This article provides a contextual analysis of the assassination attempt on the Timurid ruler Shāhrukh's life on 21 February 1427 in Herat. According to the contemporary Timurid chroniclers, Aḥmad-i Lur, a Ḥurūfī by profession, tried to kill Shāhrukh. Having survived the attack with light injuries, Shāhrukh reacted harshly and executed many of those who were accused of conspiring against him. During the interrogations, many other intellectuals who professed as a method of inquiry the ‘ilm-i ḥurūf (the science of letters) were also accused of participating in the conspiracy. In this article, I treat the assassination attempt as a moment of crisis in Timurid politics, study it in relation to the transformation of the intellectual landscape towards the mid-fifteenth century, and provide an in-depth textual and contextual analysis of the historiographical sources as well as the writings of those intellectuals who left a first-hand testimony of the subsequent interrogations. After a close scrutiny of the available evidence, I demonstrate that the interrogations of those intellectuals who practiced the science of letters predated the assassination attempt, and I argue that the assassination attempt was just an episode, albeit an important one, in Shāhrukh's attempts to control and regulate the emerging public sphere in Iran and Central Asia.

This article is concerned with four inscriptions found at Bodhgayā in the nineteenth century that are documented by records kept in the Department of Asia at the British Museum. Two Tibetan inscriptions, probably dating between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, are of special note because they provide the first archaeological evidence for Tibetans at the site. Chinese and Burmese records of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth century are also noted, that of the Song emperor Renzong (1022–63) being illustrated for the first time.

This article uses Chinese sources to argue that a range of gunpowder weapons was already in use in China during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, earlier than previously thought. ‘True firearms’, that is cannon or guns firing solid projectiles, had quite probably been developed by at least as early as 1200 ce.

As is well known, the oldest extant chronicle of Sri Lanka, the Dīpavaṃsa,1 has preserved a succession line of the foremost teachers who transmitted and taught the vinaya in India: Upāli, Dāsaka, Soṇaka, Siggava and Moggaliputta Tissa; the length of time they have been regarded as vinayapāmokkha; the dates when they ordained the next in line and when they entered parinirvāṇa. An intriguing range of dates has been inferred from an interpretation of these figures, especially for dating the death of the historical Buddha. I do not intend to rehearse the whole discussion here but cordially refer to the proceedings of the grand symposium organised by H. Bechert in 1988 at the University of Göttingen.2

Unfortunately the author's the name was misspelt throughout this article and also on the contents page of issue 23 (2). The correct name should have read ‘Masaharu Arakawa’.

Cambridge University Press apologises unreservedly for any inconvenience or embarrassment caused by this error.