The association of man and elephant dates back to remote antiquity. The bones of the animal unearthed at Mohenjodaro, the realistic figurines, and the representations on the seals of the Indus sites point to the beginnings of this fateful friendship; the docility, intelligence, and easy obedience of the elephant must have quickly led to its domestication, once it was known and captured. That the prosperous civilization of the Indus used the elephant for riding and other purposes, appears almost certain; “the representations on the seals show the two breeds recognized today in India, the Kamooria Dhundia with its flat back, square head, and stout legs, and the inferior Meergha, less heavily built and with a sloping back.” The proto-Australoids were perhaps the first people to domesticate and train the elephant; the words gaja and mātaṅga have been traced to the pre-Aryan peoples of India speaking Austric languages.

Students of early Indian history are aware that the Yuga-purāṇa section of the Gārgī-saṁhitā contains an account of the Yavanas or Indo-Bactrian Greeks, important because it speaks of a Yavana invasion of Puṣpapura (i.e. the city of Pāṭaliputra, the capital of the Mauryas) and some other areas apparently forming parts of the Maurya empire, and assigns it to a date shortly after Śāliūka who was a descendant of Aśoka and flourished about 200 b.c. So the Yavanas invaded Pāṭaliputra not long before the Brāhmaṇa general Puṣyamitra killed his master, the last Maurya king Bṛhadratha, and occupied the Maurya throne about 185 b.c. There can be little doubt that the success of the Greeks against the Mauryas is associated with the dynastic revolution, and that the rise of Puṣyamitra was due to the Greek occupation of Maurya territories.

Two pebbles of the nephrite variety of jade were found by the author in 1955 in the river bed of the Teri Toi in Kohat District of former North-West Frontier Province of West Pakistan; the positive identification of the compositions of the pebbles was, however, not made until February, 1962. This appears to be the first authenticated record of either of the true jade minerals (nephrite or jadeite) in Pakistan or India, and the discovery is of significance in relation to the unsolved problem of the origin of the raw material of Indian carved jade.

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 epigraphic and literary records of medieval Hindu India the term sāmanta is used to mean vassals and nobles. Thus the sāmantas were vitally connected with the structure of Indian society. But, in spite of its importance, the term has not received a full-length study.

According to its derivation the term sāmanta is an adjective and means ‘being on all sides’, ‘neighbouring’ or ‘bordering’. In earlier works we find it used in this sense.

The following is an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of Mu'tazilite theology by looking at the political attitudes of its exponents. I am much indebted to H. S. Nyberg's pioneer work, notably his article Mu'tazila in the Encyclopedia of Islam and his edition of Kitāb al-Intiṣār. If different conclusions are reached, that is because his work has made possible a more radical estimate of the sources.

In the vicinity of Aden and Abyan there are many pottery sites of archaeological interest, which are still little known, although this is in no way due to any difficulty in finding the sites for there is usually extensive surface evidence. In fact in some places wind erosion has exposed thick layers of pottery fragments.

This essay is intended to appear in place of a review of two recent publications, one an English version of a famous work of medieval Hebrew poetry, published in this country, and the other a translation of a classic of the middle ages, a treatise in legal prose, issued in the United States. The first is Solomon Ibn Gabirol's (Avicebron's) great religious hymn Kether Malkhuth, The Kingly Crown; the second is Maimonides' Sepher Haphla'ah, The Book of Asseverations, the sixth of the fourteen sections of his halakhic code Mishneh Torah, or Yad hazaqah. The Kether was composed in the eleventh century in Arabic Spain and in the course of time became part of Jewish Synagogue liturgy; the Yad was compiled in the twelfth century in Egypt and soon came to be considered as the authoritative codification of Jewish religious law. Gabirol wrote his poem in the Hebrew idiom of the Bible, a style commonly employed by the poets of his era and area. Maimonides, dealing with talmudic law (and sources) used in his code the Hebrew diction of the post-biblical Mishnah, a literary innovation considering the fact that hitherto rabbinic works had been written in the Aramaic of the Talmud. His contemporary critics, therefore, occasionally also accused him of mistranslating (and halakhically misinterpreting) his Aramaic sources of the Talmud.

This list contains the titles of the Raffles and Farquhar MSS., drawn from Van der Tuuk's catalogue as edited by R. Rost in Miscellaneous Papers relating to Indo-China and the Indian Archipelago, vol. ii, 1887, pp. 1–56 (after the original in JRAS., N.S., vol. ii, pp. 85–135, revised from the Dutch translation in BKI, III, 1, pp. 409–474, and with additional notes by Rost). I have added dates of MSS. and references to Van der Tuuk's notes about them found in some Leiden MSS. For the Maxwell collection this list reproduces Blagden's inventory (JRAS., 1899, pp. 121–129) with small corrections and the addition of other Malay manuscripts since presented by other donors. Some references to printed editions for which the R.A.S. MSS. have been used are also added. In a few cases some new notes about the contents of the texts have been given, mostly taken from information supplied by Sir R. O. Winstedt, who has also made the descriptions of the additional MSS. Maxwell 106 et sqq.

In recent years some admirable attempts have been made to offer a connected story of the development of the science of archaeology in various parts of the world in the last hundred years or so. No comparable account is available of its development in India. Archaeology developed in Denmark, in the Aegean, in Egypt and in Cranborne Chase — as it were, so many laboratories in which the methods and techniques of the new discipline were perfected. The question naturally arises in the mind as to why these methods did not grow in India, where literally hundreds of sites were at the archaeologists' disposal. What circumstances prevailed in the Indian archaeological scene to account for the remarkable delay in introducing developed concepts and techniques? To answer this question we must examine the phase when archaeology in India was dominated by Cunningham and Burgess.

It is common knowledge that religion and politics in Islam are closely related, and that in this relationship, the prevalent mode has been for the man of the sword to dominate the man of the pen. This is so both in theory and practice: passive obedience to the ruler has been erected into a religious duty, while religious dignitaries, muftis, qadls, and such have been usually content to play the rôle of

an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;…

The earliest western mention of the Easter fire seems to be by Fulcher of Chartres in a.d. 1101 and this, like later reports, calls it a miracle. An Arabic account exists in a manuscript in the British Museum of the tatimmat ṣiwān al-ḥikma by 'Alī b. Zaid al-Baihaqī († 1174) though it is not in the Lahore print of this book. It runs:—

He said: How shall I neglect the judgement of the teacher? The fire comes down in the church of the Resurrection in the mosque al-Aqṣā. The story of this fire is that on the night in which God lifted Jesus up to heaven, the night of the 15th of Nisan, in that night every year fire comes down from the ether so that men see it and it lights the lamps of the Church of the Resurrection though there is no window or opening in the roof of this building. But the fire strikes the roof without igniting the timbers and then it lights the lamp and the torches. When dawn comes, it is extinguished. Abū Zaid Yaḥyā b. 'Adī (†974), a pupil of Abū Naṣr al-Fārabī, wrote a book about it and explained that it was a natural occurrence.