The documented history of the theory of the muwashshaḥ and one of its constituent parts, the kharja, spans almost 800 years: from Ion Sanā' al-Mulk (d. 608/1211) to the present day. Apologists for the various theories broadly belong to one of two schools, which for the sake of convenience I shall label ‘integralist’ and ‘partialist’. The integralist view holds that the muwashshaḥ is an indivisible poetic unit with a coherent internal structure; partialists, on the other hand, divide the muwashshaḥ into two separate units where certain linguistic criteria are applicable: the main body of the muwashshaḥ in Classical Arabic and the kharja if it employs a Romance and/or Arabic vernacular.

§1

A Short account of the Kuvalayamālā was given in “An Unpublished Fragment of Paiśācī”, BSOAS., xii, p. 659 foil. It is dated A.D. 778 and is known from two MSS.—J dated A.D. 1083 and P undated, of which P 2 is a copy. The bulk of the work is written in Pāyaya-bhāsā, i.e. Jaina Maharastri. Other styles are used, one of which is Avabbhamsa, which Uddyotana, the author, describes as Sakkaya-Pāy'ubhaya-suddh'āsuddha-paya-samataramgaramgamta vaggiram “A spoken language rippling with even waves of Sanskrit and Prakrit words correct and incorrect”. It is therefore not the classical Apabhramśa of Hemacandra and others, which does not contain Sanskrit words apart from the tatsamas or words common to Sanskrit and Prakrit.

§2

The first and longest fragment is printed by L. B. Gandhi in GOS. 37 (G.), Intro., p. 109. The spelling is much less regular than in the Prakrit preceding and following it, and cannot be ascribed for the most part to clerical errors. The two MSS. do not differ widely. For reasons into which it is unnecessary to enter here it is clear that J and P were copied from the same MS. and neither is dependent upon the other. P 2, although an inferior MS., often usefully supplements J and in the present extract such aid is particularly welcome, as owing to the habit of readers putting a finger on the text where difficulties occur, much of the J palm-leaf has been smudged and would be almost unreadable without the help of P 2.

In Johnson's Standard Swahili-English dictionary (1939) the meaning of the verb-Shika is described as follows:

hold fast, take hold of, keep hold on, seize, grasp, keep. A common word with a wide range of application, e.g. (1) get hold on, press hard on, be on the mind, put in difficulties; (2) keep a hold on, persevere in; (3) hold to, keep to, observe, remember, attend to, obey; (4) determine, resolve, make up the mind to; (5) also as Intrans. have a hold, prevail, be urgent.

The main doctrines of the Shī'a are well known; Ibn Babuye, in his book The Reasons for Laws, gives a more popular view of theology.

The imam

‘Alī said: But for us God would not have created Adam, Eve, paradise, hell, heaven and earth. How shall we not be better than the angels? We knew our Lord before they did, our spirits were the first He created, and He made us speak of His unity. Then he created the angels and, when they saw that our spirits were one light, they glorified us; but we praised God that they might know that we too were created creatures. It is said that God created the five, Muḥammad, ‘Alī, Fāṭima, Ḥasan and Ḥusain seven thousand years before the world; they were before the throne. Ḥusain said: We were forms of light, circling round the throne of the Merciful; we taught the angels to praise, laud and magnify. Another expression is: A brilliant light, which was the substance (clay) of ‘Alī, passed before the angels. God created the hearts and bodies of the prophets from the substance of the highest places (‘illiyūn). An imam said: God created us from the highest places and our spirits from something higher; He created the spirits of our followers from the highest places and their bodies from something lower, so they are kin to us and their hearts yearn towards us. Then God created Adam and placed us in his loins; He commanded the angels to bow down to him to honour us. Their prostration was worship of God and respect and obedience to Adam because we were in his loins.

The British Museum manuscript Or. 8613 (146 folios, probably 5th–11th century) has lost both its beginning and end. Its subject is the doctrine of the Mu'tazila and it is divided into sections each of which begins with the quotation from a book by Abū 'Alī Muḥammad b. Khallād (Fihrist 174); in one place he is called ṣāḥib al-kitāb. The authorities mostly quoted are the two shaikhs, Abū 'Ahī al-Jubbāī and his son Abū Hāshim, the chief judge 'Abd al-jabbār (†415/1024) and Abū Rashīd Sa'īd b. Muḥammad who died somewhat later. He is the latest authority quoted. It is hard to decide to which of the two men Abū 'Alī refers. The MS. has been collated within the last 200 years but no other copy seems to be recorded unless no. 589 in Landberg (MSS. belonging to Maison Brill), Ziyādāt, by Abū Ṭālib Yaḥyā b. Ḥusain to al-uṣūl of Ibn Khallād, is the same work; but if the description ‘giving much information about the Zaidis’ is right, it is another book. The character of the book will be shown by a summary of its contents followed by an abridged translation of one section.

This paper deals with certain features of the Bantu dialect spoken at Machame on the western slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanganyika Territory. It arises very largely as the result of work done in London with the help of Mr. S. J. Ntiro, whose home is in Machame, but in part from observations made in the field during study-leave in Africa. The subject-matter of what follows is narrowly circumscribed, but the treatment is relevant to problems of more general interest in linguistic analysis, especially those involved in the analysis of so-called ‘ tone languages ’.

The material to be considered consists of disyllabic words of which the syntactical function is identical except in so far as they are sub-categorized by features of grammatical concord: it is by reference to this function that these words are here called ‘ nouns ’. They are all equally analysable in terms of a single prefix and a stem.

In his Linguistic Survey of India, Sir George Grierson has drawn attention to the first Hindūstānī grammar, and given someparticulars about its author, Joan Josua Ketelaar, who was a German in the service of the Dutch East India Company. In the presentpaper I wish to supplement the information regarding Ketelaar's career by means of some biographical data mostly drawn from the Company's records preserved in the “ Bijks Archief ” at The Hague.

The three terms which have been made the subject of the following investigation are all to be found in Greek sources. Two of them, γαζαρηνοί and φαρισαῖοι, only occur in biblical or Jewish historical works written in Greek. The third, ὑποκριταί although an old Greek concept, gained prominence mainly because of its occurrence in the Greek Bible in connexion with φαρισαῖοι. The first two terms are but transliterated Hebrew concepts used by the Greek writers as untranslatable loan-words. The third term is an original Greek word.

With this article the series “Zurvanica” comes to an end. There still remain passages in the Dēnkart deserving of attention, notably in the fourth book. The author has, however, found the relevant passages in that book so obscure and so difficult that he cannot undertake to publish a translation of them for a long time yet. In the present article all passages of importance have been collected from the third book. To these have been added the celebrated Daharĩ passage in the Šikand GumāniīVazār and the conclusion of that book. The translation of certain Pahlavī terms has sometimes been a source of embarrassment.

The vocabularies of the present notice are due to Dr. W. M. Strong. They were collected at Panakrusima (Earle Island) in the east-centralpart of the Calyados Chain, about 48 miles south-east of Panaieti(Deboyne Island) and at Panatinani (Joannet Island), about 18 milesto the east, close to North-West Tagula (Sud-Est Island).