international success was short-lived. He had to face extraordinary political hostility in his own coun- try. His controversial role in the bifurcation of Pakistan and the eventual birth of Bangladesh led to the spread of internal chaos. A military coup in 1977 led to his imprisonment and execution in 1979. All the leaders who have found a place in this book, except Lee Kuan Yew, the modern architect of Singapore, died long ago. Lee died only in 2015. Lee, a towering personality, transformed Singapore’s economy greatly within a short span of time and became one of the most sought-after countries for Western capitalists. Yet Lee’s political and economic ideals, Makers of Modern Asia reminds us, remained critically hostile to Western ideas of ‘political practice and state-making’. Essentially, Makers of Modern Asia successfully makes new connections between Asian nations by retelling the political biographies of these nations. By doing so, this book superbly recaptures the time-tested tradition of political biography. The book’s brilliantly argued essays carry fresh insights which would have to be taken seriously by anyone interested in the emergence of modern Asia. Any reader curious to understand the birth of the Asian century as well as to know how the Asian countries struggled for national unity will be interested in this book. The book will also remain one of the most important contributions to our new understanding of the birth of major Asian nations, which have challenged the European and American economies. This profoundly thought- provoking work will give us a different understanding of modern Asia. Family Matters in Indian Buddhist Monasticisms. By Shayne Neil Clarke. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 275. ISBN 10: 0824836472; ISBN 13: 978-0824836474. Reviewed by Nicholas Witkowski, University of Tokyo E-mail nwitkows@ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp doi:10.1017/S1479591415000297 Shayne Clarke’s Family Matters is truly a welcome addition to scholarship in the field of Buddhist Studies. Modern scholarship has long promulgated a conception of Indian Buddhist monasticism in which the ordination of the monk signifies a complete disavowal of relationships to parents, spouse, children, and the broader kinship network. In spite of Clarke’s significant caveat that his study is “experimental and exploratory” (p. 36), it cannot be denied that his book is the first extended treatment of Indian Buddhist monks and nuns which offers a direct and sustained challenge to this conception of the monastic figure as a religious practitioner who has abandoned all family ties. In addition to the primary task Clarke has set himself of challenging preponderant conceptions of the monastic as solitary wanderer, Family Matters also offers valuable object-lessons in how to prop- erly interpret the Buddhist legal codes, or vinaya. In Chapter 1, Clarke offers a comprehensive overview of scholarly conceptions about the relation- ship of the monk or nun to his or her family. In particular, he notes the great extent to which scholars have represented the Buddhist monk in accordance with rhetorical ideals which come from texts in the early Indian Buddhist tradition emphasizing the role of the monk as a solitary wanderer set apart from society (pp. 4–10). He suggests that the images of the early Indian Buddhist monk found in mod- ern Western scholarship are rooted in two formative conceptions: “(1) European notions of medieval Christian monasticism and (2) visions of the ideal monk from within modern, particularly Therava¯ da, Buddhist traditions and their canonical texts” (p. 2). These two sets of images are supported by a certain textual strand in Indian Buddhist literature which valorizes the ideal of the “asocial” renunciant (p. 5). Focusing on the influence exerted by the scriptural ideal articulated in the Pa¯li Rhinoceros Horn Su¯ tra on modern Buddhist Studies, Clarke concludes that “scholarly consensus has painted a picture in which Indian Buddhist monks and nuns severed all ties book review 103 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core . NTU Library, on 18 Aug 2019 at 10:53:30, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms . https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479591415000297