Drawing from more than a decade of field and archival research, this monograph concerns Cambodian cultural history and historiography, with an ultimate aim of broadening and deepening bases for understanding the Cambodian Theravadin politico-cultural complex. The book takes the form of an interdisciplinary analysis of performative and representational strategies for constituting social collectivities, largely developed at Angkor. The analysis involves extended close readings of a wide range of cultural artefacts including epigraphic and manuscript texts, sculpture and ritual practices. The author proposes a critical re-evaluation of dominant paradigms of Cambodian historiography in view of engendering new histories, or hybrid histories, which make room for previously absent perspectives and voices, while developing new theoretical tools engaging with and partially derived from "indigenous" narrative practices in the broadest sense. In this history-making process the historical event is shown to never be entirely separable from its aesthetic representation. Particular attention is paid to the roles of sexual difference in such (re)constructions of history. The book presents a theory of power capable of accounting for the historical phenomena by which vernacular cultures appropriate, subvert and submit to cosmopolitan forces. It charts out a novel approach to the study of classical Southeast Asian materials, and is of interest to students and scholars of Asian Art, Religion and Philosophy, Buddhism and Southeast Asian History.

A Companion to Gender History surveys the history of womenaround the world, studies their interaction with men in genderedsocieties, and looks at the role of gender in shaping humanbehavior over thousands of years. An extensive survey of the history of women around the world,their interaction with men, and the role of gender in shaping humanbehavior over thousands of years. Discusses family history, the history of the body andsexuality, and cultural history alongside women’s history andgender history. Considers the importance of class, region, ethnicity, race andreligion to the formation of gendered societies. Contains both thematic essays and chronological-geographicessays. Gives due weight to pre-history and the pre-modern era as wellas to the modern era. Written by scholars from across the English-speaking world andscholars for whom English is not their first language.

Refiguring the Body provides a sustained interrogation of categories and models of the body grounded in the distinctive idioms of South Asian religions, particularly Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The contributors engage prevailing theories of the body in the Western academy that derive from philosophy, social theory, and feminist and gender studies. At the same time, they recognize the limitations of applying Western theoretical models as the default epistemological framework for understanding notions of embodiment that derive from non-Western cultures. Divided into three sections, this collection of essays explores material bodies, embodied selves, and perfected forms of embodiment; divine bodies and devotional bodies; and gendered logics defining male and female bodies. The contributors seek to establish theory parity in scholarly investigations and to re-figure body theories by taking seriously the contributions of South Asian discourses to theorizing the body.

Critically exploring medical thought in a cultural milieu with no discernible influence from the European Enlightenment, Being Human in a Buddhist World reveals an otherwise unnoticed intersection of early modern sensibilities and religious values in traditional Tibetan medicine. It further studies the adaptation of Buddhist concepts and values to medical concerns and suggests important dimensions of Buddhism's role in the development of Asian and global civilization. Through its unique focus and sophisticated reading of source materials, Being Human adds a crucial chapter in the larger historiography of science and religion. The book opens with the bold achievements in Tibetan medical illustration, commentary, and institution building during the period of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his regent, Desi Sangye Gyatso, then looks back to the work of earlier thinkers, tracing a strategically astute dialectic between scriptural and empirical authority on questions of history and the nature of human anatomy. It follows key differences between medicine and Buddhism in attitudes toward gender and sex and the moral character of the physician, who had to serve both the patient's and the practitioner's well-being. Being Human in a Buddhist World ultimately finds that Tibetan medical scholars absorbed ethical and epistemological categories from Buddhism yet shied away from ideal systems and absolutes, instead embracing the imperfectability of the human condition.

Human-fashioned boundaries transform spaces by introducing dualisms, bifurcations, creative symbioses, contradictions, and notions of inclusion and exclusion. The Buddhist boundaries considered in this book, sīmās—a term found in South and Southeast Asian languages and later translated into East Asian languages—come in various shapes and sizes and can be established on land or in bodies of water. Sometimes, the word sīmā refers not only to a ceremonial boundary, but the space enclosed by the boundary, or even the markers (when they are used) that denote the boundary. Sīmās were established early on as places where core legal acts (kamma), including ordination, of the monastic community (sangha) took place according to their disciplinary codes. Sīmās continue to be deployed in the creation of monastic lineages and to function in diverse ways for monastics and non-monastics alike. As foundations of Buddhist religion, sīmās are used to sustain, revitalize, or reform Buddhist practices, notions of identity, and conceptualizations of time and history. In the last few decades, scholarly awareness of and expertise on sīmās has developed to a point where a volume like this one, which examines sīmās across numerous cultural contexts and scholarly fields of inquiry, is both possible and needed. Sīmā traditions expressed in the Theravāda cultures of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka constitute the dominant focus of the work; a chapter on East Asia raises questions of historical transmission beyond these areas. Throughout contributors engage texts; history; archaeology; politics; art; ecology; economics; epigraphy; legal categories; mythic narratives; understandings of the cosmos; and conceptualizations of compassion, authority, and violence. Examining sīmās through multiple perspectives allows us to look at them in their contextual specificity, in a way that allows for discernment of variation as well as consistency. Sīmā spaces can be both simple and extremely intricate, and this book helps show why and how that is the case.

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism offers a comprehensive collection of work by leading scholars in the field. They examine the historical development of Buddhist traditions throughout the world, from traditional settings like India, Japan, and Tibet, to the less well known regions of Latin America, Africa, and Oceania.