The article addresses the important question of the calendar used in dating the Payagyi Pyu urns from Sri Ksetra (mod. Pyay) in Myanmar. It shows that, of the four calendars used in Myanmar at the time, two—the Ajjagona and Buddhist eras—can be ruled out. This leaves the Saka and Myanmar eras as the only possible options. However, although the Saka era was used for dating Indian records up to East Bengal, it was only used twice for dating an inscription in central Myanmar and, in addition, the early dates on the Payagyi urns seem to preclude its use in Myanmar that early on. The article concludes therefore that, for dating the Pyu urns, most likely the Pyu–Myanmar calendar of 638 CE was used.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, electric tramways made their appearance in the cities of Asia, but despite being a universal technology, and despite the considerable impact they had upon life in these cities, the history of tramways in Asia has hardly ever been studied. Trams, wherever they ran, mobilized the urban population to a degree unseen before—their track network could restructure the urban topography and re-evaluate its segments, as independent villages became suburbs and residential quarters rose or fell in status, and add to the segregation of workplaces and residential areas. The two cities of Singapore and Rangoon, which have been selected because of their comparability, provide two contrasting examples of how trams functioned and eventually failed in an Asian urban environment.

The article tries to identify the factors that led to urban growth in India in the period we style ‘early medieval India’, viz the centuries between the decline of the Gupta empire and the rise of the Islamic sultanates in northern India. In doing so, the author obviously responds to the seminal work of R.S. Sharma, without, however, even mentioning it. Sharma is one of the most influential advocates of the school of ‘Indian feudalism’, and he linked the decline of cities in India during the period under review to the decline of long-distance trade (caused especially by the decline of Roman trade with India) on the one hand and the feudal transformation of agrarian relations on the other. The economic crisis (the emphasis on which easily identifies Sharma as a staunch Marxist) went along with a socio-religious crisis, during which people expected the fourth age of Hinduism, the age of Kali, to draw to a close. Thakur does not deny the importance of economic factors completely, but tries to weigh them against other factors, which he styles ‘technological and ecological’ and ‘institutional and political’. His conclusion in this respect is somewhat inconclusive as ‘no single factor initiated urban growth’, though in a surprising move, he adds that three phases can be made out which are characterized by agrarian expansion (AD 600–750), emergence of empires (750–1000 – this phase is obviously related to the institutional and political factors) and finally the predominance of trade (1000–1200). In what sense this development is based on ‘mechanisms’ (as alluded to in the title), remains completely open.