Bøger i Beyond Boundaries serien

A hitherto unpublished scripture of Buddhist dharani literature, the Vajratü¿asamayakalpar¿ja has been recently discovered in five Nepalese manuscripts. This rare Sanskrit text from around the fifth century focuses on the ritual practice of thaumaturgic weather control for successful agriculture by the vidyadhara spell-master, linking the incantation tradition to the economic power of the Nepalese Buddhist community.

The Aulikaras were the rulers of western Malwa (the northwest of Central India) in the heyday of the Imperial Guptas in the fifth century CE, and rose briefly to sovereignty at the beginning of the sixth century before disappearing from the spotlight of history. This book gathers all the epigraphic evidence pertaining to this dynasty, meticulously editing and translating the inscriptions and analysing their content and its implications.

This book reports on excavations at Paithan in India revealed the development of two early Hindu temples from the 4th century to the 9th: the key formative phase of Hinduism. The temples started as small shrines but were elaborated into formal temples. In relation to these changes, the excavations revealed a sequence of palaeobotanical and palaeofaunal evidence that give insight into the economic and social changes that took place at that time.

In 1587, Abu al-Faz¿l ibn Mubarak - a favourite at the Mughal court and author of the Akbarnamah - completed his Preface to the Persian translation of the Mahabharata. This book is the first detailed study of Abu al-Faz¿l's Preface. It offers insights into manuscript practices at the Mughal court, the role a Persian version of the Mahabharata was meant to play, and the religious interactions that characterised 16th-century India.

The Sri Ksetra Museum Inventory provides public access to this significant collection for the first time. The Inventory records the majority of the Museum collection up until 2015. Nearly all of the artefacts date to Myanmar's Pyu period of the first millennium. Many of the objects have been documented for the first time, having been kept in storage in some cases unseen for nearly one hundred years. As only a limited amount of collection material can be publicly displayed in the Museum the Inventory provides immediate access to resource materials that would otherwise be out of reach. From intact votive tablets in diverse styles, to fragments of terracotta plaques and stone sculptures this is the most comprehensive collection of Pyu material culture in Myanmar. With the rise of interest in Pyu scholarship since the UNESCO listing of The Pyu Ancient Cities in 2014, this inventory, which also includes more recent finds from the important Pyu site of Khin Ba, will broaden scholars' appreciation of Pyu culture and open avenues for future research across many disciplines.