In a recent article on ‘Words for “printing block” and the origin of printing’, Mr. R. Shafer rejected B. Laufer's derivation of Tibetan par from Chinese baan ‘printing block’, which the latter had proposed in his article ‘Loan-words in Tibetan’, though, in fairness to Laufer, it must be added that he qualified his etymology by the adverb ‘presumably’. While I fully agree with Mr. Shafer's rejection of Laufer's suggestion, I feel bound to say that he reached his conclusion from premises which are open to serious objections and indeed lend little support to the hypothesis on the origin of printing which he advances as a corollary.

Prostration (sujūd) is a fundamental part of the ritual prayer (ṣalāt). It is the highest form of religious devotion and is often mentioned in the Quran as well as in many traditions from all genres of Muslim literature. Prostration is also mentioned in some traditions in relation to what Muslim sources define as sujūd al-shukr, i.e., literally, ‘the thanksgiving prostration’. This is a voluntary act of devotion consisting of a prostration performed by the believer when he wants to thank God for some blessing. There is an abundance of evidence concerning this kind of prostration and it will be discussed here.

In an article concerning the prehistory of Kelantan G. Benjamin provided an etymology for the toponym ‘Lebir’ as deriving from the Old Mon [OM] word for ‘sea, river’, OM Iḅir, Iḅīr, modern Mon LM ḅś, SM /бi/. He went on to say that there is evidence to assume early Malay–Mon contacts; in fact, it was only by the twelfth century A.D. that a language-shift at the expense of Mon occurred in an area of what is today southern Thailand and northern Malaysia. By implication this might also mean that there were contacts between groups speaking Aslian languages and Mon.

In support of his hypothesis Benjamin referred to epigraphic evidence, in particular to Mon inscriptions from southern Thailand as the earliest written in any vernacular. In fact, there are only two inscriptions, previously claimed to be written in Mon, Nś. 2, discovered in 1971, from Nakhorn Sri Thammarat [Ligor] and Nś. 3 from the same area. The Thai Government's Fine Arts Department [FAD] dates Nś. 2 to the later half of the thirteenth century A.D., at a time when Benjamin assumes the language-shift Mon > Malay/Thai in the peninsula to have already taken place. But the difficulty is not only how to reconcile the comparatively late date—based on palaeographical grounds—with Benjamin's chronological framework; the inscription is largely illegible and classed by the FAD in its most recent publication as written in ‘Old Mon and Old Burmese’. The other inscription which the FAD has interpreted as Old Mon is Nś. 3/RIS XXVII, dated by Cœdès to the sixth century. But Cœdès himself was unable to determine the language of this one line inscription, and it cannot be ascribed to Old Mon.

A. A. Macdonell in his commentary on RV. IV. 50.5 (Vedic Reader for Students) remarks: “The exact meaning … does not clearly appear from its four occurrences; but it must have a sense closely allied to receptacle—in three passages it is spoken of as being rent or pierced, and twice is associated with Valá; and in the Naighaṇṭuka it is given as a synonym of megha cloud.” Grassmann (Wörterbuch) similarly translates as Behälter, Wolke. The four passages in which it occurs are I. 62.4, phaligam, Indra śakra, valaṃ raveṇa darayo, “Rend, O mighty Indra, the ph. cage with a crash”; I. 121.10, tam, adrivaḥ, phaligaṃ hetim asya, “At that ph., O thou of the thunderbolt, hurl thy missile”; IV. 50.5, sa … valaṃ ruroja phaligaṃ raveṇa, “He hath burst with a crash the ph. cage”; VIII. 32.35, ya udnaḥ phaligaṃ bhinan nyak sindhūṃr avāsṛjat, “Who split the ph. of the water and let the streams rush down.” Phaligam is here a valam, cave, prison or cage, but is not always used as such, otherwise there would be no need to complete its meaning by valam. It shares with the rock and the cloud the function of imprisoning the waters, but, unlike the twin aśman (cloud above and rock below), is not mentioned as a producer of fire. The cloud, like the rock, must be hard, so that the clash of the upper with the nether aśman may yield fire, and phaligam is probably hard also. It may be white, like the bright cloud or the snow-capped mountain, grey or even black, like the rain-charged cloud or the stark rock.

Burushaski, the language of Hunza and Nagir, has not up to the present received any undue measure of attention.

The list of authorities in the Linguistic Survey of India is a short one containing only nine items. Of these only three are of serious importance:—

Dr. G. W. Leitner, The Languages and Races of Dardistan, Lahore, 1877.

Col. J. Biddulph, JRAS., vol. xvi, pt. i (1884), “The Boorishki Language,” being a corrected reprint of the Grammar and Vocabulary of the language, published in his Tribes of the Hindu Rush, Calcutta, 1880.

Dr. G. W. Leitner. The Hunza and Nagyr Handbook, pt. i, Calcutta, 1889.

The Girnar Inscription of Skanda Gupta,1 read in conjunction with the Bhitari Inscription of the same king,2 shows that Skanda Gupta came to the throne while the Gupta Empire was in great difficulties as a result of the invasion of the Hunas and the mysterious Pusyamitras. On pacifying the country Skanda gave much thought to the choice of governors for the outlying provinces, and decided to appoint one Parnadatta as governor of Surastra.

Im Jahre 1928 erschien bei Luzac in London ein Buch unter dem Titel Munda–Magyar–Maori. An Indian link between the Antipodes. New Tracks of Hungarian Origins. Der Verfasser dieses Buches, Herr W. F. von Hevesy, der sich hier unter dem Pseudonym F. A. Uxbond verbarg, verehrte mir ein Exemplar (15. 1. 29) mit seiner persönlichenx Widmung und bat mich, darüber eine Besprechung zu veröffentlichen. Obwohl ich die schöne Alliteration des Titels “Munda-Magyar-Maori” und den grossen Mut, den der Verfasser bei der Konstruktion seiner Theorie zeigte, anerkennen musste, konnte ich mich doch nicht entschliessen, der Sache näher zu treten.

In a previous article I described certain features of that form of Chinese short story which is most conveniently known as hua-pen. Illustrations were taken in the main from a number of stories of the Ku chin hsiao shuo, a collection published in Soochow in or about the year 1621.

As I indicated, however, the stories of the Ku chin hsiao shuo show wide variations in age and in the degree to which they qualify to be regarded as genuine hua-pen, that is to say, as written versions of the actual stories told by the story-tellers of the Sung, Yüan, or Ming periods.

Hardly had the article ‘A Farewell to the Khagan of the Aq-Aqatärān’ been printed, when my eye fell on a passage in Pliny which settles the problem posed by Mšyk. Shapur, it will be recalled, defeated the Roman army, under Gordianus (who fell in the battle), at Mšyk = MHCIXICH and MICIXH, and renamed the town (and district) Pērōz-Šabūr. The ancient name, in a form which precisely corresponds with the Parthian spelling Mšyk, is mentioned by Pliny, v, 21, 4 (§ 90): scinditur Euphrates a Zeugmate dlxxxxiv mp. circa vicum Massicen, et parte laeva in Mesopotamiam vadit per ipsam Seleuciam, circa eam praefluenti infusus Tigri; dexteriore autem alveo Babylonem … petit; a later passage, vi, 30, 3 (§ 120), indicates that the left branch referred to is the Narmalchas, the ‘Royal River’. The identity of Massice with Pēroz-Šabūr could have been recognized, even without the help of the inscription, by comparing Pliny with Ammianus Marcellinus, who made a statement in similar terms, xxiv, 2, 7, hinc pars fluminis scinditur … ducens ad tractus Babylonos interiores …, alia Naarmalcha nomine … Ctesiphonta praetermeat; the latter branch was crossed by the Roman army, which immediately came upon Pirisabora.

In an earlier study, ‘Assimilation, and the definite nominal particle in Balti Tibetan’ (Sprigg, 1972), I dealt with vowel harmony in words in which the noun is colligated with the definite nominal particle, a particle that has the constant phonetic form po when in junction with the final syllable of a noun ending in a consonant (-Cpo), e.g. smenpo ‘the medicine’ sman, but variable phonetic features where the final syllable of the noun ends in a vowel: a share in the features of the resulting word-final long vowel, either -o: or -u: according to vowel harmony.