Asia Beyond Boundaries: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Primary Sources in the Premodern World

Preface
Contents
Contributors
Primary Sources and Asian Pasts: Beyond the Boundaries of the “Gupta Period”
Part I: Narrative Form and Literary Legacies
Why So Many ‘Other’ Voices in the ‘Brahmin’ Mahābhārata?
After the Mahābhārata: On the Portrayal of Vyāsa in the Skandapurāṇa
The “Best Abode of Virtue”: Sattra Represented on a Gupta-Period Frieze from Gaṛhwa,̄ Uttar Pradesh
The Skandapurāṇa and Bāṇa’s Harṣacarita
Part II: Political Landscapes and Regional Identity
Describing the Own Other: Chinese Buddhist Travelogues Between Literary Tropes and Educational Narratives
Imperial Languages and Public Writings in Tamil South India: A Bird’s-Eye View in the Very Longue Durée
Landscapes, Linkages, and Luminescence: First-Millennium CE Environmental and Social Change in Mainland Southeast Asia
Sri Ksetra, 3rd Century BCE to 6th Century CE: Indianization, Synergies, Creation
Part III: Religion, Ritual, and Empowerment
The Meaning of the Word ārya in Two Gupta-Period Inscriptions
Four Syllables for Slaying and Repelling: A Tibetan Vajrabhairava Practice from Recently Recovered Manuscripts of the “Lost” Book of Rwa (Rwa pod)
Love, Unknowing, and Female Filth: The Buddhist Discourse of Birth as a Vector of Social Change for Monastic Women in Premodern South Asia
A Natural Wonder: From Liṅga Mountain to Prosperous Lord at Vat Phu
Index