Primary Sources and Asian Pasts Frontmatter Preface Contents Contributors Primary Sources and Asian Pasts: Beyond the Boundaries of the Gupta Period Part I: Narrative Form and Literary Legacies Why So Many Other Voices in the Brahmin Mahābhārata After the Mahābhārata: On the Portrayal of Vyāsa in the Skandapurāṇa The Best Abode of Virtue : Sattra Represented on a Gupta Period Frieze from Gaṛhwa ̄ Uttar Pradesh The Skandapurāṇa and Bāṇas Harṣacarita Part II: Political Landscapes and Regional Identity Describing the Own Other: Chinese Buddhist Travelogues Between Literary Tropes and Educational Narratives Imperial Languages and Public Writings in Tamil South India: A Birds Eye View in the Very Longue Durée Landscapes Linkages and Luminescence: First Millennium CE Environmental and Social Change in Mainland Southeast Asia Sri Ksetra 3rd Century BCE to 6th Century CE: Indianization Synergies Creation Part III: Religion Ritual and Empowerment The Meaning of the Word ārya in Two Gupta Period Inscriptions Four Syllables for Slaying and Repelling: A Tibetan Vajrabhairava Practice from Recently Recovered Manuscripts of the Lost Book of Rwa (Rwa pod) Love Unknowing and Female Filth: The Buddhist Discourse of Birth as a Vector of Social Change for Monastic Women in Premodern South Asia A Natural Wonder: From Liṅga Mountain to Prosperous Lord at Vat Phu Index This conference volume unites a wide range of scholars working in the fields of history archaeology religion art and philology in an effort to explore new perspectives and methods in the study of primary sources from premodern South and Southeast Asia. The contributions engage with primary sources (including texts images material artefacts monuments as well as archaeological sites and landscapes) and draw needed attention to highly adaptable innovative and dynamic modes of cultural production within traditional idioms. The volume works to develop categories of historical analysis that cross disciplinary boundaries and represent a wide variety of methodological concerns. By revisiting premodern sources Asia Beyond Boundaries also addresses critical issues of temporality and periodization that attend established categories in Asian Studies such as the Classical Age or the Gupta Period . This volume represents the culmination of the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy project Asia Beyond Boundaries: Religion Region Language and the State a research consortium of the British Museum the British Library and the School of Oriental and African Studies in partnership with Leiden University