This paper compares the relationship between the vāsudeva Kṣṇa and his prativāsudeva rival Jarāsandha in the Jaina tradition (primarily in Hemacandra's Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacarita) with Kṣṇa Vāsudeva's rivalries with Jarāsandha, Śiśupāla and Pauṇḍraka in the Mahābhārata and Hindu purāṇas. Three main points arising from this comparison are proposed. First, the Jainas conflated characteristics of the Hindu figures Jarāsandha, Śiśupāla and Pauṇḍraka in order to create a new Jarāsandha, who was now a single powerful nemesis for Kṣṇa. Second, this new relationship between Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha provided the template for a new class of Illustrious Beings (śalākāpuruṣas) in the Jaina Universal History: the recurring and paradigmatic vāsudevas and prativāsudevas. And third, this evolution of Kṣṇa mythology in the Jaina tradition may have influenced the parallel development in the Hindu tradition, including the creation of the vaiṣṇava ten avatāras doctrine, and the expansion of the purāṇic mythology surrounding both Jarāsandha and Śiśupāla.

This paper examines the nature of performance literature in Ancient Greece, comparing it with other modern and medieval examples. It concentrates on archaic Greek ‘song culture’, and especially choral praise poetry. It discusses the social and cultural significance of the original performances and, drawing on comparative examples, investigates the ‘gap’ between performance and text, possible cultural explanations and interpretations of ‘difficult’ performed literature—particularly competitive and religious—which stand out in comparison to performance literatures elsewhere.

The ‘novel of the future’ speculates on the ‘temporal’ utopia/dystopia. Its strange fate in modern China reveals much about the relationship between imagination, ideology and modernity in the Chinese mindset. Prior to the concept of modernity being imported into China there had been no fiction about the future. For, in traditional China, history did not have directionality. Two powerful Western ideologies, both ‘progressive’, took turns to dominate modern China. Social Darwinism led to the great explosion of the novel of the future in the early twentieth century. From the 1920s onwards, with Marxism becoming the dominant ideology, the novel of the future disappeared completely: when the future was predetermined, no speculation was to be tolerated. In the 1990s, there erupted another spectacular flourishing of novels of future in China, although these works are pessimistic in tone, as belief in the future has been thrown into serious doubt.

Lǔ xùn's first story Kúangrén rìjì ‘Diary of a madman’ was published in the review Xīn Qīngnián (La Jeunesse) in May 1918. This was during the New Culture Movement when the editors of the review were engaged in their onslaught on Confucian morality, the literary language, and other aspects of the Chinese tradition. Lǔ Xùn's story was intended as a contribution to this movement and was written, according to the author's own account, at the request of one of his friends and fellowprovincials on the editorial board, Qián Xuán-tóng .

For a definition of the term huong-hỏa, we can do no better than give two quotations, one from a Frenchman, the other from a Vietnamese. ‘Le huong-hỏa’, says Professor M. R. Deloustal ‘est une institution trop connue pour qu'il soit nécessaire de s'appesantir longuement sur sa description. En principe, c'est une portion de patrimoine, quelquefois une certaine somme d'argent, dont les revenus servent à entretenir l'encens ( huong) et le luminaire (hỏa) sur l'autel des ancêtres, c'est-à-dire à subvenir aux frais de leur culte et à l'entretien de leurs tombeaux.’1 Mr. Le Van Dinh tells us ‘La masse de biens créée pour le service du culte ancestral, c'est le huong-hoa, biens de “l'encens et du feu”, biens susceptibles d'assurer au culte qu'ils desservent tout l'éclat, toute la splendeur désirables, ainsi qu'une pérennité temporelle et spatiale’.2

A seven-line Ṭākarī inscription on the doorjamb of the Hiḍimbā Devī temple at Manali has as yet remained undeciphered. However, the last line of the inscription was misread by J.Ph. Vogel in 1903–04, and Hirananda (1907–08) simply followed the date earlier suggested by Vogel. Neither has this historic document been translated in extenso by Vogel or Hirananda, or any other scholar. This article offers a complete translation of the inscription, its historical significance, and re-establishes the date of the temple from ad 1553 to ad 1551. This was during the reign of Bahādur Singh, the ruler of Kulu, who completed the present structure of the temple, and performed a yajña at the temple of the goddess Hiḍimbā during its consecration.