For the European and later the American colonial soldier, the civil administrator and his clerk, the merchant, the missionary, and the families who followed them east of Suez, daily life was less a matter of advancing the glory of God or empire than a battle for survival against sunstroke, dysentery, cholera, malaria, and a host of other unnamed deadly fevers as well as little-examined, vague indispositions that in hindsight would probably be diagnosed as clinical symptoms of depression. Later, medical scholars coined a phrase for it: "tropical fatigue." Pity John Ouchterlony. By the time...
For the European and later the American colonial soldier, the civil administrator and his clerk, the merchant, the missionary, and the families who fo...
Tantric Buddhism, with its complex and fascinating rites, rose to its highest levels on the trans-Himalayan Tibetan plateau, where it had flowered since the eighth century. But now the small kingdoms - Sikkim and Ladakh among them - where the teachings and miracles of the great lamas were revered have been gobbled up by bigger powers. The story of that loss is a prelude to Barbara Crossette's richly evocative journey into the historical past and courageous present of Bhutan, where the Buddhist world can still be seen intact, peaceful, harmonious - and threatened. We enter a landscape of...
Tantric Buddhism, with its complex and fascinating rites, rose to its highest levels on the trans-Himalayan Tibetan plateau, where it had flowered sin...
