One major problem which comes to the fore in comparing Omotic languages is the wide diversity seen in the inflectional morphology of the verb. To the linguist coming from Ethiopian Semitic or East Cushitic the variety encountered from language to language in Omotic is bewildering. The problem may be illustrated by comparing paradigms of three languages of the Ometo cluster—a group which on the basis of lexicostatistic calculations is considered to be fairly close-knit. Two of the languages, Zayse and Koyra, have been classified (together with Haruro, Ganjule, Harro and Zargula) as East Ometo, a label which is intended to convey a genetic as well as a geographical affiliation. The third language is Gofa, which, as a member of the dialect cluster which includes Wolaitta, Kullo, Konta, Gemu, Zala, Malo, Oyda, etc., is classified as Central Ometo. The paradigms compared are: (i) the perfect (or past) declarative, (ii) the perfect (or past) interrogative, (iii) the imperfect (or present) declarative, (iv) the imperfect (or present) interrogative. The verb employed in the illustration is wod'-‘kill’.

1. śāra-

IN BSOAS 13. 130–1 I pointed out the Indian manaraǵa- ‘ boy ‘, attested only by the plural manare in Niya Kharoṣṭhī, as a bye-form of the Indian māṇava- (with -ka)‘ Brahman boy ’. I noted too that the Kharoṣṭhī word gave the explanation of the Agnean manark ‘ Brahman boy ’, of which the meaning made an Indian origin plausible. I pointed also to Niya kaṣara, corresponding to Central Indian kaṣāya- ‘ yellow robe ‘, whose connexion with Agnean kāṣār is now well-known.

That recognition of the Middle Indian influence in Central Asia is most important can, I think, be shown also in connexion with another word, familiar in just such Buddhist texts as were brought into Central Asia by Buddhist communities. It is decidedly necessary to search out all such intrusive Indian material before the vocabularies of Central Asian languages can be used for wider purposes, historīcal or linguistic in Indo-European comparative grammar. And such material is itself of great importance for the history of Indian culture in Central Asia. Naturally it is in cultural, specifically Buddhist, terms that the Indian element is most prominent.

The word I propose to consider here is attested in Sanskrit śāṭa-s, śāṭaka-s, -m, śāṭtī, śāṭīkā ‘ piece of cloth, garment’, snāna-śāṭaka- ‘ bathing robe ’,śiraḥśāṭaka- ‘ head-cloth ’, well known in Central Indian literature. Beside the Brahmanical literature we have in Jaina books, Ovavāiya-sutta 54 s¯ṭiya-; Antagaṭa-dasāo (translation L. D. Barnett, p. 67) sāṭaa-; and Ratnachandraji gives in his Ardḥamāgadhī Dictionary sāṭa- ‘ garment’, sāṭaga-, sāṭaa- ‘ upper garment’, sāṭī ‘ garment’, sāṭiyā ‘ upper garment worn by ladies ’, sāṭilla- ‘ silken garment’, sāṭollaya-‘ upper garment’.

When first examining, now quite some time ago, the Tibetan version of the Karmavibhaṅga in the MS Kanjur of the British Museum, I was struck immediately by the preservation therein of the ‘introductory tale’, which apparently has not survived in the printed Kanjurs. On closer inspection the MS version showed two other prominent features which, taken together with the first, may justify the present note and, it is hoped, may make it acceptable to the great Indo-Iranian scholar in whose honour it has been written.

Abū Dāwūd Sulaimān b. al-Ash'ath al-Sijistānī (202–275/817–889) was the author of the Sunan which has come to be recognized as one of the six authoritative books of tradition accepted by Sunnīs. Ibn Dāsa is frequently quoted as authority for the statement that Abū Dāwūd selected the 4,800 traditions in this work from a mass of 500,000 traditions which he had collected, those given a place in his book being ‘sound traditions, those which seem to be so, and those which are nearly so’. But he adds that only four traditions are necessary for one's religious guidance: (1) Deeds are judged by intentions; (2) To abstain from what does not concern him is a part of a man's good observance of Islam; (3) A believer is not a believer till he likes for his brother what he likes for himself; (4) What is lawful is clear and what is unlawful is clear, but in between are dubious matters.

The language described in this chapter is spoken by at least three million people who call themselves Qafar, though earlier European writers and travelers usually referred to them as Danakil. The Qafar inhabit that vast tract of land which stretches from the Red Sea coast south and west as far as the scarplands of the Ethiopian Plateau, an area generally referred to as the Danakil Depression. With the exception of narrow belts of luxuriant jungle along the banks of rivers, such as the Awash and the Mille, which descend into the Depression, the country is largely desert; though even quite short spells of rain can bring grass and other transient plant life back into some parts. Although Qafar living in large coastal towns such as Djibouti and Assab and those on the Red Sea coast who live by fishing have clearly abandoned past oralism as a way of life, the majority of Qafar remain pastoralists, and pastoralism is strongly reflected in the lexicon of their language.

It has been stated many times that the principal idea in the repetition of words is that of emphasis or intensity. My observation has led me to conclude that this is incorrect, and that the true sense in almost every case is one of the following:—

distribution (over time, space, or a number of objects), pleasantness, no meaning at all.

In order to make the inquiry practical, it is better to confine it to cases of words repeated without alteration. If anyone will in the course of his reading take 1,000 consecutive instances of repetition, he will find that (i) short words are repeated far oftener than long,(ii) repetition of adjj. or advv. with a pleasant meaning is much commoner than of those with a nasty meaning, and when the meaning may be either good or bad, the good is intended,(iii) nearly every instance comes under either distribution or pleasantness.

The languages of India Proper belong to two great families— in the North, the Indo-Aryan; and in the South, the Dravidian. The map here displayed shows the localities in which the former are spoken. These Indo-Aryan tongues again lull into two main groups, viz., those of the Midland—indicated on the map by red — and a number of Outer Languages, indicated by blue. These two groups differ from each other in an important characteristic, which has affected their respective literatures to no inconsiderable extent. In the Midland the languages are all analytical. Their grammars are very simple, they are cumbered by few grammatical forms, and they indicate the various relations of time and space by the aid of auxiliary words, just as we do in English. The Outer Languages, on the contrary, are synthetic. Their idioms depend chiefly on grammatical form, and, as in Latin or German, each has a more or less complicated system of declension and conjugation.

It appears from those who have written the history of Russia that neither native nor European authorities know anything about it before the latter half of the ninth century, and that the tenth century is nearing its end before anything like firm ground is reached. Their name is by this time quite familiar to the Arabic chroniclers, and Ibn al-Athir even takes the trouble to record the commencement of the conversion of the Russians to Christianity; according to him in the year 375, i.e. 985–6 a.d., the Byzantine emperors being besieged found it necessary to invoke the aid of the king of the Russians, and offered him their sister in marriage. She declined to marry one who was not of her religion, whence this Russian king adopted Christianity, and that was how the religion began to be propagated in his country. The date of the first conversion of a Russian king given by Morfill on the authority of a Russian chronicle is within two years of that assigned by Ibn al-Athir; the former 988, the latter apparently 986; and Ibn al-Athir is here following a contemporary record. The name Rūs, i.e. Russians, was already familiar to Ibn al-Athir's readers and indeed those of the authority whom he excerpts owing to their being mentioned by the popular poet Mutanabbi in his most celebrated poem, describing the victory won by the Hamdanide Saif al-daulah in 954 over a force mustered by the Byzantine general called the Domesticus, wherein according to the poet so many tribes and tongues were represented that a staff of interpreters was required.

A total of 32 poems, including some of doubtful authenticity, are ascribed to Hassān b. Thābit in his Dīwān or elsewhere, which can be wholly or partly classified as elegies. It is remarkable, however, that in this total there is not a single poem on an Ansārī while no less than eight are on 'Uthmān b. 'Affān, as compared with only four on the death of the Prophet. Equally remarkable is the fact that there is a wide variety of style and method of treatment not only among the poems as a whole but among poems on the same subject.