It is a strange circumstance, yet one immediately observable, that the Parsi community in India, so innovative and so energetically creative in many other respects, has failed to distinguish itself in the sphere of indigenous arts. In the acquisition of tastes and skills in European or hybrid pseudo-Persian architecture, in European-style portraiture, and in Classical music, the Parsis have been diligent, even as they long ago became eloquent masters of the English tongue. What of their arts can properly be called Zoroastrian?

The most exhaustive, if not the best known, source for the history of Shāh Isma'īl the Ṣafavī, is undoubtedly the Ḥabib-us-Siyar of Khwāndamīr. Though this large and important work has been lithographed, both in Ṭihrān and in Bombay, it is but too little known in Europe, where it has generally been regarded as a mere epitome of the Rauzat-uṣ-Ṣafā; whereas, besides being an original source for much valuable biographical and geographical matter, it contains detailed accounts of many little-known dynasties. Khwāndamīr's work is thus in many respects more interesting than the ponderous universal history of his grandfather. Now, there is a work, of which the British Museum possesses one copy, and the Cambridge University Library a second, which is devoted entirely to the biography of Shāh Isma'īl. Neither MS. bears a title nor gives any author's name, and in no part of the work have I been able to find a clue to the author's identity. MS. L bears the title , which is taken from the Epilogue, and in the very last line after we read which, according to Dr. Rieu, is most probably meant for the transcriber and not the author. The work ends with a short account of the accession of Isma'īl's son Ṭahmāsp, and with prayers for the prosperity and long life of the young prince. This would lead one to fix the completion of the history soon after the accession of Ṭahmāsp Mīrzā in a.h. 930. On the other hand, on fol. 277a of MS. L, we are told, in a momentary digression from the main narrative, that Moḥammad Zamān Mīrzā was drowned in the Ganges in the year 947, on the occasion of Humāyūn's retreat from Bengal.

As an account of the tenures in the Dekkan involves the consideration of certain ancient Hindú offices, I beg to offer some preliminary observations which may possibly assist in throwing light on the former state of the country now called Mahárashtra, and its institutions. The Mahrattas do not pretend to be the aborigines; they have a tradition that they came from the north, and that they are of Rájpút origin.

The book I have chosen for my present paper is a sort of Jātaka or Avadāna entitled the “ Hien-yü-Ching,” which Mr. Nanjio has restored into Sanskrit as “ Damamūkasūtra” , or “ Tales of the Wise Man and the Fool.” It will at once remind one of the Tibetan work “ mDsans-blun ” (generally called Dsan-lun), that is, “Der Weise und der Thor,” published by I. J. Schmidt, and afterwards by Schiefner, for this is a popular work and is read by almost every student of Tibetan. The Chinese version was by Hui-hsio , Wei-teh , and others, written during their stay in Karakhodjo, a.d. 445 . There are, however, two texts both assigned to the same translators, one coming down through the Korean Buddhists and the other through the Chinese. It is said in the earliest catalogue in existence (a.d. 520) that the original text was obtained by the translators in Khoten (Kustana, ) and translated by them in the Temple Tien-an-shi, Karakhodjo . As to the Tibetan text we were first informed of its existence by Csoma de Cörösi in the “ Asiatic Researches,” vol. xx, 1836, and seven years later we were furnished with the text by the Russian savants mentioned above.

Tumshuqese is the name proposed by Emmerick, on the analogy of “Khotan: Khotanese”, for the language spoken in the region of Tumshuq, on the northern edge of the Tarim basin in the Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region of China. It is closely related to — though in many respects more archaic than — Khotanese, a Middle Iranian language (like Sogdian, Bactrian, Khwarezmian, Middle Persian and Parthian), the language of Khotan, a country and city on the southern border of the Tarim basin (see, e.g. Emmerick, 1979, 1–5).

The first intimation of any intercourse by embassies between the courts of Dehli and Constantinople occurs in the reign of Suliman the Lawgiver, in the year 1536; when Burhân, the son of Sikandar, the king of Dehli, sought refuge at the Ottoman Porte from the displeasure of Humayun. In Ferdi's excellent history of Sultan Suliman'S reign is the following account of this event:

“Burhan Beg, the son of Sikandar, king of Hindustan, ruined by the “invasions of the Jagataïan armies, fled to the Sublime Porte; where he “was honoured by being allowed to kiss the imperial hand, and was pro-“vided with a daily pension of three hundred aspers.”

The great and increasing importance attaching to the question of Cotton supply renders any remarks which may throw light on the subject, of peculiar interest; the fact that the value of our cotton manufacture now exceeds sixty million pounds sterling annually— consuming therein upwards of four hundred thousand tons of the simple fibre—employing nearly one hundred million pounds sterling of capital—and giving employment directly and indirectly to about four millions of our countrymen, is alone so startling and withal so colossal as almost to defy comprehension. That a fibre so simple, and with us but a century since so little known and appreciated, should now give rise to such wealth and comfort, almost partakes of fiction; and one knows not how sufficiently to praise the ingenuity of Wyatt, Kay, Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton, who led the way to raise the manufacture in little more than a century to its present prodigious proportions. But the extension, not to say the sustenance, of this trade, is primarily dependent upon the supply of the raw material: upon this, the one hundred millions of our capital, and the livelihood of near four millions of our countrymen is dependent, a matter so serious and of such magnitude, as to make the question one of the State; the appalling result only contemplated of one year's stoppage of the supply, is sufficient to force a dread of the slender basis upon which the magnificent fabric depends. Our legislators are however now fully alive to its importance, and it is pleasing to mark the attention the matter receives amid the turmoil of our immense governmental affairs.

One may conclude from the lull in publications on the Gāthic Ahuna Vairiia that a satisfactory understanding of the stanza is at hand. This is, however, not the case. The last substantial treatment of the stanza is from Humbach (1991 II) in his 1991 two-volume edition of the Old Avestan texts. Somewhat less extensive is the discussion we find in Kellens’ and Pirart's monumental three-volume edition and study of the Old Avestan texts (1991). In 1975, Insler published a detailed article on the Ahuna Vairiia. The late 1950s saw the appearance of four studies of the stanza by distinguished Avesta scholars: Benveniste, Humbach, Duchesne-Guillemin and Hinz. As for the number of translations there are, it virtually equals the number of scholars in the field. The source of the difficulties is the syntax of the stanza. The disagreements are due for the most part to the scholar's analysis of syntactic units. Thus the variety of translations may be reduced to a few basic types.

It is very improbable that the Mahmal, which formed such a prominent object in the procession of the “Kiswat en Nebi” at Cairo and the pilgrim caravans from Egypt and Syria, will be seen in the Hejaz again.

There are very strong political and religious reasons against its introduction into the ceremonies at Mecca. As the practice of sending a Mahmal to Mecca was adopted by an Indian Prince and the late Sultan of Darfur, it might be of use to trace the origin and purport of this very curious custom in Islam.

Marco Polo's book — The Travels, The Description of the World, II Milione, or whatever we prefer to call it — is unquestionably the best known of all contemporary sources on that unprecedented historical phenomenon, the Mongol Empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. That is not to say that it is by any means the best source. As history, it cannot compare, for example, with Rashīd al-Dīn's Jāmi' al-tawārīkh, and as a European travel account (if that is what it is), it is not remotely in the same class as Friar William of Rubruck's Itinerarium. Nevertheless, while Friar William may have been completely forgotten and Chinggis Khan remembered only as someone a political reactionary can, by dint of great effort, get himself (or herself, one should hasten to add) to the right of, there are many who know at least something about Marco Polo: perhaps principally the fact that he went to China — as almost everyone has hitherto supposed that he did.

The aim of this article is to describe and explain multiple processes of alphabet reform and romanisation with which Uzbekistan has experimented since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. These reforms, which were debated and implemented in different socio-political and cultural contexts, illustrate essentially different stages of political development and experiences. While in the past reformers tended toward more complicated and rapid reforms, today the scope of change is much more modest and we meet with changes which are simpler and extended over the long term.

The kingdom of Khotan lay 2,628 kilometres to the north-west of the Tang capital at Chang'an. Strategically located in the south-west of the Taklamakan Desert, Khotan was a meeting point of different ethnic groups, languages, cultures and traditions, and was renowned as a centre of Buddhism. With its unique combination of influences, Khotanese society was quite different from that of Turfan to the north of the Taklamakan. In addition to the indigenous practices and traditions that developed in Khotan, this kingdom was always under the influence of major external political powers: Khotan was a vassal kingdom of the Hephtalites or Turkic peoples during the sixth century, came under increasing Chinese influence in the seventh and eighth centuries, was under Tibetan occupation from the 790s to 840s, and thereafter under the Chinese again. The secular documentary evidence from Khotan, written in Khotanese and Chinese, from the seventh and eighth centuries reflects everyday life there, and reveals the impact of Chinese administrative changes on traditional practices.

It is not unlikely that the earliest trace of the Kurds is to be found on a Sumerian clay-tablet, of the third millennium B.C., on which “ the land of Kar-da ” or “ Qar-da ” is mentioned. This “ land of Karda ” adjoined that of the people of Su, who dwelt on the south of Lake Wân, and seems in all probability to have been connected with the Qur-ṭi-e, who lived in the mountains to the west of the same lake, and with whom Tiglath-Pileser I fought; the philological identity of these two names is, however, uncertain, owing to the doubt about the precise value of the palatals and dentals in Sumerian.

When Chinggis Khan died in 1227, his sons inherited different parts of the empire that had been built by their father. Chinggis Khan's second son, Chaghatai (d. c. 1241), became the ruler of the lands of present-day Central Asia, conforming the origin of what became to be known as the Chaghataid Khanate. After the death of its founder, this political entity experienced a long succession crisis that lasted for a decade until a woman, Orghīna Khātūn, took control of the khanate in the name of her son. Although a ruling woman is not an exceptional case in the Mongol empire, she was the first and only woman that ruled over the Chaghataid Khanate, and that did so peacefully and without major upheavals for nine years. Additionally, she did not adopt a passive role but was involved in the running of the khanate, playing her cards in the always-unstable political arena of the Mongol empire. This article looks at the ascension to the throne, the reign and the legacy of this Mongol woman in Mongol Central Asia by contextualising her rule within the history of the region in general and in that of the Mongol empire in particular.

In 1973 a cache of silk manuscripts was discovered in Mawangdui tomb number three in Hunan province. This was the first extensive collection of silk manuscripts unearthed from such an early period: 168 BCE, during the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 202 CE). Guodian village in the province of Hubei was the site of another exciting discovery in October of 1993. Here archaeologists uncovered a tomb they labelled M1 from 300 BCE in the pre-Qin state of Chu that contained texts written on 804 bamboo strips. These two tombs are separated by one of the most significant period-defining events in ancient history, Qin Shihuang's unification of China. Excavated manuscripts now bridge this historic divide. Some are early editions of major works known from the received tradition. Others were previously unknown having been lost for over two millennia. Of the received texts, the Daodejing has been translated into English based on each of the editions found in Mawangdui and Guodian. The only other text that appears in both of these tombs is “The Five Aspects of Conduct”, which will be made widely available to an English speaking audience for the first time at the end of this article.

For nearly nine hundred years Uyğur, the name of a Turkish tribe which played an important part in the history of Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan from the 8th until perhaps the 13th century, and spoke at any rate one of the Turkish dialects which have at one time or another been called Uyğur, has exercised a fatal fascination for those who like to find meanings for Turkish tribal and proper names.

In the early 1830s and 1840s, a British colonial official by the name of Colonel James Low uncovered evidence for an early culture with Indic traits in a river system known as the Bujang Valley. On the west coast of the Thai-Malay peninsula, the Bujang Valley is today located in the Malaysian state of Kedah. However, it wasn't until just before World War II that excavations took place, conducted by H. G. Quaritch Wales and his wife Dorothy. Their discoveries and subsequent publications led to the first real attempts to explain the origins and extent of this civilisation and its place within the larger South and Southeast Asian world. In the intervening years between Quaritch Wales's excavations and the present day, considerably more research has taken place within the Bujang Valley, though this has not been without controversy. Recently claims and counter-claims regarding the antiquity of Hinduism and Buddhism at the site have arisen in some quarters within Malaysia. It therefore seems pertinent that this material be re-evaluated in light of new scholarship and discoveries as well as the prevailing paradigms of interactions between South and Southeast Asia. This paper presents an updated reading of this material and argues that the Bujang Valley should be seen as a cosmopolitan trading port with substantive evidence for the presence of Hinduism and Buddhism.

Ever since the establishment of the Fatimid empire in the early part of the 10th century of the Christian era the origin of its rulers has been the subject of incessant discussion and polemics. This was, for the people of the time, no idle academic question, but one of immediate political importance. The defenders of the declining Abbasid state went to great lengths to discredit the rulers of the dynamic rival caliphate in the West, denouncing them not only as rebels and heretics, but also as impudent swindlers falsely claiming to belong to the house of the Prophet, while they were in reality the offspring of one Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ. The Fatimid rulers, for their part, maintained all along that they did indeed belong to the family of Muḥammad, and traced their lineage, at least from the middle of the 10th century onwards, to Ismā‘īl, the second son and, it was claimed, only legitimate successor of the famous Shi‘ite leader Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq, the great-grandson of ‘All and of Fāṭimah, the Prophet's daughter. The Ismaili descent of these rulers became a matter of faith for their partisans, who survive to the present day, in various branches, proudly identifying themselves precisely as “Ismailis”. Historians, whether in the Muslim world or, later, in the West, have taken sides in this ancient dispute, which flares up again from time to time, often with astonishing ferocity.

Kalīlah wa Dimnah, a compendium of individual tales and short stories, is a very well-known Middle Eastern literary work. Although it can not match the popularity of the ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, it is nevertheless sufficiently well known to have attracted scholarly interest for decades. As a result, a considerable volume of scholarly writing has been produced regarding its origin and importance.

This article focuses on the origin of one story in the work, the trial of Dimnah. Since the Indian original is missing, accepted wisdom attributes the writing of this story to its first Arabic translator, Ibn al-Muqaffac. Although I do not challenge this view, I argue that there could be an Urtext in Middle Persian which was later rewritten by the famous translator. In what follows, this article provides evidence for this hypothesis from what at first glance might be considered a surprising perspective – Sasanian legal history.