Southern asia has a long history of contact with countries that were relatively advanced in one or the other aspect of their civilization. Certain elements of these other civilizations were assimilated, others were not, and today the cultural diversity of the area is as great as it has ever been. The processes of intercultural communication are traced here in their broadest outlines to bring out the main patterns of transmittal and of resistance which we can discern.

When, in 1926, N. J. Krom published his standard study of the Hindu-Javanese period in Indonesian history, a major gap in the historiography of the Archipelago seemed to have been filled. Krom's later publications enlarged expertly upon the major themes of his great work. He seemed content to catalogue and analyze the many Indonesia inscriptions, statues, and temples, dating from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries A.D. which he regarded as the fruit of the Hinduization of Java and Sumatra. In his earlier study of Hindu-Javanese art, he brilliantly revealed the mingling of indigenous traditions with the technique of Hindu and Hinduized artisans in the Sumatran and Javanese kingdoms. The dominant note in all his writings was the great civilizing influence which he claimed had been exerted by Hindu traders and colonists over the supposedly untutored indigenous population of the Greater Sunda islands. Though willing to admit that the inhabitants of Java and Sumatra before the coming of the Hindus were not “savages” and that they possessed a certain knowledge of political organization, and agricultural and metallurgical technique, Krom emphasized that the high civilization reached by the kingdoms of Java and Sumatra between the ninth and thirteenth centuries was largely due to the infiltration of Hindu culture.

Although placed on canvasses of very different magnitude, the authors of the two preceding articles have posed similar questions. Both ask essentially, “What were the processes of adaptation during periods of culture contact in South Asia?” Neither author is particularly preoccupied with chronology and itemizing but rather with formulating the larger regularities within which events have occurred. The question they ask is the kind that social scientists rather than historians are likely to phrase. It is, however, a question of such a high level of generalization that few social scientists have had the courage to investigate it—even though its implications would be of inestimable theoretical importance to contemporary programs of international assistance.

Germany's role in the events leading up to Pearl Harbor needs to be re-examined in the light of documents published since the end of the war. These sources help correct certain misconceptions about German policy which were held during the conflict. The Allied powers believed at that time that Hitler had long-range plans for conquest and that as a part of these plans had, in one way or another, pushed Japan into war with the United States.

In vol. 9, no. 3 of The Far Eastern Quarterly, Alphonse Riesenfeld called attention to “Some Probable Bronze-Age Influences in Melanesian Culture.” His point of departure was a stone ax from Bougainville in the Solomon Islands showing traces of derivation from bronze axes of types known from Indonesia, and suggesting analogies with trunnion axes of the bronze and iron ages from regions as remote as the Near East and Europe. It seems appropriate, therefore, to introduce in this place another comparison, of a slightly different order, between certain artifacts of modern or recent times in Melanesia and artifacts from the ancient bronze-age art of the Far East.

Materials at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Of the thousands of fifth to tenth century documents which came from a temple grotto at Tun-huang the better materials are to be found in the Collection Pelliot in Paris. This contains documents about half in Chinese, and the rest in Tibetan, Sogdian, and the Kucha, Khotan and Uighur languages. Access to them is to be had in the manuscript room of the Bibliothèque Nationale where Madame Guignard is in charge of the Oriental materials. There are two catalogues of the rolls; both are unique copies in longhand. The numbers mentioned below refer to the actual numbers on the rolls according to which they are arranged in storage and may be requested by readers.

No Study of the history of the Japanese socialist movement may be made without reference to the work and thought of Sen Katayama (1859–1933). Pioneer socialist, publisher of the first successful Japanese labor newspaper, and representative of Japanese socialism in the camps of the international movement, Katayama's career is a veritable mirror of the Japanese socialist movement.

On the Party. By Liu Shao-ch'i. Second Edition. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1950. 206 p.