Levi, Werner

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108writing which otherwise provides Guenther'sapparatus. If "ethical" be used at all, I wouldsuggest "ethically commendable demeanour" orsomething of the kind.The Jewel Ornament displays an amazinglove for captions and subcaptions, for cate-gorizing, quotation and cross-reference, psy-chological insight of considerable subtlety, andoccasionally at least, exquisite poetical beauty(e.g. p. 91 ff—the paradigm of a mother'sdevotion to her child). Guenther's thorough-ness can hardly be surpassed: there is a succinctintroduction explaining the general problemsof the text and its genre, twenty-one chaptersof translation; a fine guide to Tibetan pro-nunciation, inculcating the Lhasa (dbus) dia-lect. This guide has great value of its own,quite apart from the text. There follow elevenpages of Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Pali book-titles referred to or quoted from in the JewelOrnament; seven pages of Tibetan and Sanskritindices of technical terms, and finally an indexof names and subjects. This book is bound tobecome a classic.A. BHARATIUniversity of WashingtonPhilosophy of the Buddha. By A. J. BAHM.New York: Harper, 1959, 175. Bibli-ography, Index. $3.00.Professor Bahm has given us one of themost original analyses of early Buddhism toappear in recent years. It will provide thenon-specialist with a sensible and readableaccount and the specialist with something tomull over. To one who has ploughed throughscores of accounts of Buddhism in recent years,this one written in Rangoon has a. refreshingflavor absent in the usual sacerdotal exposi-tions.Although Bahm considers that the Buddha'scontributions warrant a kind of cosmic recog-nition (p. 73), he also has some sharp criticismto make of the early doctrine, which in thelight of contemporary thought, provides aneeded corrective. The weaknesses of the orig-inal doctrine of the Buddha are held to be:(1) unbalanced committment to the middle-way, (2) greed for no views, (3) insufficientrealism, for "real things may also contributeJOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIESto our happiness when they satisfy our desires."(pp. 151-2), (4) insufficient voluntarism, whichis to say that if there is to be freedom of choiceat all there must be desire, (5) extremeactualism as opposed to sufficient idealismabout what might be done about improvingthe world and (6) insufficient instrumentalismbecause nirvana is radically separated from itsmeans. These criticisms are particularly di-rected at those who today hold that Gotamais flawless, those whose critical faculties havebeen dulled by tradition and dogma.Bahm, finally, calls for new Buddhist studiesto determine Gotama's own philosophy in theearly scriptures. Perhaps it can "be recon-structed adequately only after first determin-ing what type of refraction was likely to occurin the different mental prisms of each of hisvarious reporters" (p. 159).Buddhologists of long-standing will be in-trigued by the common-sensical approach tothe Vinaya and Sutta Pita\as as seen throughthe eyes of Bahm's organicism.DALE RIEPEUniversity of North DakotaIndo Pakistan Relations (1947-1955)- By Dr.J. B. DAS GUPTA. Amsterdam: Djambatan,1958. xii, 254. Bibliography. Dfl. 18.50( = 35 s.)The relations between India and Pakistan,according to this book, consist of an agglomer-ation of insoluble disputes. Their fundamentalcharacter and attempts to settle them havebeen reported before. The present book cantherefore add nothing strikingly new but onlydetails to the sad subject, the more so as theevents since 1955 have not been included. Theauthor provides a short, hence incompleteaccount of the rise of nationalism and com-munism in India. He then deals with the his-tory of Partition, the Kashmir Dispute, theCanal Waters Dispute, the Evacuee PropertyProblem, and the Minorities. He scarcely men-tions the less hostile trade relations or Kashmirpolitics, two topics with considerable influenceupon the relations between the two nations.He also deals most cursorily with the broaderquestions of foreign policy, such as member-ship in the Commonwealth, participation in• « • 'use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.2307/2943480Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 07:44:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms ofBOOK REVIEWSthe Colombo Plan, and exposure to commondanger from the north, which have been knownto soften the bitterness of the disputes betweenIndia and Pakistan.The author makes his report in great detailand presents the facts objectively, though hisrare evaluations tend, rather subtly, to supportthe Indian position. He restricts his accountessentially to the official side of the story (inspite of a promise in the Preface that the workwill study "historical forces"). This choiceleaves important questions unanswered—forinstance why both sides occasionally shift theirpositions—and tends to give the impression ofsuperficiality. The author is apparently awareof this. For at the very beginning of the bookhe apologizes for neglecting domestic issuesaffecting external relations, and at the end heintroduces ideology as the basic cause of allevil. And so, having retold the fairly wellknown story of the disputes on 211 pages, hedevotes ten to what he considers the essentialconditioner of Indo Pakistan relations. Theseten pages are interesting and a good beginningto a needed study in depth of the unhappysituation on the subcontinent. But the authorremains, once again, on the surface. He statesthe differences in the beliefs and values of thetwo nations. Yet he fails to go beyond abstractdescription, he does not attempt to prove hisassertion of the primacy of ideology and todemonstrate its influence in concrete politicalsituations. He should have done so, for someof the disputes (e.g. canal waters, evacueeproperty) could quite well be explained onnon-ideological grounds.This omission contributes to occasional con-tradictions and shifts in the author's viewpoint,and therefore leads to some inadequately sup-ported conclusions. American aid to Pakistan,for example, rather than ideology is branded as"the most decisive factor in undermining theagreement on Kashmir" (p. 145). The author'sgloomy conclusion that the quarrels betweenthe two nations could not be expected to besolved "in any foreseeable future" (p. 240)might have been less certain and sweepinghad he remembered his own denial (p. ro) ofthe necessity of ideology as a divisive factor,when he remarked that "religion in the spirit-ual sense of the term is not a divisive forcein a modern polity" but that it has been used109in India "as a tool for furthering aims otherthan religious" and when he pointed out thatcommunalism has been non-existent in modernIndia for long periods. He does not probe intothe question who is using the tool, how, andfor what purpose, perhaps because he decidedto deal with "forces" rather than individuals(p. 1). Nevertheless, in social relations "forces"become effective through individuals, and inAsia especially foreign policy is usually thepreserve of a very few people. The book istherefore inevitably full of references to im-portant individuals. The author might havereached more qualified and substantiated con-clusions had he devoted himself more to theseindividuals—even if it is overly simplifying tosay, as some observers have done, that IndoPakistan relations will become peaceful withthe disappearance of the present generation ofleaders from the public scene.WERNER LEVIGraduate Institute of International Studies,GenevaThe Pathans 550 B.C.—AJD. 1957. By OLAFCAROE. New York, St. Martins Press, 1958.pp. xxii -\- 521. $12.50.The issue of the accession of Kashmir toeither Pakistan or India arises primarily be-cause of a precipitous action taken by thePathans late in 1947, an action designated inofficial records as the "invasion by tribesmen."The tribesmen referred to are the Pushtu-speaking Pathans of the North-West FrontierProvince, now an area of Pakistan. Sir OlafCaroe, author of Wells of Power and SovietEmpire, presents in this handsome volume thefirst modern, comprehensive study of theseCentral Asian peoples. It has long seemed tothis reviewer that the several books thus farpublished on the Kashmir problem did notgive sympathetic enough treatment of Pakis-tan's relations with the Pathans. The Pathanswere never lighdy to be dealt with, for theirfierce independence was at once admired andunsubdued by the British. Once they associatedthe alleged oppression of their Muslim breth-ren in Kashmir with the Islamic phenomenonof jihad, or holy war, there was no stoppingtheir incursion across the Punjab into Kashmir.use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.2307/2943480Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 07:44:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Book Review: Indo Pakistan Relations (1947-1955): Indo Pakistan Relations (1947-1955). By Dr. GuptaJ. B. Das. Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1958. xii, 254. Bibliography. Dfl. 18.50 (= 35 s.)

Book Review: Indo Pakistan Relations (1947-1955): Indo Pakistan Relations (1947-1955). By Dr. GuptaJ. B. Das. Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1958. xii, 254. Bibliography. Dfl. 18.50 (= 35 s.)

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