The haunted house (“ Mostellaria ”) of Plautus. As played by the students of University College, Liverpool, March, 1890. The original text, with a translation... by L. P. Anderson, L. D. Barnett, F. E. Smith, pp. xii, [1], 86. Liverpool, T. Dobb and Co., 1890.

The Mahasin al-majalis of Ibn al-'Arif (†536/1141) is a Sufi treatise of minor dimensions and inconsiderable importance, one of a multitude of such summaries that bridge the gap between the classical works of Kalabadhi, Qushairi, and Makki, and the phenomenal productivity of Ibn al-'Arabi. For all that, the essay (for it is little more) is not without interest; it is allusive and elliptical in style, thus affording material for commentators; and the author begins his discourse proper by quoting, though not by name, the Mawdqif of Niffari; as Ibn al-'Arabi afterwards used Ibn al-'Arif quite freely and approvingly, it is always possible that he got to know and take an interest in Niffari through this intermediary.

I. ′ÖMER B. MEZÎD: Mecmû‘atu’n-nazdir (S.O.A.S., 27,689), ff. 309, size 7 ½ in. by 5 ½ in., thick paper in library cloth, binding. The MS. has been considerably cut down, and the first leaf is missing. An odd leaf, formerly one of the end blanks, upon which verses have been written, has been bound in separately at the beginning. The first few leaves are defective, but have been carefully repaired, and nothing of importance is missing; in the main the MS. is in extremely good condition. It is undated, but belongs to the fifteenth century. Among the chronograms there is a verse which suggests that the compilation was made in 840/1436. The hand is a bold clear early Turkish neskh, black, with titles and ruled border in red. The harekes are carefully marked throughout. There are only eleven lines to a page, the area within the ruling being about 6 ¼ in. by 4 ¼ in., sometimes slightly more.

An interesting footnote to the abortive expedition of the Florentines against the island of Chios in May 1599 is provided by a rare–possibly unique– book in the British Museum.

Its rarity may be gauged from the fact that we find no record of it in the catalogues of Steinschneider, Kayserling, and Ya'ari, or in the Jewish encyclopaedias. Nor have I been able to trace a reference to it in any other source. The book is a small quarto volume, measuring 7¾ in. by 5⅜ in., and consisting of twenty-eight leaves. The last leaf, which has no foliation, appears to be a cancel, as it reproduces, in a somewhat different form, the text of fol. 2. The book contains the Aramaic paraphrase of the Song of Solomon (known as the Targum), accompanied by a Judseo-Spanish (Ladino) version in the Hebrew character, and was printed in Salonica in the year A.M. (5)360 (A.D. 1600) at the printing press of Mattithiah Bathsheba and his sons, and subsidized by Moses [ben Samuel] di Medina. It was published for Jacob ben Judah Ashkenazzi, an itinerant bookseller of Safed in Galilee. A preface by him, as well as a poem by the same author on the game of chess, which, like the preface, is otherwise unknown (it is to be found on the verso of fol. 27), complete the book.

Bkitish Museum Ms., Oriental 8606, a Syriac codex of Melchite origin, written in the year A.D. 723, contains, besides a Syriac Corpus Athanasianum (the only Syriac Corpus of Athanasian writings so far discovered), a collection of Homilies on the Nativity by various authors. With one exception, a Homily by St. Ephraim, these are all translated from Greek originals. One of these discourses, a Homily by Severian, Bishop of Gabala in Syria, ” On the Nativity of our Lord and against Heretics ”, seems to be no longer extant in Greek, nor, so far as I can discover, has the Syriac version ever been published. This is somewhat surprising since the same discourse is to be found in Cod. Vat. Syr. 369, fol.15v–17v. As very few of Severian's sermons are preserved in the original Greek, it seemed to me that an edition of this piece might be of interest to scholars.

It is astonishing how soon the Arabs fade out of Muslim history, Arabia itself excepted. There are notable instances to the contrary like the Hamdanids and the Banū Hilāl, but they are few. During the rule of the Fatimids in Egypt the Banū Jarrah of Tai' were the most important of the bedouins in Syria; their chief Mufarrij b. Daghfal b. Jarrāh died in 404/1013 and his son Hassān succeeded him. Contemporary with Hassān was Fadl b. Rabi'a b. Hāzin b. Jarrāh, who was, perhaps, as Ibn Khaldūn suggested and Ibn Hajar affirmed, the ancestor of the Āl Fadl: This Fadl was at times an ally of the Franks and at times an ally of thesultan of Egypt. He was banished and joined Sadaqa b. Mazyad and in 500/1106 was the ally of Sadaqa against the Saljūq sultan Muhammad b. Malikshāh; later he abandoned Sadaqa.

Among the many contributions by which Ignaz Goldziher. deepened and enriched western understanding of Arabic culture, one of the most familiar to all students is his study of the conflict of ancient and modern in Arabic poetry.1 Devoted in the main to an analysis of the attitude taken up by literary critics towards modern, i.e. post–Islamic and later poets, the study traces the gradual shift in the criteria of judgment from the older philologists view of the unapproachable superiority of the pre–Islamic poets to the later aesthetic appreciation of modern and contemporary poetry. At the same time, it is pointed out that the older view not only continued to find support amongst the reactionaries, but remained the generally accepted view of the whole learned society of the Muslim, and particularly of the Arab, East.

The Arabic manuscript Or. 9200 in the British Museum collection, copied in Cairo in a fairly clear Naskhi hand in the year A.H. 1181 (A.D. 1767), contains three short works. The first of these, covering sixty–one folios, bears the title al–Jalīs al–anīs fī tahrim al–kkandarīs. Its author is the famous lexicographer Muhammad ibn Ya′qūb al–Fīrūzābādī (d. 817/1415). It is a vocabulary of all the Arabic words known to him which signify wine or any other intoxicant, and he is careful to emphasize that he composed it in loyal support of the Islamic ordinance of prohibition no less than as a contribution to Arabic philology.

The Tārīkhi Qumm was originally written in Arabic by Hasan b. Muhammad b. Hasan Qumml in the year A.H. 378 (A.D. 988–9). No copy of this is known to exist. A Persian translation was made in the year A.H. 805–6 (A.D. 1402–3) by Hasan b. Alī b. Hasan b. Abd al–Malik Qummī for Ibrāhīm b. Mahmūd b. Muhammad b. Alī as–Safī. The translator states that the original contained twenty chapters and fifty sections. None of the known manuscripts, however, contains more than the first five chapters.

The importance of the oath in Ismā′īlism was recognized at an early date, and some of the earliest tracts against the sect devote several pages to the oaths demanded from new recruits. Of particular interest is a passage in a medieval Egyptian manual for secretaries, giving the formula of oaths to be sworn by Ismā′īlīs. The work, the Tā′rīf bi ′l–Muskdah ash–Sharīf, is administrative rather than theological in scope, and may, on the whole, be relied upon as giving the approved formula for the numerous Ismallls still to be found in the Mamlūk dominions. The author was the respected and well known chief Qādī Shihāb ad–Dān b. Fadl Allah al–Umarā. Qalqashandi quotes the passage, with some explanatory and critical notes, in his chapter on the Ismā′īlīs.

The Sogdian “Ancient Letters”, no doubt one of the most important of Sir Aurel Steins many finds, have been attributed to the middle of the second century of our era, on the strength of archaeological evidence (Serindia, ii, 671 sqq.). Their editor, H. Reichelt, expressed a mild doubt (Die Soghdischen Handschriftenreste des Britischen Museums, ii, p. 6), and so did Pelliot in his review of Reichelts edition (Toung Pao, xxviii, 1931, 457–463). If the date originally proposed by Sir Aurel Stein (between A.D. 105 and 137, or in 153) could be substantiated, the Letters, which are on paper, would have to be regarded as the oldest paper documents in existence.

The following few pages, dedicated to Dr. L. D. Barnett in memory of many A kindnesses, may call up for a brief moment the forgotten princes, the acaryas, Buddhist teachers, who in the tenth century on their way between Khotan and China were plundered and distracted by the Turks who met them on their way. They are religious teachers and have no enemies, said their guides to the Turks. The short text forms part of the Buddhist legacy of India to Central Asia. The Stein MS. Ch 00269 contains, after some incomplete phrases in lines 0–8, the drafts of three letters: 9–23 concern a certain Prabhākaravardhana; 24–108 and 108–120, here edited and translated, give the letter of the messengers, written in Sacū (1. 84), and the letter of the seven princes. Lines 75–80 were quoted in BSOS 8. 883 (twelve years ago) for their importance for the Tokharian problem. The companion piece to this MS. is P 2741 at the Bibliotheque Nationale, of which an edition has been given in this same volume XII of the BSOAS. Both were prepared for the press as long ago as 1942, but it has not been possible hitherto to publish them.

On several occasions, when my Persian coaster ventured into the Indian Ocean and was battered by too heavy seas, and I was murmuring the verse of Hafiz:– Dr. L. D. Barnett, like the expert pilot he is, came to the rescue. As a token of gratitude I wish him to accept my translation of the chapter on India extracted from the unpublished part of Gardīzī′s historical work.

Avestic has a series of compounds in which the word for ‘foot’, IE. *ped-, appears in its weakest ablaut grade, viz. -bd-: bibda-, βribda-, vīspabda- ‘double, treble, universal fetter’. Corresponding to these Sanskrit has forms with full grade: dvipád-, RV. nom. -pát, Pān. dvī- ‘ two-footed ’, RV. tripod-, AV. sdrvapad-; also RV. apád- ‘footless’ and, with other numerals, RV. cátuspad-, AV. sátpad-, VS. saptápad-, RV. astápad-, áatápad-, sahásrapad

An etymology long current among Indo-Europeanists runs as follows: Gk. “ the dark underworld ” ( “ dark, gloomy ”, “ black, dark ”), Goth, riqis “ darkness ” (riqizyan “ to become dark ”, riqizeins “dark”) Arm. erek “evening”, Skt. rajas “darkness, dimness; dark space, space; dark mist, mist, cloud, atmosphere; dust, dirt; pollen; arable land (as black); the darkening quality, passion, emotion; the second of the three gunas whose nature is active, urgent, and variable ”. As far as the first three languages are concerned the equation is simple and straightforward; but the Sanskrit word creates difficulty on account of the extreme variety of meanings which it is said to possess, and the semantic problems which this involves.

Before coming to the main argument I should like to place before the reader some general observations which have taken an ever firmer hold of me the more I have had to do with literary productions of the past.

Most of the available specimens of Paiśācī are recorded in Lacote′s Essai sur Gunādhya et la Brhaikathā, pp. 201 f., and in my article “ The Mysterious Paiśācī”, JRAS., 1943, 217 f. They comprise about a hundred words. I am now able, by the courtesy of Muni Punyavijayajī of the Svetambara Jaina Dharmasala, Baroda, who has sent me photostats of an early MS., to publish the longest extract extant in Paisaci from an unpublished portion of the Kuvalayamālā.

The document here edited is one of the large collection of papers presented by B. H. Hodgson to the library of the India Office, being vol. 29, no. 8 (34/3), ff. 48–51. At the top of the first page is written, presumably by Hodgson,“Ethics and Ritual of Buddhism”; but the word“Ethics”here refers simply to the fact that the text is followed (ff. 52–53) by the standard lists of the ten kuśalas, the ten pāramitās, the four brahmavihāras, the thirty-seven bodhipāksika-dharmas, and so forth, the first two lists being given also in the body of the text. The main text gives in outline the chief rites of Buddhism, daily, monthly, and annual ceremonies (forming, so to speak, a Buddhist “Church′s Year ”), followed by accounts of the thirteen sacraments.

Most modern systems of law find it convenient to impose a limit to collateral succession. The average man of to-day knows little and cares less about his distant cousins; and, if he will not even take the trouble to execute a will in their favour, the State which has protected him and his fortune and taken an ever increasing interest in his welfare, has, it is thought”, a stronger claim to his goods at death than those who were strangers to him in life and whose title is only what Lord Thurlow called “the accident of an accident ”.

Kalhana′s Rājataranginī contains an important account of an event probably unique in the history of Hindu India. The dissolute king Harsa or Harsadeva (A.D. 1089–1101), when in financial straits, was advised by his evil counsellor Lostadhara to restore his fortunes by looting the temples and melting down the images of the gods. After some persuasion he agreed to taking this course, and pursued a policy of iconoclasm so vigorously that, among the larger images in his kingdom, only four, two Hindu (those of Ranasvāmin and Mārtānda) and two Buddhist, were spared. The work of temple-looting was carried out so thoroughly that Harsa appointed a special official named Udayaraja as “superintendent of the destruction of the gods (devotpātananāyaka) ”.