Preliminary Material

It is an absolute honor and pleasure to write a few words about Devin DeWeese and his intellectual trajectory, which has influenced and inspired all of the contributors to this volume, as well as many others.Beyond his formidable intellectual achievements as a scholar, the volume should reveal the admiration of his students and colleagues over the years for his kindness, good humor and attention.Those of us who have explored the fields of the history and religion of Inner Asia and Central Asia have done so taking into account Devin's work, and always benefiting from his friendship, and drawing from his example as of what good scholarship should be.Devin was born in 1956 in Indianapolis Indiana, into a family with roots in nearby Putnam County.His mother worked as a nurse, and his father owned a photography studio.Devin grew up in Speedway, a suburb of Indianapolis, and attended high school there.He benefitted from good math and English teachers in Speedway's public schools, but it was the example of his father that first lured him toward appreciating the world outside of Indiana.Devin's first learned of foreign cultures and history through the experience of his father, who served during the Second World War in India and Burma with the Office of Strategic Services (oss) training Burmese to take photographs behind Japanese lines.His father developed a keen interest in the beauty and complete unfamiliarity of India and Burma, where, drawn by his own curiosity he developed a taste for photographing the countries in which was stationed, and their inhabitants.After the war he brought home photographs of temples and villages which attracted him as something strange, enthralling and captivating.These photo albums made Devin aware that there existed different and fascinating worlds beyond the United States; but more importantly, his father's natural curiosity served as an example that unfamiliar, and seemingly alien cultures, far from being something uninteresting or even vaguely threatening, were something to approach, admire, and perhaps even seek to understand.Devin became interested in history, like many American boys, through family trips to Civil War battlefields -in his case through a trip to Gettysburg and Washington D.C. in 1962.However, he was also strongly interested in amateur astronomy.His introduction to religion was through his family's membership a local Protestant church.Early on he became conscious of and attracted to the language of the church, and would later confess having "a religious bent."His experience with Protestantism, and the church he was a member of, made him

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