This poem is mentioned by Steere (in the Preface to his Swahili Tales, p. xii) in the following terms: “I should have been glad to have exhibited the whole of the ‘Utenzi on Job’, which was the best I met with, but my authority could give me no more than the beginning, my copy breaking off short in the council of the fiends as to how to avail themselves of the permission to vex Job [st. 37–46]. The stanzas I have printed [1–6 in an imperfect form] are followed by a confession of God's greatness and a long commemoration of Mohammed, his family, and chief followers. Then there is an account of Job's prosperity, mentioning, amongst other things, the ducks and fowls which he had; then the colloquy between Satan and the Almighty, and the planning of the temptation. The language of this Utenzix is singularly clear and intelligible.”

Though not invariably susceptible of demonstration, the influence of Classical Arabic upon the popular literature of Arabic-speaking Muslims in North Africa may safely be assumed. ‘Popular’, indeed, the early Islamic verse forms (ši'r mawzūn) and the later stanzaic compositions (klam or ālat al-andalus) have remained, and in these, even when modified by local tradition, the source of inspiration is easily recognized. Less clear is the transfer pattern of classical elements in the strictly vernacular poetry (klam melḥūn) of the same people. It is this category of composition with which the following observations are concerned, and wḥich suggested selection of the term ‘vernacular’ rather than ‘popular’. A further factor contributory to isolation of this topic is the existence of a vernacular literature amongst non-Muslim Arabic speakers in North Africa: the Jewish communities. There, owing both to Judaeo-Arabic orthography and to confessional motives in the selection of theme, the tyranny of Classical Arabic is considerably weakened, to some extent a consequence of social (educational) lines of demarcation. Important, however, are the affinities between the vernacular compositions of both groups, especially in matters relating to rhetorical convention and prosodic structure.

For typographical reasons the Jahai words and phrases in the following grammatical sketch have been transcribed from the Anthropos alphabet into the script of the International Phonetic Association. The two alphabets do not strictly correspond, and it seems desirable to add a few explanations of some of the symbols used.

It is well known that the oldest existing complete literary work of a Mussulman Turk, the Qudatqu Bilik or Qutadghu Bilik, was composed in 462 H. (a.d. 1069–70) by Yūsuf Khāṣṣ Ḥājib, a native from Bālāsāghūn, on the River Chu, for a Khān residing in Kāshghar who is called “Mashriq Maliki Tabghach Khani Malik Bughra Khan” (King of the East, Khan of China, the King Bughra Khan), “Tabghach Qara Bughra Khanlar Khani” (the Chinese Qara Bughra, the Khan of Khans), “Tabghach Ulugh Bughra Khan” (the Chinese, the great Bughra Khan), even more simply “Ordukent Khani Beg” (the Khan of the court-town, that is Kashghar, the prince). The statements concerning the chronology of the Kashghar kings of the eleventh century are very vague and scanty, and are not supplied by numismatic evidence; therefore it is not an easy task to ascertain who was the king mentioned by Yūsuf. There can be no doubt that he belonged to the dynasty of the Ilek Khāns. The chief authority on the history of that dynasty has been for all Muhammedan and European scholars the great work of Ibn al-Athīr, especially the statements given under the year 408 H. We are told by Ibn al-Athīr that Arslān Khān, son of Qādir Khān Yūsuf, King of Kāshghar, Khotan, and Bālāsāghūn, was deposed by his brother Bughra Khān and taken prisoner; Bughrā Khān was some time later poisoned by his wife, who put to death Arslān Khān also, in 439 H. Bughrā Khān ruled only fifteen months and was succeeded by Ṭoghrul Khān, son of Yūsuf Qadir Khāan (that is, by his brother), who ruled sixteen years (until 456 or 457). His son, Ṭoghrul-tagīn, was deposed after two months by “Hārūn Bughrā Khān, brother of Yūsuf Ṭoghrul Khān and son of Ṭafghāch Boghrā Khān” (?); Hārūn Bughrā Khān passed (‘abara) Kāshghar, made Hārūn (? mistake for Ṭoghrul-tagīn) prisoner; the army of the latter submitted to him, and he took possession of Kāshghar, Khotan, and the neighbouring districts to Bālāsāghūn, where he reigned twenty-nine years and died in 496. These statements can, of course, not be quite correct; if Bughrā Khān Hārūn was the brother of Ṭoghrul Khān, he must have been a son of Yūsuf Qadír Khān, and is, in fact, called so by Ibn al-Athīr himself on the previous page. The reigns mentioned by Ibn al-Athīr, and said to have extended from 439 to 496 (fifty-seven years), do not cover all that time, but nearly ten years less. We know, indeed, from an earlier author, Abu-I-Faḍl Baihaqī, that the first Bughrā Khān (called by Ibn al-Athīr Maḥmud) died not in 439 but in 449. Bughrā Khān Hārūn must have reigned in this case from 467 to 496, Ṭoghrul Khān from 451 to 467; the Qudatqu Bilik, composed in 462, was therefore written in the reign of Ṭoghrul Khān, but Bughrā Khān seems to have been a co-regent of his brother; Ibn al-Athīr speaks of the war made by the two brothers against Shams al-Mulk, Khān of Samarqand. Therefore it was quite natural to come to the conclusion that the Bughrā Khān mentioned by Yūsuf Khāṣṣ Ḥājib was Bughrā Khān Hārūn ibn Yūsuf, and such an opinion has been expressed in my article “Bughrā Khān” in the Encyclopædia of Islām.

In 1904 Dr. H. Stönner published as an appendix to a paper on Zentralasiatische Sanskrittexte in Brāhmīschrift aus Idikutšahri, Chinesisch-Turkistān, i, a short description of a fragment of Turkish in Brāhmi script containing forty lines of text with a Chinese text on the recto side. Its interest and importance for Turkish is evident. We have here a fully vocalized fragment of Turkish. It is therefore somewhat unexpected not to find more use made of it, after the references of Professor F. W. K. Müller in Uigurica [i], 1908, in the many recent publications of Turfan texts. In a brief note, A Brāhmi Aksara, in the JRAS, 1936, 92–4, reference was made to this publication of Dr. Stönner owing to its interest for Iranian studies. Shortly after the publication of that note it was possible to reach clearer views. It had been, however, intended to await the complete publication of the fragment of forty lines. But, since inquiries have made it likely that the publication cannot be expected for a considerable time, and Iranian studies are affected, it has seemed profitable to publish a brief study of the fourteen lines (25–38) already available. They suffice to supplement and correct the earlier note.

The Library of the Wellcome Institute is devoted to the history of medicine and related sciences. Apart from some 250,000 printed books, it contains about 10,000 manuscripts, half of which are in Oriental languages.

In 1970 I was entrusted with describing the Ethiopian manuscripts belonging to this library. There were 34 of them: 17 mostly of religious content and completely unrelated to the interests of the Institute, 16 magical scrolls, and one manuscript mainly of divinatory content. Without constituting medical manuscripts in the strict sense of the term, the scrolls are designed to combat demons and diseases and to keep people in good health. They can be called magico-medical scrolls and belong to the field of ethnomedicine. The scrolls are written in Gə'az with strong Amharic influence. At the suggestion of Dr. F. N. L. Poynter, Director of the Wellcome Institute, the Wellcome Trust decided to donate the first group of manuscripts to the British Museum, to whom 14 were presented in June 1970 and 3 others in June 1971. All these manuscripts have been described by the present writer in the Catalogue of the Ethiopian manuscripts in the British Museum acquired since 1877 (in preparation). The present catalogue notes contain only the description of the 16 scrolls and the divinatory manuscript.

1. Bray's excellent work (1909, 1934) on Brahui, the Dravidian language spoken, so improbably, in Baluchistan, could not help but be used to the full by Burrow and myself in our 35 years of work on Dravidian etymologies. My very short contact, no more than eight hours, with Brahui speakers at the Chanhu-daro excavation early in 1936 (Emeneau, 1937) had stimulated me and provided a background for intensive etymological study based on Bray's material. This resulted in my publications, especially in 1962, reprinted in part and with some slight change in 1980a (pp. 315–49). In this latter publication (p. 318) I ventured a statement: ‘More descriptive field-work would certainly provide [more material on the language]. Whether much more would emerge to add to Bray's account is uncertain. Certainly it seems that vocabulary additions would probably include no new items from the Dravidian heritage’.

Just as there are said to be ‘painters' painters’ and ‘poets' poets’, so too there may be said to be ‘linguists' languages’, and amongst these must without any question be included the languages of the Caucasus. These languages, with their elaborate and unusual phonetic, phonological, and morphological structures, possess a special fascination for professional linguists, from both the practical and the theoretical point of view.

The Yüeh-fu hung-shan is a Ming dynasty work which is generally thought to have been lost. What little is known of it is entirely dependent on one man's description. On the strength of this, however, the work has come to occupy a fairly important position in histories of Chinese oral literature. The purpose of this article is to call attention to a surviving copy of the Yüeh-fu hung-shan, and to show that the nature of its contents has been completely misunderstood.