The contributions of Rong Xinjiang to the study of Tang civilization, and particularly of external influences upon it, have already rapidly mounted up to a considerable number, so the appearance of a volume collecting many of his essays together in one place is much to be welcomed.

The Kitāb Sulaym ibn Qays, a collection of sayings attributed to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, was supposedly collected by the (otherwise unknown) Sulaym b. Qays al-Hilālī (d. 76/678); the work is generally recognized as an important source for early Shīʿī thought. There has been much debate, both within the Shīʿī tradition and outside of it, over when its contents reached their current form and how representative they were of Shīʿī views in the early centuries of Islam. Here, I take one passage from the Kitāb Sulaym and set it against the development of early Muslim hermeneutics in an attempt to establish a tentative dating for this passage. The result is a dating between late eighth century ce (second century ah) and the early ninth century ce (early third century ah), roughly contemporary with, and perhaps postdating the revolutionary hermeneutic work of Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820). This conclusion tallies, to some extent, with an analysis of the report's various isnāds.

The Shenxian zhuan is a biographical (or hagiographical) collection of great importance to our understanding of the formation of the Taoist religion in the early centuries of the Common Era.

The only definite statements as to the authorship of the play occur in the commentaries in two different MSS., and are conflicting; one mentions Bodhayana as the author, while the other mentions the name of Indracarumani. There were several Bdhyanas, two of whom were poets and it is not easy to decide to whom the first of the above statements refers. Several plausible guesses have been made, based on evidence other than the statements in the two commentaries. It has been pointed out that the Bhagavadajjukam, in common with the plays of Bhsa, lacks all reference to the author in the text, begins with a Sthpan instead of the usual Prastavana, and bear some resemblances to them in style and diction. On the other hand, it has been shown that the play shows similarities to the Mttavilasa of Mahendra-vikrama Varman. Both plays ridicule Buddhist doctrines and extol Hindu Dharma. This argument gains strength from the fact that in the stone mscription at Mmundr, which has been proved to be that of Mhendra-vikrama, Bhagavadajjukam and Mattavilasa are mentioned in company. Similarities in diction have also been traced between the two. It will therefore be seen that the authorship of the play is still uncertain, and will continue to engage the attention of scholars for some time to come.

This article explores three important Zoroastrian legal texts from the ʿAbbasid period, consisting of questions and answers to high-ranking priests. The texts contain a wellspring of information about the social history of Zoroastrianism under Islamic rule, especially the formative encounter between Zoroastrians and Muslims. These include matters such as conversion, apostasy, sexual relations with outsiders, inheritance, commerce, and the economic status of priests. The article argues that the elite clergy responsible for writing these texts used law to refashion the Zoroastrian community from the rulers of Iran, as they had been in Late Antiquity, into one of a variety of dhimmī groups living under Islamic rule. It also argues that, far from being brittle or inflexible, the priests responded to the challenges of the day with creativity and pragmatism. On both counts, there are strong parallels between the experiences of Zoroastrians and those of Christians and Jews, who also turned to law as an instrument for rethinking their place in the new Islamic cosmos. Finally, the article makes a methodological point, namely to show the importance of integrating Pahlavi sources into wider histories of Iran and the Middle East during the early Islamic period.

In the Mid. Ind. stage, represented by the Prakrits, though not in the North–west, Sk. ā, ī ū before two consonants (homorganic or heterorganic) coincided with Sk. a, i, u before two consonants, for in both cases Mid. Ind. showed ā ī ū before double consonants, e.g. Sk. kāstha– > Pa. Pk. hattha–; Sk. tīrtha– > Pa. Pk. tittha–; Sk. pūrna– > Pa. Pk. punna–; just as Sk. lajjā– > Pa – Pk. lajjā–; Sk. mitra– > Pa. Pk. mitta–; Sk. śuddha– > Pa. Pk. suddha–.

To the north-east of the Solomon Islands lies a ring of coral islands surrounding a lagoon about 100 miles in circumference. The nearest land is the northern tip of the island of Ysabel, which is some 200 miles to the south-west. This group of islands has been variously called Ongtong Java, Lord Howe's Group, Leueneuwa, Leua Niua, and Lua Niua. The three latter are more or less unsatisfactory attempts at writing the native name of the largest island, Luaniua. There is no native name for the whole atoll and it is not only misleading but also wrong to use Luaniua for the purpose. Lord Howe has already given his name to three other Pacific Islands, so that it seems best to take the name which Tasman gave and call the atoll Ongtong Java.

These islands are populated by natives with undoubted Polynesian affinities. In physical type they show a resemblance to the Samoans and their language is a Polynesian dialect, but in other respects the culture shows some marked differences from those of the central Pacific. The social organization is closely parallelled by that of Sikiana, in the south, and by that of the Tasman Islands, the Mortlocks and Fead Island (Nuguria) to the north. This organization is not characterized by rank, which is so important in Polynesia.

The Yazata of the benediction known as the Dahma Āfriti is a figure whose importance in the Zoroastrian pantheon has been obscured, it seems for two main reasons. One is that, although she was apparently originally accorded a place among the thirty ‘calendar’ divinities, she subsequently lost this, probably in an Achaemenian calendar reform. The other is that later still her identity became confused through her name acquiring several Middle Persian forms: Dahm Yazad, Dahmān Āfrīn, Dahmān, the last, since it is a formal plural, causing some misunderstandings in her veneration locally.

The Avestan adjective dahma is understood to have meant originally ‘instructed’, that is, in the Zoroastrian faith; but, to judge from its use in context, it developed the sense of ‘pious, devout’, occurring frequently with ašavan as a term for a good Zoroastrian. The name of the benediction is accordingly generally rendered as the ‘Pious Blessing’. Much power was attributed by Zoroastrians to solemnly pronounced words, and the compilers of the extended yasna liturgy set the ‘Pious Good Blessing’, Dahṃa VaohviĀfriti, after the Ahuna Vairya, Ašəm Vohū and Yenhē hātąm as the fourth of the mighty utterances which crush and destroy Anra Mainyu and his hordes (Y.61:l–2). (The other three form a group because together they precede the Gāthās, and together are the subject of the commentary which forms (Y. 19–21.)

Cette description se fonde sur des observations faites en plusieurs points du Territoire français des Afars et des Issas (Goda, Mabla, ‘Àlta, Gamàrri notamment), de 1973 à 1975, et sur le témoignage d'informateurs originaires, pour certains, de l'Àwsa. Ceux-ci nous ont permis d'acquérir la certitude qu'un même dialecte était parlé dans la zone comprise entre le delta lacustre de l'Awash (Kalo) et le golfe de Tadjoura. Il semble aussi que l'afar méridional s'étende en amont même de Ba'àdu et jusqu'au piémont éthiopien, (Dòk'a, Dawwe et Awra); d'autre part, il est attesté au nord, à Baylūl, mouillage au delà duquel commence l'afar septentrional. Si nous n'avons pu encore enquêter personnellement dans ces régions, la classification proposée par Mahafly nous paraît toutefois approximative. Il est hasardeux d'isoler l'Awsa des régions côtières. De nombreux faits historiques (comme en témoignent les traditions orales) et sociologiques fournissent la preuve du contraire. Les tribus ‘asayammàra établies au nord et à l'ouest du Territoire français atteignent le Kalo au cours de leurs migrations saisonnières. Les Debne de la plaine du Gōba'ad, en transhumant par Anḍaḍkàlu au sud du lac Abḥe, touchent le pays gal'êla qui, au début de ce siècle, s'étendait à la majeure partie du Gōba'ad. De plus, les famines, les affaires de sang ont souvent été jusqu'à un passé récent à l'origine de l'exode de tout ou partie d'un groupe tribal. Les guerres pour la conquête de la vallée de l'Awash ont également opéré des bouleversements démographiques importants. Le déplacement vers l'ouest des Mōdayto ou des Badoyta-m mēla en est une illustration. On pourrait aussi mentionner les relations commerciales, occasions d'une dissémination de plusieurs tribus spécialisées dans les opérations de transit, tels les Ḥasōba que l'on retrouve tout au long d'une piste caravanière allant de Bāte à Ambabbo, près de Tadjoura.

The problems posed by the interpretation of the Ṥvetāṥvatara Upaniṣad are almost as interesting as is the Upaniṣad itself. There are both in the West and in India two clearly discernible trends in the method of such interpretation. One follows quite strictly the line of the monistic, advaita doctrine, involving frequent disregard of the text itself. The other shows a realistic appreciation of a largely deistic philosophy of the Upaniṣad, which leans towards soteriological concepts of the Sāṃkhya or rather the Sāṃkhya-Yoga syncretism. The Upaniṣad presents, in fact, a triadic combination of (I) Īṥvara = puruṣa, (2) Brahman, whose role as that of a creator is idenfield with the role of the prakṛti, pradhāna, or buddhi, and who is the intermediary between the Īṥvara, and (3) āman = jīva.

In 1933, in a brief remark on the expression hun-t'o‘leather bag’, Peter A. Boodberg identified it as a Kitan word and proposed to explain it through the Mongol °huquta, huyuta (modern Mongol uyula, pronounced ūta) ‘bag, sack’. Boodberg referred to Pelliot's article of 1925 on the Mongol °h- lost in the modern language; but Pelliot in his paper does not even mention hun-t'o. Professor Boodberg's note remained largely unnoticed, due no doubt to its brevity, comprising as it did not more than a few lines in a longer article which appeared in a publication distributed in rather restricted circles.

The biblical figure of Samson (Judges 13: 1–16: 31) is not mentioned by name in the Quran. He was, however, incorporated by medieval Muslims such as al-Ṭabarī and Tha‘labī into the quranic prophetic world. How and why that was accomplished is the initial focus of this paper. While the medieval ability to find Samson in the text of scripture was admittedly limited, the attempt does illustrate the process of fitting scripture into a pre-existing world view itself composed on the basis of a variety of competing priorities. That world view does not always agree with the biblical text, nor with the full dimension of the living traditions of Judaism and Christianity; rather, the overall cultural framework of the Islamic tradition necessitated a range of interpretive strategies, dictated by the demands of the interpretive situation. Putting this medieval interpretive process in focus provides a context for discussing some modern Muslim views of Samson, about whom it is sometimes proclaimed proudly that he is not to be found in scripture. Why that position should be taken proves revealing of the process and the priorities of modern quranic interpretation. Marked by the abandonment of the value of tradition, contemporary interpretive strategies involve the same hermeneutical processes found in the medieval approach – the fitting of world views to the text of scripture – with the primary difference to be located in the rejection of the accumulative nature of the interpretive enterprise. Finally, the role of modern “secular” scholarship interacts with Muslim tradition by its focus on the boundaries of a strict scriptural text as the source of Islam. The scholarly focus on the textual is seen in a world view not of confessional dogma but one that still supports a confessional position that is also textually focused. It pretends to an appearance of being “scientific”. Scholarship plays its own political role within the process of modern interpretation.

The Jewish-Persian manuscript Or. 8659 was brought to my attention by Dr. J. Rosenwasser of the British Museum, to whom I am most grateful for giving me the occasion to examine it closely and discover its great interest. Dr. Rosenwasser had rightly queried the description of the manuscript as ‘a commentary on Joshua’. There are quotations from Joshua on fol. lr and v, it is true, but that is by no means the whole story. He also remarked that the first and last folios deal with the same subject, and fol. 1 should in fact follow immediately on fol. 10. It was with this introduction, and much initial help with the Hebrew passages, that he urged the investigation of the text on me.