Every student of Vedic literature is confronted by vast details of an uncommonly complicated ritual. This ritual engrossed the major part of the religious life of a householder. Every small act promised him riches in cattle and progeny, long life and bliss in the next world. On the other hand, the slightest negligence had to be assiduously atoned for, otherwise it would lead him into misery. Thus it is that even the ropes, the brooms, and their numbers have been carefully recorded, the materials of which they were made, their size, and their functions prescribed with the same thoroughness as the crushing of the soma-juice or the coronation of the king.

In recurring, briefly, to the consideration of this expression we may take with us the fact that in the Sārnāth inscription the verb vivāsāy- has been shown to bear the meaning “cause to dwell away”, to dwell, that is, in a place which is anāvāsa, “not a residence,” in the particular case “not a residence of a community of monks”.

Not everyone will agree with the view that the Pilgrimage is Burton's “outstanding contribution to travel literature”. What is beyond dispute is the unique place it occupies among his writings. Conscious of the significant part it played in her husband's life and career, Lady Burton placed it at the head of the Memorial edition of his works. “Although he has been the author of some eighty books and pamphlets”, she wrote, “I think that this original edition of three volumes is the one that his name should live by…” Just over thirty years later, it provided the starting-point for the Royal Asiatic Society's first Burton Memorial Lecture.

The Kyauksè district is at once the smallest and the richest in Upper Burma. Two rivers, the Zawgyi and the Panlaung, enter it from the mountains in the Shan States to the east, and from them spring a number of canal systems. These existed long before the British annexed the country, and tradition ascribes them to the great king Nawyӑta (Anuruddha), who reigned from 1044 to 1077 a.d.

The following sketch of the history of the principality of Pándya, one of the earliest political divisions of southern India, was compiled several years ago, from documents contained in the manuscript collections of the late Colonel Mackenzie. It was prepared before the completion and publication of my catalogue of those collections, and it was my intention to have revised it at some future period, with the assistance of such further materials as a more thorough examination, of its authorities might have supplied. At the same time, I commenced similar epitomes of the history of the other chief states of the Peninsula, purposing in like manner to give them the benefit of future revision and comparison with additional sources of information. Time, however, passes away, and I have not had any opportunity of carrying my intentions into execution. When such an occasion may offer is still uncertain, and I have thought, therefore, that it may not be unacceptable to the Royal Asiatic Society to be put at once in possession of what I have effected, at least as far as relates to the kindom of Pándya. From my subsequent investigation of the Mackenzie Collection, I do not expect that any material accession to our knowledge of the remote condition of the Pándya kingdom will be derived from it; but, at any rate, so much as is here supplied will, in the mean time, contribute to throw some light upon a dark period of Pándya history, and may pave the way for its more complete and more successful elucidation.

The Rev. Dr A.A. Führer lived to the age of seventy-seven. Herein is examined his first forty years. Trained as an Oriental Linguist, Führer eventually found employment as a field archaeologist. Three years after his appointment, the Archaeological Survey of India entered the worst crisis of its existence. Führer reacted in ways incompatible with scholarly integrity. It remains to be seen whether he committed further transgressions and or forgeries during his final thirty-seven years.

The problem tackled in this article is ambitious. Through examination of how certain fundamental teachings of the Buddha originated – the author argues that those teachings must indeed go back to the Buddha himself. Thus the author builds a chain of argument which creates hypothetical links rather than declaring ‘a priori’ that links and connection cannot be established.

This article argues that the Alagaddūpama Sutta, an important early Buddhist text, portrays the Buddha in the process of formulating his thoughts. If so it contradicts the myth that the Buddha awakened to the entire Buddhist Dharma on one occasion, and should be dated to the fourth century bce. Such an antiquity, and peculiar didactic structure suggests that the text contains authentic teachings of the Buddha.

Nicolaus Dicolaus, in a fragment preserved by Strabo, relates “that at Antioch Epidaphne, he fell in with three Indian ambassadors, then on their way to the court of Augustus. They were, as their letter showed, the survivors of a larger embassy, but to the others the length of the journey principally had proved fatal. Their letter was written on parchment (διØθɛρα) and in the name of Porus, and in Greek. It set forth that Porus, though Lord over 600 600 kings, much valued the friendship of, and was ready to open his ‘dominions to, Caesar, and to assist him on all just and lawful occasions. The presents they brought with them were in the charge of eight well-anointed slaves, naked all but their girdles, and consisted of a youth whose arms had been amputated at the shoulders in childhood, a sort of Hermes, some large vipers, a snake ten cubits long, a river tortoise of four cubits, and a partridge somewhat larger than a vulture. With the ambassadors was that Indian, who burned himself at Athens, not to escape from present ills, but because hitherto successful in every thing he had undertaken; he now feared, lest any longer life should bring him misery and disappointment, and so smiling, naked and perfumed, lie leaped into the burning pile. On bis tomb was placed this inscription:—

This paper investigates the nature of the British and Foreign Bible Society's (BFBS) patronage of the translation of the Chinese Union Versions (CUVs), the largest Chinese Protestant Bible translation project initiated by the western Protestant churches in the nineteenth century. Drawing on André Lefevere's concept of patronage, it delves into how the BFBS served as a controlling factor of the translation of the CUV by examining the BFBS's financial support to the translation project, conferment of honorary titles to the translators and ideological influence on the translators’ choice of Greek text as the basis for the CUVs New Testament translation.

An aerial city in the north is detrimental to the court priest; one in the east, is so to the sovereign; one in the south, to the commander of the troops; one in the west, to the prince royal. A white one is pernicious to Brahmans, a crimson one to Kshatriyas, a yellow one to Vaiçyas, and a dusky one to Çûdras.

This article examines the conduct of Richard Goodlad, the East India Company's collector in Rangpur, north Bengal, upon the outbreak of a peasant rebellion in his district during 1783. It uses his reaction to this event to illustrate the nature of the Company's district bureaucracy and its relationship with the central colonial authorities in Calcutta during the later eighteenth century.

The article considers the aims and limitations of the European officials who were sent out to administer Bengal's districts, detailing their priorities and practices within a weak and decentralised state structure. Ultimately it argues that the relationship between these local and central components of the colonial state was, prior to the Company's rise to subcontinental hegemony in the early nineteenth-century, profoundly shaped both by widespread military under-resourcing, and by the primacy of personal interest among its local officials.

Mountbatten once said, “I sincerely hope that His Majesty's Government will support me should this eventuality arise. But I feel that if we can blot out 10,000 fanatics in the first round we may stop four hundred million people from being involved in war”.1 Despite his strong commitment and prompt responses to the communal riots, Mountbatten's inability to prevent the massacres, especially brutal and widespread in the Punjab, and in the rest of the country in general, invited criticism of his role as the last leader of British India. It is important, therefore, to analyze the dynamics of the communal violence in the Punjab and Mountbatten's response to it. This paper attempts to understand Mountbatten's reading of Punjab's communal problem and his efforts to deal with it. It also analyzes the measures he took to curb and eradicate violence which resulted from that. Hence, this study fills an important gap in our existing historical literature and helps in revising prevailing views about Mountbatten's real role in dealing with the communal riots in the Punjab.

This contribution proposes an interpretation of a newly attested divine title of the ancient Arabian deity Ruḍaw, mkśd ‘(the one) from Chaldea’. It explores what sense this title could have had and its implications on our understanding of Ruḍaw's position in the ancient Arabian pantheon, especially in relation to Allāt. It also examines mentions of Ruḍaw in Islamic-period narrative sources and concludes that his cult likely disappeared by Islamic times; tales of the destruction of his cult site reflect the use of the ‘smashing idols’ topos to narrativize the passage from pre-Islam to Islam.

In this paper I postulate that the original function of the srāošāuuarəza- is the recitation of the formula sraōšō astu (srōš barišnīh), and provide an analysis of the function of this formula in the Long Liturgy. It has an Indo-Iranian background and plays an important role in the Long Liturgy. Because of the dependence of previous editions on the exegetical manuscripts, the formula has never been recorded in the different variations it displays in the liturgy. Some instances have never been edited at all, and others only partially, leading to an incorrect understanding of several texts included in this formula. Furthermore, I present some thoughts about the materials, problems, and methods for the study of the Avestan priestly college and its evolution.

This article identifies three Khotanese fragments in the British Library – IOL Khot 25/4, IOL Khot 147/5 (H. 147 NS 106) and Khot missing frags. 3 – as Agrapradīpadhāraṇī, Mahāvaipulya-buddha-Avataṃsaka-sūtra-acintya-visaya-pradesa and Hastikakṣyā, since their parallels have been found in the Chinese canon. The first identification adds one more dhāraṇī text to the current Khotanese Buddhist corpus. The second identification provides a better understanding of the Buddhist connection between Khotan and Central China. The Chinese version was translated by a Khotanese monk named Devendraprajña. The second identification indicates that the text Hastikakṣyā has a Khotanese translation, in addition to a Sanskrit version and two Chinese translations. In sum, this article sheds new light on Buddhist literature in Khotanese and its connection with Buddhist literature in Chinese.

This article discusses a number of nineteenth century playing boards for the Sufi form of the traditional Indian board game of gyān caupar̩ (the Chaupar of Gnosis), from which modern Snakes and Ladders derives. Usually comprising 100 squares inscribed in Persian, the playing area conducts the players hazardously upward from lower spiritual states to the final goal of heaven, according to the throw of dice and sudden demotions or promotions through snakes or ladders. Most surviving examples are held in British collections, including that of the Royal Asiatic Society. Detailed attention is given to a unique, expanded version of the standard Sufi board which came to light a few years ago. Innovative and elaborate in its structure, method of play and nomenclature, it seems however to have been a late and short-lived experiment.