Hindus regard all humans as fundamentally unequal. Hindu society is organized around groupings of people into ranked castes. On this there is general agreement, as Dumont's apt characterization, Homo hierarchies, affirms and attests. No similar agreement exists, however, as to the criterion of caste rank. On the one hand, attributional theorists such as H.N.C. Stevenson emphasize the physical nature of a caste and its placement on a continuum of purity and impurity, with the more pure castes held to rank above the less pure. On the other hand, interactional theorists like McKim Marriott emphasize the coded exchange between castes of culturally valued foods and services, with the givers of food held to rank above the receivers, and the receivers of service above the givers; here it is not the religious values of purity and impurity, but behavioral dominance that seems to be at issue.

Japan has undergone sweeping change twice in its modern history. Each time the imperial house served to help bridge the transition, although in different ways. In the 1860s every effort was made to emphasize the break with the immediate past, albeit in the name of a more ancient continuity. In the 1940s, on the other hand, close continuity with the recent past of Meiji was emphasized. The ability of the imperial institution to absorb and assimilate very different, in fact contradictory, changes, is my point of departure.

During the past twenty-five years, hundreds of studies of Chinese peasant rebellions have appeared in print. Most of these were published in the People's Republic of China, where they represented an effort to create a new revolutionary history of class struggle, intended to replace the elite history written by Confucian historiographers under the empire. Embodying Mao Tse-tung's belief that “the ruthless economic exploitations and political oppression of the peasantry by the landlord class forced the peasants to rise repeatedly in revolt against its rule” (Mao 1961, Vol. III, p. 75), these studies of popular uprisings describe a bewildering variety of social phenomena.

Confucian historians presented the first succession struggle (in 945) of the Koryŏ Dynasty as simply an abortive usurpation attempt by Wang Kyu (the influential father-in-law of King Hyejong [r. 943–945]), thwarted by the timely intervention of the king's two half-brothers, Princes Yo and So, with military backing from Wang Singnyom of the P'yongyang Regional Military Command (Tae-doho Pu). The traditional account depicted the princes as archetypal protectors who safeguarded the legitimacy of royal succession, thereby placing the responsibility for the bloody struggle solely on the alleged villain, Wang Kyu. Such a treatment was apparently derived from a politically motivated moralistic interpretation intended to impart a lesson to posterity in the tradition of Confucian historiography. In the traditional account, therefore, the issues typically advanced were those best fitted to orthodox Confucian themes: legitimacy in royal succession, and loyalty to the throne. Factors incompatible with these themes were suppressed or perforce left unexplained, resulting in an account containing inconsistencies and gaps, which—surprisingly—went unchallenged until modern times.

The parish guild, or miyaza, has been studied by Japanese scholars from various perspectives and disciplines. While not wishing to disparage other approaches to the subject, in this paper I shall treat the institution as a socio-religious monopoly. A monopoly, by definition, is a group that restricts or denies resources, services, or markets to other segments of a society. While the word is generally confined to economics—where one thinks of medieval guilds and modern cartels—the concept can be profitably extended to other areas of society. The sociology of religion, for example, provides us with a wide variety of monopolies. These groups restrict access to the sacred, just as economic monopolies corner markets. Access to the sacred can be controlled in various ways—e.g., by maintaining an exclusive kinship tie with the gods (clans), by means of a purity-pollution complex (caste), or by control of a sacramental system necessary for salvation (sacerdotal priesthoods).

The second half of the twentieth century may be remembered by Chinese archaeologists as the Golden Age of their discipline. A unique combination of factors and circumstances has produced, and will probably continue to produce for a time, enormous amounts of new material for the study of Chinese prehistory and history. These factors and circumstances include a deep-rooted interest of the Chinese people in their past, not only for its own sake but also for guidance, as lesson; the introduction, in the first half of the century, of Western archaeological science; systematic, large-scale, and sustained national projects to construct roads, canals, reservoirs, and buildings throughout China; and a conscious and conscientious effort to include archaeology as an important part of the political education of the people. This sudden flood of new data—most hitherto unknown, and many unexpected and almost unimaginable—provides unprecedented opportunities for gaining new and much richer knowledge of China's past. China scholars will be busy coping with the new materials for decades to come. They should count themselves extremely lucky, for such opportunities are not likely to arise again after the present century; archaeological relics are a limited resource, even in China.

The four articles on Thai religion and society published here are revisions of papers originally prepared for panels at the 1972 and 1973 annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, held in New York and Chicago, respectively. Contributions were solicited from scholars representing a number of disciplines and regional interests, to survey the variety of approaches being followed and the research being done on “Religious and Social Change in Southeast Asia.” Various circumstances have made it impossible to publish the entire set of panel papers together, as was originally planned; but a list of the participants in the two panels and the topics their papers addressed will reflect the range of religious and social changes underway in Southeast Asia, as well as the diversity of disciplinary interests.

“In order to decide whether one can speak of a caste system in a society, one must ask: are status and power completely dissociated, can one find the equivalent of a Brahman/Ksatriya relationship? This question, though it may appear improper, has the virtue of immediately fixing a limit to Indian influence in South-East Asia. Important as this influence has been from the cultural and even social point of view, it would seem, roughly speaking, that nowhere in Indochina and Indonesia has the king been dispossessed of his religious prerogatives.”

This claim concerns the important question of the degree to which the Indian caste system can be, or has been, exported—a question that elicits deep-rooted and contentious problems inhering in our understanding of the nature of the caste system itself. Two propositions may here be identified and distinguished. The first is that, in India, kings—however powerful politically—did not formally possess religious or ritual authority; whereas in Indochina, however weak they were, kings formally possessed religious as well as political prerogatives. This is the contention cited above. The second is that, the first being true, it is also true that in Indochina kings possessed and exercised a degree of real control over social organization, by virtue of their ritual position (which was foreign to India): they were social engineers. In brief, they were oriental despots. The first proposition does not entail the second, but the two tend to go together; many writers have shown an inclination to accept the second, sometimes on the evidence of the first, sometimes on the evidence of facts about Indochinese kingdoms.

Perhaps the first question should be “Why?” Why transport a critical apparatus heavily laden with paradoxical factions and conflicting terminology back a millennium to the Chinese genre known as cbuana? And why a genre study, when so much groundwork is still necessary before Chinese literature can begin to demand for itself a larger consideration in general contemporary literary criticism? To attend to the second query first, genre studies are essential now for two reasons: 1) because genres evolve much more readily than their designations, and 2) because they are so basic to a reader's (and thus a critic's) approach to a work. Misunderstandings of the diachronic changes of what a generic title may include have led to useless critiques, the most notable case being perhaps that of Henry James and Fielding. In reply to the question of why a structural approach, the answer is less definitive.

The Ching-hua yüan, the work of vernacular fiction by Li ju-chen (ca. 1763–1830) shows remarkable diversity in both narrative content and purpose. Critics have observed that it is encyclopedic in scope, and suggested that it reflects the wide range of interests and activities prevalent among scholars in early nineteenth- century China. The author's intention has been variously interpreted as private entertainment, display of erudition, or social criticism.

Social reformers must often make difficult political decisions as they define an ideology of change, and the strategies and tactics to be implemented on its behalf. As Peter Gay observes, “A democratic Socialist movement that attempts to transform a capitalist into a Socialist order is necessarily faced with the choice between two incompatibles—principles and power.” An emphasis on the purity of principles may help to sustain the identity of the movement. But it may also expose the movement to repression by governments that have as their policy the control of dissent, and insistence on society's conformity to the central value system they seek to protect. On the other hand, accommodation with the established order—however justifiable it may be as a means of working for social change from within the existing institutions of society—runs the risk of exposing reform movements to the danger of cooptation and absorption by that order, particularly if the reform movements are weak to begin with or if the pressures upon them to sacrifice their principles for the national good become irresistible.

Complexity has characterized the Thai religious system since at least 1292, when the well-known inscription of Rama Kamhaeng was composed. This inscription not only celebrates the devotion of his people of Sukhothai to Theravada Buddhism but also notes a special relationship between the prosperity of the kingdom and reverence for Phra Khaphung, a “spirit-deity” living in a nearby mountain. Phra Khaphung is characterized as a phī-thewadā, combining phī (an indigenous Thai form meaning “spirit,” “ghost”) with thewadā (a form derived from Hindu-Buddhist cosmology and meaning “deity”). This classification of Phra Khaphung suggests that a process of merging two once-distinct religious traditions had already begun.

In recent years a number of historians, political scientists, and sociologists have been searching for a better way of approaching the study of the religious ideas, sentiments, and symbols associated with the life of modern national communities. It has become increasingly evident that the older procedure of making a clear distinction between specifically religious communities and religion on the one hand, and the state and politics on the other, then analyzing the interaction between the two, is no longer sufficient. However, no widely accepted alternative way of viewing the problem has emerged.

Severe urban rioting, the accompaniment of an organized political agitation known as the Nav Nirman (Reconstruction) movement, gripped the Indian state of Gujarat in early 1974, bringing to a violent climax social and political discontents from beneath a surface tranquility. Costly in lives and property and damaging to the political fabric of Gujarat, the ten-week-long agitation subsided only after winning two political objectives: first, the expulsion of the Chief Minister and imposition of President's Rule; and second, dissolution of the Gujarat legislative assembly. Resisted by the central government, the overthrow in Gujarat was an embarrassment to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and was a factor leading to the declaration of national emergency in June 1975. Gujarat's recent troubles have a background in the 1969 national split of the Congress party, but the immediate issues of Nav Nirman were food scarcity, rising prices, corruption in governing circles, and grievances in the educational system. These issues were seized upon by college students, who sparked the riots and who thereafter provided the most visible leadership of the movement.

In the period since the end of World War II, the Japanese economic achievement has been of prodigious proportions. During this period, its growth rate—an average of almost 10% in GNP per year—has been the highest in the world. Japan has become the third-ranking industrial nation and its world standing, in terms of per capita GNP, has risen from fortieth in the early 1950s to twelfth at the present time. Growth so sweeping and rapid inevitably has brought a multitude of changes, not least in the composition of total output. At a highly accelerated rate, industries have declined, others have blossomed, new industries have appeared, and the importance of various sectors of the economy has changed. Amidst the continuing adjustments and readjustments, it is of interest to consider the nature of the impact on Japanese industrial organization. More specifically, what has been the effect on economic concentration and monopoly in Japan?

Humiliated and shaken by the depredations of the imperialist nations, early twentieth-century Chinese leaders sought the establishment of a strong nation-state. Bitter struggles over the means to reach that goal—primarily over the distribution of political power—ended in the demise of the Ch'ing, the defeat of Yuan Shih-k'ai, and the turmoil of the “warlord” period. After Yuan's death in 1916, the dispute over distribution of power thrust into serious consideration the model of a federation for building a nation out of China's disparate regions and interests. Some felt that a federation was perhaps a more effective integrating form than the centralized bureaucratic model the late Ch'ing and Yuan Shih-k'ai had supported. The debate was not new in China. However, during the empire, proponents of centralization (chün-hsien) and decentralization (feng-chien) had been concerned with finding the form that would produce the greatest stability and administrative efficiency; now the Chinese were obsessed with the issue for life-and-death reasons. 2 Rapid national integration seemed imperative for China's survival. In 1901, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao had discussed the possibilities of a Chinese federation; 3 but, until 1916, federalism was effectively submerged by the centralizers. Amid increasing turmoil after Yuan's death, federalism seemed to provide an answer to chaotic instability.

The analysis of change and stability in voting behavior is an important component of contemporary political behavior research. Because of implications for continuity and discontinuity in national political leadership, both stability and change in aggregate electoral choices are of special importance in present-day Japan. Also, because there have been tendencies toward stability in some sectors of the Japanese electorate and great fluidity elsewhere, the nature and sources of consistent and fluid voting behavior are of special interest. In the ensuing discussion, two kinds of basic analysis are presented: one deals with the question of the degree and location of stable voting trends and fluid behavior; the second seeks to identify the sources of both shifting and constant choices.

In recent years the glitter of modern economic growth has been dulled, as more attention has been focused upon the attendant dislocations and negative aspects that have accompanied it. One area that has received little attention, especially from economists, is crime. Many writings of criminologists suggest that crime is a negative attribute that accompanies economic growth, for levels of affluence and crime seem to move upward together. A pattern similar to that observed in other modern countries was reported for Japan in 1966 by Professors DeVos and Mizushima.

What relationship should be expected between growth and crime? The usual economic theories of criminal behavior, with crime a declining function of an individual's ability to obtain legal income, would seem to argue for a negative relationship. However, crime is also related to the potential for ill-gotten gains; thus, it might be expected to at least keep pace with levels of income, or perhaps surpass them. This paper represents an attempt to provide some answers to these issues by explaining some of the complex interplay between factors involved in labor market improvement and the degree of criminal activity in Japan.

Theoretical Considerations

In this paper I am concerned with the explanation of a type of religious phenomenon I shall refer to as millennialism. I would, at the outset, underline the religious character of this phenomenon, since millennialism (also known under a variety of other names) is often viewed as a projection of psychological, economic, or political crisis experiences. I do not view religion merely as a projective system; rather I hold with Clifford Geertz that it is a “cultural system” which serves as both a “model of” and a “model for” reality. That is to say, I see religion serving both as a set of symbols that makes human experience ultimately meaningful, and as a set of symbols that provides an ultimate basis for human action.

In administrative districts throughout Taiwan, political factions resembling political machines compete for political offices and the attendant rewards of power, profit, and prestige. The forces that unite a faction and divide it from its opponent(s), however, vary from place to place. In many areas of mixed ethno-linguistic settlement—such as Taoyuan and Hsinchu counties—a Hokkien-based faction competes with a Hakka faction. In Kaohsiung Municipality, the urban destination of considerable rural outmigration, native-place associations form the core of the political factions. These ethnolinguistic and native-place lines of factional alignment and division offer no surprises. On what bases, however, do political factions align and divide in relatively homogeneous districts? This article, the result of eighteen months' field research in one such rural Taiwanese township, attempts to answer this question.