Return to the Silk Routes
Return to the Silk Routes
Current Scandinavian Research
on Central Asia
EDITED BY
Mirja Juntunen & Birgit N. Schlyter
First published in 1999 by
Kegan Paul International
This edition first published in 2009 by
Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor &Francis Group, an informa business
Institute of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, 1999
Printed and bound in Great Britain
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 10: 0-7103-0608-3 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-7103-0608-1 (hbk)
Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. The publisher has made every effort to contact original copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
To Gunnar Jarring,
for his great knowledge and
generous attitude towards
fellow researchers
Contents
Preface
As will be further explained in our introductory chapter, the rest of the contributions to this volume have their origin in a symposium which was held in Stockholm on 2729 September 1996 under the Swedish title of Nordisk Centralasienforskning: sprk kultur samhlle, i.e. Nordic Central Asia Research: Language Culture Society. The main purpose of this meeting was to obtain a general view of current research activities and study programmes in this field and to help establish contact between Central Asia researchers in the Nordic countries. Therefore, by designating a general theme for the symposium we hoped to attract most Nordic scholars and graduate students involved in Central Asia research to the Stockholm symposium.
This symposium was prepared by a working committee from the Institute of Oriental Languages at Stockholm University consisting of Joakim Enwall, Mirja Juntunen, Staffan Rosn and Birgit N. Schlyter. The symposium and the present volume were sponsored by generous grants from the Nordic Academy of Advanced Study, Oslo, and the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Stockholm. A travel grant was obtained from the Wenner-Gren Center, Stockholm.
Participants in each of the fields represented at the symposium were invited to submit their papers for publication. Our first chapter, which gives a brief historical background to the ensuing articles, was written with the aid of information received from several persons in different parts of the Nordic countries: Christel Braae, Bernt Brendemoen, Ole Bruun, Gerd Carling, Ester Fihl, Anette Jensen, Folke Josephson, Pl Kolst, Ida Nicolaisen, Staffan Rosn, Volker Rybatzki, Erik Skaaning, Ingvar Svanberg, Per Srensen and Bo Utas. The Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, made its contribution by offering one of the present editors an opportunity to use its library and benefit from the good services of its librarians. The renowned Swedish scholar and ambassador, Professor Gunnar Jarring, to whom this book is dedicated, has also been engaged in our work. His long experience and excellent memory as well as his keen interest in present-day research on Central Asia render his comments and advice an extraordinary status.
Consultants for questions on the English language were Judith Monk, William Smith and Michael Stevens.
Krftriket, Stockholm
June 1998
The Editors
Remarks on Transcription and Spelling
It has been our ambition to keep as coherent a spelling as possible throughout the book, with certain exceptions; for example, the two American contributors were permitted to retain their American spelling where it differs from British spelling (as in neighbor, center etc.). Quoted titles in English, including translations from other languages, were everywhere spelt with capital initial letters in prominent words.
Quotations, lexical items and references to publications originally in non-Latin scripts were transliterated according to international scientific standards; for example, for Chinese we followed the Pinyin scheme convention. Names appearing in the main text (not references), on the other hand, were treated in a somewhat different manner. Geographical names and the names of languages and dialects, both transcribed ones and names originally in the Latin script, were rendered in a common English spelling, as long as there was one (e.g. Peking, not Beijing, and Sinkiang, not Xinjiang, Aarhus, instead of Danish rhus, and Gothenburg, instead of Swedish Gteborg). Where there were alternatives, each more or less as frequent as the other, either of them was chosen for all articles. For example, Tajikistan was preferred to Tadzhikistan under the motivation that the affricate sound [dz] is represented by the letter j in most other transcribed names (e.g. Jigda-bulung and Jungaria). As to personal and institutional names in the Latin script, these were spelt as we have most often seen them written in the country of their origin (e.g. Norwegian Kvrne and Danish Grnbech, Moesgrd). Proper names originally spelt in other alphabets were rewritten in accordance with conventions adhered to in the English mass media; e.g. Yeltsin and Turkmenbashi, not Elcin and Turkmenbay, which would be standard scientific transliterations of the Russian Cyrillic and Turkmen Cyrillic versions of these two names, respectively. In a small number of cases, for example, less common Mongolian names, the aforementioned transliteration standards were followed (e.g. X rlbaatar).
CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH A BACKGROUND
Nordic Research on Central Asia Past, Present and Future
MlRJA JUNTUNEN AND BIRGIT N. SCHLYTER
After decades of political seclusion, the vast region of Central Asia from the Caspian Sea to the Khingan Mountains and from the Iranian Plateau and the Himalayas to the Siberian Steppes is in a process of profound sociocultural metamorphosis and reassertion. This state of affairs challenges present-day and future Central Asia research by making demands for new knowledge and perhaps even a new outlook on the organization of the research itself; a new era has started in Central Asian studies.
Central Asia research in Scandinavia and more generally, the Nordic countries, has a long and rich tradition to fall back on but is today entering a new state of development and expansion, in a fashion similar to Central Asia research elsewhere in the international community. The following chapters, most of which are reports from ongoing projects on contemporary Central Asian settings and based on papers read at a symposium held in Stockholm in 1996, further elucidate the course of development and future perspectives in this field of research.
