The Stoics, according to Seneca and others, divided the whole of creation into two main principles: cause and matter. In a previous article I discussed some words meaning ‘matter’ in Armenian. The time seems ripe to deal with the other half of the universe, though perhaps not exhaustively. A linguistic analysis of the concept “cause” in Armenian involves a consideration of two roots, namely, IE *ai (IH *hei, *a4ei), and Iranian *5kar. Since these, especially the latter, are good examples, in the field of etymology, of the “polycephalous rhizomes” which perplexed an early Armenian translator of Gregory of Nyssa, they lead also to a consideration of words which seem to have very little to do with “cause”.

It has been known for many years that the Mahānubhāvas used ciphers for the transmission of much of their religious literature in Marathi. They devised a number of such ciphers which are known in the sect by names such as sakaḷa, sundarī, anka lipī, etc., but of all these sakala lipī is by far the commonest—no doubt because its extreme simplicity commended it to the scribes. Its invention is traditionally ascribed to Ravalovyāsa, the author of Sahyādrī-varnana, some time around A.D. 1335, but the earliest references to it are in fifteenth-century texts which simply call it ravalobāsāci nāgara līpa. One text of approximately the same date, however, refers to it as sakalita līpa and within the living tradition of the sect it is always known as sakala lipī or sakalī. The name has been variously derived from Old Marathi sakala ‘all’, because it was used throughout the sect, and from Skt. sankalita, because it is full of abbreviations. The former seems more plausible. The cipher was the first to be introduced and is the most widely used, whereas later, more complex ciphers tend to be the private preserve of one or other of the Mahānubhāva āmnāya or sub-sects.

The story of the merchant Nanda is told in Khotanese on a roll now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, P(elliot) 2834. The first five lines are a document, transliterated by our honorand in KT, III, 77. Thereafter comes the Nanda story. The story is incomplete, although the roll is blank at the end and the text finishes in mid-line at 1. 58 with a double daṇḍa. Even the final sentence is incomplete. The reason for this unfortunate circumstance is unknown.

Few phenomena in the modern history of Asia can have been so completely misunderstood by Westerners as the Vietnamese religious (and political) movement known in European languages as ‘Caodaism’. Based upon a syncretic approach to religion, in which a key role is played by spirit-séances, it has inevitably been regarded by Christian writers with the same suspicion (if not contempt) as occidental ‘spiritualism’; and this initial lack of sympathy is compounded by the fact that the spirits who have revealed themselves at Caodaist séances include such familiar figures as Victor Hugo and Jeanne d'Arc. Then there is the show-piece temple of the Caodaists at Tây-Ninh, which drew forth Mr. Graham Greene's description of ‘Christ and Buddha looking down from the roof of the Cathedral on a Walt Disney fantasia of the East, dragons and snakes in Technicolor’. This superficial notion of the religious element in Caodaism fitted in very well with the cynicism of political observers, notably Bernard Fall, who saw in Caodaism no more than a political movement anxious to preserve its private armies and local power, using its religious ideas merely to dupe a credulous peasantry. In these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that the real nature and origins of Caodaism have been lost from view, and even its history has never been adequately summarized in any Western language. The present article will attempt to fill the historical gap, by tracing the history of the religion from 1925 to 1936, and then looking at its origins and antecedents. A subsequent article (to appear in BSOAS, XXXIII, 3, 1970) will analyse the various beliefs which have been incorporated into this essentially syncretic cult.

The onomasticon of the Elamite Fortification tablets from Persepolis, so generously placed at the disposal of Professor Benveniste and myself by Professor Hallock, keeps yielding precious pearls. Benveniste published in 1966 those which he had recognized. In the following year I sent to the printer a list of additional identifications, giving notice of more to follow. The present tribute to one of the giants of Iranian studies, whose massive work, countless discoveries, immense erudition, and many tokens of personal friendship have been a constant source of inspiration to me for decades, brings a selection of further identifications, as well as some revision of earlier views. The need to select was dictated by space-limit. An article containing what had here to be omitted, is being timed so as to appear in TPS shortly after the present one.

Just as there are said to be ‘painters' painters’ and ‘poets' poets’, so too there may be said to be ‘linguists' languages’, and amongst these must without any question be included the languages of the Caucasus. These languages, with their elaborate and unusual phonetic, phonological, and morphological structures, possess a special fascination for professional linguists, from both the practical and the theoretical point of view.

How long did Greek continue to be spoken in north-eastern Afghanistan ? We shall probably never know. Till now Greek inscriptions have only been found on the outskirts of Afghan territory and from pre-Christian times, at Kandahar and at Ai Khanum (second century B.C.). The latter must have been a thoroughly Hellenistic city, and Kandahar also must have had an element in its population speaking or understanding Greek for Aśoka to have inscriptions written there in this language. On coins Greek continued to be used long after the Graeco-Bactrian kings, by the Indo-Parthian and the first Kusana kings. And the position of Greek was at any rate strong enough to induce the Kusānas to use Greek, and not Indian or Aramaic, script for their own language, a script which persevered, in a debased form, down into the ninth century A.D.

The Persian manuscript which is numbered 40912 in the SOAS accessions list is not given a very full description in the card catalogue of the Library. It has been entitled ‘Calligrapher's manual’, its numerous lacunae are referred to, and it is tentatively dated to the early seventeenth century. Since, for all ts defects, one of the two works it contains is an important and apparently unknown treatise on inshā' and bureaucratic practice of the late Safawid period it deserves a more adequate description. The purpose of this communication is to provide that, and to put forward some speculations about the date and authorship of that treatise.

La tradition bouddhique s'est montrée justement sévère à l'endroit de Devadatta, le cousin du buddha Śākyamuni qui, entré dans l'ordre des bhikṣu, essaya de supplanter le Maître à la tête de la Communauté où il se rendit coupable de trois fautes graves: il provoqua un schisme, précipita un rocher du haut d'une montagne pour écraser le Buddha et infligea une blessure mortelle à une religieuse. Finalement, la terre s'entr'ouvrit sous ses pas et il fut précipité vivant dans le grand enfer.

Dans la deuxième décennie du vingtième siècle, l'historiographie s'est penchee sur un genre littéraire qui perdit très tôt la faveur du public dans l'Empire ottoman. II s'agit de chroniques, de proportions plutôt modestes qui relataient, dans un langage simple, sans enjolivures, parfois môme très archaique, l'histoire de la Maison de 'Osmān. Ne satisfaisant pas, à l'a longue, au goût des hommes de lettres, elles furent remplacées par des ouvrages d'un style plus raffiné. Ces chroniques, souvent, ne donnaient aucune indication quant à l'auteur, mais même lorsque celles-ci en mentionnaient le nom, nos connaissances s'arrêtaient là.

VJ 741 ff. rty ZK pr”mn w'n'kw r'y'y' PZY šy ZK ššky ZKw šyšky rt β'y'p'y ‘and the Brahman wept so much that his tears *rolled quickly one upon the other’. So runs Benveniste's translation, while his note suggests more closely the meaning ‘succeed, follow’ or ‘be added’for the verb *'βy' p- (or *βry'p-) ‘not otherwise known’, with a tentative reference to pty'p- ‘reach’. A very similar verb was to be found in ST, n, c 3, 12, however: cywyd pyd'r m't 'zw by'pd'rm 't γrbm. qt bγy xcy wyspw sfrynny ‘for the reason that I have *learnt (erfahren) and know, that God is the creator of all (things)’. by'pd'rm is plainly a preterite formed from the present stem by'p- (v. GMS, § 877, n. 1), since the corresponding past stem would have to be in X -ft, M, B -βt; cf. X ftyp-d'r-.

The corpus of Bactrian, of which KI forms the most important part, is too restricted to enable us to form even a remotely complete picture of its phonemic system and development. This would be the case even if every word had been finally or at any rate plausibly interpreted. As long as we restrict ourselves to the SK inscriptions, the language seems to represent, in the main, one single dialect. But if we include in the term Bactrian everything written in Ir. language and Greek script, from the coins of Kadphises I down to the IT of A.D. 866, it seems reasonable to assume that dialect variants, of chronological or local nature, are to be found. In this paper I shall be dealing mainly with the KI, with only occasional references to other sources. For the interpretation I shall base myself on the work of Henning, Benveniste, and Gershevitch, together with the contributions made by Harmatta and Humbach; and it will be assumed that the reader is conversant with, above all, Henning's interpretation of a substantial part of the text of the inscription.