The object of this essay is not so much to propound a new theory of my own, as to draw more prominent attention to one put forth by Mr. Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar in two papers contributed by him to the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1903. They are entitled Gūrjaras and Epigraphic Notes and Questions, No. III. Stated quite briefly, the theory is that the well-known ‘ Kings of Mahodaya ’ were Gūrjaras. Mr. Bhandarkar does not claim the whole credit of it for himself. Much of his material, as he himself admits, has been drawn by him from the Bombay Gazetteer. But he has added to it new material and fresh points of view, and worked up the whole into a consistent theory. To me it appears that, in the main, the theory is sound, and throws unexpected light on a period of Indian history until now very dark. I will first briefly explain the main positions of the theory, as I gather them from the two papers above referred to: the evidence, in detail, must be read in the papers themselves. Next, I shall set out, in detail, such further particulars as a closer examination of the contemporary records of that period appears to me to yield, partly in corroboration, partly in modification of Mr. Bhandarkar's theory.

This paper is about an Old Indian judicial institution called paṇa (“wager”). Within a court proceeding, a judicial wager is a certain sum of money that a conflicting party offers to pay if he ends up losing his case. This paper explains the rationale of judicial wagers by showing that they may signal truthfulness.

This article examines seemingly monotheistic, polytheistic and dualistic features of Zoroastrianism from the point of view of the Zoroastrian creation myth. Exploring the personality of the principal deity, Ahura Mazdā, the origin of the spiritual and material worlds and the worship of the Yazatas, it is argued that Zoroastrianism has its own particular form of monotheism.

The rediscovery, conservation and repositioning of an ancient stone carved Buddha in Leh, Ladakh is one of the most important events in recent years for students of early Tibetan history and religion. Uncovering an inscription next to the carving has made it possible to date this artefact to the eleventh century or even earlier, while deciphering the inscription has confirmed that the figure should be identified as the Buddha Maitreya. This identification permits a better understanding of how the cult of Maitreya among of the emperors of imperial Tibet extended to western Tibet, and how the Maitreya images of western Tibet represent a specific local iconography.

A glance at the List of Members of this Society shows a number of Oriental names from every country between the Danube and the Pacific, which is, in itself, a matter for congratulation. A second will suggest a doubt as to the proper style in which to address one or two of their owners; and a detailed examination is enough, like Colonel Bowie's tooth-pick, “to give a timid man the colic.” The fact is, that we have not yet acquired a system by which we can index these names so as to know at a glance the proper written or spoken address of an Oriental.

It is at a relatively late date that the writing of history begins in the Arabic literature. The Arabs of the earliest period of Islām seem to lack all historical sense, and their theologians proved entirely hostile to historical studies. The impetus towards such investigations was not given until the second half of the second century A.H., when, under the ‘Abbāsides, the Arabs came into close touch with the Sāsānides, whose political ideas and civilization were accepted by the caliphs of Baghdād. Persian customs, Persian knowledge pervaded the empire and brought forth one of the most remarkable phenomena of history: the subjugation of the conqueror by the conquered, possessed of higher intellectual gifts.

The original home of the founders of the royal dynasties of the Hittites was the country of Kussar. It was of Kussar and Kussar only that Khattusilis, the ancestor of Subbi-luliuwas, the founder of the second dynasty, was king (KB. iii, p. 30); so, too, was “the lord” Labarnas or Tabarnas, the founder of the first dynasty (c. 1900 b.c.). From his death-bed in the city of Kussar Khattusilis I issued his last testament to his son and successor Mursilis I, and the only territorial title of the unnamed “great king” in whom Dr. Forrer is probably right in seeing Mursilis I is “king of Kussari”. The state records carefully preserved the annals of a still earlier monarch, Anittas “king of Kussara”, who describes in them his conquest of the Hittite-land.

[The following fragments were found among the papers of the late R. C. Childers. When his last illness overtook him, he was known to have been engaged for some time on a comprehensive handbook of the Pali language. Before, however, he had far proceeded with the elaboration of the greater work, he proposed to bring out an elementary grammar first, to meet the pressing want of intending students of that language. After his death, it was hoped that some other Pali scholar would be found willing to complete the work in either form from the materials collected by Mr. Childers: and with this view these were submitted to Prof. Pischel at Kiel. But as this gentleman has since expressed his intention of publishing a grammar on a plan of his own, it is thought that the following two fragments may, even as such, be of interest to Pali students. Each of them treats of the Sandhi rules, and is complete in itself. But while the former, intended for the shorter work, was left ready for the press, the latter, intended for the larger, had not yet received the benefit of the gifted author's revision.—R. R.]

Tirāhī is a Dardic language of which, till now, hardly anything has been known. Our only materials have been the contents of a short vocabulary compiled by Leech in the year 1838. According to him, its speakers once inhabited the Tirāh country, now the home of the Afrīdi Pathāns, and, in consequence of a feud breaking out between the Ōrakzāīs and the Afrīdīs, they left that tract and settled in the Ningrahār country in independent Afghānistān, where they are now found.

This article explores the processes by which medieval Sufi masters and holy men established themselves through their physical and spatial settings and left their mark on the religious and sacred topography. Focusing on Damascus from the mid-6th/12th to mid-8th/14th centuries under the reign of the Zangids, Ayyubids and early Mamluks. The article offers observations on three parallel developments: the genesis and growth of a local space around masters of the Path, the spread of endowed establishments designed by their founders to support the mystics and their rituals, and the incorporation of venerated shaykhs' tombs and shrines into a growing inventory of regional and local sacred sites. Special emphasis is placed on the variations in the very nature of the local sites and spaces that came to be associated with Sufism, their patterns of development and geographical spread, the functions they served and their symbolic message. Through this investigation, the article casts light on the concrete signs of the creation of diverse Sufi spheres in pre-modern Damascus and develops an understanding of the tangible material manifestations of the overall prominent status that Sufism came to hold during a period of intense religious activity.

When the Tagebuch of Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) was published in 1978, it was widely expected that the work would prove to be a mine of information on the life and career of its celebrated author. What was not expected was that so much of this information should consist of bitter criticism and empassioned invective directed against leading personalities in the social and intellectual circles of Budapest and Hungary, particularly in the Jewish community of which Goldziher himself was a leading member. The contrast between the image of the dispassionate and meticulous researcher presented to the public in so many of Goldziher's seminal studies on the religion and culture of Islam, and that of the outraged and sorrowing diarist manifest in the Tagebuch, was most striking.

In medieval Islamic times and afterwards, the kuttāb was a modest institution for elementary education, with most emphasis being placed on learning the Qurʾān by heart―hence a ‘Qurʾānic school’ in English. Thus far, the topic of the kuttāb has been addressed by only a few modern works, leaving inadequately researched a number of critical related issues. This article is an attempt to give insights into the intellectual development of Muslim pedagogy in such archetypal primary schools. It looks into the teaching programmes and methods adopted for that intellectual preparation as well as their assumptions, rationales, implications, and consequences. The kuttāb's objectives are usually thought of as being universally identical, to help in the formation of a good Muslim. The picture, however, was more multifaceted, and the objectives, as well as means of their realisation, were moulded based on what a ‘good Muslim’ would mean according to those in command. Administrating the katātīb was a source, and a symptom, of competitive rivalry between the different intellectual tendencies in medieval Islam, who jostled for control over these critically significant institutions. The article thus delves into the intellectual, cultural, and socio-economic contexts in which primary education materialised and was practiced in pre-modern Islam.