis of Gandharan Buddhism.

With reference to the relations with the Brahmanic religion what is surprising is the total absence in the discussion of the glyptic evidence, which indeed is hugely important in the identification of the local religious forms encountered by Buddhism in the region: and yet it is precisely in the Department of Oriental Antiquities of the British Museum that an important collection of seals collected in the North-West may be foundi(9). The scant evidence provided by the coins and the sculpture mentioned on p. 137 with reference to the worship of Skanda-Kårttikeya, for example, might have been supplemented by a more substantial glyptic documentation, as was aptly done by D.M. Srinivasani(10) in the article that is nevertheless cited by the authors.

And again, what may be said of the section on the Brahmanic rebirth which mentions the fact that ‘Xuan Zang speaks of a number of “Deva temples” in Swat’ (p. 136), but does not mention the great Brahmanic temple excavated by the IsIAO Italian Mission at Barikot (B¤r-Ko† ghwa∫∂ai), with its wealth of figured stucco and marble decorations which open up a fresh chapter in the so-called Shahi art (also in this case, of course, these finds have been omitted from the list supplied)? This is a discovery communicated to the scientific community

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in the well-known series of congresses of the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists and published in English in three different editorial locationsi(11). But the site of Barikot must indeed have been quite repugnant to the authors also because, with reference to the Indo-Greek period, they make no mention of the only monumental evidence datable to that period known so far, namely the powerful fortification brought to light by the IsIAO Italian Mission precisely at Barikoti(12).

What can be said about a numismatic study that, in the face of numerous citations of contributions made by collectors concerning materials the provenance of which is generally far removed from legality, studiously avoids mentioning the only recent publication of coins from stratigraphic excavations in an urban site of the regioni(13)?

In the face of such huge gaps one can only express astonishment. However, it is not only regarding the results of Italian archaeology in Pakistan that the book is seriously deficient. Not the slightest mention is made of the monumental work done by the Pakistani-German mission that for several decades has been studying the artistic and epigraphic evidence of the upper Indus valley, of fundamental importance for a correct positioning of the cultural contacts between the Indian sub-continent and the Central and East Asian regions that used this route. And yet, in addition to the numerous contributions of various kinds, two complete sets of reports saw the lighti(14). And how can we explain the absence of Tapa Sardar from fig. 176, the caption to which reads ‘Buddhist sites of south-east Afghanistan and Gandhara’?

Is this not one of the most interesting and more thoroughly investigated Buddhist sites of south-east Afghanistan and Gandhara? It is mentioned in the text on pages 135 and 136, but not on this map!

Side by side with these inadmissible gaps, several past researchers are instead considered as infallible legendary figures, in spite of the progress made by studies. One interesting example from the point of view of epistemology is raised by the question of the location of the Aornos rock, where the inhabitants of Swat sought refuge from the pursuit of Alexander.

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On p. 34, the correct identification of this problematic Greek toponym is considered to coincide with the peak of Pir Sar, on the Indus, proposed in 1927 by Sir Aurel Stein, whereas, shortly after, the previous identification of Aornos with the site of Ranigat proposed by Cunningham is defined as ‘based on wishful thinking rather than on archaeological evidence’ (p. 36). However, it escapes the authors’ notice that Stein’s identification was itself only a possibility. Indeed, in 1977, Giuseppe Tucci, on the basis of historical considerations and of his exploration of the territory, had proposed to identify the Aornos of Swat with Mt Ilam, between Swat and Buneri(15). This identification was accepted also by other scholars who had resumed the topic after himi(16), up to a recent further confirmation by a subsequent detailed topographic investigation of the route followed by Alexanderi(17).

The only really positive note in this part is represented by the clear ordering of the complex numismatics of the 4th-7th century A.D., which allows the authors to illustrate in great detail the events occurring during the period of the Iranian Huns (pp. 85-102).

However, there are too many topics in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 that, ignoring the advances made in this field of studies, are uncritically presented from a ‘traditional’ viewpoint and instead would deserve a more up-to-date treatment if the authors really had the intention of proposing the ‘critical appraisal of current views’ mentioned above.

On p. 70, in the caption to figs. 62 and 63, for example, we see the temple of Må† simplistically defined as a ‘Kushan dynastic shrine’: this is a term that, as G. Verardii(18) and G. Fussmani(19) have clearly demonstrated, may today be accepted only if accompanied by the necessary explanations linking it to the Indian conception of royalty. Instead, on p. 119 we see that the architectural complex of Khalchajan, which on p. 67 had been presented in the excavators’ interpretation as ‘a Kushan palace of the early first century AD, with later second- to third-century additions’, is presented as a ‘small dynastic temple serving a similar function as the principal Kushan dynastic shrines of Surkh Kotal and Mat’. The reference to the preceding

place is made in an ambiguous and secondary fashion, so that an inattentive reader might consider this interpretation as the only one possible, thus confirming the idea that it was certain that a dynastic worship of the Kushan kings really did exist that was possibly similar to that of the Hellenistic kings. It should not be overlooked that, for Khalcajan, it was precisely the interpretation of dynastic temple, proposed by B.Ja. Staviskij in 1977i(20), that was immediately rejected comprehensively by P. Bernardi(21).

On p. 112, the description of the Gandharan Vajrapå∫i, which starts from the obvious link with the figure of Heracles, nevertheless ignores other recently proposed interpretations which broaden the problem of the iconographic interpretationi(22). Also the well-known image from Tillya Tapa is presented in a univocal fashion, disregarding any reference to other proposed interpretationsi(23).

On p. 114-15 the important issue of the dating of Zarathushthra is simplified, with the reference to footnote of the indication of a theory that disagrees with the 1200-1000 B.C. given as a certain date: and in the footnote (n. 5, p. 138), which refers the discussion to an article

by Sh. Shahbazi written in 2002, the lower dating is attributed to Zaehner 1961, without mentioning, before him, S.H. Taqizadehi(24), W.B. Henningi(25) and, in more recent times, I. Gershevitchi(26) and above all G. Gnoli, who has dedicated to this topic a considerable body of contributionsi(27).

And Gnoli is again ignored with reference to another problem, that of the geographic location of the prophet, a problem on which much has been written and which is instead glossed over as follows: ‘It is not clear where Zarathushtra came from exactly, but he seems to have preached in northern [sic!] Central Asia, perhaps Choresmia’ (p. 115). Other hypotheses, like the one situating Zarathushtra’s preaching in the region South of the Hindukush centered around Sistan, which Gnoli proposed on well-grounded evidencei(28), are completely ignored, except for a single reference regarding the location of the Avestic Raγa (and not ‘Rhaga’), for which the recent contribution by F. Grenet 2005 is cited.

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On p. 120, with regard to the rare Gandharan presences of Buddha with shoulder flames a nevertheless praiseworthy contribution

by H. Tsuchiya 1999/2000 is only cited, when specific studies have been dedicated to this problem by experts of the calibre of G. Tuccii(29) and M. Taddeii(30).

On p. 126 it is claimed that the discoveries of Masson, Court and the others ‘led to a basic understanding of the nature of the stupa’: here, as in Chapter 9 ‘Exploring Gandhara’, we would have been happy to find at least one phrase regarding the catastrophic effects this type of investigation had on the architectural heritage of the region, in which the main st∑pas were literally gutted: however, this would have presupposed an archaeological sensitivity that, as we have seen, is to be found in only a few of the contributions to the volume! The principal approach followed is actually that of antiquarian collectionism, not of archaeology, as we are sure that our observations to date have demonstrated. To construct a history of Buddhism on the basis of numismatic sources obtained by means of non scientific methods is indeed extraordinary if we consider the methodological observations already suggested in 1987 by G. Fussman with regard to the complex significance of the presence of coins in the st∑pasi(31)!

But it is not only these lacunae that detract from the quality of the volume. It also contains some glaring errors.

In Chapter 2, ‘Deciphering Ancient Scripts’, p. 17, we read for example that, thanks to the first complete copy of the trilingual inscription in Pahlavi, Parthian and Greek at Naqsh-e Rostam, published by C. Niebuhr in 1778, A.S. de Sacy succeeded in correctly identifying ‘the author of the inscription as the Sasanian king Shapur I (AD 241-72) (Wiesehöfer 2001, p. 234)’. In fact, the only trilingual inscription of Naqsh-e Rostam that Niebuhr would have been able to copy in the course of his 1767 expedition was that of Ardashir Ii(32), which, among things, in the volume under review, is to be found in fig. 65 on p. 73 at the foot of the sketch made by R. Ker Porter of the relief depicting the scene of the investiture of the first Sasanian king. In fact,

472

J. Wiesehöfer, incorrectly cited by the author, does not speak of Shapur I, but of an ‘early Sasanian period (3rd century AD)’i(33). The explanation of this erroneous attribution is revealed on p. 19, where we read that ‘[Grotefend] correctly identified the ancient Persian title “king of kings” […] by comparing the Old Persian inscription with the already translated trilingual Pahlavi, Parthian and Greek inscription of Shapur I at Kaba-i Zardusht’. In fact, until the excavations carried out by the Oriental Institute at Naqsh-e Rostam, which between 1936 and 1939 freed the lower portion of the Ka‘ba-ye Zardoshti(34), the inscription of Shapur I was not known and could in no way have helped Grotefend in his work.

Again with reference to Chapter 2 we point out that among the ‘scripts used in ancient Persia’, illustrated on pp. 17-20, Aramaic is inexplicably omitted, even though it appears in several different inscriptions, the main ones consisting of those written on the tablets and artefacts found at Persepolis and the large inscription on the face of the tomb of Darius I at Naqsh-e Rostam: this evidence apparently escaped the authors’ attention.

In Chapter 3, ‘Empires and dynasties’, p. 31, in order to indicate the ancient form of the term ‘satrap’, oddly enough the Old Persian form xšaçapavan is not used but rather the form khshathrapata, in italics, the language of which is not even specified. Further, on p. 42, we discover that Ai Khanum was a Greek city ‘with an acropolis and necropolis occupying the high citadel area’: in actual fact, the Hellenistic acropolis did not house a necropolis, and the tombs found in it belong to the nomads that conquered the city. And again the river flowing by the city to the SW is not the Kotcha, as mentioned in the text and in fig. 44, but the Kokcha.

Continuing on to Chapter 4, ‘Religion’, on p. 107, we read that ‘possible confirmation that divinities of Greek origin were worshipped in Bactria comes from the second-century BC temple at Dal’verzin Tepe, which had painted images of the Dioscuri at the entrance to the shrine (Kruglikova 2004)’. Without entering into any discussion of the simplistic equating of iconographic representations of Greek origin

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and a cult of Greek origin, it should be remembered that the temple to which the authors are referring is not known as Dal’verzin Tepe, a toponym commonly used to refer to another important site in northern Bactria, but as Dil’berjin, an Afghan site excavated by a Soviet-Afghan mission in the 1970s. And further, the dating of the various pictorial phases of the site proposed by Kruglikova was totally demolished over the decades and an updated bibliography would have been available to the authorsi(35).

Lastly, a similar acceptance of a ‘traditional’ dating is proposed in the caption to fig.

120, p. 135, where the two Bamiyan Buddhas are dated to the ‘fifth and third century AD, respectively’, following a dating that no one today would dare repropose as extremely robust arguments have been proposed confuting iti(36), to which recent C14 datings can be added.

It is impossible here to report the typos of all kinds that appear in the book as the list would be too long, nor the numerous inaccuracies, particularly in the captions (e.g. caption of fig. 31 on p. 30 ‘the northern staircase of the west wing of the Apadana’: there is no west wing of the Apadana, but a west wing of the northern staircase of the Apadana).

The very serious lacunae mentioned above also of course affect the bibliographic reference which cruelly denote the literature used by the authors and with which they were familiar.

In a publication aiming to provide ‘a critical appraisal of current views and the sources now available for interpreting the history of these countries’ (p. xvii), and which certainly is not addressed to the general public when the presentation of the subject matter and the price are taken into consideration, to skim through the list of authors present and not find names such as K. Jettmar, C. Nylander, G. Tucci, L. Vanden Berghe, J. Wolski, to mention but a few, gives a good idea of the dramatic prior selection made. But in the face of the choice of using Wikipedia as a bibliographic reference for the figure of Ptolemy Ceraunus (p. 41) we can only close the volume and heave a disconsolate sigh.

Pierfrancesco Callieri

(1) D. Faccenna, Butkara I (Swåt, Pakistan) 19561962, RepMem, III.1-5.2, Rome 1980-1981.

(2) E. Errington, ‘Numismatic Evidence for Dating the Buddhist Remains of Gandhara’, Silk Road Art and Archaeology, 6, 1999/2000, Papers in Honour of Francine Tissot, pp. 191-216.

(3) D. Faccenna, P. Callieri & A. Filigenzi, ‘At the Origin of Gandharan Art. The Contribution of the IsIAO Italian Archaeological Mission in the Swat Valley, Pakistan’, Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia, 9 (3-4), pp. 277-380.

(4) D. Faccenna, Saidu Sharif I (Swåt, Pakistan), 2. The Buddhist Sacred Area. The St∑pa Terrace, RepMem, XXIII.2, Rome 1995.

(5) D. Faccenna, Il fregio figurato dello St∑pa Principale nell’area sacra buddhistica di Saidu Sharif I, RepMem, XXVIII, Roma 2001 (summarized in ‘The Frieze on the Main St∑pa of Saidu Sharif I’, Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia, 9 (3-4), pp. 319-49).

(6) G. Fussman, ‘Upåya-Kau alya. L’implantation du bouddhisme au Gandhara’, in F. Fukui & G. Fussman, eds., Bouddhisme et cultures locales.

Quelques cas de réciproques adaptations. Actes du colloque franco-japonais de septembre 1991, Paris 1994, pp. 17-51.

(7) P. Callieri, ‘Buddhist Presence in the Urban Settlements of Swat, Second Century BCE to Fourth Century CE’, in P. Brancaccio & K. Behrendt, eds., Gandhåran Buddhism. Archaeology, Art, Texts, Vancouver-Toronto 2006, pp. 60-82.

(8) R. Salomon, Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhåra. The British Library Kharo߆h¤ Fragments, Seattle 1999, pp. 180-81.

(9) P. Callieri, Seals and Sealings from the NorthWest of the Indian Subcontinent and Afghanistan (4th Century BC-11th Century AD). Local, Indian, Sasanian, Graeco-Persian, Sogdian, Roman, Dissertationes, I, Naples 1997.

(10) D.M. Srinivasan, ‘Skanda/Kårttikeya in the Early Art of the Northwest’, Silk Road Art and Archaeology, 5, 1997-98, pp. 233-68.

(11) P. Callieri, L. Colliva, R. Micheli, A. Nasir & L.M. Olivieri, ‘B¤r-ko†-ghwa∫∂ai, Swat, Pakistan.

1998-1999 Excavation Report’, EW, 50, 1-4, pp. 191226; P. Callieri, L. Colliva & A. Nasir, ‘B¤r-ko†ghwa∫∂ai, Swat, Pakistan. Preliminary Report on the Autumn 2000 Campaign of the IsIAO Archaeological Mission in Pakistan’, AION, 60-61, 2000-2001, pp.

215-32; P. Callieri, ‘Excavation of the IsIAO Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan at B¤r-ko†ghwa∫∂ai, Swat: The Sacred Building on the Citadel’, in C. Jarrige & V. Lefèvre, eds., South Asian Archaeology 2001, Vol. II, Paris 2005, pp. 417-25; A. Filigenzi, ‘Stone and Stucco Sculptures from the

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Sacred Building of B¤r-ko†-ghwa∫∂ai, Swat, Pakistan’, ibid., pp. 453-61.

(12) P. Callieri, ‘B¤r-ko†-ghwa∫∂ai: An Early Historic Town in Swat (Pakistan)’, in C. Jarrige, ed., South Asian Archaeology 1989, Madison 1992, pp.

339-46; Id., ‘Excavations of the IsMEO Italian Archaeological Mission at the Historic Settlement of B¤r-ko†-ghwa∫∂ai, Swat, Pakistan: 1990-91 Campaign’, in A.J. Gail & G.J.R. Mevissen, eds., South Asian Archaeology 1991, Stuttgart 1993, pp.

339-48; P. Callieri et al., B¤r-ko†-ghwa∫∂ai 1990-1992.

A Preliminary Report on the Excavations of the Italian Archaeological Mission, IsMEO, Suppl. 73 to AION, 52, 4, Naples 1992; L.M. Olivieri, ‘Excavations at B¤rko†-ghwa∫∂ai (Swat) 1992. Preliminary Report’, Pakistan Archaeology, 28, 1993, pp. 103-16; P. Callieri, ‘The North-West of the Indian Subcontinent in the Indo-Greek Period: The Archaeological Evidence’, in A. Invernizzi, ed., In the Land of the Gryphons, Monografie di Mesopotamia, V, Firenze 1995, pp. 293-308.

(13) D.W. MacDowall & P. Callieri, ‘A Catalogue of Coins from the Excavations at B¤r-ko†-ghwa∫∂ai 1984-1992’, in B¤r-ko†-ghwa∫∂ai Interim Reports, II, RepMem, n.s., III, Rome 2004, pp. 27-90.

(14) The monographs of the series ‘Materialien zur Archäologie der Nordgebiete Pakistans’ (nine volumes from 1994 to 2009) and the volumes of the series ‘Antiquities of Northern Pakistan, Reports and Studies’ (five volumes from 1989 to 2004).

(15) G. Tucci, ‘On Swåt. The Dards and Connected Problems’, EW, XXVII, 1-4, 1977, pp. 9-85, 94-103, specially pp. 52-55 (reprinted in G. Tucci, On Swåt. Historical and Archaeological Notes, ed. P. Callieri & A. Filigenzi, Rome 1997, pp. 165-259).

(16) O. Caroe, The Pathans 550 B.C.-A.D. 1957, London 1964, pp. 46, 50-51, 55, had treated the question very diplomatically and only in one of his letters to P.H.L. Eggermont published later by the latter reveals his decided preference for Ilam: see P.H.L. Eggermont, ‘Ptolemy the Geographer and the People of the Dards: Alexander in Buner, The Aornus Problem and the Dards of Dyrta’, Journal of Central Asia, VII, 1, 1984, pp. 73-123, specially pp. 73-74, where Tucci’s proposal is accepted (published also in Orientalia Lovanensia Periodica, 15, 1984, pp. 191200). P. Bernard, ‘L’Aornos bactrien et l’Aornos indien. Philostrate et Taxila: géographie, mythe, et réalité, TOΠOI, 6 (2), 1996, pp. 475-530, specially p.

484, reviews the various positions and, even though it does not express an opinion, accepts as quite possible the Ilam identification.

(17) L.M. Olivieri, ‘Notes on the Problematical Sequence of Alexander’s Itinerary in Swat. A GeoHistorical Approach’, EW, 46, 1-2, 1996, pp. 45-78.

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(18) G. Verardi, ‘The Kußå∫a Emperors as Cakravartins. Dynastic Art and Cults in India and Central Asia: History of a Theory, Clarifications and Refutations’, EW, 33, 1-4, 1983, pp. 225-94, where among things the concept of ‘dynastic art’ is downplayed.

(19) G. Fussman, ‘The Må† devakula: a New Approach to its Understanding’, in D.M. Srinivasan, ed., Mathurå. The Cultural Heritage, New Delhi 1989, pp. 193-99, specially p. 199: ‘At least we now understand what a dynastic shrine is: it is a shrine where the king, his family and high officials worshipped the deity who protects the king and his family, not the temple of the godlike king’.

(20) B.Ja. Staviskij, Kušanskaja Baktrija. Problemy istorii i kul’tury, Moskva 1977.

(21) P. Bernard, ‘La Bactriane à l’époque kushane d’après une nouvelle publication soviétique’, Journal des Savants, Octobre-Décembre 1979, pp. 237-56.

(22) A. Filigenzi, ‘Maître du ciel, héros de la terre: la triade Bouddha-Vajrapå∫i-Skanda dans l’art du Gandhara’, in Z. Tarzi & D. Vaillancourt, eds., Art et archéologie des monastères gréco-bouddhiques du Nord-Ouest de l’Inde et de l’Asie Centrale. Actes du colloque international du Crpoga, Strasbourg, 17-18 mars 2000, Paris 2005, pp. 93-111.

(23) R.L. Brown, ‘The Walking Tilya Tepe Buddha: a Lost Prototype’, Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 14, 2003, pp. 77-87.

(24) S.H. Taqizadeh, ‘The Era of Zoroaster’, JRAS, 1947, pp. 33-40.

(25) W.B. Henning, Zoroaster. Politician or Witch-doctor, Oxford 1951.

(26) I. Gershevitch, ‘Approaches to Zoroaster’s Gathas’, Iran, XXXIII, 1995, pp. 1-29.

(27) G. Gnoli, Zoroaster in History, New York 2000; Id., ‘Agathias and the Date of Zoroaster’, in M. Compareti et al., eds., Erån ud Ane-rån. Studies Presented to Boris Il’ič Maršak on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, Venezia 2006, pp. 213-21; Id., ‘The Seleucid Era and the Date of Zoroaster’, in A. Panaino & A. Piras, eds., Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea Held in Ravenna, 6-11 October 2003, Vol. I. Ancient and Middle Iranian Studies, Milano 2006, pp. 101-14.

(28) G. Gnoli, Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland. A Study on the Origins of Mazdeism and Related Problems, Naples 1980; Id., ‘More on the Khwarezmian Hypothesis’, in R.E. Emmerick & D. Weber, eds., Corolla Iranica. Papers in Honour of Prof.

Dr. David Neil MacKenzie on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday on April 8th 1991, Frankfurt am Mein 1991, pp. 74-78; Id., ‘Further Notes on Avestan Geography’, in D. Weber, ed., Languages of Iran: Past

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and Present. Iranian Studies in memoriam David Neil MacKenzie, Wiesbaden 2005, pp. 43-50.

(29) G. Tucci, ‘On a Sculpture of Gandhåra’, EW, 9, 1958, pp. 227-30.

(30) M. Taddei, ‘Appunti sull’iconografia di alcune manifestazioni luminose dei Buddha’, in Gururåjamañjarikå. Studi in onore di Giuseppe Tucci, Napoli 1974, pp. 435-39; Id., ‘The D¤paækara-Jåtaka and Siddhårtha’s Meeting with Råhula. How Are They Linked to the Flaming Buddha?’, AION, 52, 1992, pp. 103-107.

(31) G. Fussman, ‘Coin Deposits in NorthWestern India Stupas and Their Meaning for the Archaeologist’, in P.L. Gupta & A.K. Jha, eds., Numismatics and Archaeology, Nashik 1987, pp. 11-15.

(32) ANRm: cf. M. Back, Die sassanidischen Staatsinschriften, Acta Iranica, 18, Leiden-TéhéranLiège 1978, pp. 281-82.

(33) J. Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD, London-New York 1996, p. 234.

(34) M. Sprengling, Third Century Iran. Sapor and Kartir, Chicago 1953; Ph. Huyse, Die dreisprächige Inschrift Šåbuhrs I. an der Ka’ba-i Zardušt (ŠKZ) (CII, III 1, 1), London 1999, pp. 6-7.

(35) P. Bernard, Review of I.T. Kruglikova, Dil’berdzin. Xram Dioskurov, Moskva 1986, in Abstracta Iranica, 1987, pp. 60-62; C. Lo Muzio, ‘The Discouri at Dilberjin (Northern Afghanistan): Reviewing their Chronology and Significance’, Studia Iranica, 28, 1, 1999, pp. 41-71.

(36) S. Kuwayama, ‘Literary Evidence for Dating the Colossi in Bamiyan’, in G. Gnoli & L. Lanciotti, eds., Orientalia Iosephi Tucci Memoriae Dicata, 2, SOR, LVI 2, Roma 1987, pp. 703-27, specially p. 725; D. Klimburg-Salter, The Kingdom of Båmiyån.

Buddhist Art and Culture of the Hindukush, NaplesRome 1989, pp. 90-92; B.A. Litvinskij & T.I. Zejmal’, The Buddhist Monastery of Ajina Tepa, Tajikistan.

History and Art of Buddhism in Central Asia, RepMem, n.s., I, Rome 2004, p. 166.

INDOLOGY Von Hinüber, Oskar, Die Palola #åhis. Ihre Steininschriften, Inschriften auf Bronzen, Handschriftencolophone und Schutzzauber.

Materialien zur Geschichte von Gilgit und

Chilas, Heidelberg Academy for the Humanities and Sciences, Antiquities of Northern Pakistan, Reports and Studies, Vol. 5, Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2004, XI-215 pp., 31 b/w pls. ISBN 3805334826.

Until recently, both the remote and recent history of the Hindukush/Karakoram region (which some scholars are starting to label with the nick-name Peristan, referring to its basic cultural homogeneity in recent pre-Islamic times) had remained largely the subject of speculation. There were traces of a remote Buddhist past in the first millennium A.D., clear signs of the later diffusion of indigenous pagan cultures of the ‘Kafir’ type all the way up to Gilgit and Chilas, and a general, though unfounded, belief that islamization dated back to no later than the first half of the second millennium.

It was only in the last two or three decades that, on the one hand, the work of qualified historians like Wolfgang Holzwarth has started to shed better light on the events of the last five centuries, while, on the other hand, the discovery of thousands of petroglyphs after the opening of the Karakoram Highway in 1979 has triggered a wave of intense research on the Buddhist period of the 1st millennium.

Thus we can now describe with much better approximation the process of penetration of the great civilizations into these high mountains during the last two millennia.

Throughout the 1st millennium there was a great thrust from the south which led literate cultures to spread into the mountains to Chilas and Gilgit, establishing a perilous connection with the Tarim Basin through Hunza or Baltistan. The decline of Buddhist civilization at the end of the millennium gave way to nonliterate cultures, most likely proto-Kafir, which prevailed throughout Peristan until the progressive diffusion of Islamic civilization from the north starting from the mid-2nd millennium.

This work of Oskar von Hinüber marks a decisive step forward in our knowledge of the Buddhist period, which has been steadily increased over the last three decades by the work

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started by Karl Jettmar and Ahmad Hasan Dani in 1980 and then continued by their heirs, especially by the research cell on Rock Carvings and Inscriptions along the Karakoram Highway set up in 1984 at the Heidelberg Academy for the Humanities and Sciences. This very active research group, currently directed by Harald Hauptmann, has produced the two series ‘Materialien zur Archäologie der Nordgebiete Pakistans’ and ‘Antiquities of Northern Pakistan’, the latter including the study under review as Vol. 5.

The Palola #åhi dynasty reigned over Chilas and Gilgit from the late 6th century A.D. to the early 8th century, in the time of the highest flourishing of Buddhist art and civilization in this area. When the present writer inquired into the subject a decade ago, the sparse information available about them was scattered through a range of specialized publications which no one had yet tried to piece together: even the exact name of this dynasty was uncertain, since it was better known as Pa†ola #åhi, a sanscritization of the indigenous term Palola.

In his path-breaking inquiry, von Hinüber has now collected all the available sources about this dynasty and related times, which include seventeen colophons and apotropaic formulas from the Gilgit manuscripts (already partly noted by Tucci and others), nine inscriptions from bronze Buddha statues (only two of which previously noted by Fussman), 22 inscriptions (partly previously unpublished) from the Karakoram Highway and some sparse references in literary sources from India, China and the 10th-century Saka Itinerary from the Dunhuang collection.

Von Hinüber has no inclination for the broad and bold speculations that some of his earlier predecessors were fond of. His work is strictly concerned with establishing the basic documented facts, which are kept clearly apart from any conjecture about them. After the brief introduction on the state of knowledge, he lists in Chapter II, in a series of numbered entries, all the sources available on the dynasty and related times. Entries 1 to 33A, dealing with texts from the Gilgit manuscripts and the bronze and stone inscriptions, include each a brief caption describing the source (with reference to the illustration in the Appendix when available), reference to previous publications when available,

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a transcription of the Sanskrit text, a translation and/or discussion of the text, and a list of proper names appearing in it with their titles. Entries 34 to 36 deal with the literary sources on the Palola #åhi: the Chinese sources from the T’ang Annals unearthed long ago by Chavannes; the Indian sources stemming from Varåhamihira’s B®hatsamhita; and the Saka itineray.

On the basis of this material, the author can discuss one by one in Chapter III, the nine documented rulers of the dynasty, from Somana in the 6th century A. D. to Surendråditya, who was reigning in 720. At the end of the chapter he provides a tentative chronology based on a handful of fixed dates drawn mainly from the bronzes. According to von Hinüber, all these rulers probably belonged, with the exception of the first, to the same family, named Bhagadatta.

Chapter IV briefly discusses other rulers of Chilas who apparently preceded and followed the Palula #åhi in the area, particularly Vai rava∫asena and Vajra ∑ra, while the long Chapter V deals extensively with the royal, clerical and administrative titles appearing in the sources. The last two pages of this chapter discuss the ethnonym Purußa or Vurußa, which most likely refers to speakers of protoBurushaski, ancestors of the present Burushos, who apparently already intermingled with the prevailing proto-Shina-speaking population.

Chapter VI is a valuable comparative study of the depictions of dedicators in the Palola #åhi materials and in the contemporaneous bronze Buddha statues from North-Western India, while Chapter VII is concerned with the dedication formulas employed in the colophones and inscriptions of Gilgit and Chilas. The volume is provided with three indexes, but, unfortunately, there is no bibliography. The 36 black-and-white illustrations are assembled at the end of the book, depicting, with many enlargements, manuscript fragments, Buddha statues (some of which very fine artefacts) and rock inscriptions.

The Palula #åhi were the bearers of a highly sophisticated civilization which ephemerally succeeded in taking roots in one of the remotest mountain regions of the world. They were commissioners of great art, of paintings, carvings, bronze sculptures, religious buildings, inscriptions and illuminated manuscripts which

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show a level of artistic achievement never again to be attained in Peristan.

The distance between these highly cultured rulers and the illiterate and unruly Kafir tribesmen who still peopled Chilas (as we now know from Holzwarth’s studies) in the mid18th century, is one of the great puzzles of Peristan history. Despite the eclypse of Buddhism and of the benefits of civilization, it is highly probable that the subjects of the Palola #åhi were the direct ancestors of the present Shina-speakers of Gilgit and Chilas, as indicated by the ethnonym Palula, which was long applied to them and is still carried by the splinter refugee community of Shina-speakers in Southern Chitral. It is highly tempting to speculate that a trace of this ethnic and historical descendance may be preserved in the famous Gilgit legend of Shiri Badat, whose name may echo that of the Bhagadatta family, rather than the Sri Brahmadatta of the Jåtakas, as earlier suggested by John Mock.

We know that a Kafir ruler reigned over Gilgit as late as the late 18th century, and the rituals of royalty of this kingdom survived into the 19th century to be recorded by Biddulph and other early explorers. But we know next to nothing about the historical roots of those rituals and their possible relations with Buddhist times. We have here pages and pages of a most intriguing history that still await to be written.

The relations of the Buddhist civilization of Peristan with what were probably its protoKafir surroundings are a topic that fascinated Tucci’s imagination at the time of his 1977 study on the subject, when knowledge of both sides of that relationship was much vaguer than today. The presence of proto-Kafir cultures in Buddhist times is starting to emerge, as Jettmar had already detected, in the Karakoram Highway petroglyphs and, as Olivieri has recently found, in post-Buddhist Swat.

All this lies beyond the scope of von Hinüber’s study. But his painstaking inquiry on the Palola #åhi lays down the basic facts on the most crucial phase of Buddhist civilization in Peristan. This is the groundwork upon which we can now build our understanding of their socio-political structure, their material culture,

their relations with their literate and non-literate surroundings and, last but not least, their successors and their distant descendants.

Alberto M. Cacopardo

CHINESE STUDIES Alfredo Cadonna, ed., Liezi. La scrittura reale del vuoto abissale e della potenza suprema, Einaudi, Torino 2008, XVIII-316 pp. ISBN 9788806192419.

We must be grateful to Alfredo Cadonna, professor of History of the Philosophy and Religions of China at ‘Ca’ Foscari’ University of Venice for his excellent translation of Liezi’s text. The book, enhanced by a parallel text with traditional and non simplified Chinese characters on the opposite page, is preceded by a long introductory essay on the work and on themes of doctrinal interest. After Angus Graham’s English translation the need was felt for an Italian version that took into account also Chinese critical works such as those of Wang Shumin and Yang Bojun.

Lionello Lanciotti Michel Masson, ed., Grandi religioni e culture nell’Estremo Oriente. Cina, Jaka BookMassimo, Milano 2008, 256 pp. ISBN 9788816408142.

Michel Masson and the Ricci Institute of Paris and Taipei edited this book which appears in an Italian edition as the eighth volume of the Trattato di Antropologia del Sacro directed by Julien Ries and Lawrence E. Sullivan. The book under review includes articles by P.H. de Bruyn, A. Dell’Orto, C. Despeux, V. Goossaert, C. Konstler, Lin Chenyuan, M. Masson, T. Meynard, E. Rochat del Vallée and B. Vermander. As M. Masson correctly pointed out in his introduction (p. 21), ‘in China, as elsewhere, the sacred is everywhere’ thanks to

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the studies of western and East Asian specialists on the Confucian texts, on the Taoist canon, on the inscriptions on oracular bones and archaic bronzes. The book makes a particularly important contribution to our understanding of ancient Chinese religious feeling, but takes in also research on the present situations such as the study by Alessandro Dell’Orto on ‘Cosmology, Territory and Chinese Popular Religion’ (pp. 43-60), based on research carried out on Taiwan, in particular on the divinity known as Tudi Gong and on the popular divinity of the city or Chenghuang.

Lionello Lanciotti

Carmen Coduti, ed., Liu Xiang, Biografie di donne, Il Nuovo Ramusio, 7, IsIAO, Roma 2008, 304 pp., ill. ISBN 9788885320550.

The ‘Il Nuovo Ramusio’ series published

by IsIAO, now in its seventh volume, has presented this translation of Lienuzhuan (Women’s Biographies), attributed to Liu Xiang (1st century B.C.), one of the greatest erudite scholars of the Han dynasty. Of this work only book seven, edited by Riccardo Fracasso, has been translated, under the title of ‘Quindici donne perverse’ (Fifteen Perverse Women) (Vicenza 2005), as already reported in East and West. The complete translation of the work by a young female sinologist is enhanced by a series of ancient Chinese xylographs. The book illustrates how, during the Han dynasty, importance was attached to the female figure both from the positive point of view (intelligent, wise and benevolent women and mothers who were chaste and obedient, orators) and the negative (corrupt women and wicked favourites). A long introduction (pp. 7-73) examines the figure of the author, the story narrated in the text, the subjects, the historical setting and the ideology which gave rise to a didactic work that could provide a paragon for female behaviour, and lastly, ensure the good fortune of the book.

Carmen Coduti’s contribution is excellent and attests to the validity of Italian sinology. For those who are not aware of the fact owing to

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the low level of knowledge of our language abroad, it should be noted that just one year ago Francesco D’Arelli, in his masterly work La Cina in Italia. Una bibliografia dal 1899 to 1999 (IsIAO, Roma 2008), lists as many as 3,809 books and articles by Italian authors on Chinese civilization published over a period of one century.

Lionello Lanciotti

Stefania Stafutti and Federica Romagnoli, China. Storia e tesori di un’antica civilità, White Star, Vercelli 2008, 207 pp., ill.

ISBN 9788854008038.

Two hundred a seven pages crammed with fabulous colour plates showing Chinese civilization from its earliest origins to the arrival of the Mongol invaders and the discovery of Marco Polo’s Cathay is the impression immediately received by anyone opening this fine book. But also the written text must not be neglected. It is due to two experts on Chinese culture of the calibre of Prof. Stefania Stafutti of the University of Turin and Dr Federica Romagnoli. The book also presents several works that are still relatively unknown in Italy, such as the bronzes of Sanxingdui as well as recently unearthed archaeological finds. Overall it is a book that will enlighten a vast reading public concerning an ancient civilization but will not fail to satisfy also the specialists.

Lionello Lanciotti

Mario Sabattini, I tesori di Pechino Imperiale, White Star, Vercelli 2007, 311 pp., ill.

ISBN 9788854006133.

The author of this fine book on the Chinese capital and its art treasures is Mario Sabattini, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Venice. He wrote not only the introductory part but also the entire section on the history of the city and the description of the imperial metropolis. The chapters on the more ancient ruins of the

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capital and the more important places of worship are the work of Nicoletta Celli, who also teaches at the same university and is the author of books and articles on Chinese art. The richly illustrated book also takes into account more recent restoration work that has shed new light on ancient monuments.

Lionello Lanciotti

Fabio Fattori, Gli Italiani che invasero la Cina. Cronache di guerra 1900-1901, Sugarco, Milano 2008, 221 pp., ill. ISBN 9788871985480.

This book reconstructs Italian military involvement in the international expedition against the Boxers on the basis of Italian press reports of the time, as well as of the mémoires of diplomats, missionaries and military personnel taking part in the military operations.

The book makes pleasant reading and is accompanied by quality photographic documentation. A quotation is made of a prophetic statement by a young reporter, Luigi Barzini, who worked for the most important Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera and was to become famous in later years. This is what he said of the Chinese: ‘Ma lasciamo dormire in pace questo immenso popolo sonnacchioso e divertente, sarà tanto meglio per noi. Guardate i Giapponesi che cosa hanno saputo fare in poco tempo. I Cinesi sarebbero capaci di ammazzare in cinquant’anni tutte le nostre industrie e quelle americane. Quattrocento milioni di uomini instancabili, intelligenti, sobri, ma vi pare? Troveremmo il made in China persino in fondo alle nostre mutande’ (But let us let this immense dozy and amusing people sleep in peace; it will be better for us.

Look at what the Japanese succeeded in doing so quickly. The Chinese in fifty years would be able to kill all our industries and those of the Americans. Four hundred million tireless, intelligent, sober men, you know. We would find ‘made in China’ even at the bottom of our underpants).

Lionello Lanciotti

Stefania Stafutti and Gianmaria Ajani, Colpirne uno per educarne cento. Slogan e parole d’ordine per capire la Cina, Einaudi, Torino 2008, 136 pp. ISBN 9788806193027.

This slim volume is of great interest and utility to anyone studying contemporary China for a reading public of average education who, above all in newspapers and magazines, has come across phrases like, for example, ‘It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice’ (bu guan bai mao hei mao, hui zuzhua laoshu jiu shi hao mao) or ‘criticize Confucius, criticize Lin Bao’ (Piy Lin pi Kong). The two authors list some thirty-eight slogans of this kind, with accurate explanations concerning their origin and, at the end of the book, providing an alphabetical list of characters in Chinese and pin yin.

Lionello Lanciotti

Hong-Sen Yan, The Beauty of Ancient Chinese Locks, Ancient Chinese Machinery Cultural Center, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 20032, 124 pp., ill. ISBN 9783540205920.

The author of the book is a Taiwanese collector who has so far gathered together some seven hundred Chinese locks. The book is divided into seventeen chapters dealing with the development of these objects in Chinese history, the origin of the linguistic expressions used to refer to them, the materials of which they were made, the operations required to use them, the principal forms and types and their various internal mechanisms. It makes a substantial contribution, albeit of a pioneering nature, to the history of locks in China. With the exception of a few but accurate pages by Joseph Needham on the topic in Science and Civilization in China (Vol. II, Part 4, pp. 236-43), no one had ever written a monography on Chinese locks.

Inevitably short, the bibliography is also confused. For instance, Needham’s pages are attributed, for example, to Joseph N. (sic!). The book is enhanced by some fine plates.

Lionello Lanciotti

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TIBETAN STUDIES Per K. Sørensen and Guntram Hazod (in cooperation with Tsering Gyalbo), Rulers on the Celestial Plain. Ecclesiastical and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet. A Study of Tshal Gung-thang, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien 2007, 2 vols., IX-1011 pp., many illustrations in colour and black-and-white, and several maps.

Paperback. ISBN 9783700138280.

Since the appearance of his translation of bSod nams rgyal mtshan’s The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies (Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1994) Per K. Sørensen has not ceased to bewilder the scholarly community with the publication of important as well as massive historical monographic studies, regularly based upon carefully edited and annotated translations of Tibetan historical texts, the last three of which in collaboration with Guntram Hazod. The two authors’ last endeavour, the 10th volume in the series Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, represents a follow-up of their works of 2000 and 2005 (Civilization at the Foot of Mount Sham-po and Thundering Falcon, which I reviewed in Vol. 55, 1-4 of East and West, pp. 497-99). It is part of their significant contribution to the study of medieval Tibet, in which the authors afford us the first detailed study of the bKa’ brgyud monastery of Tshal Gung thang between the 12th and the 20th century, with particular reference to the political supremacy of the Tshal polity in the 13th and 14th centuries.

The book is divided into two volumes, the first preceded by a preface with acknowledgements (pp. 1-4) explaining several of the authors’ objectives and containing: an introduction divided in ten sections (pp. 6-47) dealing with the historical, political, cultural and geographical background as well as with the Gung thang dkar chag translated in the volume, and illustrated with a map and 15 plates, all in colour but one; and an extensively annotated translation of the basic text

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concerning the history of Tshal Gung thang in five chapters preceded by their original preface (pp. 72-295) and followed by over ten maps and 90 plates, all in colour except one (pp. 297-347).

The second volume includes five appendices, the first one (pp. 353-97) divided in three sections consecrated to the political and ideological function of religious images depicting Bla ma Zhang, the founder of Tshal Gung thang, as well as Grags pa dpal with the gNyos clan lineage, the latter of which may have been painted by a Newar artist (cf. p. 391); it is illustrated by a dozen plates, mostly in colour. The three sections of the second Appendix (pp. 401-550) deal with the control of the Lhasa holy area in terms of geopolitical schemes, national monuments, flood control politics and ideological battlefield, and is illustrated with five maps and over 33 plates, mostly in colour. Appendix III (pp. 553-67) is divided in two sections dealing with the territory, appanage grants and Mongol patronage of the Tshal myriarchy during the second half of the 13th and first half of the 14th century, and is illustrated with a map and 6 plates, all in colour but one. The five sections of Appendix IV (pp.

572-632) deal with several aspects of the cultural history of Tshal Gung thang, and are illustrated with half a dozen maps, 2 graphs, and 53 plates in colour and black-and-white. Appendix V (pp.

635-776) includes a number of tables reporting various lineages grouped, sometimes on a comparative basis, in thirteen sections, the last one providing a chronology of the history of Tshal Gung thang, and is illustrated with 4 maps and over 76 plates, mostly in colour. The last appendix (pp. 779-804) reproduces the facsimile xylographic edition of the Gung thang dkar chag as well as the MS of the hagiography of the 9th Tshal ruler, sMon lam rdo rje, in dbu med script, and ends with a list of the latter’s collected works.

The extensive bibliography (pp. 833-914) is arranged in two sections, the first including primary and secondary Tibetan sources, the second listing sources in European languages.

There are two Tibetan indexes (one for personal names and one for place names) as well as Sanskrit, Chinese and Mongolian indexes. There are no lists of maps, graphs and illustrations, but a mere note on the illustrations at the end of the book.

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Sørensen and Hazod’s twofold volume provides a detailed account in the first place of the history of the warlord and yogin Bla ma Zhang (1123-1193) and of his political legacy, and furthermore of the sKyid shod region to which Lhasa belongs. In that respect it represents the first historical study of the region of Lhasa, providing a wealth of new information about its sacred environment, and explaining even how flooding played a decisive role in shaping the policy of hegemony and rule around it. In particular, the book shows how the two most ancient and venerated temples in Lhasa, the Jo khang and the Ra mo che, linking the Buddhist tradition of Tibet to its great monarchic past, were placed under the special protection and management of the Tshal polity.

The authors address one of the main desiderata in tibetological research, given the largely medieval character of Tibetan society, documenting and identifying the clans that populated the territories taken into consideration, as well as outlining their migratory and settlement history. In so doing, they allow us to appreciate the unfolding of the political history of central Tibet in a better way, shedding light on the relations and interactions among clans, territories, religious lineages and ruling families in the region around Lhasa from the 11th to the 17th century.

As might be expected in such a bulky work, some minor flaws are inevitable in terms of misprints (for example p. 281 twice on p. VII of the table of contents, instead of 381), rare omissions (the caption of plate 1 is missing from p. 303) and even rarer oddities (one finds an obscure caption for pl. 25 on p. 684: ‘Stone engraving of a not closer identified figure’). In their punctuation authors tend to follow the reproduction of the oral register, marking pauses, rather than that of the written register, marking subordinate clauses (cf. p. 81, lines 16 and 19).

The edited translation of the Gung thang dkar chag in Part 1 is an achievement in itself, while Sørensen’s political approach to religious art in Appendix I of Part 2 should set an example to specialist in Tibetan art history, too often preoccupied more with problems of iconographic identification, aesthetic value and dating than with issues of cultural, political and

religious contextualization. Furthermore, from a geo-historical perspective, the authors have paid special attention to the identification and localization of all relevant place names.

Hardly any criticism may detract from the soundness of this study, which not only takes into account a host of Tibetan written sources, some rare or hitherto unkown, as shown by the impressive apparatus of notes and appendices, but is also based on field work, during which Per Sørensen and Guntram Hazod have continued their fruitful cooperation with Tsering Gyalbo, pursuing their objectives with a methodological interdisciplinary approach combining in-depth textual analysis, philological research, anthropological inquiry, cartographical survey and field work in situ. It is thanks to publications such as this that the picture of Tibetan history is becoming clearer, and we must be grateful to the authors for that.

This publication is remarkable in its encyclopaedic conception and represents an important tessera in the mosaic of Tibetan history as well as a cornerstone for further studies. It is bound to represent the only reference work on the history of the sKyid shod region and of the Lhasa area for years to come, and hopefully to pave the way to new research by specialists in the field, finally enabling us to map out a history of Tibet based on a better knowledge of its local history.

Erberto F. Lo Bue

COLLECTING Vanna Ghiringhelli, The Invincible Krises 2, Saviolo, Milano, n.d. (2007), 188 pp., ill.

ISBN 9788895125053.

Proclaimed in 2005 as ‘Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’, the kris owes its undeniable success with the general adventure novel reading public in the late 19th-early 20th

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in Italy above all to Emilio Salgari who made it the patriotic weapon used by Sandokan and his ‘tigers of Mompracem’ against the British sabre.

A formidable instrument of death originating in the Indonesian archipelago and Malaysia, but also a refined work of art, according to legend the kris lives a life of its own, an animated entity, as it were, rather than a mere object: ‘[...] flowers, leaves, plants, fruits, the rice, the animals, the snake and the bird, the ocean, the mountain, the fire and water, the wind, the iron and the minerals, the stone and gems: the spirit, semangat, of all these natural things, is living in the keris’, writes the Author in her ‘Preface’. A cosmic entity, to boot, owing to the frequent presence in the alloy of which the blade (mata) is made of meteoric iron. This was not unusual in the forging of knives and other such weapons and was shared by different and distant cultures. Suffice it to consider the example of Colonel James Bowie (1796-1836), the hero of the Alamo, who, as the legend has it, actually forged the famous knife named after him from a fragment of ferrum sidereum.

In 1968, Vanna Scolari, together with her late-lamented husband Mario Ghiringhelli, began collecting krises, of which she soon became an eminent lover (1). Her book contains reproductions of her rich collection and is addressed mainly to collectors. It follows a rather unusual approach for this kind of publication which is positively influenced by the Author’s general Indological and Orientalistic background. For many years she taught Hindi language and culture at the IsIAO school in Milan and now at the local State University. In almost all the information text accompanying the splendid colour illustrations, the emphasis is laid on the profound influence exerted by the great Indian, Chinese and Islamic cultures on the workmanship of this famous weapon, and on it its symbolic inheritance in particular. In this way, Indian divinities and the characters of the Indian epic, above all when they are depicted on the hafts, are accurately identified by means of references in the texts.

The inscriptions appearing on the blade, the sheath or on the haft, in Arabic, Japanese or ancient Javanese (deriving from kawi) have

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been duly translated, a rare occurrence in collectors’ catalogues.

For each plant, type of wood or flower, the corresponding scientific name is given (see for instance ‘Nagasari’ = Mesua ferrea L. on p. 154). The Sanskrit and Arabic names have been correctly transliterated following the international criteria.

Any instances of ingenuousness present in the book which, it must be remembered, is not the work of an art historian, may be ascribed to the multiple skills demanded by this extraordinary weapon, as a saying by one of her collectors clearly highlights: ‘becoming an expert on the keris is like carrying an encyclopedia in your head’.

Beniamino Melasecchi (1) On this subject, together with her husband M. Ghiringhelli, she has written: Kris gli invincibili – The Invincibile Krises, Milano 1991; ‘Keris Hilts Materials’, Arts of Asia, Sept.-Oct. 1997 (Hong Kong); ‘Il tempo sacro dell’armaiolo giavanese – Saat keramat bagi pembuat keris bangsa Jawa’, Indonesian transl. by L. Soerjowati, A Oriente, III, 7, 2002 (Milano); ‘Il potere del Kris’, Astrolabe, 82, Juin 2004 (Tunis).

BOOKS RECEIVED An-yi Pan, Painting Faith. Li Gonglin and Northern Song Buddhist Culture, Sinica Leidensia, 77, Brill, Leiden-Boston 2007, xxiv-396 pp., ill. ISBN 9789004160613.

Baimatowa, N.S., 5000 Jahre Architektur in Mittelasien. Lehmziegelgewölbe vom 4./3.

Jt. v. Chr. bis zum Ende des 8. Jhs. n. Chr., Archäologie in Iran und Turan, 7, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Eurasien-Abteilung, Außenstelle Teheran, von Zabern, Mainz 2008, xiv-492 pp., 422 figs.

ISBN 9783805339063.

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Böhtlingk, O. and R. Roth, Briefe zum Petersburger Wörterbuch 1852-1885, H. Brückner and G. Zeller, eds., GlasenappStiftung, 45, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2007, xxi-870 pp., 6 pls. ISBN 9783447056410.

schaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse Denkschriften, 367, Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, 59, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien 2008, lxxxiv-531 pp. ISBN 9783700160410.

Couto, D. and R.M. Loureiro, eds., Revisiting Hormuz. Portuguese Interactions in the Persian Gulf Region in the Early Modern Period, Maritime Asia, 19, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2008, xv-280 pp., 51 col. pls.

ISBN 9783447057318.

Kiehnle, C., ed., An Indian Tartuffe. P.K. Atre’s Comedy ‘Where There Is a Guru There Are Women’, Drama und Theater in Südasien, 5, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2006, 201 pp.

ISBN 9783447054485.

Fussman, G. with B. Murad and E. Ollivier, Monuments bouddhiques de la région de Caboul. Kabul Buddhist Monuments, II 1, Inventaire et Descriptions, II 2, Planches, Résumés, Index, Collège de France, Publications de l’Institut de Civilisation Indienne, 76, 1-2, de Boccard, Paris 2008, 186 pp., 373 pp., 97 pls. ISBN 2868030769.

Ga∫e apurå∫a. Part II: Kr¤∂åkha∫∂a. Translation, Notes and Index by Greg Bailey, Purå∫a Research Publications Tübingen, 4/II, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2008, xvi693 pp. ISBN 9783447054720.

Haerinck, E. and B. Overlaet, The Kalleh Nisar Bronze Age Graveyard in Pusht-i Kuh, Luristan, Luristan Excavation Documents, VII, Acta Iranica, 46, Belgian Archaeological Mission in Iran – The Ghent University and the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels Joint Expedition, Peeters, Lovanii 2008, 223 pp., 36 figs., 34 col. pls., 88 b/w pls. ISBN 9789042919952.

Harper, P.O., In Search of a Cultural Identity.

Monuments and Artifacts of the Sasanian Near East, 3rd to 7th Century A.D., Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series, 2, Bibliotheca Persica, New York 2006, xiv210 pp., 97 figs. ISBN 0933273886.

Herrmann-Pfandt, A., Die Lhan Kar Ma. Ein früher Katalog der ins Tibetische übersetzten buddhistischen Texte. Kritische Neuausgabe mit Einleitung und Materialen, Österreichische Akademie der Wissen-

Knüppel, M. and E. Winkler, eds., Ungarn, Türken und Mongolen. Kleine Schriften von Hansgerd Göckenjan, Veröffentlichungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2007, XX-589 pp. ISBN 9783447056281.

Koßler, M., ed., Schopenhauer und die Philosophien Asiens, Beiträge zur Indologie, 42, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2008, 127 pp.

ISBN 9783447057042.

Lienhard, S., Kleine Schriften, O. von Hinüber, ed., Glasenapp-Stiftung, 44, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2007, xxxii-505 pp. ISBN 9783447056199.

Li Xuezhu and E. Steinkellner with Toru Tomabechi, Vasubandhu’s Pañca-skandhaka, Sanskrit Texts from the Tibetan Autonomous Region, 4, China Tibetology Publishing House, Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, Beijing-Vienna 2008, xxviii107 pp. ISBN 9783700161097.

Meyer, Ch., Ritendiskussionen am Hof der nördlichen Song-Dynastie (1034-1093).

Zwischen Ritengelehrsamkeit, Macht-kampf und intellektuellen Bewegungen, Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, LVIII, Institut Monumenta Serica, Sankt Augustin-Nettetal 2008, 646 pp. ISBN 9783805005517.

Moser, H., Na¥¥yår-K∑ttu – ein Teilaspekt des Sanskrittheaterkomplexes K∑†iyå am.

Historische Entwicklung und performative Textumsetzung, Drama und Theater in Südasien, 6, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2008, xxiv-357 pp., 43 figs. ISBN 9783447054539.

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Müller, R.F.G., Kleine Schriften zur traditionellen Medizin Südasiens, R.P. Das, ed., Glasenapp-Stiftung, 39, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2008, xlvi-663 pp. ISBN 9783447056373.

Mylius, K., Wörterbuch Deutsch-Påli, Beiträge zur Kenntnis südasiatischer Sprachen und Literaturen, 18, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2008, 251 pp. ISBN 9783447057165.

Orosz, G., A Catalogue of the Tibetan Manuscripts and Block Prints in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Vol. I, Oriental Manuscripts in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 3, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest 2008, xvi-752 pp. ISBN 9789637451157.

Parlatir, I., Gy. Hazai and B. Kellner-Heinkele, Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Oriental Manuscripts in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, n.d., 664 pp., 27 col. pls. ISBN 9789635085583.

Pasqualotto, G., Dieci lezioni sul buddhismo, Marsilio, Venezia 2008, 189 pp. ISBN 978883179509.

Ritter, M., R. Kauz and B. Hoffmann, eds., Iran und iranisch geprägte Kulturen. Studien zum 65. Geburtstag von Bert G. Fragner, Beiträge zur Iranistik, 27, Reichert, Wiesbaden 2008, xxiv-435 pp., 12 col. pls.

ISBN 9783895006074.

Schneewiß, J., Die Siedlung Cica in der westsibirischen Walsteppe I. Untersuchungen zur spätbronze- bis früheisenzeitlichen Keramik, Chronologie und kulturellen Stellung, Archäologie in Eurasien, 22, Von Zabern, Mainz 2007, XVI-422 pp., 181 col. & b/w figs., 45

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graphs., 60 col. & b/w pls. ISBN 9783805338837.

Simonenko, A., I.I. Marcenko and N.Ju. Limberis, Römische Importe in sarmatischen und maiotischen Gräbern zwischen Unterer Donau und Kuban, Archäologie in Eurasien, 25, von Zabern, Mainz 2008, x-400 pp., ill., 222 pls. ISBN 9783805339544.

Slaje, W., ‡åstrårambha. Inquiries into the Preamble in Sanskrit, Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, LXII, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2008, viii-255 pp. ISBN 9783447056458.

Srinivasan, D.M., ed., On the Cusp of an Era. Art in the Pre-Kußå∫a World, Brill’s Inner Asian Library, 18, Brill, Leiden-Boston 2007, vi-402 pp., ill. ISBN 9789004154513.

Standaert, N., An Illustrated Life of Christ Presented to the Chinese Emperor. The History of Jincheng shuxiang (1640), Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, LIX, Institut Monumenta Serica, Sankt Augustin-Nettetal 2007, 333 pp., 65 pls.

ISBN 9783805005487.

Walravens, H., ed., Richard Wilhelm (18731930) Missionar in China und Vermittler chinesischen Geistesguts. Schriftenverzichnis Katalog seiner Chinesischen Bibliothek.

Briefe von Heinrich Hackmann. Briefe von Ku Hung-ming, Collectanea Serica, Institut Monumenta Serica, Sankt Augustin-Nettetal 2008, 316 pp., ill. ISBN 9783805005531.

Willemse, K., One Foot in Heaven. Narratives on Gender and Islam in Darfur, West-Sudan, Women and Gender. The Middle East and the Islamic World, 5, Brill, LeidenBoston 2007, XXIV-547 pp., ill. ISBN 9789004150119.