Use of the term ‘exegesis’ is now so general that scholars in the field of scriptural studies must have sensed an impingement upon their conventional prerogative. If, perhaps, they are justified in so doing, they might none the less be prepared to acknowledge the value of ancillary functions accumulated in its extension into areas beyond its standard application to literature. While it may be that these can be encompassed in the general shift from self-consciously ‘interpretative’ to epistemologically ‘hermeneutic’, it would seem more practical to identify as ‘exegesis’ any and every act of perception. That, of course, is facilitated by the now conventional notion of ‘text’ espoused by most practitioners of structuralism. Whether one equates every datum of perception as somehow ‘textual’ or, conversely, the perception of every text as dependent upon the totality of experience, does not really matter. ‘Exegesis’ is conveniently inclusive and may be thought of general utility in the service of every taste and all analytical techniques. As such, it is ineluctably present in every transaction of the intellect: one observes, hears, reads, and makes the necessary adjustments in aid of understanding. In the very interests of survival, one seldom elects not to understand. It is the ‘necessary adjustments’ that require description, abundantly documented in the textbooks of literary criticism: from the rhetorical ‘naming of parts’ to contemporary discourse analysis. If it seems difficult to add to that vast corpus of technical terms, it is certainly possible to take a stand in respect of their presumptive efficiency.

Professor M. J. Kister, in a justly celebrated article on the meaning of the word taḥannuth, takes notes only casually of the related word ḥinth, which, he implies, means sin. Montgomery Watt had previously noted that ‘ḥinth is properly the violation of or failure to perform an oath, and so more generally sin.’ These are of course correct reflections of the Muslim lexicographical tradition. But, I shall argue in this essay, they do not exhaust the connotations of the word ḥinth: indeed they are probably secondary developments from the meaning which I shall explore here. It is not the least benefit of my proposal that it may—after a lengthy exploration of juristic vocabulary—cast new light on the meaning of the word taḥannuth, for so long a crux in the academic study of the biography of the Muslim Prophet.

Considering the unique position of the Modern South Arabian languages within Semitic it is surprising how little has been published concerning them. A case in point is the Jibbāli language of Dhofar, whose extreme phonetic and phonological complexity should arouse the interest of the general linguist as well as of the Semitic specialist. This becomes clear in even a brief perusal of the most notable pioneer study of the language, T. M. Johnstone's Jibbali lexicon.

Since the early years of this century, there has been a steady flow of publications containing editions of Uigur texts found in the Turfan region and brought to Germany. Not so the Uigur MSS of Dunhuang, which are kept in London and Paris. A good start was made by Le Coq, Thomsen and Pelliot in 1911–1914. Twenty years later, Bang, Gabain and Rachmati published the ‘Sūtra of Eight Heaps’. Another forty years were to elapse before the appearance of further material. Moriyasu mentions hundreds of MSS found in the cave which was given the number 181. There have, on the other hand, been multiple editions: The ‘ Story of the Two Princes’ was edited three times; recently, an Uigur text in Tibetan script was published—twice.

Of all the diseases which afflicted mankind in the nineteenth century cholera has a good claim to the unenviable title of being the most dreaded. It was certainly the one which prompted the first sustained efforts to devise and implement international sanitary conventions. The reasons why cholera was so feared are many. Until the second decade of the century it was confined to the Indian subcontinent—where it had probably existed since ancient times—and medical knowledge of it elsewhere was practically nil. In 1817, however, maritime trade carried the infection to other lands and thus began the first period of diffusion which lasted for some six years. By the early years of the twentieth century a further five massive epidemics had occurred, almost every country in the world had been affected and the cumulative death toll was measured in millions. Persia, being so close to the original source of infection, suffered in every one of those epidemics and also from several other more limited and localized outbreaks.

Emphasizing the importance of balanced geographical and historical knowledge in the late sixteenth century, Richard Hakluyt remarked: ‘Geographie and Chronologie are the sune and moone, the right eye and left eye of all history.’ In current studies of archaeology and history this emphasis remains apt, for to write a proper account of both artifacts and kings, they must be set geographi- cally in space and chronologically in time. The regions south of the River Yamunā, anciently known as Gopakṣetra, Daśārṇa, and Jejākadeśa (Maps 1 and 2), are rich in antiquarian remains, and have played an important role in the history of India, especially from the Gupta period to the time of the Muslim invasion. Their historical geography, however, has been generally ignored, and scholars have been content to describe the area simply as ‘ Central India’. The purpose of the present essay is to give an introduction to the historical geography of these provinces, and as such it can be taken as a foundation for further studies in local history and archaeology.

The fifteenth-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machaeras, whose Recital concerning the sweet land of Cyprus concludes in 1432, first mentions locusts thus: ‘And in 1351 the locust, with God's blessing, began to come to Cyprus (and did great damage).’ Strange as it may seem, this may have been the first visit of locusts to the island in numbers sufficient to be destructive. Soon other local chroniclers, as well as travellers, pilgrims, and merchants, joined Machaeras in recording such invasions. They may have been no surprise to the Cypriot chronicler, writing a little under a century later, but in 1351 they could well have been the cause of surprise, even terror, on the island.