Denys Lombard & Roderich Ptak éd., Asia Maritima. Images et réalité. Bilder und Wirklichkeit 1200-1800 (Wiesbaden). Harrassowitz, 1994. 218 pp., 10 ill, index, Chinese glossaries. DM. 126.

For three reasons this book is of special interest, not only for Chinese studies but also for the field of social anthropology. First, it is concerned with a part of the world where Asia, Europe and Africa meet and which is in general considered to be at the margin of the great cultural traditions. Second, it opposes various perceptions of «the Other»: Asians looking at Europeans, Europeans looking at Asians and Asians looking at Asians, thus offering a complex cross-cultural perspective. And third, it deals, as the title indicates, with the gap between «images et réalité». Speaking in terms of geography the book concentrates on South India, South East Asia and South China while the historical focus is on the Middle Ages and modern times until the 17th century. The eleven articles which make up the book - six in French and five in German - grew out of a Franco-German conference held in Germersheim (University of Mainz) in 1993. They are presented in three parts: three studies are concerned with European views while the following five deal with Asian views, and the remaining three articles focus on «Comparisons and Models».

To begin with, I give a summary of each article before making some general and concluding remarks.

The first study by Geneviève Bouchon, «Le sud-ouest de l'Inde dans l'imaginaire européen au début du XVIe siècle: du mythe à la réalité» (pp. 3-11), traces European visions of India, i.e., the Malabar Coast including Calicut, from the Greeks and Romans right through to the Middle ages until the age of the Italian and Portuguese sailors and merchants after 1498. The author distinguishes mainly four discourses each following on the other. The arrangement of views succeeding one another does not, however, imply an unilineal development from fiction and mythology to more or less realistic images. If it is true that mythical elements are - in the course of the expansion of contact and knowledge - substituted by concrete details, we observe at the same time the creation of new myths and new fantasies.

The second essay by Marilia dos Santos Lopes, «Tradition und Imagination: Kalikutische Leut' im Kontext alt-neuer Weltbeschreibungen des 16. Jahrhunderts» (pp. 13-26) focussing on the city of Calicut, stresses the fact