This article interrogates the early reception history of the late Qing Chinese novel The Travels of Lao Can authored by Liu E (1857–1909). It argues that for decades this novel was widely read as a book of prophecy that revealed the future of China based on traditional Chinese occult wisdom. It was this alleged mystique, instead of its literary merits, that accounted for the high popularity of the text in the late Qing and Republican book market. This argument is predicated upon the discovery and reappraisal of a 1916 “fake edition” of the book until now unremarked in Chinese literary historiography. Investigating this forgery reveals that it was arguably the most widely circulated edition of The Travels of Lao Can in the Republican period. Bound with a newly fabricated sequel that explicitly manifested its “divinatory efficacy”, this edition greatly shaped the popular reception of the text as a book of prophecy. Revisiting this “fake edition” and the forgotten stories behind it not only enables the rereading of The Travels of Lao Can in its full complexity, but also points to deeper questions about the relationship between print culture, literary consumption, and the production of occult knowledge in China's modern transition.

Although Chinese was not an official language in early colonial Hong Kong, translation between English and Chinese played a crucial role in daily life and politics. The first part of this article discusses the making of some important translated terms for government units and departments as well as foreign consulates in Hong Kong. In doing so, it accounts for different approaches in translation and lexical innovation, and their historical significance behind the making of newly translated terms. The second part of this article investigates salient features of the translation experiment initiated by Governor John Pope Hennessy (1834–1891; term of office: 1877–1882). The experiment aimed at strengthening the political legitimacy and colonial governability in Hong Kong. In return, the social standing of Chinese community leaders was duly recognised through their association with translation projects between English and Chinese, and the presentation of translated messages at important occasions hosted by Government House.

This article examines a collection of manuscripts of travel writings kept in the National Library of China. Many of the texts are copies of articles and travel accounts published in magazines, papers, or books during the first decade of the Republican period. Although the majority of texts are by Chinese authors, nine of them can be verified as translations from other languages, even though almost no information is available regarding their source texts and original authors. Identifying the sources of the translations permits a better understanding of how this group of writings ended up as a collection. More importantly, we can consider how their content and function changed when they became adopted into an entirely different environment.

The British territories of greater Southeast Asia were administratively connected to London and Calcutta, and while local censuses show that these centres could exert some influence at the furthest peripheries of the Empire, a close analysis of the ways in which race and religion were approached in the classification of colonial subjects in Southeast Asia shows peculiarities specific to the region.

In this article I argue that the demographic and socio-political contexts of British Burma and Malaya (with references to Hong Kong) led to a framing of ‘race’ that challenged European ‘scientific’ definitions and embraced instead the interweaving of multiple aspects of an individual's identity, most prominently religion. This shift, potentially empowering as reflective of local understandings of belonging, and an improvement from the period's anthropometric framework, was to backfire, however. With the emergence of nationalism, majoritarian identities came to be homogenised in these ethno-religious intersectional communities, marginalising and excluding those who did not fit.

The present note offers a new, and hopefully more nuanced, reading for a cryptic marginal legend on an issue of the Umayyad-era rebel ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ashʿath (d. circa 85 ah/704 ce). Comparing this legend with several marginal legends of like character, and contextualising the formulae within contemporary religious idiom as expressed in late ancient Arabic-Islamic epigraphy, it is argued that all these legends contain proper nouns invariably belonging to the issuing authority, in conjunction with invocations addressed to God, in an attempt to establish a hierarchic relationship between the two. Drawing on literary sources, it is then demonstrated that the legend of the Ibn al-Ashʿath issue does indeed mention the name of an individual, the local governor, Kharasha ibn Masʿūd ibn Wathīma, a new name in the repertoire of governors known through Arab-Sasanian coinage. Based on these results, a case for further reliance on literary, epigraphic, papyrological, and other forms of evidence in the study of numismatics is made. A new chronology, based on numismatic evidence, for Ibn al-Ashʿath's rebellion is also proposed.

Literary sources of the classical era (first-fifth centuries), both Greco-Roman and Jewish, indicate that snakes were used for different purposes, such as for medicine, as raw materials for manufacturing objects, and as pets. This article discusses the use of snakes to deal with pests in the ancient homes as reflected in the Talmudic sources as well as in classical literature. The Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi) brings a story of how a house snake helped a family locate a wild snake that entered the house and left its venom in the food. The impression is that the origin of the story is from a non-Jewish environment, and not necessarily from Eretz Israel. It is not impossible that the story is one version of stories about Aesculapian snakes that helped exterminate and drive away pests, as related by Pliny. This narrative variation was absorbed by the sages from their own non-Jewish environment, who adapted the story to the religious-educational messages that they sought to convey. It seems that the practice of using snakes to exterminate domestic pests was relatively limited and less common than that of small predators, such as cats, mongooses or weasels.

This essay offers a codicological analysis of three manuscripts—Bühler 70a (Ms. 7089), Bühler 70b (Ms. 7304) and Bühler 70c (Ms. 7303)—of the British Library, which contain some panegyrics composed by Rudra Kavi (fl. 1570s–1650s). Based on a critical appraisal of handwriting, colophons, watermark and other textual attributes, this essay shows that the three Bühler manuscripts constitute a composite volume of an incomplete anthology of Rudra's panegyric poems. Furthermore, it corroborates how deftly and faithfully all three manuscripts were copied by just one scribe sometime between 1840 and 1880. His exemplar, however, was a draft edition of a few unfinished panegyrics that the poet had been composing simultaneously in praise of some prominent members of the Mughal elite. These findings about the material production and reception history of the Bühler manuscripts illuminate both the craft of an adept scribe and the creative imaginings of a court-poet. For want of a rigorous codicological analysis, previous scholarship has held the scribe responsible for the ‘fragmentary’ and ‘corrupt’ condition of these manuscripts and applauded the Brahmin poet for his literary prowess. This essay distances itself from such unwarranted privileging of a court-poet and marginalisation of a skilled scribe. Instead, it seeks codicological and textual evidence in determining the roles played by poets and scribes in the production of literary manuscripts. This essay ultimately reaffirms the value of codicological reflections in the fields of South Asian historiography and literary studies.

The celebrated universal Islamic history, Mīrkhwānd's Tārīkh-i Rauḍat al-ṣafā, written in Herat in the late Timurid period, became a model for later Persian histories, but has not yet been the subject of any substantial critical analysis as a work of historical literature, or in terms of its manuscript transmission. Although numerous copies exist of different volumes of the text, only a handful have been illustrated, providing another dimension to the reception and ‘reading' of the chronicle. This paper focuses on the fourth volume of Mīrkhwānd's history, on the Persian dynasties up to the rise of Timur, four copies of which have been illustrated, among them the Royal Asiatic Society’s manuscript no. P. 38. After detailing the ten pictures in the manuscript, the article concludes with a discussion of their character and purpose.

This article examines the linked sets of paintings commonly known as the “small Guler” Rāmāyaṇa by Paṇḍit Seu, the “Mankot” Rāmāyaṇa and the “Siege of Laṅkā” by Mānaku in the light of the text from the Vālmīki Rāmayaṇa on the versos of the paintings. This allows significant conclusions about the intentions behind their production and the original extent of each set.

This paper discusses discourse features such as tail-head linkage and repetition, development devices, associative strategies and subordination in oral narrative texts in the Koroshi (KoB), Sistani (SiB), and Coastal (CoB) dialects of Balochi, all of which belong to the North-West branch of the Iranian language family. The frequency with which these features vary with the dialect, and the variation can be attributed to different stages of orality. Three stages have been identified, with CoB and SiB at the ends of the cline and KoB located in between. CoB is the most conservative dialect, as different aspects of its grammar also show; it demonstrates a pure orality state by its frequent use of tail-head linkage, repetition and juxtaposition, and by the relative infrequency with which it employs associative and subordination strategies. SiB and its close relation Turkmenistan Balochi [TB])1 use associative and subordination strategies more frequently, have fully lexicalised development devices and seldom employs tail-head linkage, repetition and juxtaposition. This loss of oral techniques demonstrates that the state of narration in SiB has switched from oral to written style. Finally, KoB represents a language in a state of transition by using more unmarked tail-head linkage, repetition and juxtaposition and by a strong tendency to employ subordination strategies.

This article proposes a re-examination of the phases of construction and decoration at the shrine of ‘Abd al-Samad in Natanz and demonstrates that the core fabric and elements of architectural revetments of the shrine are datable to the Seljuq period (431-590/1040-1194), or slightly later. The structure was repurposed and redecorated, including the addition of extensive lustre tiles and stucco, for ‘Abd al-Samad by Zayn al-Din al-Mastari in the early years of the fourteenth century in a series of separate phases. Particular attention is focused on the nature of the original decoration of the shrine, revealed beneath the mortar which held the, now largely removed, Ilkhanid tilework in place. Scrutiny of the decorative interventions illustrates that the application of lustre revetments in the shrine also determined a major change of the function of the monument, from a simple burial structure into a pilgrimage centre in its own right.

Abul A‘la Maududi explicitly built on Islamic ideas of equality to critique nationalism and modern racism. How then could he reject the idea of social equality between men and women? This is particularly puzzling given his noticeable employment of a Marxist critique of the marketisation of society and liberal conceptions of freedom in his controversial 1939 book Pardah. Parsing out the structure of his argument in Pardah in some detail and emphasising the hitherto understudied engagement with Marxist ideas in his thought, this article shows that Maududi rejected a specific vision of social equality, where equality amounts to exchangeability. His use of Marxist ideas to non-Marxist ends was in large part a result of his assessment of Marx as a capable historian but a flawed philosopher, and more fundamentally a very different conception of society to the Marxist one. Maududi relied on his by then well-developed concept of divine sovereignty to carry much of the conceptual burden regarding his critique of, as well as alternatives to, social equality.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the process of community-centric awakening was producing the politics of religious identity, mobilisations, and mutual cultural contests between different communities. Punjab being a province that was inhabited mostly by Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs witnessed an identity based triangular contest between these religious communities where the political leadership of each community picked up cultural symbols to mobilise, organise, and consolidate their respective constituencies. While presenting an account of the symbolic manoeuvrings around jhatka and tobacco in the politics of Sikh identity during the colonial and post-colonial contexts respectively, this article examines the role of symbols in community-centric discourses wherein cultural differences are transformed into cultural discord or antagonism. Here, it is argued that the meanings communicated and deciphered through such symbols need to be comprehended by locating their articulations in the field of inter-community power relations.

The immensity of the corpus and diversity of genres of Classical New Persian in Judeo-Persian garb is remarkable, comprising a wide-ranging multitude of genres from translations of the Tanakh and rabbinic works to chronicles, lexicographies, religious poetry, translations of medieval Hebrew poems, and a large corpus of non-Jewish Classical Persian literature transcribed in Hebrew script. Yet, Judeo-Persian literary corpora remain incompletely catalogued as well as unsatisfactorily studied. While detailed studies of the genres of Judeo-Persian literature-in-transcription, as well as comparisons with literature in the common Perso-Arabic script, are still desiderata, this article aims to undertake a preliminary survey of the extant Judeo-Persian versions of the Dīvān of Šams od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ of Shiraz (d. 792/1390) and address some contextual aspects of its popularity among Iranian Jewry.

Based on the first English translation of the Old Tibetan document with the shelf mark Pelliot tibétain 1096 recto, the article analyses the internal organisation of a stage station (sluṅs) in the Central Asian colonial provinces of the Tibetan Empire. It examines officials and offices that constituted a stage station, as well as persons who were using its services. By comparing the information contained in the document with later reports of foreign travellers, the article reconstructs the organisation of a stage station. It also brings to light certain traits that were apparently common to the first historically attested relay system of the Tibetan Empire and the succeeding system introduced by the Mongols during the thirteenth century ce.

Divine sovereignty (ḥākimiyya)—as conceived by Abū al-A‘lā Mawdūdī (1903–79) and popularised by Sayyid Quṭb (1906–66) - has been a central component of Islamist thought. This article investigates the reception of the concept within Shi‘i Islam. As case studies, the article choses two prominent actors in the formative period of Shi‘i Islamism in Iraq: Muḥammad Bāqir al-Ṣadr (1935–80) and Muḥammad Taqī al-Mudarrisī (b. 1945). By discussing their reflections on the nature of an Islamic state, the article pursues three objectives: first, it overcomes a trend in academic scholarship that disregards Sunni influences on the development of Shi‘i Islamism. Second, the article highlights the role that the Iraqi Shi‘i intellectual milieu played in incorporating key Islamist concepts into Shi‘i political thought. Finally, the article demonstrates the different receptions of ḥākimiyya. Bāqir al-Ṣadr uses the ideological repertoire of Islamism to explore in pragmatic terms the parameters that define the state as Islamically legitimate. In contrast, Taqī al-Mudarrisī uses ḥākimiyya to redefine the sovereignty of the state in Islamic terms. He operationalises the concept in a Shi‘i context by arguing that the state must be led by a just jurisconsult (al-faqīh al-‘ādil) who becomes the sole agent of divine sovereignty in the state.

This article explores the engagement of the Pakistani Jamaʿat-i Islami (JI) with the Iranian Revolution. I argue that the Islamist JI was drawn to the events because it reflected a core concern and signature idea of Abu ’l-Aʿla Maududi, namely to establish the sovereignty of God (hakimiyya) on earth. My analysis of various travelogues and JI publications from the 1980s demonstrates that JI observers were deeply familiar with internal revolutionary dynamics and Iran's Shiʿi identity. The prospect of seeing a proper Islamic system in action, with potentially global consequences for their cause, initially crowded out any sectarian concerns for the JI. At the same time, certain JI leaders began to voice criticism of what they perceived as rash revolutionary policies that differed from Maududi's careful, irenic understanding of a proper Islamic revolution. They also took note of sectarian messages that damaged Iran's ecumenical outreach. It was, however, the more general geopolitical climate in the Middle East and South Asia which forced the JI to publicly downplay its ties with Iran. By the late 1980s, being accused of harbouring affinities for the ‘deviant Islam’ of Shiʿism was a charge that had to be avoided at all costs in Pakistan and beyond.

This article discusses some manuscripts copied and described by E. W. West in his Notebooks held at the Royal Asiatic Society, with special reference to the texts contained in the Pahlavi codex MK.

The Middle Persian (MP) verb gumēxtan, gumēz- [gwmyhtn', gymyc-], despite its Indo-Iranian and Indo-European origins, does not offer attestations in Avestan and Old Persian. This is a very peculiar fact, because in particular a nominal derivative of this verbal stem, gumēzišn [gwmyck'], became one of the most sensible technical terms adopted in the framework of the Mazdean cosmology and theology. We can briefly recall that the gumēzišn concerns the ‘state of mixture’, the mélange produced by the irruption of Ahreman in the primordial good creation of Ohrmazd, when he pierced the heavens and entered the world.

This article examines the extent of the concluding section (Y 41) of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti in light of the manuscript evidence and the section's divergent reception in a Middle Persian text known as the “Supplementary Texts to the Šāyest nē Šāyest” (Suppl.ŠnŠ). This investigation will entertain the possibility of an alternative ritual being described in the Suppl.ŠnŠ. Moreover, it argues that the manuscripts transmit the ritual text along with certain variations and repetitions while the descriptions of the extent of each section preserve the necessary boundaries of the text as a textual composition or unit.