‘Kusemai’ was the name given to a particular type of musical entertain- ment which flourished in Japan, mainly around Kyōto and Nara, in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.1 The name implies dances (mai) which were peculiar and unconventional (huse), but the peculiarity of the performances lay not so much in the dance as in the music. The musical style of Kusemai put overwhelming emphasis on the beat at the expense of melody, and the novel effect to which this gave rise was sufficient, it seems, to warrant the rather disparaging name. The dance itself was of very minor importance and probably consisted of little more than the performer turning and stamping in time to the music. In Kusemai the song was more important than the dance, and the music of the song more important than the words.

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.

In a previous article discussing the text entitled al-Lughāt fī'l-Qur'ān attributed to Ibn 'Abbās, mention was made of two manuscripts of Gharīb al-Qur'ān also attributed to Ibn 'Abbās. A recent visit to Istanbul allowed an examination of these works, leading to the discovery that, in fact, these manuscripts contain two additional copies of al-Lughāt fī'l-Qur'ān and that an independent text Gharīb al-Qur'ān attributed to Ibn. 'Abbās does not exist. A proliferation of titles has taken place regarding this text and, most significantly of course, around the figure of Ibn 'Abbās and his role in Qur'ānic lexicography.

PROFESSOR J. BLOCH in L'Indo-aryen du Veda aux temps modernes, p. 271 f., has discussed the passage of the passive construction of the past tense of transitive verbs (based on the past participle of Sanskrit) into an active construction in which the verb agrees in number and gender with the logical subject. It is obvious that during the course of this evolution there were periods of fluctuation. An astonishing fluctuation is found in the Rājasthānī MS. Nala kī bāta (R.A.S. Todd Coll. No. 81), written at some date prior to A.D. 1806.

“… 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.

In recent studies of the Tibetan epic, much effort has been spent on analysing the origins and types of material that make up the epic literature, but no study presents an overall view of Ling (Gling) society. In the paper I gave at the second Symposium on the Epic of King Gesar at Lhasa in 1991, I therefore discussed the theoretical basis upon which the whole of Tibetan epic literature is built. I demonstrated that the Tibetan epic reveals a basic principle as well as a ‘chronological order’ in its development. Without this theoretical basis, Tibetan epic literature appears as a tangled web of material which is moreover still growing in complexity.

Ilya eu un verbe indo-iranien pour désigner le labour: RV. imp. ; il s'y rattache des substantifs désignant le sillon: av. karša-, karši- f.; RV. sans doute ŚBr.

Par contre les noms Sanskrits de la charrue n'ont pas de correspondants connus dans l'lran.

L'un de ces noms, qui vit encore aujourd'hui, skr. hala-, n'est pas attesté avant Pānini. Est-il cependant plus ancien que le Sanskrit? On en a proposé plusieurs étymologies indo-européennes, dont malheureusement aucune ne s'impose (v. Walde-Pokorny, Vergl. Wb. der. Indog. Spr., i, p. 629; Scheftelowitz, ZII., ii, p. 278). Le Rgveda offre deux autres noms encore:

In this article, some previously unrecognized facts about the way the morphology of the verb manifests relationships within clauses in Swahili are presented, in the context of current general linguistic interest in functional semantics.

My This paper is a critical evaluation of B. Nothofer's definition of ‘Malayic’ (§1). It also discusses his classification of Iban (or ‘Sea Dayak’) as a separate primary branch in the Malayic language group, and his analysis of some aspects of Iban phonological history (§ 2).

The Malayic language group consists of (literary, standard) Malay and all dialects and languages that are sufficiently close to Malay in order to form an exclusive subgroup with it within the Austronesian language family. In 1985 I finished a PhD thesis which is a phonological, lexical and morphological reconstruction of Proto-Malayic, the hypothetical stock-language of the Malayic subgroup. The reconstruction is made on the basis of six members of the Malayic subgroup, viz. Malay, Minangkabau, Banjarese, Middle Malay (Seraway variant) Iban and Jakartanese. In August 1986 the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in Kuala Lumpur organized the International Workshop on the History of Malay, the contributions to which were published in 1988 (Mohd. Thani Ahmad and Zaini Mohamed Zain, 1988). Nothofer's paper treated the various views on the definition of the Malayic subgroup (Nothofer, 1988). Concerning my 1985 study, Nothofer made the following criticisms: definition of ‘Malayic’ is different from that of previous scholars and I do not explain in which way it differs. More particularly, my definition differs from that of Blust (1981), who also includes the Chamic languages of Vietnam and Rejang.

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.

Svetadvipa, “The White Island,” is the name of an island, situated in the far North, inhabited by Nārāyana and by pious White Men, who worship him. The description of their worship, which can be read in that part of the Śāntiparvan, the twelfth of the Mahābhārata books, devoted to Nārāyana is distinguishable to an obvious degree from the stories of other cults found in the Brahminical literature, and has led researchers of both earlier and more recent date to try certain more or less successful interpretations. The attempt at solving the problem of Śvetadvīpa, which has, during more recent times, attracted the greatest attention, is that of Garbe.

In the seventies and early eighties of the eighteenth century the Secret Committee had shown, as we have seen, an increasing tendency to become subservient to the Ministry, and in consequence the Directors had begun to keep a careful watch on the Committee's activities. Although, in April, 1783, to please Fox they nominated the “Chairs”, Sir Henry Fletcher and Nathaniel Smith, to be the Secret Committee, with authority to conduct the Company's naval and military affairs and to consult with the Ministry, they at the same time cautiously enjoined that such powers should be valid for only one month. These powers were grudgingly renewed monthly until November, when Fox, with the approval of Fletcher, who was one of his best friends and firmest political supporters, produced his India Bills, which sought to destroy the Company's existing home government. That Fletcher had seen and yet silently acquiesced in these revolutíonary Bills was deemed by the majority of the Directors to be a betrayal of his trust as chairman, and they promptly sacked him. So great was the blow to their confidence in the “Chairs” that subsequent to the overthrow of the Coalition in late December they forbade the new Chairmen privately to interview the Ministers unless accompanied by Laurence Sulivan, the senior Director and trusted representative of the Indian interest, the strongest party in the Court.