This new volume examines the processes of cultural exchange as they occurred in 'empire building, ' looking at Early Mesopotamia, Africa, Greece, Japan, India, the Arab world, and empires in other parts of the globe. The articles draw upon a variety of disciplines from the social sciences and the humanities, a feature not often found in other readers. Unlike other books on world civilizations, this text strives to develop a consistent theme as it focuses on the manner in which imperial authority and cultural interaction worked through different bureaucracies in various empires. The articles also help students understand the cross-cultural interactions and historical events that have laid the foundation for our modern global society. This book also contains useful maps and supplements consisting of images to assist students in visualizing and understanding the textual material. This new text is ideal for courses in world history prior to 1650.

B. Kellner-Heinkele, Hommage a Denis Sinor V. M. Alpatov, Phonetic and Grammatical Units in the European and Japanese Linguistic Traditions A. Birtalan, Dudlaga. A Genre of Mongolian Shamanic Tradition E. V. Boikova, The Mongolian Factor in the History of Russia L. Johanson, "Der Orientalist" als "Turkologe" S. G. Klyashtorny, The Asian Aspect of the Early Khazar History H. Okada, J. Miyawaki-Okada, The Birth of the World History in the Mongol Empire: History Education in Modern Japan T. A. Pang, Three Versions of a Poem Composed by Emperor Qianlong R. Pop, La notion d'allie matrimonial chez les Mongols A. Pozzi, A Birthday Banquet for our Guest of Honour Professor Denis Sinor a la mode of the Ancestors of Manchu People J. Richard, La cooperation militaire entre Francs et Mongols a l'epreuve: les campagnes de Ghazan en Syrie A. Rona-Tas, Etymological Notes on Hungarian gyapju 'wool' V. Rybatzki, Genealogischer Stammbaum der Mongolen A. Sarkozi, Conquering the World: The Linguistic Legerdemain of the Mongols A. M. Shcherbak, Some Words About the Project of an "Etymological Dictionary of the Manchu-Tungus Languages"

There are many excellent books dealing with Old Turkic, Preclassical and Classical Mongolian and Literary Manchu individually, but none providing in a single volume a comprehensive survey of all the three major Altaic languages. The present volume attempts to fill this gap; at the same time it reviews also the much debated Altaic Hypothesis. The book is intended for use by students at university level as well as by general readers with a basic knowledge of linguistics. The 39 language texts analysed in the volume are discussed within their historical and cultural context, thus vastly enlarging the scope of the purely linguistic investigation.

The Black Master is a Festschrift with 16 papers written by colleagues or former students of Professor Gyorgy Kara, including some of the most renowned scholars in the field. The themes of the articles reflect the wide scope of Gyorgi Kara's research, with texts on Central Eurasian linguistics, history or ethnology. A list of his publications completes the volume. From the table of contents (17 contributions): C. Atwood, Poems of Fraternity: Literary Responses to the Attempted Reunification of Inner Mongolia and the Mongolian's People Republic B. Baumann, "Nakshatra Astrology" in Antoine Mostaert's Manual of Mongolian Astrology and Divination A. Birtalan, An Invocation to Dayan Derx Collected from a Darkhad Shaman's Descendant M. Dobrovits, The Tolis and the Tardus in Old Turkic Inscriptions J. Elverskog, Sagang Sechen on the Qing Conquest J. Janhunen, On the Development of the Sibilant System of Qinghai Bonan M. Kiripolska, A Few Remarks on Some Mongolian Texts in Stockholm R. I. Meserve, The Snowcocks of Central Asia and Mongolia D. Prior, Tonyuquq's Humiliation and an Old Turkic Etymology A. Rona-Tas, Turko-Mongolian Etymologies: Turkic yarp V. Rybatzki, Personal Names and Titles of the Naiman in the Secret History of the Mongols Y. Saito, On the Word in West Middle Mongolian A. Sarkozi, Proper Names in the First Chapter of the Mongolian Suvarnaprabhasottamasutra A.G. Sazykin, Mongolian Xylographs in St. Petersburg's Collections

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages provides a comprehensive account of the Transeurasian languages, and is the first major reference work in the field since 1965. The term 'Transeurasian' refers to a large group of geographically adjacent languages that includes five uncontroversial linguistic families: Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic. The historical connection between these languages, however, constitutes one of the most debated issues in historical comparative linguistics. In the present book, a team of leading international scholars in the field take a balanced approach to this controversy, integrating different theoretical frameworks, combining both functional and formal linguistics, and showing that genealogical and areal approaches are in fact compatible with one another. The volume is divided into five parts. Part I deals with the historical sources and periodization of the Transeurasian languages and their classification and typology. In Part II, chapters provide individual structural overviews of the Transeurasian languages and the linguistic subgroups that they belong to, while Part III explores Transeurasian phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis, and semantics from a comparative perspective. Part IV offers a range of areal and genealogical explanations for the correlations observed in the preceding parts. Finally, Part V combines archaeological, genetic, and anthropological perspectives on the identity of speakers of Transeurasian languages. The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages will be an indispensable resource for specialists in Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages and for anyone with an interest in Transeurasian and comparative linguistics more broadly.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries religious zeal nourished by the mendicants’ sense of purpose motivated Dominican and Franciscan friars to venture far beyond Europe’s cultural frontiers to spread their Christian faith into the farthest reaches of Asia. Their incredible journeys were reminiscent of heroic missionary ventures in earlier eras and far more exotic than evangelization during the tenth through twelfth centuries, when the western church Christianized Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. This new mission effort was stimulated by a variety of factors and facilitated by the establishment of the Mongol Empire, and, as the fourteenth century dawned, missionaries entertained fervent but vain hopes of success within khanates in China, Central Asia, Persia and Kipchak. The reports these missionaries sent back to Europe have fascinated successive generations of historians who analyzed their travels and struggled to understand their motives and aspirations. The essays selected for this volume, drawn from a range of twentieth-century historians and contextualized in the introduction, provide a comprehensive overview of missionary efforts in Asia, and of the developments in the secular world that both made them possible and encouraged the missionaries’ hopes for success. Three of the studies have been translated from French specially for publication in this volume.