Reconnecting Balinese Manuscripts with Local Voices: WikiSami University Workshops in Bali diff.wikimedia.org/2026/03/28/r...

Still time to submit comments to the FCC in opposition to Reflect Orbital's request for approval to help put a million orbital data centers into space: aas.org/posts/advoca... (SpaceX also has filed to do so, but the deadline for public comments has passed.) If you care, speak up!

Issue 146:1 of JASPA (former JAOS) is out online lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/ja...: on quranic reading in Andalus, holy tombs in Cairo, Tamil temple endowments, vratyas in Atharva Veda, military bounties in China, Mori Ōgai’s Dancing Girl, child-slaves in Egypt, Sumerian wordplay, & more!

This talk by Vasudha Narayanan on connections between India and Cambodia in 1st millennium religion and art will be worth tuning in for. www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/en/events-at...

My article on kinship ties, Buddhism, and early medieval states has just been published. Available open access: doi.org/10.1163/9789...

"Under the Spell of the Batur Volcano," a fascinating study by Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin of a Balinese Hindu temple beside Lake Batur in the caldera of a volcano came out days before I drove a scooter up the twisting road from the coast to see it (pics below). OA Book link: brill.com/display/titl...

Issue 145:4 of the JAOS is out online doi.org/10.7817/jaos... , with articles on: Yahwists in Elephantine, oracular law in Assyria, syntax in Qur'anic interpretation, r vs rr in Khotan, Mongol text of the 1413 Tyr stele, Old Chinese parts of speech, Song dynasty incense trade, and more!

11 in-depth studies on inscriptions from early Āndhradeśa in South India, touching on coins, pottery, grant charters, memorial stones, and religious pluralism (Buddhist, Jainist, and Hindu). Open Access download from Brill: brill.com/edcollbook-o... (this is v. 2, the studies; v. 1, also available).

The American Society for Premodern Asia web portal is now live on our new domain name: www.aspa1842.org

Astonishing finds excavated at Berenike in Egypt include Buddha images & other artifacts from India and some made locally in Indian style, plus a bilingual Sanskrit & Greek dedicatory inscription found near a marble Buddha head in an Isis temple courtyard. publications.dainst.org/journals/jdi...

Important group of new studies on the "Kawi culture" that grew out of the use of the Old Javanese in the 8th-15th c. as a cosmopolitan vernacular by speakers of various languages, esp. in Java & Bali. Lots of exciting new work in this field. Wacana 26(3), free download: scholarhub.ui.ac.id/wacana/

Edel Rodriguez’s “Mayor Mamdani” (November 4, 2025) www.newyorker.com/culture/cove...

Few examples suvive of written statute law from early S&SE Asia, but I propose that one might infer the existence of generally applicable, enforceable laws from immunities granted in charters: "Customary Legalism: Rules of Law in Early India, Java, and Bali" www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/news/news.ph...

Rioting and arson have engulfed Kathmandu in the wake of the govt's aborted attempt to censor or block access to social media. These brave souls sat out to protect Nepal's cultural heritage.

Provincialising Dharma: Studies on Legal Issues in the Himalaya, a collection of essays exploring the Himalayan regional dimensions of dharma, historically & today, is out: www.asiainstitutetorino.it/cis/CIS_10.pdf including my piece, "Sacred Law as a Device of State-Building in Gorkhali Nepal."

JAOS 145.3 is out: doi.org/10.7817/jaos..., articles on: autobiog of becoming, Ming women's anger, an old term for foreigners in China, cuneiform word lists, neo-Babylonian chronicles, the epic of Aqhat, Tabari's poetic license, bustling Buddhist monasteries, the aims of Sanskrit doxography, & more!

"‘Yala Toilet Frog’ named for departing Tea Board chairman." “I’m deeply gratified...” says Pethiyagoda. "If [those I've annoyed find] a frog in the toilet, I'm sure their actions will speak louder than words. Or they can simply drop the matter.” archives1.dailynews.lk/2018/03/21/l...

Issue 145:2 of the JAOS is out online: doi.org/10.7817/jaos... with articles on: Regal code-switching in the Deccan, r-clusters in Gandhari, omens in Song shu, 3 Qing compendia on cats, the Semitic perfect tense, Joseph in Egypt, counting lines in Erra, basmala as cosmic design, and gendering sex!

Superb new OA article by Jarrah Sastrawan sorts through the complex issues of provenance, "ownership," and violence as they bear on #cultural #heritage claims & repatriation, by exploring the precolonial history of the "Lombok Treasure" & "Lombok Collection" of manuscripts. doi.org/10.1163/2213...

A delightful bit on the world's oldest map of the world. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUxF...

Posted a forthcoming study of how the Gorkha kings deployed Hindu sacred law (dharma) in 18th- & early 19th-c. Nepal to integrate ethnic groups as castes within a multiethnic kingdom — in the shadow of late Mughal/early Company-raj India. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

To everyone (justifiably) applauding @harvard.edu 's response to the fed. administration's demands: that letter is only part of the story. Harvard's new website went public in coordination with Harvard Pres. #AlanGarber 's letter. It's completely revamped--and it's brilliant. www.harvard.edu. (1/8)

After the decades of agony that uprooted the monarchy at last, violent agitation to restore it cannot be merely "the people’s discontent with Nepal's political establishment." The yearning for a king is the yearning for the old order by those who benefited from it. www.himalmag.com/podcast/nepa...

Fascinating Mughal order reveals a history of 18th century India the right-wing doesn’t want you to know!

At the 235th Meeting yesterday, we voted to continue our work under a new name: the American Society for Premodern Asia. We invite all scholars who work on languages, literatures, history, and material culture of West, Central, South, and East Asia, and North Africa join us! #ancient #medieval #asia

ACLS President Joy Connolly has published a new opinion piece in the @chronicle.com calling for collaboration among higher education institutions in response to the current political climate: bit.ly/3E9Fdaq

Discontent does only so much to explain the revival of royalist politics in Nepal. Amish Raj Mulmi writes about what's fuelling the recent violent pro-monarchy protests:

I hope other university alliances start pooling resources and engaging in the kinds of collective action Rutgers is proposing here for the Big Ten. senate.rutgers.edu/report/resol...

New insights on how Śiva worship took shape in early India and Nepal!

Columbia University (bis alma mater mea!) caves fecklessly to brutal government tyranny. An ill omen for American academia ... until someone dares to resist. robertreich.substack.com/p/the-shame-...

Columbia U. faces a demand to sacrifice its academic freedom in exchange for $400M in federal funds. Too steep a price.

Eminent Sanskritist Sheldon Pollock, the former MESAAS dept head at Columbia, writes that "like a mob boss, the government threatens to cut off two of the university’s fingers: academic freedom and faculty governance."

Special Project launch event (hybrid) at the The SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies with the three Principal Investigators of the ERC Synergy MANTRAMS Project, Carola Lorea, Finnian Gerety, and Borayin Larios. Register for (free) tickets… 1/

Follow @stlubin.bsky.social for visionary images of how ecosystems and human systems overlap. s3.amazonaws.com/images.icomp...

Works from the series "After Audubon" and "Watershed" (laurestevenslubin.com/series/after...) are on view at The Branch Museum in Richmond, Va. for the next three months as part of the exhibition "Re-Think Landscape Design": branchmuseum.org/re-think-lan...

Don't miss this talk "Historicising Caste, Decolonizing Slavery." by the fabulous Indrani Chatterjee Friday morning 10 EST. Register here: tinyurl.com/22rvht8f

The first JAOS issue 2025 is out online: lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/ja... with articles on: early Muslim converts; the 1st world history; Tamil God in Sanskrit; Atiśa in Tangut mss; Yang Ningshi's calligraphy; Han verse; Amarna politics; Mesopotamian hermeneutics; & Aramaic cadastres!

Geschockt über den Ausgang der Wahlen? Es ist an der Zeit, sich mit der Vergangenheit zu beschäftigen – auch in der Iranistik oder ähnlichen Disziplinen. Shocked by the outcome of the German elections? It may be time to engage with the past of our disciplines. www.biblioiranica.info/two-mirrors/

Laure Stevens-Lubin's redesigned website is live, exploring ecosystems and human-systems: laurestevenslubin.com

Our chapter on status and family in the Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law came out last fall. This collaborative volume, long in the works, expands the scope of ancient legal history and thinks hard about what comparative history can accomplish. #history www.academia.edu/127810712/St...

Worried that all those govt webpages that Trump took down just disappeared? Archive.org has been preserving govt websites at the end of each administration since 2004. Help support them -- one of the surviving good-for-humanity parts of the Internet still going: eotarchive.org

First conference on Nepalbhasa online on Feb 21st.

The latest installment in the first critical edition & translation of the oldest rulebook of lay Śiva-devotion, the Śivadharmaśāstra (here, chapter 10 on vows and giving), w open access download: www.fedoabooks.unina.it/index.php/fe...

Here is an accessible discussion of comparative categories like #god and the #sacred as applied to #Buddhism, by Signe Cohen, in Cambridge's "Problem of God" series. (Free to download until 4th March!) www.cambridge.org/core/element...

This 2020 essay reflecting on the state of the discipline of Semitic linguistics is more urgently relevant in 2025. Pat-El's recommendations apply for philologists and premodernists generally: to reverse balkanization, broaden training,& increase interdisciplinary work. www.jstor.org/stable/27132...

An exciting find in a family collection: a Pallava-era copper-plate inscription, a substantial new addition to the small corpus of these early south Indian grant charters. www.thehindu.com/news/nationa...

Friends, please join @adeanamcn.bsky.social and myself as we host Prof. Indrani Chatterjee (UVA) for the first lecture and discussion of our Spring 2025 #Buddhism and #Caste Initiative Lecture Series. February 28, 2025 10am EST / 8:30pm IST (on zoom) Register here: tinyurl.com/22rvht8f

"The Ludic Languages of Asia," lecture series on the history of games hosted by the ASTRA research group, Max Planck Institute. First lecture 14 Feb 14:00 CET on games in medieval Marathi literature. Join via Zoom: eu02web.zoom-x.de/j/68564259061 For info: www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/page/astra-c...