It is well known that a large number of the accounts in the Kuo yü have matching counterparts in the Tso chuan. By my count there are at least 73 Kuo yü accounts with Tso chuan parallels; this out of a total of 241 separate Kuo yü accounts altogether. This means that by percentage of accounts (vs. percentage of text) 30% of the Kuo yü bears some textual relation to the Tso chuan, a proportion surely large enough to justify looking into the question of what that relation is. The degree to which each of these 73 Kuo yü accounts matches its Tso chuan parallel varies considerably. At one extreme there are cases where only a very few lines, names, or words signal the fact of an underlying textual relation. At the other extreme virtually the whole Kuo yü passage may appear with only slight variations in the Tso chuan. Most of the 73 fall somewhere in between these two extremes.

Professor G. Vernadsky, well-known as an historian of ancient Russia, recently published an Ossetic folktale, which he had obtained from a Mr. Dzambulat Dzanty, an Ossete by birth, who in his turn stated that he had heard it (and written it down) in his youth, ‘in the village of Great Iron (Bolshoe OsetinsJcoe) at the time of hay-making (xosgärdän), June, 1910’, from an ‘old white-bearded man’ by name of Khulyx [] ‘The Lame One’, who ‘was a poet himself and in some of his own works followed the pattern of the old Ossetian oral traditions’. As the old gentleman was ‘over seventy in 1910’, we cannot hope to consult him now about his sources or about the numerous strange words and expressions in the text presented, after an interval of 45 years, by Mr. Dzambulat Dzanty.

The simplest, irreducible part of the verb is the root, which carries the lexical information, and to which are suffixed markers of person, tense, mood, etc. Most verb roots end in a consonant, the commonest shapes being CVC- and CVCC-, but also VC- and VCC-: qal- ‘see’, wäš- ‘hear’, arq- ‘know’, abz- ‘finish’, mars'- ‘choose’, ward- ‘play’, aq- ‘be’, is'- ‘curse’, and so on. Dissyllabic roots are extremely rare in the material and almost all appear to be loans from Ethiopian Semitic: wływär- ‘throw’, färaq- ‘be wide’, mikwir- ‘try’, addin- ‘hunt’, tinfis- ‘breathe’; dissyllabic Agaw roots are is'aq- ‘send’, iqa- (also shortened to qa-)‘wash’. In addition there is a comparatively small number of roots with the shape CV-: xwa/t- ‘eat’, fi- ‘go out’, gwi- ‘get up, rise’, bi- ‘lack’, yi- ‘say’, and so on.

Throughout the ages from antiquity until modern times the extraordinary prowess of the horse-archers of Asia has excited wonder and admiration in those who have had the opportunity of observing them in action or of hearing of their feats. From the comments of observers and historians, therefore, a reasonably instructive account of their capabilities might be assembled. There can be no doubt, on the other hand, that a picture based solely on data of this kind would have its limitations in that it would capture the impression of what the eye perceived rather than reproduce the details of technique which alone can enable us to distinguish between fact and fiction or probable and improbable in the accounts of our witnesses. By a happy chance the evidence of a Mamlūk writer goes far to fill the lacuna. The source of the testimony is a technical treatise bearing on the training of archers. Entitled Kitāb ghunyat al-ṭullāb fī ma'rifat al-ramy bi 'l-nushshāb, the work was written circa 769/1368 by a certain Ṭaybugha '-Baklamishi '1-Yūnānī, about whom we know almost nothing beyond what can be gleaned from his treatise. Unlike many Arabic technical manuals of a similar kind dating from the later Middle Ages, the Ghunya will bear examination by the expert, for Ṭaybughā has an essentially practical mind and a complete grasp of his subject-matter. To judge from the number of extant MSS—17 are traceable in published works of reference—the work would appear to have been long esteemed throughout the Middle East as an authoritative source of instruction, and it may be surmised that Ṭaybughā's own words provide a clue to one of the reasons for its popularity: ‘Since archery and riding are enjoined by authentic command of the Prophet and since I knew of no work by any predecessor on the subject of shooting from horseback I felt I should accord the two accomplishments joint treatment in a single work, seeking thereby to comply with the command of God and His Messenger and to render a service to those of my brethren who campaign and fight in the jihād’.

The only publications in this dialect1 of the Galla language are translations of the Gospels of St. Luke2 and St. John3 and the Acts of the Apostles.4 The orthography used in these texts, obviously, has practical aims in view and dispenses with much of the phonetic detail which would be of interest to a linguist. As far as I know, there are no published works which would give a description of this dialect. The grammars of Borello,5 Hodson and Walker,6 Moreno,7 Nordfeldt,8 and Tutschek9 all deal with other dialects of Galla, which differ from Borana in many details.

WHEN the geographical term ‘Bengal’ is used in any study of the old or medieval period of the literary history of the area, it must be borne in mind that it has so far been impossible to delineate its then boundaries with precision. Such early cartographical evidence2 as there is, suggests that it is improbable that the topography of Bengal resembled very closely that which is now familiar in our modern maps. The great rivers, which are the most distinctive characteristic of the formation of this part of India, are known to have made considerable changes in their courses; and the constant depositing of silt in the delta districts has almost certainly increased the area of its land surface during the centuries.

By the Han empire, concepts of the cosmos were changing basically from that of the ‘Four Quarters’ (Si fang) to the ‘Five Phases’ (Wu xing), with a place for emperors to act as an essential pivot in the interlocking relationships of Heaven, Earth and Man. Differing views of the duty of monarchs may be discerned, e.g., in the memorials of Dong Zhongshu and the chapters of the Huainanzi, and the underlying questions could lead to antagonisms between emperors and kings, or between high-ranking officials of government and scholars of traditional writings. The part that individual Han emperors played in determining decisions of state may well be limited to a few instances. While it may be questioned how far they were conscious of the intellectual basis that supported their authority with its implied responsibilities, Wang Mang tried to exploit a view of the cosmos to assert his claim to power.

The asbāb mentioned in five passages of the Quran have been interpreted by medieval Muslims and modern scholars as referring generally to various “ways”, “means”, and “connections”. However, the word meant something more specific as part of a biblical-quranic “cosmology of the domicile”. The asbāb are heavenly ropes running along or leading up to the top of the sky-roof. This notion of sky-cords is not as unusual as it may seem at first, for various kinds of heavenly cords were part of Western Asian cosmologies in the sixth and seventh centuries ce. According to the Quran, a righteous individual may ascend by means of these cords to heaven, above the dome of the sky, where God resides, only with God's authorization. The heavenly cords are a feature of quranic cosmology and part of a complex of beliefs by which true prophets ascend to heaven and return bearing signs.

The Anglo-Russian Convention, signed at St. Petersburg on 31 August 1907, contained provisions relating to Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. The text of the agreement would seem to suggest that the matters adjusted were purely local in character—an arrangement arrived at between two countries settling problems in far-away frontier regions. But the Anglo-Russian Convention was of much greater significance. It represented a change not only in Anglo-Russian relations, but in Britain's fundamental European policy. It also meant that the role of the Government of India, which had often been a powerful factor in the determination of foreign policy in the nineteenth century, became less significant. It seems highly probable, too, that in the years when Sir Edward Grey was Foreign Secretary (December 1905 to December 1916—holding office for a longer consecutive period than any other Foreign Secretary in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, the next being Castlereagh, 1812–22) the permanent staff of the Foreign Office exercised more influence and had a more decisive voice in the conduct of the country's foreign policy than they ever had before of have had since.

This paper deals with a secret language (kalamo) spoken by the Anakara clan of the Antaimoro tribe in the south-east of Madagascar. According to their own tradition, they migrated to the island between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, from the Arabian peninsula. Their sacred writings (sorabe) are written in Arabic script in a mixture of Malagasy and Arabic. The secret language kalamo contains a large number of Arabic loanwords, as well as Malagasy words that have been coded by various phonological processes. The analysis of the loanwords helps to elucidate the origin of the kalamo, which may contain elements of a pre-existing Arabic pidgin. Their phonetic form shows that the Islamic migrants in Madagascar may indeed have come originally from the Arabian peninsula.

In Korea green-glazed celadon ceramics were manufactured during the Koryŏ kingdom (ad 918–1392), but by the end of the fourteenth century their manufacture ceased and they virtually disappeared from view until the 1880s when they began to be unearthed from tombs and other sites. This led to increased interest in them from Koreans, and especially the Japanese, Americans and Europeans. Focusing on British collections, this article outlines the collecting practices of Korean celadon wares from the time of their discovery in the 1880s to the market boom of the 1910s, culminating in the decrease in their availability in the 1930s. It will be argued that the desire for celadon wares was socially conditioned and that celadon were collected for a range of different, though not unrelated reasons, ranging from collectors' pursuit of unique Korean artworks, to their want of genuine antiquities and aesthetic perfection.

In his article ‘Caucasica’ Professor H. W. Bailey drew attention to an interesting article by A. Shanidze, ‘The newly-discovered alphabet of the Caucasian Albanians and its significance for science’, in a sadly inaccessible periodical. ‘The discovery of the lost alphabet was made by I. Abuladze in an Armenian manuscript of the fifteenth century containing a miscellany of alphabets, Greek, Syriac, Latin, Georgian, Coptic, Arabic, and Albanian.’

The studies of Sūra CXI 1 have not yet arrived at satisfactory results, hence the meaning of this sūra is still obscure. The present study tries to present a better basis for its understanding.

1. The date and background of the sῡra

Sūra CXI deals with Abū Lahab, whom all the Muslim sources identify as Muḥammad's paternal uncle, 'Abd al-'Uzzā b. 'Abd al-Muṭṭalib of the clan of Hāshim.

The famous British orientalist E. G. Browne, a physician by training, was interested in Turkish language and literataure long before he became Professor of Arabic at Cambridge. It was at Cambridge that he wrote most of the works in the field of Persian studies, which were to bring him recognition as an outstanding Iranologist. But Browne's sense of affinity with the Turks endured from the time of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877–78, when he was only 16, until the end of his life in 1926. In 1914 he wrote in his introduction to The press and poetry of modern Persia: ‘Curiously enough it was the Ottoman Turks, a people far less original and talented than either the Persians or the Arabs, who so far as the Near East is concerned, introduced the hitherto unknown ideas of ‘the Fatherland’ (watan), ‘the nation’ or ‘people’ (millat) and ‘liberty’ (hurriyyat) and who succeeded in giving to these old words this new and potent significance.’

The Funj were a people of uncertain origin who, in the early sixteenth century, established themselves in the valley of the Blue Nile with their capital at Sennar (Sinnār), and acquired the hegemony over the Muslim Arab tribes of the Nilotic Sudan. The present investigation attempts an analysis of the documentary information on the inception of the Funj hegemony. It develops certain criticisms made by Dr. A. J. Arkell in his article, ‘Fung origins’ (Sudan Notes and Records, XV, 2, 1932, especially pp. 209–13), in connexion with an hypothesis, which he has since abandoned, that the Funj were Shilluk. It does not deal with the controversial general problem of Funj origins.

It has been known for many years that the Mahānubhāvas used ciphers for the transmission of much of their religious literature in Marathi. They devised a number of such ciphers which are known in the sect by names such as sakaḷa, sundarī, anka lipī, etc., but of all these sakala lipī is by far the commonest—no doubt because its extreme simplicity commended it to the scribes. Its invention is traditionally ascribed to Ravalovyāsa, the author of Sahyādrī-varnana, some time around A.D. 1335, but the earliest references to it are in fifteenth-century texts which simply call it ravalobāsāci nāgara līpa. One text of approximately the same date, however, refers to it as sakalita līpa and within the living tradition of the sect it is always known as sakala lipī or sakalī. The name has been variously derived from Old Marathi sakala ‘all’, because it was used throughout the sect, and from Skt. sankalita, because it is full of abbreviations. The former seems more plausible. The cipher was the first to be introduced and is the most widely used, whereas later, more complex ciphers tend to be the private preserve of one or other of the Mahānubhāva āmnāya or sub-sects.

Gurungkura is the Nepali name of a language spoken in West Central Nepal by the Gurung tribe.2 These studies are based on the speech of G./Lieut. Ganesh Gurung, M.C., l/2nd K.E.O. Goorkha Rifles, who during 1950 was seconded for duty as a research assistant at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

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.