Major M. D. Van Lessen, M.C. (Royal Hampshire Regt.), has made available to me, in photographs and hand-made copies, about 30 inscriptions and graffiti which he had either acquired or come across on rocks and buildings during his tour of duty with the Aden Protectorate Levies. These inscriptions, most of which proved to be hitherto unknown or unpublished, will be numbered in a series under the name-of Van Lessen.

The inscriptions published here for the first time were discovered in the course of a visit to Edessa, the modern Urfa, during the summer of 1956. My journey was made possible by generous subventions from the Central Research Funds of the University of London and the Pilgrim Trust Fund administered by the British Academy. It is a pleasure to express here my gratitude not only to those bodies, but also to the officials of the Turkish Department of Antiquities and to the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, whose ready co-operation greatly facilitated our work in the field; and my sincere thanks are due no less to the energy and perseverance of Dr. D. S. Rice and his assistants Dr. Donald Strong and Mr. Michael Ballance, my companions in the rigours of an Anatolian heat-wave.

In al-Wāqidī's Kitdb al-maghāzī and in that part of Ibn Ishāq's Sīra which deals with Muhammad's life in Medina and is contained in Ibn Hishrm's version of al-Bakkā'Ī's recension, there are similar and sometimes identical passages. Since Ibn Ishāq is the earlier of the two authorities, it has been assumed on a plausibly a priori basis that al-Wāqidī modelled himself on his predecessor in the arrangement of his material, and drew from him much of the basic warp of his narrative to which he then added his own weft.

The object of this paper is to give preliminary information about Shāhrudi, one of the Iranian dialects spoken in Khalkhāl, the south-eastern province of Āzarbāijān lying between the Caspian province of Tālesh to the east, Ardabil to the north, Zanjān to the south, and Miyāna(j) to the west.

Our information about the Iranian dialects of Āzarbāijān, where a form of Turkish is the common language, has until recently been very defective. The scanty material available was summed up by Professor W. B. Henning in a recent article. Since then, however, several studies of the current dialects of Āzarbāijān have been published.

Those who wish to ascertain ‘le dernier état de ces questions’ will be grateful to Professor G. Dumézil who has now summed up for us in brief compass his immense labours of nearly a quarter of a century in the study of Indo-European religion. Although the book does not cover the whole wide range of his researches, it does deal comprehensively (and with full bibliographical notes) with the central dogma:

'La comparaison des plus vieilles traditions des divers peuples parlant des langues indo-europeennes a révélé un fond considérable d'éléments communs, et d'éléments non pas isolés, mais organises en structures complexes, dont les autres peuples de l'ancien monde n'offrent pas l'équivalent. L'xposé qu'on va lire est consacré à la plus importante de ces structures'(introduction, p. 5).

Until quite recently, Western students of Veda have found it difficult to obtain reliable information on the manner of chanting practised by Rgvedic Brahmans maintaining their sacred tradition. Some studies on Vedic recitation have appeared in the past, 1 but none has given any information on the oldest of the Vedic schools, the Rgveda. During the year 1952–3, some progress was made in this respect, and recordings were taken in Rājasthān2 and in Bombay.3 At the time, the manner in which these two reciters chanted appeared to run so far counter to the generally accepted notions in the West concerning the nature of the Vedic accentual pattern that their evidence was simply‘filed ’. More recently still, in 1957 and 1958, a further opportunity presented itself of recording chants by a Rgvedic Brahman, this time from Mahārāstra.4 Nothing fully authentic is yet available from the eastern side of India, 5 but the fact that the above three Brahmans agree so closely that any divergences are scarcely worth noting makes useful.

Among the many controversies between the Sautrāntika and the Vaibhāsika recorded in the Abhidharma-koś-bhāsya of Vasubandhu, 1 a large number are devoted to discussions of the reality of a Vaibhāsika category called cittaviprayukta-samslāras (tr. ‘pure forces’ by Stcherbatsky).2 The Vaibhāsikas enumerate thirteen such samskāras 3 and declare them to be distinct from the traditional three categories of dhannas, viz. rūpa (matter), citta (mind), and caitasikas (mental concomitants). Whereas the first ten of these samskāras have a bearing on the Buddhist theories of causation, unconscious

The attributes of the Indian king have long been familiar, but taken together they have an inexplicable feature-their apparent incompatibility.An explanation for one, bhū-bhojana, is hinted at by J. J. Meyer&s Trilogie altindischer Māchte und Feste der Vegetation (Zürich and Leipzig, 1937), and the setting in which the subject is to be reviewed has been entirely recast by the lengthy and exhaustive article by J. Gonda, entitled ‘Ancient Indian kingship from the religious point of view’(Numen, III-IV, 1956–7). It is much to be hoped that these works will not escape the notice of historians of India, and it is assumed in this paper that Professor Gonda&s article is accessible to the reader.

Under the title ‘Argenterie d'un seigneur sassanide’ Dr. Ghirshman describes, in Ars Orientalis, II, 1957, 77-82, a recent find, made in Mazendaran, of silver-ware, the most important constituent of which is a set of three richly ornamented bowls with Pahlavi inscriptions. Of these inscriptions, throughout in pointille, only feeble traces can be seen in the photographs that accompany the article; for the purpose of reading we depend wholly on a drawing (p. 81). Drawings are useful enough when they supplement photographs; but no student of epigraphy likes being compelled to rely on another man's eyes.

In Somaliland God is universally known by the names Allaah and Rabbi, both of Arabic origin, but the full list of His 99 Arabic names is known only to sheikhs and wadaads.1 In addition to the Arabic names, however, there are a considerable number of purely Somali titles for Allaah. The majority of those recorded here will be seen to be praise-names referring to God's attributes and in many cases direct equivalents in Somali of the corresponding titles in Arabic.