“… desde tempo remoto passa por verdade demonstrada ogrande absurdo de que a lingua desta terra (Goa), a lingua de meio milhão de homens, nem tem gramática nem é susceptível de ser escrita; julgamos que ao menos faremos algum serviço se dissiparmos tão perniciosa ilusão, mostrando que a lingua concani não só tem a sua gramática, como qualquer outra, mas que a mesma gramatica foiem tempo formulada em regras e até impressa.” J. H. da Cunha Rivara, Ensaio Histórico da Lingua Concani, 1857, pg. 1.

The name of Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī naturally appears frequently in early Buddhist texts, and in the Chinese translations a number of transcriptions and translated versions of the name are well known.1 The former need not detain us: with a few variations in the characters chosen, they represent clearly either Prakritic pajāpadī, pajāpadī, or Sanskrit prajāpatī. One Middle Indian version may be singled out as showing a different development:p***e-*** ***ayuâ-dei, i.e. piyāvadī.2 We shall come back to this later.

This article examines the mythical significance of the famous Afghan Kafir ‘Temple of Imra’ described in Robertson's Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush (1896: 389–92) within the cosmology of the Kalasha (‘Kalash Kafirs’) of Chitral in northern Pakistan. It is known as the ‘Temple of Mahandeu’ in Kalasha tradition, and stories about this sanctuary play an important role in the exegesis of all Kalasha rites. It is, indeed, a focal symbol of Kalasha cosmology: the site of an axis mundi linking heaven and earth with the underworld of the deceased, and the primordial domain of major deities. After examining narratives about this temple, I shall discuss several problems in the comparative religions of the Hindu Kush that such traditions help to elucidate. In recognition of the pioneering scholarship on this subject by Wolfgang Lentz (1974) and Lennart Edelberg (et al., 1959), I present here some Kalasha perspectives on an extraordinary Kafir sanctuary (cf. Jettmar, 1986: 50–51). But in discussing its significance in Kalasha cosmology, I also address broader questions about our present conception of religious knowledge in the Hindu Kush, particularly on the comparative ‘mythology’ of the Afghan Kafirs and of their Dardicspeaking neighbours in northern Pakistan

The people whose language forms the subject of this article live in the Belgian Congo, on the sandy plateau immediately to the north-east of Léopoldville. Known to the neighbouring Kongo-speaking tribes as Bamfununga or Bamfunika, they call themselves Bamfinu, and their language Emfinu. Following the usual practice of referring to Bantu languages in English by means of the stem of the vernacular name, this particular language is termed Mfinu.

Although a Bantu language, Mfinu displays a number of features that are not found elsewhere in the Bantu family, except to a certain extent in some of the neighbouring languages.

Kitāb Sulaym is possibly the earliest Shīʿī work in existence and analysis of its constituent reports could shed light on aspects of early Shīʿī thought and doctrine. This paper examines one of its reports on the subject of ikhtilāf in Prophetic ḥadīth between the Shīʿa and their opponents, and the related subjects of the status of the Companions of the Prophet and the Prophet's transmission of his knowledge to ʿAlī. It suggests dates and contexts for the composition of the report and the updating it seems to have undergone. It shows that the report reflects moderate Imāmī attitudes and doctrines similar to those attested for other leading pre-ghayba Imāmīs.

The following paper does not set out to be a comprehensive comparison of tonal systems—it is rather an account of my own experiences with various methods, with special reference to tone-marking in dictionaries and vocabularies. For this reason a certain amount of biographical detail is inevitable.

In preparing a bibliography of the modern South Arabic languages I came across the only document of the dialect of Curia Muria. It is J. G. Hulton's article, “ Notice on the Curia Muria Island,” in the Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, 3 (1840), 183–197.2 This article, in which the author gives a detailed description of the island and its inhabitants, contains a list of 103 words in English, Arabic, and in the dialect of Curia Muria.3

In the following 15 condensed analyses are published some of the many problems arising when the full Indo-Iranian field is considered. Only when all the Iranian evidence is studied together with the Old Indian will it be possible to survey Indo-Iranian as a whole, an indispensable preliminary to the history of the Indo-Iranian vocabulary, and the texts behind. The constant necessity of quoting elementary data indicates how little has yet been garnered into convenient reference books. The workers (and they, too, usually distracted by other tasks) have hitherto been very few.

May (God) bless the beginning (of the text) and favour its ending with good fortune. This is both said and written by Sīdi Sālim in praise of his Shaykh. Shaykh Mā' al-'Aynayn, may God prolong his life.

On 29 June 1881 letters were despatched by a Dunqulāwī ascetic and religious teacher to various notables in the Egyptian Sudan. The writer, who had previously been known as Muḥammad Aḥmad b. ‘Abdallāh, announced in these letters what had for some time been an open secret among his followers, namely that he was the Expected Mahdi. Muḥammad Ahmad was by no means an unknown figure. He was at this time approaching 40 years of age. From childhood he had been profoundly devoted to the study of Islam, Ṣufī doctrine, and the ascetic life, although, unlike a number of other Sudanese, he had never proceeded to higher studies at al-Azhar. His experience of the world was limited to the northern and central parts of the Egyptian Sudan.