The Great Mosque at Harāat ranks among the largest religious buildings still standing in Iranian lands. In the past it has been referred to as an example of Ghūrid architecture heavily restored at various periods. In fact, anyone standing inside the four-ayvān courtyard and looking at the typical arches (plates I-II) or at the marble columns so similar to the stone work at the Gāzargāh, and the mausoleum of Gawharshād, would be inclined to regard it as a typically Tīmūrid mosque. But as soon as one walks into the ayvān this vault takes on unusual proportions: on each side are passages with remarkably strong pillars; and the points of the arches differ from the usual Tīmūrid modulum. The same is true of the complex passages leading from the eastern façade, almost entirely rebuilt in recent years: here also strong square pillars support arches the spans of which come closer to twelfth- or thirteenth-century models rather than those of the late fifteenth century. It would be unwise, of course, to reappraise the period of such an important structure on the basis of a passing impression; a thorough study on the spot, including the drawing of the over-all plan and elevations, and accurate measurements, is necessary.

Swahili stands alone among the Bantu languages in possessing a literature, which originated before the people came in contact with Europeans and has probably been in existence for several centuries. The Arabs, who settled on the east coast of Africa from the seventh century onwards, brought with them their alphabet and their prosody; and their descendants who, intermarrying with the daughters of the land, evolved the Swahili language, have preserved both to this day, though not without modifications. The use of the Arabic alphabet to express Swahili sounds involves considerable difficulties, and though some of these have been surmounted by expedients similar to those adopted in writing Turkish, Persian, Malay, etc., the reading even of an ordinary letter is by no means always a simple matter.

The onomasticon of the Elamite Fortification tablets from Persepolis, so generously placed at the disposal of Professor Benveniste and myself by Professor Hallock, keeps yielding precious pearls. Benveniste published in 1966 those which he had recognized. In the following year I sent to the printer a list of additional identifications, giving notice of more to follow. The present tribute to one of the giants of Iranian studies, whose massive work, countless discoveries, immense erudition, and many tokens of personal friendship have been a constant source of inspiration to me for decades, brings a selection of further identifications, as well as some revision of earlier views. The need to select was dictated by space-limit. An article containing what had here to be omitted, is being timed so as to appear in TPS shortly after the present one.

Professor E. H. Johnston's sudden death in October, 1942, was a grievous blow to Oriental research. Sir Richard Burn, called in by the authorities of Balliol College to go through his papers, found amongst them a rough manuscript article and other material on the Sanskrit inscriptions of Arakan, together with correspondence on the subject with Mr. G. H. Luce and other scholars who had supplied him with rubbings and photographs. As will be seen from the following letter to Mr. Luce, dated the 15th August, 1942, Professor Johnston was contemplating the preparation of this work for publication:

“I have not yet heard what is your opinion about publishing some of the Arakanese results now. Life is short and uncertain these days, and it will hardly be possible to get anything out in Epigraphia Birmanica for years to come. What I should like to do is to publish Ānandacandra's inscription, omittiṇg all I have said in the draft about the palæography and just mentioning the others, with a brief account of the coins and of the historical conclusions. For one thing it might attract the attention of linguists and lead to some ideas about the vernacular names; e.g. what language is Seviṅreṅ, assuming my reading to be correct? The fuller consideration of details could then be reserved till Epigraphia Birmanica is ready to come about.

Introduction

The (Kara-)Kirghiz language is spoken on the territory of the Autonomous Republic of the Kirghiz by about 650,000–700,000 individuals. My Kirghiz informant was Odajarov Abdilla (20 years old), of a village near Frunze (Purunza, 42° 50" north latitude; 75° east latitude), the capital of Kirghizistan. He and his parents had always lived in that village, where they had worked as agricultural labourers. He had been to school for four years and spoke a little Russian apart from Kirghiz. For the literary language I had a grammar at my disposal (Qьrgьz Tilinin elementardьq gramatikesi = “Elementary Grammar of the Kirghiz language”, by Şaвdan uulu Açьman and I. A. Batmanov), from which I had taken most of the examples.

In societies where oaths and vows are taken seriously the problem inevitably arises of how to escape from them when necessary. The story of Jephthah and his daughter in Judges 11.3Off. illustrates what might happen if no escape mechanism is sought. In both the Bible (Num. 30:3) and the Qur՚ān (5:89) we are told that we must fulfil our oaths and vows, but both scriptures also set out acceptable ways of atonement for certain occasions when fulfilment proves impossible (cf. Lev. 5:1 ff. and Qur՚ān loc. cit.). The atonement might then serve as an escape route for someone who is bound by an oath or vow which he can no longer keep. Other ways out were also provided by the law and its interpreters (sometimes known in Islam as the ahl al-ḥall wa՚l-՚aqd, ‘those who loose and bind’): the words used might be held to be invalid; recourse might be had to the principle that we cannot be held to vows which are beyond our capacity or are contrary to God's law; our state of mind at the time we made the vow (whether in anger, jest, or mental distraction) might be taken into consideration, etc. The tension thus generated between the desire to stress the seriousness of oaths and vows on the one hand, and the need to be realistic in recognizing human weakness on the other, could be considerable.

Before considering the literature of Egypt of the eighteenth century, a glance at the state of the country would not be out of place. There was not such a great difference between Egypt under the Turks and under the Circassians. The Sultan sent a Turkish governor but the Amīrs, no longer the great men of earlier times, were still the rulers. The governor lived in perpetual terror of his own garrison, while the Amīrs, who had formed themselves into parties (the Ḳ¯simīs and the Fiḳārīs were the most famous), fought and intrigued with one another for power. At times the anarchy was unbearable, but street fighting seems to have been of such common occurrence that the tradesmen sometimes did not even bother to shut up their shops while it was going on. Occasionally a really strong Amir was able to prevail over the rest of his rivals for a few years and a few names of such strong men are worth mentioning, for it was under them that Egypt was able to regain some of its prosperity.

The Avromān parchments, two (I and II) in Greek and one (III) in Parthian, were brought to England in 1913 by Dr. Sa'īd Khan Kurdistāni and were acquired soon afterwards by the British Museum. Professor E. H. Minns, of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in his article ‘Parchments of the Parthian Period from Avroman in Kurdistan’, published in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1915, has translated and discussed at length the two Greek texts. The latest and most authoritative of several articles on the Parthian manuscript is that of Dr. H. S. Nyberg entitled ‘The Pahlavi Documents from Avroman’, in Le Monde Oriental of 1923. The summary of information relevant to the present paper given in the following three paragraphs is based on these articles.

Drawing on the large corpus of Chola period Tamil inscriptions, this paper attempts to clarify the meaning of the apparently obscure and neglected term in Tamil epigraphy, known as veḷam. The paper argues that the term in Chola period sources should best be understood as a “palace establishment” composed mostly of women (and sometimes men) of servile status. A relatively comprehensive review of the term in inscriptions and literature sheds significant light on the organization of the lower echelons of labour in the Chola royal household and the conditions under which men and women of this status were incorporated into such service. The paper argues for a reconsideration of the importance of the veḷam as an institution in Chola times, as well as the lives of its members, concluding with reflections on how the institution changed over time.

Plural markers in some languages are quite unlike their Indo-European counterparts in that their use does not depend only on number but also on other considerations (pragmatic, perspective-related and so on). This article gives an insight into how such plurals work, based on a careful analysis of the suffix -men in Mandarin Chinese.

The notion of personal collective is what universally underlies the so-called plural of personal pronouns. Benveniste (1966) has shown that in this case pluralization does not amount to an addition or multiplication of elements, but to what he calls ‘amplification of persons’, that is, a collective. In Chinese it is this pronominal plural that has been extended, under certain conditions, to nouns.

It is claimed that the occurrence of -men is governed by the conjunction of number (n>1) and person (reference to a subject-origin). Grammatical person is taken to refer to the space (and positions within it) organized around a subject-origin, normally the speaker. -Men requires that entities be related to a human locator who performs the role of the deictic centre and acts as the origin of point of view. The required conditions are by definition met with personal pronouns, which is why -men is obligatory, but are seldom satisfied with nouns, which is why the latter take the suffix only rarely. Most remarkably, when nouns are not reducible to pronouns, the occurrence of -men is associated with a shift in perspective. The group is considered from the point of view of a locator distinct from the speaker, not from that of the speaker. The speaker being essentially free to shift his viewpoint or not, this explains why -men is optional (though not arbitrary) with nouns in such contexts. Note that, all else being equal (n>1), the contrast between N and N-men is not one of number but of point of view (external versus internal point of view). In summary, the suffix operates in all cases with reference to a subject-origin, either the speaker or a protagonist whose point of view is provisionally adopted by the narrator.

The case of Chinese, far from being exotic, is a meaningful illustration of the interaction between the grammatical categories of number and person. This study opens up new typological perspectives in terms of grammaticalization of the pronominal versus nominal plural across languages.

Needless to say the Amharic speakers also have close contact with the speakers of the other Semitic Ethiopic languages as well as of the Cushitic languages. Nearly all the Semitic Ethiopic and Cushitic languages have many Arabic loanwords for the same reasons mentioned above in connexion with Amharic. It is, therefore, often difficult to know whether an Arabic loanword in Amharic came directly from an Arabic dialect or through the intermediary of another Semitic Ethiopic or Cushitic language. Since we have no adequate means at our disposal for a historical treatment of the Semitic Ethiopic vocabulary, we shall most probably never be able to determine the precise origin of some of the words considered here as borrowings, that is to say whether they come directly from an Arabic dialect or through another Semitic Ethiopic or Cushitic language.

Since its début in 1881, when Charles Rieu's brief but masterly grammatical sketch appeared, the Gorānī koinĒ has become one of the Cinderellas of Iranian studies, literary and linguistic. Apart from a notice by E. B. Soane, of which more below, its only real outing has been in Professor Minorsky's compendious article on ‘The Gūrān’, containing an illustrated survey of all the epic, lyric, and religious verse then known in Gorānī. The surviving manuscripts acquired by Professor Minorsky he has since donated to the Leningrad branch of the Oriental Institute (Institut Narodov Azii AN), where they remain unpublished.

The mausolea that safeguarded the remains of the Commanders of the Faithful are not preserved among the meagre remnants of 'Abbāsid Baghdād. The history of these prominent buildings can be reconstructed from historical sources, however, and their significance sketched. The evidence presented here is not new, but it may profitably be reviewed with regard to funerary practices, terminology, and the development of Islamic architectural forms.

Most Iranists are probably acquainted with some of my writings on Iranian chronology and systems of time-reckoning. One of the essential points in my outline of the history of the Iranian calendars is the theory I put forward about the date of the creation of a fixed religious year, co-existing and running parallel with the civil year, which was a vague one. This fixed year, called in Pahlavi literature Vihēǰakīk, was, however, theoretical and without any application in daily life. It was used only by the Zoroastrian clergy for the purpose of ascertaining the original position of the religious festivals and keeping them in or about their astronomical positions. By the ‘original position’ is meant the places these most important religious days occupied in the tropical year at the time of instituting the Vihēǰakīk year, which time may or may not have been the epoch of the initial adoption of the Mazdayasnian or ‘Young Avestan’ civil year in Iran. The date I proposed was 441 B.c., or at any rate some time in the first decade of the second half of the 5th century B.c.

English Translation: The ‘Song Of Bagauda’ In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate. May God bless our Lord Muḥammad and his family, and his Companions, and his wives, and his offspring, and grant them peace.

Modern tendencies in the linguistic development of Arabic, in both its literary and colloquial aspects, has for some time now been the subject of serious scholary study (see, e.g. Blau, 1978, Cantarino, 1974-5, Stekevych, 1970, amont others). Contact between different social groups and thus between different dialects and speech levels, has brought about changes in the actual speech of Arabic-speaking peoples which have been variously called koineization, levelling and classicization (or literarization) (cf. Blanc, 1960). These processes will be the subject of this paper.

Of the 7, 000 manuscripts (including fragments) which were taken by Sir Aurel Stein, almost at random, from the great hoard in Tunhuang, some 380 bear dates, ranging from A.D. 406 to 995. Six are of the fifth century, and forty-four of the sixth. A few of the undated MSS. may be even earlier than 406, while it is highly probable that others are later than 995, seeing that the date 1035 is found in the similar collection at Paris. But in any case the period covered does not greatly exceed 600 years.

Neolithic sites of the North Karnataka region produce artifacts belonging to two distinct industries.1 The first comprises mainly blade and ‘geometric’ tools manufactured from a series of siliceous rocks. Their manufacture entails a definite tradition of core preparation and striking of bladeflakes.2 The second industry comprises core and flake tools manufactured from a group of igneous and metamorphic rocks. Their manufacture entails different techniques based upon flaking, grinding, and pecking. The artifacts to be studied here belong to the second industry.

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 what follows I would like to discuss the structure of Amharic relative clauses. In the course of the discussion, I would like to make the following three claims which I will attempt to substantiate in turn. First, I believe that relativization is a kind of pronominalization and, consequently, the particle yä- that is attached to the main verb (or its auxiliary) of the relative clause is not a relative pronoun. Second, I maintain that the ‘yä- clause’ in subject position in Amharic cleft sentences is also a relative clause with an unspecified element as its head. My third claim is that Amharic genitive phrases originate from relative clauses and that the noun (phrase) in the genitive phrase to which the particle yä- is attached in surface structure is governed by a preposition in underlying structure, and the head of a genitive phrase is the head of the under-lying relative clause. In this connexion, I also argue that there is a rule in Amharic which moves the particle yä- (to the right) over, at least, one constituent.