This essay analyses the sole extant chapter of a fourth/tenth-century Faḍā'il al-Ṣaḥaba work by the ḥadı̄th critic and scholar Al-Ḥasan ʿAlı̄ ibn ʿUmar ibn Aḥmad Ibn Mahdı̄ ibn Masʿūd al-Dāraquṭnı̄ (d. 385/995). As scholars have noted, faḍā’il literature beyond the chapters on religious merits of the Companions in the Ṣaḥı̄ḥayn is among a number of sub-genres of tradition-based literature (alongside, for example, targhı̄b wa tarhı̄b), which tends largely to be comprised of weak, non-canonical ḥadı̄th. This has generally been interpreted as evidence of the acceptability of “lower standards” for the inclusion of ḥadı̄th in exhortatory or edifying literature (lower when compared to standards for the authentication of ḥadı̄th in relation to law). This conceptualization both centres law as the dominant lens through which to view the reception of ḥadı̄th in general, and contributes to the marginalization of faḍā’il literature as merely folkloric. Using a history of emotions perspective to elucidate the nature and mechanisms of edification and pious instruction in faḍā’il texts, this essay argues that far from being marginal, faḍā’il works were central to the formation of emotional communities and to the construction of pious subjects in the Būyid period. Al-Dāraquṭnı̄'s fragmentary text reflects how a well-known and highly respected fourth-century ḥadı̄th scholar capitalized on the emotional resonances and sectarian ambiguities made available by the abundance of non-legal and non-prophetic ḥadı̄th generated during the second and third centuries ah.

The dissolution of ideological identities that had seemed since the middle of this century fairly stable would appear to be one of the characteristics of our times. In place of the struggle between Capitalism and Communism, Samuel Huntingdon would wish to erect a more fragmented competition between civilizational blocs, bearing such labels as the Confucian East and the World of Islam. Yet even such an analysis seems already distinctly old-fashioned, imposing a questionable cultural stability on more labile phenomena. As an alternative Lionel Jensen suggests that the first of these labels, at any rate, is in no small measure the creation of early European observers, and that far from basking in any unproblematic sense of identity, some of the best minds of twentieth-century China actually expended much of their ink on a highly problematic search for the origins of an identifiable Confucian group in the early Chinese past.

A Buddhist practice existed whereby a dānapati, patron, had a manuscript of a Buddhist religious text copied, into which at the appropriate place his personal name was inserted with Sanskrit inflexion. In the Buddhist Sanskrit Sitātapatra-sūtra, the ‘Book of the white umbrella’, Stein manuscript S 2529, two personal names are inserted. In lines 45–6 occurs aṣṭānā mahāgrrahāṇā vaidhvasanakara hu ttrū 〈rakṣa rakṣa〉 mama vaṣayānasya ‘O destroyer of the eight great ravishers, hūṃ trūṃ. Protect, protect me Yaṣayāna’. In lines 48, 70, 88, 117 the name is Sīdyākaraca. Here we read:

48 auma svasta〈ka〉ra bavattū mama sīdyākaracasya

70 rakṣa rakṣa mama sīdyākaracasya:

88 ye ke cai salvā mama sīdyākaracasya ∥

117: rakṣa rakṣa mama sīdyākaracasya:

Instead of a name in line 122 occurs the word īthanāmasya ‘of so-and-so’.

As one reads through the Rigveda the āyú- stand out challenging attention. They are vīprās (8.12.13) and belong to the antiquity of the poets (9.10.6; 9.23.2 prtnasa āyávaḥ). Their activities are clearly to some extent identical with those of the kārú- officials. They even share one verse with these in RV 9.10.6 āpa dvrā matīnm pratn ṛṇvanti kārávaḥ hárasa āyávaḥ ‘the ancient kārú- officiants (and) the āyú- officiants have opened the gates of the formulae for the heat of the bull (soma)’. Both these types of officials thus assist in the production of mantras.

The editions of Sanskrit dramas based entirely on manuscripts written in the local vernacular script, called Ārya Euttu, present interesting subjects for linguistic study. The Prakrit of many of these dramas, and especially the dramas wrongly assigned to Bhāsa, has been examined by various scholars, and the general conclusions derived thence have been utilized as one of the arguments in support of the Bhāsa-theory. But careful study of the original texts and the printed edition of them shows that in transforming the original Malayali script into Devanagari print some liberties have been taken by the local editors, including Mm. Dr. T. Ganapati Sastri, the late lamented editor of the Trivandrum Sanskrit Series. The first thing that arrests the attention of the student who examines the manuscripts is the presence of small circles written by the side of the letters, as for instance in: MUHUoTÅ, EoVĀ, etc. The general principle that has guided the editors has been to double the consonant following the small circle, when it stands by the side of the letter, and to treat it as an anusvāra when it stands above the letter. This procedure of giving two different values to the same symbol is, however, very much open to question.

Having been in the first instance a classical scholar, Wilfred Whiteley well knew how important vernacular texts are for an understanding of a people's thought and values. He was also that rare combination of anthropologist and linguist and saw therefore in texts much more than phonetic, grammatical, lexicographical, and other purely linguistic problems, but also the semantic, which in effect means ethnographical, questions raised by them. He saw clearly that a people's whole way of life, and the way they see it, may be revealed in a single text. Consequently, and apart from their significance for the ethnographer who recorded vernacular texts among (generally) a pre-literate people, they can be, especially if presented in both vernacular and with a competent translation, of considerable pedagogic value, the student asking himself such questions as arise from their content.

The change of p, initial and intervocalic, to h in Kanarese was noticed by Western scholars early. Caldwell says “the initial p of nearly all the words-whether they are pure Dravidian or Sanskrit derivatives-changes to h”. A more careful study of this change of p to h was made by Kittel in his Grammar. He points out that initial p was changed to h in Kēśirāja's time (1260) optionally. But he has not given evidence from the inscriptions to show when p changed to h.