First Published in 1999. The majority of the contributions to this volume have their origin in a symposium which was held in Stockholm on 27–29 September 1996 under the Swedish title of Nordisk Centralasienforskning: språk – kultur – samhälle, i.e. ''Nordic Central Asia Research: Language – Culture – Society''. The main purpose of this meeting was to obtain a general view of current research activities and study programmes in this field and to help establish contact between Central Asia researchers in the Nordic countries.