Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Timan's Frasch's Pagan und Stadt in German

Just bumped into a note on Tilman Frasch's contribution to Pagan era historiography in a review of Lieberman's Strange Parallels.

"...Although important studies of Southeast Asian history written in German are quite rare, some of them, however, should not be ignored. To give one example: As for the economic history of Pagan, Lieberman relies almost entirely on Michael Aung-Thwin's work, who is the leading authority in this field. If he had consulted Tilman Frasch's Ph.D. thesis Pagan: Stadt und Staat (Stuttgart 1994) he probably would have contested Aung-Thwin's theory that the decline of Pagan was spurred by excessive donations of royal land to religious institutions."

Now I have a motive to read Pagan: Stadt und Staat which is sitting on my bookshelf at home, waiting.

It's been a long time since I read German though, but with my trusty dictionary, some time, and a top down approach, it will be manageable.

By the way, there are copies of both Tilman Frasch's PhD dissertation and Grabowsky's at the Siam Society in Bangkok. Submitting a copy of your dissertation to this venerable old institution is probably the best way of disseminating your work throughout mainland Southeast Asia.