It has long been recognized that the letters n and z, whose initial and medial forms had already fallen together by the date of the ‘Ancient letters’, remained distinct in final position, -n being provided with a long horizontal or vertical tail. At a slightly later period in the history of the Sogdian script two more pairs of letters—still distinguished in all positions in the ‘Ancient letters’— fell together: ‘ain with r,1 and x (ḥīth) with γ (gimel). The rare letter ‘ain does not occur in final position; but both x and γ are comparatively common in all positions. It is therefore remarkable that it should never have been noticed that final x and y are regularly distinguished in exactly the same way as -n and -z. The distinction is clearest in the Buddhist manuscripts,2 in which final x has a long horizontal or vertical tail: — (= ‘horizontal -x’) or L (= ‘vertical -x’), while final γ has only a rudimentary tail pointing down-wards. There is some variation in the distribution of the two forms of -x. In some manuscripts, e.g. Vim. and P 2, both are used interchangeably. In most ‘horizontal -x’ is preferred: it is the only form found in VJ, SCE, Dhu., P 5, and P 6, while in Dhy. and P 3 ‘vertical -x’ is also occasionally employed

Persia has on many occasions produced remarkable heresiarchs, several of whom have exercised an influence extending far beyond the boundaries of that country. One of the most notable of these heresiarchs is Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbāḥ, the Isma'īlī propagandist and founder and first Grand Master of the Assassins.

Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbāḥ was born at Ray, in Northern Persia; the exact date of his birth is unknown, but, as far as can be gathered, it was in A.D. 1052 or A.D. 1053. Though claiming Ḥimyaritic ancestry, Ḥasan was both by birth and upbringing a Persian, and belonged, during his earlier years, to the Shī'a Sect of the Twelve.

One of the outstanding examples of the degeneration of the Ottoman administration in Palestine in the eighteenth century was the situation in the military field. Army units were stationed permanently in those towns which were important to the Ottoman régime. The locations had been determined in the very early stages of the Ottoman conquest, but the same criteria were still being applied in the eighteenth century, without being re-examined. This does not mean that the system was entirely inflexible: army units were brought to man those new strongholds (Haifa, Jaffa) which the supreme authorities decided to establish in order to strengthen the security network. But it appears, as these examples show, that this was done mainly in the coastal towns. It was there that the Ottoman régime felt itself to be exposed to the greatest danger, since it was, in one way or another, threatened by the uncertain whims of the Christian pirates. It should be noted that from the objective point of view their fears were greatly exaggerated, if not unfounded, in the eighteenth century, since the pirates did not even try to expand their activities beyond the harassment of merchant ships sailing along the coast. But according to the Weltanschauung of the Ottoman rulers this constituted a grave threat to the Muslim state. When the construction of these strongholds was ordered an additional reason for their establishment was given: the need to prevent Bedouin attacks. There was a certain amount of truth in this story but, again, it should be regarded in correct perspective: the Sublime Porte recognized the need to curb the Bedouin raids which constituted an acute problem in the eighteenth century. But if this had been the main reason it would have been necessary to establish new strongholds, or strengthen existing ones, in inland regions and on the border of the desert rather than in Haifa or Jaffa. This was not done since the Bedouin were, after all, Muslims, and according to the concepts of the Ottoman régime, could not seriously threaten the existence of the empire, at least not to the same extent as the Christian infidels. In retrospect we see that the damage which the Bedouin wrought to the Ottoman state in this period was undoubtedly greater than that caused by the Christian pirates; but, as has been stated, this was not recognized at the time.

The famous manuscript in Kharoṣṭhī script which contains an anthology of Buddhist verses similar to the Sanskrit Udānavarga and the Pali Dhammapada became known first in 1892, when portions came into the hands of MM. Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard in Khotan. They were told that the MS. had been found in the ruins of the Vihāra at the Gośṛnga hill (on this site see M. A. Stein, Ancient Khotan, pp. 185 ff.). Other portions were acquired by the Russian Consul-General in Kashghar, M. N. Th. Petrovskii, and were sent by him to M. S. F. Oldenburg in St. Petersburg in February, 1897. In the same year, 1897, M. Oldenburg prepared a photograph and transcription of one folio of the St. Petersburg collection, which was published and presented by the Oriental Faculty of the University of St. Petersburg to the Eleventh International Congress of Orientalists held in Paris in 1897 (Predvaritel'naja zametka o buddijskoj rukopisi, napisannoj pismenami Kharoṣṭhī, St. Petersburg). Meantime, also in 1897, the portions of the MS. which had been brought to Paris were placed in the hands of M. Émile Senart, who published his reading and interpretation of the MS., with five facsimiles, in the Journal Asiatique (1898, ii, pp. 193–308). He used in addition to the text published in facsimile a large number of small fragments, and was also able to add the readings of that part of the St. Petersburg manuscript which contained half-lines fitting into his fragment B. M. Senart remarked that the portion of the MS. in St. Petersburg was more extensive and better preserved than the portion in Paris.

The scarceness of published material renders difficult a true estimate of the development of political ideas in Egypt in the nineteenth century. Nor is it any less difficult to trace the origins of the first political parties.

The Arabi Rebellion of 1881-1882 was preceded by a long period of unrest, which finally crystallized in a self-styled National Party. This faction, led by army officers and civilians, kept its secret character for a few years, coming into the open only at the beginning of the Arabi Rebellion. Its importance in the anti-foreign struggle, however, has drawn attention to its humble but interesting origins. Research has provided us with fairly adequate, if still incomplete, material on this point. But hardly anything has been published, on the other hand, about another secret organization of that time, called ‘Young Egypt’.

The final expulsion of Moriscos from Spain in 1609 brought a new wave of Spanish Muslims to Tunis to join that substantial community of their fellow-countrymen which had increased steadily in number from the fall of Naṣid Granada onwards. Among these refugees and immigrants were some with considerable technical expertise: architects, military men, and skilled craftsmen whose arrival on Muslim territory caused a minor technological renaissance.

In 1961, while on a visit to Cambodia, I first came to know of this work from the chief Abbot of Vat Unālom of Phnom Penh. I was informed by the learned Abbot of the existence of a ‘Mahāyānist’ work known as Dibbamanta.The work was not available there but subsequently a palm-leaf MS of this work was found in the National Museum of Bangkok, a microfilm copy of which was made available to me through the courtesy of the curator of that Museum. The MS consists of 48 folios1, written in Cambodian characters. It is not dated and does not carry any information regarding the author or the scribe. As it was a common practice in Siam to copy Buddhist texts in Cambodian script, and as the work is not in use at the present day either in Siam or in Cambodia, it is hard to locate the original place of this MS. But on the basis of certain internal evidence which will be noted below I am inclined to believe that it could be of Cambodian origin.

In Sino-Tibetan (1972) P. K. Benedict has offered two different accounts of the significance, for Tibeto-Burman (TB) and Sino-Tibetan (ST) reconstruction, of the three types of ‘vocalic alternation’ in the Written Tibetan (WT) verb, a/a/o, e/a/o and o/a/o. His original account (c. 1942–3) reads: ‘Tibetan, however, shows a puzzling type of vocalic alternation in its verbs, in which stems in a regularly take o in the imperative and often either o or e in the present… The e of the present stem is possibly to be interpreted as an effect of the prefixed element’- <*a- [ə-]. Similarly, the o of the imperative stem has perhaps been conditioned by an archaic imperative suffixc -o…' (pp. 126–7). His revised version (1972) reads: ‘The Chinese vowels cannot be explained without setting up a 7-vowel system for ST … and Tibetan verb forms reflect this early system as follows:

ST/TB *a = T aa (no alternation, except in the imperative)

ST/TB *â = T ao

ST/TB *ə = T ae

We can now, by way of illustration, reconstruct TB *g-sât (T gsod-pa, Pf.bsad) …; also TB*səm “breath, voice, spirit”: T sem(s)-pa. Pf. semsbsams “think” …' (p. 126, n. 344).

JALĀL AL-DĪN RŪMĪ in Maihnawi, ii, 3478 sqq., recounts a story of a saint J falsely accused of theft, and of the miraculous manner in which he cleared himself. R. A. Nicholson in his annotation to the passage (vol. vii, p. 359) comments: “ Saints accused of theft, who produce miraculous proof of their innocence, appear in many legends related by Moslem hagiographers.”

The question primarily at issue is whether da and desu in modern, chiefly conversational, Japanese, together with other forms commonly held to belong to paradigms of da+ and desu+ viewed as inflected items, should be called copulative forms; whether, that is to say, they perform the grammatical function of linking a subject with a predicate. The question also concerns combinations consisting of de followed by one of the forms of aru+, arimasu+, or gozaimasu+. In general, these combinations have when positive the same uses and senses as forms of da+ and desu+ and are when negative the only available negative counterparts of those forms. Some attention will be given to what has been said about the verb nari+ (< ni ari+) and the combination nite ari+ of the now obsolete Classical Literary style, though no attempt will be made to reach conclusions about them.

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.

Before the discovery of the ancient inscriptions of southern Arabia by Arnaud, Halévy, Glaser, and several other explorers, knowledge of the pre-Islamic peoples of Yemen and Ḥaḍramawt was incomplete and imprecise, and was derived from the Old Testament, the annals of Assyrian kings, and from the classical and Arab historians and geographers.

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.