Until well within the second quarter of this century, academic sinology in Britain remained the province of a few isolated, if brilliant, amateurs, men who had retired to scholarly pursuits after a lifetime of activity in some other field. They occupied university chairs with distinction, but never attracted many pupils and consequently never established a tradition of exact, professional scholarship. That such a tradition, sound and solid, though still young, exists today, is above all the merit of two scholars who, having left Germany in the years before the second World War, devoted their lives to the service of learning in their adopted country. The late Gustav Haloun enjoyed a short but memorable tenure of the Chair at Cambridge. At London, Walter Simon, whom his friends, colleagues, and former pupils greet with respect and affection on his eightieth birthday with this volume of essays, inspired a new academic professionalism, which was Germanic in the rigour of its philological exactitude, but at the same time humane in its appreciation of the civilization to which the study of language is the key. His immediate monument is the present Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Far East at this School, and it is appropriate that we should take this opportunity of honouring his life's work among us. But the ‘school’ to which he gave life is by no means confined to London. Scholars whom Simon taught or influenced occupy chairs of sinology and other teaching and library posts in this country, in Australia, Canada, and the United States.

During a journey in the Near East I spent some days in Urfa, the ancient Edessa, in the south-east of Turkey, and from there I visited Sumatar Harabesi in the Tektek mountains on 27 and 29 January 1971. The object was to study all known Syriac inscriptions in Urfa and its surroundings, which date from the first three centuries of our era, in situ for their republication in a small corpus. In Sumatar Harabesi my attention was primarily directed upon the inscriptions published by Segal, all situated upon the so-called Central Mount, clearly an ancient cult site. I also visited the cave with bas-reliefs and inscriptions discovered by Pognon. It is now inhabited by a Bedouin family, but in spite of the inconveniences caused by this circumstance, it was possible to read the inscriptions, blackened as they were, by the light of a pocket torch and an oil-lamp, and it was impressive to observe once more how able an epigrapher this French consul was.

Al-Malik al-Mansūr Husām al-Dīn Lāchin al-Manṣsūrī was one of the succession of sultans whose brief reigns occupy the two decades from the death of al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn in 689/1290 to the third accession of his son, al-Nāsir Muhammad, 709/1310. Lāchīn himself reigned little more than two years; his sultanate ended as it had begun in conspiracy and it was distinguished by no outstanding successes. Nevertheless it has some features of significance for the history of the Mamlūk sultanate.

It has been frequently noted by linguists and other observers that in many parts of the Arabic-speaking world, the speech patterns of any one region divide quite sharply into two groups—that of the towns on the one hand, and that of the surrounding countryside on the other. The following is an attempt to show the relationship of two dialects of Arabic spoken in the province of Khūzistān in Iran which can be considered to be representative of urban and rural groups within their area.

The Emperor Tewodros II (1855–68), although remembered to-day mainly as an energetic modernizer, was also involved to a significant degree in the history of traditional Ethiopian libraries.

Tewodros had intended to build a great church dedicated to Mädhane Aläm ‘Saviour of the World’, on Christian ground near the natural fortress of Mäqdäla which had served him as state prison, granary, and family sanctuary no less than as a storehouse for his accumulated treasures.

To do honour to my old friend Walter Simon I have put together here five documents from Central Asia. These are: (1) the photograph of the Turkish text in Khotan Saka script; (2) a Tibetan letter in Khotan Saka script; (3) pieces of document from Kuci (Kucha) inscribed with Kharoṣṭhī and Brahml script; (4) a fragment of Khotan Saka containing the word bisīvrai; and (5) three Tibetan documents with Khotan Saka words.

This paper is intended first as a tribute to my teacher, and second as a small contribution to the perennial discussion of the place or extent of the tragic in Chinese literature. I shall plead limited space as excuse for refraining from philosophical discussion, definition, or comparison with Classical Greek or Shakespearean manifestations of the tragic. My suggestion will be simply that P'i-p'a chi ‘Lute song’ (hereafter ‘Lute’) may be added to Kuan Han-ch'ing's Ton O yuan and the ‘Red chamber dream ‘on that select list of Chinese works which in the conflicts they present and the resolutions they propose tend towards the tragic.

Some years ago while living in Khūzistān in southern Iran, the present writer carried out a number of historical-geographical studies in that province. These investigations included searching for the sites of numerous vanished towns and for other local features now known only from the historical sources. A rapid examination of the principal medieval geographical texts showed that there were three interesting problems of this type relating to the area of Izeh or Mālamīr in northern Khūzistān. The sites in question are the following:

the mausoleum of the Atabegs of the Great Lurs

the whirlpool of Fam al-Bawwāb

the extraordinary bridge called Qanṭāra Khurra Zād.

Perhaps no question of historical-geographical interest relating to the ancient Middle East has been so frequently a subject of inquiry or brought a greater difference of opinion than has that of the location of the countries of Magan and Meluḫḫa. The problems of identification are particularly confused because widely separate areas appear to be indicated at different periods. Old Babylonian and Sumerian references seem to place these regions at the lower end of the Persian Gulf and along the coast of the Indian Ocean beyond, while texts of the late Assyrian period indicate Egypt and Nubia/Ethiopia

Since 1896, when I-ching's famous book on Buddhism in India and South East Asia was made available in an English translation by J. Takakusu, Western Sanskritists have looked with special interest at chapter xxxiv, on the Sanskrit grammarians. The general reaction has been one of disappointment; and for many years most Indologists would have agreed with many of A. Barth's criticisms: ‘Il demeure done bien acquis que, parmi des renseignements du plus grand prix, comme les dates de la Kāçikā Vṛitti et du grammairien Bhartṛihari, I-tsing nous a servi quelques bourdes énormes; par exemple, quand il fait du Mahābhāshya un commentaire sur la Kāçikā Vṛitti; quand il distingue entre le Vākyapadīya de Bhartṛihari et son commentaire sur le Mahābhāshya’; and more besides. Ironically, it is now known that the date given for Bhartṛhari is wrong, and that the latter did write both the Vākyapadīya and a commentary on the Mahābhāṣya. Nevertheless, other errors continue to be quoted.

The aim of this article is to give an account of the considerations which led Amīr ‘Abd al-Rahmān Khān (1880–1901) to encourage Pashtūn migration to northern Afghanistan, the difficulties met in the execution of this policy, and the reasons for its final success. It is hoped that this case study will throw light on some of the domestic problems which faced the Iron Amīr and demonstrate a new aspect of his role in the ‘Great Game’ between Russia and Britain.

The quantity of Oriental, and particularly Indian curiosities brought to the British Isles in two centuries of imperial rule has till very recently exceeded the interest of the educated British public in them. Many have lain unregarded for long periods in the attics and basements of the descendants of those who originally brought them back. Hence amid a mass of worthless or commonplace objects there are still pieces of historical or stylistic interest, in private ownership as well as in our great public collections, which have not yet attracted scholarly interest.

Bintulu, an Austronesian language spoken in the district capital of that name and in several smaller communities in the basin of the Kemena river, Fourth Division, Sarawak, has two previously unrecognized implosive stop phonemes, 6 and d. Where these segments occur in lexical items known to reflect a Proto-Austronesian (PAN) reconstruction, they appear to result from an unconditioned phonemic split of PAN *b, *d, *D, or *j. A hypothesis constructed to account for a wider range of linguistic facts offers an explanation of some of these apparent irregularities. Most if not all residual discrepancies can be accommodated under an ancillary hypothesis of borrowing, independently motivated by various considerations. The case of the Bintulu implosives is of general theoretical interest, as it necessitates modifications in some recent claims regarding the diachronic sources of implosive stops.

The question primarily at issue is whether da and desu in modern, chiefly conversational, Japanese, together with other forms commonly held to belong to paradigms of da+ and desu+ viewed as inflected items, should be called copulative forms; whether, that is to say, they perform the grammatical function of linking a subject with a predicate. The question also concerns combinations consisting of de followed by one of the forms of aru+, arimasu+, or gozaimasu+. In general, these combinations have when positive the same uses and senses as forms of da+ and desu+ and are when negative the only available negative counterparts of those forms. Some attention will be given to what has been said about the verb nari+ (< ni ari+) and the combination nite ari+ of the now obsolete Classical Literary style, though no attempt will be made to reach conclusions about them.

In the history of Indian art some areas are in very much better order than others. For those whose interests are concentrated in the Mughal period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), the study of the history of painting has been vastly advanced in the last 20 or 30 years. Every year increases the great number of paintings known to exist in public or private collections, or passing through the sale-rooms and the stocks of dealers in three continents, and almost every year there are significant discoveries and publications. In the field of Mughal architecture, perhaps, the same rapid progress is not visible. Some attractive coffee-table books figuring it have recently been published but there is a disappointing lack of analytical examination.

In his recent translation for the Hakluyt Society of Ma Huan's Ying-yai sheng-lan, Mr. J. V. G. Mills has published illustrations of four Chinese stellar diagrams and made some comments on them. He has, however, stated that ‘having no astronomy or higher mathematics, he is not competent to express a considered opinion on astronomical difficulties, or to check the consistency of the data of the diagrams’. He hopes ‘that an astronomer will find time to examine these interesting diagrams’.

La famille était la cellule sur laquelle reposait la sociéte chinoise ancienne, a telles enseignes que la piéte filiale se vit extrapoler en loyalisme á l'égard de l'empereur, pére du peuple. Aussi le bouddhisme, qui invitait son clergé a ‘sortir de la famille’ pour s'agreger á une communauté religieuse, indépendante de l'État, ne laissa-t-il pas de poser aux Chinois qui s'y ralliérent bien des problémes douloureux. C'est ce dont témoigne l'insistance qu'ont mise les traducteurs, les commentateurs, les auteurs de textes apocryphes ou populaires, á illustrer les détours auxquels les moines bouddhistes pouvaient recourir pour ‘retribuer’ les bontes qu'ils avaient reçues de leurs parents. La plupart des apocryphes et des élucubrations populaires de ce genre ne nous sont connus que par des manuscrits retrouvés a Tun-huang. Ceux-ci nous ont rendu notamment un certain nombre de tsanqui sont particuliérement touchants par leur ton ingenu et leur langue sans apprets. L'age m'incline a préférer la muse populaire á celle des lettrés, et j'ai choisi l'une de ces pieces pour en offrir une recension et une traduction á mon vieil ami Walter Simon, en y joignant trois autres qui s'en rapprochent étroitement.

The admirable article by Drijvers is a significant contribution to the study of early Syriac texts and certainly calls for further analysis. In the decipherment of lapidary texts the overriding factor is, of course, the script; and, fortunately, monumental Syriac script conforms to a fairly uniform pattern of development. The comments that follow are based principally on epigraphic considerations.

As a small token of my gratitude to Professor Walter Simon for the help that he has ungrudgingly given me over many years, I present to him, with some trepidation, some etymological notes on words which I have encountered during work on the Japanese puppet drama. Even so restricted an investigation has obliged me to consult many long-suffering colleagues at SOAS, and I take this opportunity of thanking them and apologizing for not mentioning them individually.

Closer examination of photographs suggests that the stroke above the first word of inscription 1 is a variation of the three dots usually placed over the letters YH, the abbreviation of the Hebraic tetragrammaton, at the beginning of ecclesiastical documents