Allusions to Indian medicine appear in Chinese literature from the fifth century A.D. onwards. At first through translated Buddhist texts, and then through the incorporation of material by later Chinese authors in the form of medical theories, diagnostic, surgical methods and prescriptions, a substantial element of Indian medical knowledge permeated into Chinese medicine. Ophthalmology held a unique position in these transmissions. It was invariably associated with the famous name of Nāgārjuna, which is connected with almost all kinds of protoscientific activity in early medieval India. This has given rise to a longstanding debate among scholars regarding the origin of this material, as well as the credibility of its attribution to Nāgārjuna.

Kajali is a Tāti dialect spoken in at least two, and possibly more, villages in Khalkhāl, the south-eastern province of Persian Āzarbāijān. Kajal, the main village where this dialect is spoken, lies in Kāghaz-konān, the southwestern district of Khalkhāl, and has a population of over 400 persons, who live mainly by cultivating cereals (particularly wheat and barley), growing fruit, and keeping a small number of farm animals. Most of the Kajali men go to Tālesh, the Caspian province east of Khalkhāl, during the winter to work, and return for the summer.

In two previous studies we have sought to advance the process of understanding the complex linguistic character of the Āḍi Granth (AG) by isolating and describing two special stylistic varieties of language, which significantly differ from the normal idiom of the book as a whole. These were shown to be based respectively on the extensive use of elements drawn from the dialects of the South-Western Panjab, and of loan-items from Persian: but it was further emphasized that they were stylistic varieties of the usual AG poetic language, and were in no sense to be regarded as straightforward examples of contemporary Multani or Indo-Persian.

This study argues that five treatises on the legal status of Friday prayer in Twelver Shiite law that were composed between 1555 and 1563, in the middle of the reign of Safavid Shah Tahmasb, were all penned as part of a heated competition over the post of shaykh al-islām of the Safavid capital Qazvin. Detailed analysis of the first four treatises and the context in which they were produced, building on a 1996 article that discussed the fifth, demonstrates the influence of politics and academic rivalry on texts of Islamic law and other sciences, the types of rhetorical strategies used by scholars in the competition for patronage, and the importance of support of scholars for the establishment of legitimate rule and an official religion.

This study analyses the original waqf documents belonging to Qijmās al-Isḥāqī, an amir who lived in late Mamluk Egypt and Syria, from three perspectives: first, the types of assets possessed or endowed by Qijmās and the creation of these assets; second, the contexts and purposes of establishing waqfs by comparing the data obtained from the documents and the life history of Qijmās, which was reconstructed from literary sources; and third, how his personal relationships reflected the character of his waqfs. Further, this study reveals how he selectively and strategically used the waqf system for personal and/or public benefit at different stages of his life and according to the prevalent social circumstances. This case study proves that the waqf system had multi-dimensional and complex functions: in addition to realizing its universal purpose of enabling the performance of charitable deeds, the waqf system fulfilled the founder's particularistic secular intentions and expectations.

Bintulu, an Austronesian language spoken in the district capital of that name and in several smaller communities in the basin of the Kemena river, Fourth Division, Sarawak, has two previously unrecognized implosive stop phonemes, 6 and d. Where these segments occur in lexical items known to reflect a Proto-Austronesian (PAN) reconstruction, they appear to result from an unconditioned phonemic split of PAN *b, *d, *D, or *j. A hypothesis constructed to account for a wider range of linguistic facts offers an explanation of some of these apparent irregularities. Most if not all residual discrepancies can be accommodated under an ancillary hypothesis of borrowing, independently motivated by various considerations. The case of the Bintulu implosives is of general theoretical interest, as it necessitates modifications in some recent claims regarding the diachronic sources of implosive stops.

The present notice is merely an annex to V. V. Barthold's article on Ḥfiẓ-i Abr which has stood the test of 70 years.

Ḥfiẓ-i Abr, a Khorsnian by birth, was a distinguished historian of Timrid times. He belonged to the class of those learned men whom rulers liked to attach to their courts. He studied in Hamadn, and worked under the patronage of Tmr, Shhrukh, and Prince Baysunqur. He died in Zanjn in 83414301.

A convention existed among Manichæan copyists whereby most Parthian poetry was written as prose, the verses being separated only by some device of punctuation. The method saved a considerable amount of paper. Yet there are texts set out as poetry, in separate lines with a space between verses. The two great hymn-cycles, Huwīdagmān and Angad Rōšnan, are invariably presented in this way. These exist in the fragments of thirty-odd MSS. of very varied character; it is evident, therefore, that in their case the manner of presentation did not depend on individual taste or means, but was regarded as proper to the texts themselves.

The dialect material set out in this article was collected mainly from two informants of the Dōsiri (pl. Duwāsir < > Dawāsir) tribe living in Kuwait. Although the dialect is described as Dōsiri, there is no doubt that the informants had been influenced by the local form of ‘Ajmi, a dialect of high social prestige. This influence was particularly noticeable when the informants were conversing with one another.

Several years before the war a photograph of a stone inscription in Aramaic letters was published in the Persian language periodical Kabul (vol. ii, 1932, p. 413). The following note (in Persian), printed below the photograph, constitutes the whole of our information on the material, history, and provenance of the inscription:ߞ

“A historical inscribed stone: A few years ago a broken stone tablet (lauhe) with ancient Sanskrit writing was procured in the neighbourhood of Pul-i Darunta, Laghmān, and entrusted to Kabul Museum. So far its contents have not been read and understood. The original of the above (depicted) stone is in Kabul Museum.”

Laghmān, older Lamyān (from Lambayān<*Lampakāna), is the name of a district on the left (northern) bank of the Kabul river, a little above Jalalabad; it comprises the valleys of the Lower Alingār and Ališang. This district, whose name is familiar to Sanskritists as Lampāka (also Lambāka), was traditionally regarded as part of the Indian borderlands, the ultima Thule of Jambuduīpa. Cf. Mémoires de Hiouen-thsang, i, 55, “en partant de ce royaume ( = Kāpiśī), il… franchit les montagnes noires, entra dans les frontières de l'lnde du nord, et arriva au royaume de Lan-po”. Cf. also Lampāka in the Yaksa catalogue of the Mahāmāyūrī, and further H. Lüders, SbPAW., 1930, 43, 48, 51, 63. One may presume that the traditional view reflects the conditions prevailing under the Maurya dynasty.

The inscription was made known in Europe by Professor Morgenstierne, who, on finding that the alphabet was Aramaic, asked H. Birkeland to publish it.

Besides the well-known Vālmīki-rāmâyaṇa, three other Sanskrit poems entitled “Rāmâyaṇa” are current in northern India, and are highly esteemed. They are (1) the Yōga-vāsiṣṭha-mahārāmâyaṇa, (2) the Adhyātma-rāmâyaṇa, and (3) the Adbhuta-rāmâyaṇa. Of these the first and the last claim to have been composed by no less a person than Vālmīki himself; but the Adhyātma-rāmâyaṇa forms a section of the Brahmâṇḍa-purāṇa, and does not suggest any pretension to his authorship.

The last recorded case of sati in India, the murder (for such it undoubtedly was) of Roop Kanwar, which took place in the large Rajasthani village of Deorala in 1987, has had many reverberations. In particular, it has served as a focus for international and Indian women activists' opposition to continuing gender violence and to male domination in general. Not surprisingly, the responses have been wide-ranging, from individual and collective acts of feminist solidarity to various attempts at local level, mainly by men and political agencies, to discredit this particular women's movement.

N. Sims-Williams's proposed identification of a Bactrian god μοζδοοανο as deriving from Ir. *miždvah, Vd. mī1E0D;dhvás could shed light on the role of this word as an epithet of Rudra and Siva in India. The identification would seem in turn to derive support from the extent to which in India the epithet has been appropriated by Vedic Rudra. It is even possible to identify a stratum of Sanskrit literature that shares the Bactrian conception of Mīḍhvān as a supreme god.

In the great mass of material already collected for the study of African folk-lore—to which fresh additions are daily being made— we do not find any considerable number of what may be called heroic legends. Yet some there are, as in the traditions of Kintu and other early kings of Uganda, in the tale of Mbega, current in Usambara, and probably many others, as yet unrecorded.

The full title of this little work, which occupies 19 pages in 8vo, is as follows:—

Verdadeira e exacta Noticia dos progressos de Thamas Kouli Khan Scach da Persia no Imperio do Gram Mogô, Escrita na lingua Persiana em Delhy em 21 de Abril de 1739, e mandada a Roma por Mons. Voulton.

Acrecentada com outras chegadas por varias partes, com hum Mapa do Thesouro do Gram Mogôr levado a Hispahan pelo mesmo Schach. Dadas a luz na lingua Portugueza.

Le terme mazdayasna-, familier à ceux qui ont quelque pratique de l'Avesta ou une connaissance même somraaire des croyances mazdéennes, tient une place importante dans le vocabulaire religieux de l'Iran, depuis les temps anciens jusqu'à la fin de l'époque sassanide. Il désigne ceux que nous appelons ‘Mazdéens’, les fidèles de Mazdāh, par opposition aux fidèles des daivas, qui portent la qualification de daēvayasna-.

The extent and nature of Chinese penetration into Central Asia during the third century and the problems raised by the Chinese and Kharoṣṭhī documents that have been found at the various sites of Lop-nor, Niya, and elsewhere have recently formed the subject of articles by two scholars. Professer Brough has suggested that the territory of the state of Shan-shan was incorporated into the Kuṣāṇa empire for a short period, perhaps in the middle of the second century, before independent rules took over control. He believes that a further change was marked by the adoption of the royal title jiṭuṃgha from the seventeenth year of king Aṃgoka, and that thereafter the country was subject to Chinese control (or at least nominally so) for the period of about 60 years until the end of King Vaṣmana's reign; and he suggests that the seventeenth year of king Aṃgoka can be identified with 263. Professor Enoki has recently taken the opportunity to revise his earlier theory that the year in question should be identified as 609; and he now believes that the five kings mentioned by name in the Kharoṣṭhī documents should be dated from the middle of the third century to the decade starting in 330.

In a volume dedicated to Sir Ralph Turner, it can scarcely be inappropriate to devote an essay to a text which bears every sign of being the first Christian adaptation of that legend of the Buddha which, migrating from the cultural environment of the Lalita-vistara and the Buddha-carita, finally evolved into the story of the Christian worthies Barlaam and Ioasaph.

Since the German Turfan expeditions of half a century ago, it has become increasingly clear that an early stage in the story's development may be sited in those areas of Central Asia where Buddhism and Manichseism, the former using Sanskrit, the latter Iranian and Old Turkish as literary media, for a time overlapped. Thus, among the Turkish Manichaean fragments recovered at Turfan are two extracts from a prototype (or two separate sources) of the Barlaam legend: firstly, the episode of the meeting of the Bodisav (Bodhisattva) prince with the decrepit old man; and secondly, an unsavoury tale, later incorporated in the Arabic version by Ibn Babuya, concerning a drunken prince who mistakes a corpse for a desirable maiden.