An Act of Truth is a formal declaration of fact, accompanied by a command or resolution or prayer that the purpose of the agent shall be accomplished. For example, a hunter asks a sage how a certain nymph can be captured, and the sage replies: “Nymphs can be captured by the utterance of a truth; nor, under such circumstances, have they power to vanish from sight.” Accordingly the hunter says to the nymph he desires to capture: “You are the beautiful daughter of King Druma; if this be true, halt! you are bound fast! If it be true that you are the daughter of King Druma, and that you were reared by the king, move not a foot, O fair Mancharā!” By the utterance of this truth on the part of the hunter the nymph addressed is immediately bound fast, and is unable to vanish from sight; but all of her companions vanish into the air.

During the past ten winter seasons the Field Museum – Oxford University Joint Expedition has been conducting archæological excavations on the site of the ancient city of Kish, which according to the texts, was “the first city founded after the Flood”.

The one text that has influenced the history of Jewish – not to mention Christian – mysticism and apocalyptic literature more than any other is undoubtedly the book of Ezekiel; and the single most influential passage in it is undoubtedly the opening chapter, centring on Ezekiel's vision of the “likeness of the glory of God”.

The study of the Mamlūks under the Seljuks is of pivotal significance, because those Mamlūks formed the essential connecting link between their predecessors in the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate and their successors in the Sultanates of the Zangids, the Ayyūbids and the Mamlūks of Egypt and Syria on the one hand, and in the Sultanate of the Ottomans on the other. They were also part of an exceptionally important stage in the ethnic transformation which those Mamlūks underwent with the progress of time.

In the medieval Arab world, gemstones were used as ornaments, set in jewellery, seals, and amulets, and also were investments and status symbols. As a result of the Arab conquests and their access to new regions, the distribution and use of gemstones underwent substantial changes. Our research pieces together information regarding the production, use, trade, tradition and cultural value of gemstones from early Arabic sources; this information is compared with material found in ancient Greek and Roman sources and also European sources from the medieval period.

The most valued stones were corundum, diamond, emerald and pearl. Other stones, such as turquoise, carnelian, garnet, onyx, lazurite and malachite, were less expensive and therefore more popular and common among the middle classes. Jasper, amethyst, and crystal were still cheaper and even more commonly-owned. In this article, we have chosen to present in detail the stories of two of the most exotic, expensive, and therefore most interesting gemstones: the diamond and the corundum.

Through comparison of three poetic texts describing the career of Rana Raj Singh of Mewar (r. 1652–1680), this paper demonstrates how representations of Aurangzeb could vary dramatically even when they were produced for the same Rajput court. Much of the paper focuses on Rāj-vilās, a vernacular-language work with a lengthy account of conflict between Aurangzeb and the Rajput lords of Marwar and Mewar. Rāj-vilās is also noteworthy for its negative portrayal of the Mughal emperor, whom it castigates as a wicked killer of kin who was duplicitous and vengeful. Sometimes thought to be modern constructions, the criticisms of Aurangzeb found in Rāj-vilās reveal that certain ideas about Indian historical figures have continued to be deployed and repurposed over the centuries. Yet Rajput views during Aurangzeb's lifetime were not uniformly unfavourable, as the Sanskrit texts Rāja-ratnākara and Rāja-praśasti attest. Although these two works resembled Rāj-vilās in covering the reign of Rana Raj Singh and were written at roughly the same time, they cast Aurangzeb in a considerably more positive light. This difference can be attributed to the fluctuating political relationship between the Mughal empire and the Mewar kingdom in the decade between 1677 and 1687, underscoring the need to carefully identify the historical contexts within which representations of Aurangzeb were produced and circulated.

One of the most popular modern Korean folktales is Choi Tale Type 500, ‘The People Who Saw a Mirror for the First Time’. This tale however is neither a uniquely Korean nor East Asian tale, but an example of a general class of folktales found throughout the world. In the Aarne-Thompson Index it is classified as tale type 1336A, ‘Man does not Recognize his own Reflection in the Water (Mirror)’. The origins of the modern Korean tale may be traced back to the early years of the transmission and establishment of Buddhism in East Asia. The initial use of this tale in a Buddhist context, as a means to illustrate the illusionary nature of all things, had by the beginning of the twentieth century in Korea changed into providing a strong critique of certain features of contemporary society.

The feudal system of the Mamlūks is of great interest not only because it existed for 267 years in the leading state of the Arab world and left some permanent marks on the subsequent social and economical development of Egypt, Syria and Palestine, but also from the sociological point of view, being the result of an intermixture of three various feudal systems which corresponded to peculiar cultural worlds: the Mongol, the Islamic, and the West European. The fundamental principles were borrowed from the Mongol Empire and consequently all the lawsuits relating to the fiefs were settled not by the qāḍīs and according to the Islamic Law, but by the military judges (ḥujjāb) and according to the laws based upon the rules of Chingiz Khān. The technical terms used in the official Arabic-written documents and in the Arabic literary sources were partly borrowed from the terminology of the Islamic Law, but their sense was considerably removed from their ancient meanings—which may signify that they were now used only as more or less faithful translations of the terms employed in the Turkish dialect of the Mamlūks. The Western feudalism, brought to Syria by the Crusaders, influenced the Mamluk system chiefly through the medium of the native tribal chieftains, who after having been vassals of the kingdom of Jerusalem were gradually becoming feudatories of the Sultan of Cairo, and sometimes received the feudal charters from both powers at the same time. In the charters granted by the Latin rulers of Sidon (in 1256) and Beirut (in 1280) to two chieftains of the Buḥturide family the term “fief” is translated by the word shahāra, which means “a land given in reward for a service”, but the word mulk is also used, as well as the verbs a'ṭā and wahaba which usually refer to the unconditional transfers of the right of possession.

Digests of law collected from all the races of the Malay archipelago fill many printed volumes. In the Malay peninsula they are of three main types. There are digests and tribal sayings that embody the mild indigenous matriarchal law of agricultural clans, the 'adat perpateh or Law of Prime Ministers, found among the Minangkabaus of Sumatra and their colonists in Negri Sembilan. There are digests of patriarchal law deterrent to criminals, the 'adat Temenggong or Law of the Minister for War and Police, evolved for the mixed population of ports, law introduced largely from India along with commerce by traders and adventurers, at first Hindu and later Muslim. (This second type of law may be further divided into general digests of constitutional criminal and civil; law, full of relics of indigenous custom and borrowings from the period of Hindu influence but modelled on text-books of Muslim canon law and containing many of its provisions; secondly, digests of port rules adopted by countries like Acheh and Kedah from regulations of the kind India knew from the days of Chandra Gupta to the time of the Great Moguls; and, thirdly, digests of maritime law compiled, it is said, for Bugis trading vessels.) The last of the main types requires no comment, being Malay translations of orthodox Muslim works of the school of Shafi'i, especially treatises on the law of marriage, divorce, and the legitimacy of children, the only branch of Muslim canon law that Malays have adopted practically unchanged.

This year M. L. Ch. Watelin, director of excavations for the Oxford Field Museum Expedition at Kish, has found another seal of the early Indus Valley civilization at plain level, 9 metres below the surface of the soil. According to our stratifications at this site, the object should be pre-Sargonic, but it was found with a stone pommel bearing an inscription clearly not earlier than Sargon of Agade. Both objects, therefore, may have fallen from above.

This paper presents a new interpretation of the story of Sāvitrī as presented in the Mahābhārata. Sāvitrī is viewed as an intended putrikā, or lineal daughter, for her father, and the death of her husband and the misfortunes of her father-in-law are explained as corollaries of this circumstance; but at the last minute Sāvitrī switches her allegiance to her husband and his line, becoming a pativratā rather than a putrikā. Following a prompt in the Mahābhārata text, the paper concludes with an exploration, on the Sāvitrī model, of Draupadī's relationship to the Pāṇḍava line. The death of the Draupadeyas and the resuscitation of Parikṣit are viewed in terms of a symbolic switch from the putrikā to the pativratā mode of operation.

The question of the origin of music and its powers has always fascinated philosophers and scientists. Here we present a close reading of the view offered by the Persian Muslim philosopher and scientist Ibn Sīnā, also known as Avicenna (980–1037). We draw a parallel between Ibn Sīnā’s account of the senses and mental capacities and his hierarchical, quasi-evolutionary view of the perception of sound in its various communicative roles. We show how Ibn Sīnā positions music at the top of the organisation of sound while drawing a connecting line between the sensory and cognitive, the natural and conventional, and the biological and aesthetic. Although mostly drawing on ideas previously expounded by Aristotle and al-Fārābī, he goes way beyond his predecessors in positioning music within the systems of communication and highlights music's special ability to create a flux of joy and sadness, tension and relaxation, based on the ephemeral character of sound that serves as a connecting thread through all levels of its communicative roles.

This article applies a synthetic approach of philological, religious, philosophical, and cultural studies to explore the original meaning of the terms dao 道 and de 德, two primary concepts in traditional Chinese intellectual history. Through an etymological analysis of the characters dao and de, and supported by both received and discovered texts and materials, this article demonstrates that dao originally represented the spirit of the Pole Star/High God and the movement of Heaven, and de, in relation to dao, originally represented the impartial virtue and power of Heaven. In terms of this new interpretation, the article further discusses the signification of dao and de in the Laozi to uncover the mystic aspects of the text.

The literature on medicine in medieval Muslim countries in general and in Egypt in particular is vast and detailed. Yet study and assessment of the practical aspects of medicine in the Mediterranean society of the Middle Ages requires examination of authentic, practical medical knowledge. At present this can be extracted mainly from the prescriptions found in the Cairo Genizah; these supply a different and valuable dimension. On the importance and the potential of research into the medical aspects of the Genizah documents, mainly prescriptions, Goitein wrote in 1971 that “these prescriptions have to be examined by experts in the history of medicine”.

Debate and controversy have bedevilled the subject of social banditry. The early writing on social banditry saw it as primitive rebellion, as prepolitical and antithetical to class consciousness. Another approach identified it with weak state formation. The literature on South Asia saw social banditry as absent having been eroded by the institutional structure of caste. This article examines and critiques some of these theses on banditry. It argues, firstly, that social banditry can be simultaneous with a phase of intensified state formation. The specific theme investigated here is the interaction of the king, peasant and bandit in an Indian kingdom under late colonialism. A window to this universe is opened up by a folk epic from the oral tradition of a community of Muslims called the Meos. Far from being prepolitical, banditry raises crucial questions with respect to authority and legitimacy. This narrative not only interrogates the legitimacy of kingship, it also challenges the authority of the colonial state. Secondly, the article challenges the argument of South Asian exceptionalism to banditry that is perhaps easier to refute. Thirdly, as this article demonstrates, banditry need not relate to a pre-industrial capitalist world. Our bandit narrative indicates the reverberations of industrialism and attendant exchange relations and institutions in the colony even though it belongs to an area of ‘indirect’ rule.

Arjuna is in many ways the central character of the Mahābhārata, the great Sanskrit epic. By order of birth he is the third among the Pāṇḍavas, the five sons of Pānḍu, who represent the forces of cosmic order. When, after humiliation and exile, the Pānḍ;avas finally triumph, primogeniture prevails, and it is the eldest brother, Yudhisfhira, who takes the throne; but in other respects, Arjuna is usually a more salient figure than his dutiful eldest brother. Thus it is to Arjuna that Krishna addresses his teaching in the Bhagavad Gitā (part of Book 6 of the Epic). Moreover although Pānḍu is pater to the five brothers, each has his own divine genitor, and the genitor of Arjuna is Indra, king of the gods in the classical pantheon. A paper about Arjuna is a paper about a major figure in Hindu tradition.

The extraordinary ascendancy of the Saffarid dynasty began with the meteoric career of its founder, Yaʿqūb b. al-Layth al-Saffār. Yaʿqūb appeared on the historical scene in 238/852 as the member of an Eastern Iranian military band, and ended his days as the ruler over a vast swathe of territory stretching from today's ʿIraq to the borders of today's India; while at least theoretical acknowledgement of his overlordship was found both in Central Asia and the holy cities of Arabia.

In 1893, the Government of India revised the handbook for the officials who conducted its relations with the Indian States. The new edition included a chapter on titles and ceremonial because of “the great importance of these matters in Indian Political business”. Modern scholars agree that what we now call “honours” and “civic ritual” are worthy of study; and Stern's monograph on Jaipur State, and Dirks's on Pudukkottai, are only two of the many recent works that have noted the central role that titles and ceremonial played in the relationship between the British Paramount Power and the princes and chiefs of India.

While preparing a descriptive register of the manuscript fragments recovered by Sir Aurel Stein from the sand-buried ruins of Khadalik in the course of his second tour of exploration in Eastern Turkestan, I have recently discovered a portion of the Sanskrit version of the Sutta Nipāta. It is contained in fragments of five consecutive folios. According to Fausböll, in the reasoned statement in the Introduction to his Translation of the Sutta Nipāta (in SBE., vol. x), certain portions of that work, including the Aṭṭhavagga, are “very old”, containing as they do “some remnants of Primitive Buddhism” (loc. cit., p. xi). It is just the Aṭṭhavagga which happens to be preserved in the fragments, and it is this fact which imparts a particular interest to the discovery.

The Bauddho-Vaishnavas are a sect of Hindus living chiefly within the limits of the Marátha country, though also scattered over Gujaráth, Central India, and the Carnatic, wherever the Marathas have formed settlements. People usually call them Vitthal-Bhaktas, because they worship Vishnu under the form of Pandurang or Vitthal, whose chief temple is at Pandharpur, on the right bank of the Bhima. They delight in calling themselves Vaishnava Vira, yet since there are others to whom this name is equally applicable, it will not serve for a characteristic epithet. But as the worshippers of Pandurang consider their god to be the ninth or Bauddha Avatár of Vishnu, the term Bauddho-Vaishnavas forms a convenient descriptive name for the sect, In the paper on the intermixture of Buddhism with Brahmanism in the religion of the Hindus of the Dakhan, I made particular mention of Vithobá, as this god is most frequently termed. In that paper, I based my observations mainly on oral communications and popular traditions; since that time, however, having had occasion to pay more attention to the literature of the Vitthal-Bhaktas, there appears enough of interesting matter in their writings to merit a particular notice of their religious opinions and history.