There are not many people who can be said to have donesomething first. To Xanthus of Lydia belongs thedistinction of being the first person on record towrite in Greek about Zoroaster and aspects ofIranian religion. Not a Greek but writing in Greek,and living in the country that still joins Asia andEurope, he was to play an exemplary role inpresenting details of an eastern religion directlyto a western audience.

Any researcher into the pre-modern history of Indiainevitably faces the problem of source material, andthe creative genius of medieval Indians furnishes uswith a wide range of sources; innumerable files oforiginal documents, multi-volumed chronicles, bulkytreatises, etc. A great number of traveloguesenables us to view medieval India through the eyesof visitors from all parts of the globe. The sourceto be analysed in this article will hardly standcomparison with the above-mentioned materials. It isa biography of an insignificant man, a familyhistory of modest middle-class people unconnectedwith court intrigues and political battles. And thetitle of the book is anything but serious.Ardhakathanaka means “Half aTale”. The author, a Jain merchant named BanarasiDas, completed it in 1641, being fifty-five at thattime; the ideal life span of the great Jain sageswas believed to be one hundred and ten years. ThusBanarasi, who harboured no ambitions to equal thegreat sages, titled his autobiography “Haifa Tale”,displaying a somewhat bitter humour (he died shortlyafter completing the book).

Anyone familiar with classical Japanese literaturecannot but be struck by the rich array of terms suchas mono no aware, yugen, wabi andsabi, to mention just a few,which are regarded as being central to theunderstanding of Japanese artistic theory andpractice. These categories were not, of course,essentialist and unchanging. They were dynamicconcepts which were subject to majortransformations. These transformations illuminateimportant aspects of Japan's cultural history.