Pardah is widespread in the South Asian region, especially India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.As a traditional practice, it involves separating men and women into two different and distinct social and cultural domains. In previous studies, wearing a veil has been cited as a means for enabling women to go about their daily chores while maintaining their isolation from men. It has been explained that when the socioeconomic situation surrounding women changes and the need for women to go out arises, the spatial isolation norm in pardah is loosened and it is transposed into a norm of dress.

In the village J, in Punjab province, Pakistan, where my field work was conducted, the way of veiling by women as the practice of pardah has been changed from covering the entire face（ghūnghat）to covering the nose and below（naqāb）. Elder women in the village have told me that the new style is the result of women losing the feeling of shame（sharm）, because their eyes are not hidden in naqāb, while eyes are necessarily coveredin ghūnghat. How did this change in the village J take place? What does it mean that the method of covering the face has changed from “covering their eyes” to “showing their eyes”? In this paper, I will clarify the changes in the practice of pardah in contemporary rural Pakistan, and examine the background and implications of these changes.

In Nepal（Kathmandu Valley）, there are many drama manuscripts and song manuscripts written in Middle Bengali. These texts were performed in the courts and temples of the medieval Malla dynasty. It turns out that among these texts are included Krishna songs by Baṙu Candīdās who is the earliest Middle Bengali poet, and also the earliest version of the amorous adventure story “Princess Vidyā and Prince Sundara” attributed to Ś rīdhara, the court poet of the Gaur dynasty of Bengal. With these evidences, I argued that the Bengali manuscripts of dramas and songs that have been handed down in Nepal do not represent a sub-stream or offshoot of Medieval Bengali literature, as have been conventionally thought, but they rather preserve an early form of its mainstream.