The special importance of the Ādi Granth as the defining scripture of the Sikhs has encouraged the production of commentaries whose language and approach reflect changing understandings of the Gurus' teachings over the last four centuries. The oral style of the earlier commentaries which typically demonstrate a catholic inclusiveness towards the wider Indic tradition came largely to be replaced in the twentieth century by the more exclusive approach of Sikh reformist commentators, in part aroused by the dismissive attitudes of the first English translation by Trumpp. Continuing to shape most modern understandings of the scripture, these highly organized commentaries composed in the new idiom of Modern Standard Panjabi are only now beginning to be challenged by new styles of exegesis being pioneered in the Sikh diaspora.

This article offers a comparative examination of the literary responses of four leading early modern Pashtun authors to an armed clash in the Momand tribe in 1711. The responses include a chronicle record in prose (Afżal Khān Khaṫak) and three poems – an elegy (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Momand), a satire (ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Momand), and a war ode (ʿAbd al-Qādir Khaṫak). Discussed as both authentic historical documents and creative writings linked to a local social discourse, these Pashto texts enable us to reassess the intensity of everyday literary communications in Pashtun tribal areas in early modern times and append new factual material to the study of ethno-cultural processes within the Persophone oecumene. The salient stylistic and rhetoric diversity of the texts not only highlights the authors’ individual mindsets and literary techniques, but also provides an insight into a variety of social moods, political attitudes and ethics in the Pashtun traditional society.

The notion of text, along with the issues relating to how variable or fixed a text may be, has been a central issue in the study of oral literature for some time. In this article it will be argued that the notion of the poetic text as being unchangeable is central to Somali maanso poetry, and that such poems are instances of what become, through the composition process, ‘definitive texts’. Arguments in favour of this will be presented from a number of different perspectives. Maanso poetry will be contrasted with traditional hees and the characteristics of both outlined, with a view to showing how the ‘texts’ of each type of poetry differ from an extra-textual viewpoint, that is from the point of view of people's expectations regarding the different types of poetry. Intratextual characteristics will also be mentioned with a view to showing the objectivity and autonomy of maanso definitive texts. The development of modern hees from the heello and also the development of the use of writing in Somali poetry will also be considered and shown to support the idea of the maanso definitive text.

This article introduces an English version (translator unknown) of a Burmese law report: Judge Hpo Hlaing's ruling in Ma Hla v. Ma Wa, delivered in Mandalay in 1877. The judgement contains a paragraph dealing with the sources of Buddhist Law which appears to be a riposte to work published earlier that year in Lower Burma. That the judge was Burma's leading political philosopher gives special resonance to his views on law. His list of five law reports from the Pali canon and related texts is of interest. A reading is advanced in which the five cases link to Burmese ideas about legal pluralism.

This article examines the meanings and etymologies of several problematic Sogdian lexemes.I am very much obliged to Dr. J. Cheung (Leiden), Professor V. Livšic (St. Petersburg), P. Lurje (St. Petersburg), Professor M. Schwartz (Berkeley) and Professor N. Sims-Williams (London) who took pains to read the first drafts of this article and made valuable remarks, to Dr. B. Williams (Berkeley) who was very helpful in the matter of everything Chinese, to M. Ellsworth (Berkeley), A. Kassian (Moscow) and A. Kozák (Berkeley) who corrected my style. Final decisions are, of course, my own and none of those listed above are responsible for my errors. I am also grateful to the Houtan foundation (www.houtan.org) for its generous financial support, without which the completion of this article would hardly have been possible.

This paper offers an analysis and a new translation of an Atharvanic hymn addressed to the goddess of Night, Rātrī, attested in both recensions of the Atharvaveda (AV), in the Śaunakīya, and in the Paippalāda. The translation is accompanied by a philological and text-critical commentary as well as an analysis of some linguistic features of the Vedic language of this period, such as the use of emphatic reflexive pronouns and the periphrastic progressive tense (usually disregarded in standard Vedic grammars).

Different readings of the first and the last phrase of the short Middle Persian text Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr are suggested; these show that its beginning and end are not as strange or exceptional as is suggested in its latest edition. In particular, it is argued here that a Middle Persian translation of the title of the ‘Abbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr can be found in the text.

It would be all but impossible to compile a complete list of all the Arabic writers who used Ibn Isḥāq's Biography of the Prophet. In the Introduction to my translation of his work1 I endeavoured to collect and include anything of importance which other writers had quoted on the authority of Ibn Isḥāq. Among the writers whom I may have overlooked must now be mentioned Abū Nu‘aym Ahmad b. ‘Abdullah al-Ispahānī (d. 430)2 who wrote a book entitled Dalā’ilu'l-Nubၫwa.3