This article consists mainly of an annotated transcription of a report on the wartime courses in Japanese at SOAS prepared by Frank Daniels in August 1945. An introduction is provided setting his report in context and providing some of the background relating to the attempts by SOAS, well before the outbreak of war with Japan, to persuade the government that training needed to begin without delay. These attempts were unsuccessful, but Frank Daniels and the teachers assembled to help him, including his Japanese wife and some Japanese released from internment in the UK, successfully developed a teaching programme that went on to train many individuals who were to become the first generation of university Japanologists in the UK.

Like most early Islamic history writing, the tradition surrounding the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 is the product of later debates and priorities rather than a true reflection of eighth-century circumstances. Rather than seek to reconstruct what is lost, this article explores what the sources have to tell us about these later priorities: that is, what the authors, their patrons and their wider environment valued in the history that they retold. Its focus is the conquest of Cordoba, narratives about which entered the tradition in the tenth century, as a result of the patronage of history writing by the Umayyad caliphs ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (r. 912–61) and al-Ḥakam II (r. 961–76). These tenth-century narratives are expressions of both caliphal ideology and the writers' own status in their society.

“It is so published that injury that comes upon the fruits lies upon the holder of the pledge, that which comes upon the stock, lies upon the farmer.”

For the interpretation of graβakāndār, bar and bun, one may refer to Bartholomae, MM., 1, 14.

J.M. Tronson believed that the language of the word-list which he collected in 1856 on the Lower Amur, and published twice in 1859 was Nivkh. Among contemporary scholars, only Roman Jakobson noted that the language of Tronson's word-list is not Nivkh, but Tungusic. Unfortunately, neither Jakobson nor other specialists have specified what language that might be. We confirm E.G. Ravenstein's unnoticed assertion of 1861 that the language is Oroch and, from this new perspective, we offer a critical edition of Tronson's pseudo-Nivkh word-list.

In the notes here published an attempt is made to explore some of the peculiar linguistic problems involved in the interpretation of epigraphic texts. As a subject for study these have certain advantages for the linguist: the material on which he bases his conclusions is, at any given time, complete, reducing the chances of his being afterwards confronted with evidence which he has overlooked; its nature limits the directions which his inquiries can take; and since the text is irrevocably committed to stone, he is not delayed by the possibility of infinitely refining his phonetic and phonological observations. It is a cardinal principle of the present investigations that such texts in dead languages carry an implication of utterance; it is equally cardinal that what that implication is cannot be determined, and is not to be educed.

No one interested in the Classical Hindu Law could read Dr. S. K. Belvalkar's Critical Note to Śāntiparva, Adhyāya 121, śl. 14 and ff., without experiencing a great curiosity. The important account given by Bhīṣma of the nature and purpose of Daṇḍa (Punishment) incidentally produces an Indian counterpart to the Roman jus naturale, the full implications of which deserve investigation elsewhere. Amongst the details we find a description of Daṇḍa as follows:—

nīlōtpala-dala-śyāmaś=caturdaṃṣṭraś=caturbhujaḥ

aṣṭapān=naikanayanaś=śankukarṇōrdhvarōmavān

jaṭī dvi-jihvas tāmrāsyō mṛja-rāja-tanucchadaḥ ētad-rūpaṃ bibharty=ugraṃ Daṇḍō nityaṃ durāvaraḥ.

The oldest texts—Rgveda and Avesta—of the Indie (Indo-aryan) and Iranian languages, which together form the Aryan family, agree in much of their vocabulary, as well as in much of their grammar and syntax.

The body of rules translated below was first discovered by a Park Ranger employed to restore the erstwhile gold-mining town of Barkerville, British Columbia, as an historical monument. Searching for authentic artefacts in an abandoned ‘Chinese Frėemason’ hall in the neighbouring town of Quesnel Forks, he came upon some tattered ceremonial robes, a Chinese book of codes and signs, and a board approximately 10 feet in length inscribed with Chinese characters. These (with some other items) were stored by the ranger at Barkerville, in a box marked ‘unidentified materials’, which was found by the authors in the summer of 1961, while carrying out field research on Chinese social organization in the Cariboo region of British Columbia. Mr. Ho identified the calligraphy on the board as a set of rules of the Chih-kung T'ang.