The British Museum has a manuscript (Or. 12781), a long pamphlet of 82 folios, octavo size; folio 1r carries the title and 82v is blank. The page has 13 lines of big writing with 10 or 11 words to the line. It is modern with no author's name or indication of source; the title is “The book of refutation of the heretics, entitled al-sawād al-a‘zam according to the doctrine of the most great imām, Abū Ḥanīfa”. The author is Abu'l-Qāsim Isḥāq b. Muḥammad al-Māturīdī († 342). He may have been a brother of the more celebrated al-Māturīdī who was the founder of the school; at any rate, he studied. fiqh including theology under him; he “took taṣawwuf” from Abū Bakr al-Warrāq (Muḥammad b. ‘Umar al-Ḥakīm) and others. It is a popular work addressed to a wide audience; some passages suggest the hedge-preacher rather than the scholar. At the Judgment there will be a bridge in seven divisions, all more slippery than a mirror and darker than night and each with three sections, every one a thousand years long, being climb, descent, and level. On them seven questions will be asked about faith, prayer, fasting, alms, pilgrimage, ablutions, and duty to parents (30r). When Muḥammad went up to heaven God commanded him to fast six months in the year; on the advice of Moses this was cut down to one month (76r). One who has killed 100,000 Muslims and had illicit intercourse with 100,000 Muslim women is still a believer if he repents (1Ov, cf. 80v). The aṣḥāb al-kahf lived 80 years after Jesus (38v); another story is that they met one of His disciples.

In some verses from the Manichaean Middle Persian hymn-cycle, the Gōwišn īg grīw zīndag, the Light Self, or sum of the light elements in the world, speaks in the character both of the sacred fire of the Zoroastrians, and of the pure water reverenced by them. The editors of these verses pointed out that the use of certain technical terms shows that the Manichaean author had an intimate knowledge of Zoroastrian ritual. The publication since then of further Zoroastrian works has established this fact even more plainly; for it is now apparent that the term zōhr, which occurs twice in the text, is used in fact for two separate Zoroastrian offerings, the offering to fire, the ātaš-zōhr, as well as that to water, the āb-zōhr.

In a fragment of the Sogdian translation of the Antirrheticus of Evagrius Ponticus, we encounter:

mzprt šm'ry ptryt qy 'rdywt 't zwyrtt m'x dbtyq qw γw'n s'

for which the original Syriac has:

luqbal ḥušbā ṭama'ā damšaddel umapne Ian tūb Iwāṯ ḥṭīṯā

Prof. Hansen translates, “Gegen den unreinen Gedanken, der uns verlockt(?) und uns wiederum zur Sünde lenkt”. In view of the one-to-one correspondence of all the other Sogdian words with the Syriac, there should be no reservation in equating the new word 'rdyw- with šaddel “beguile, entice, seduce”, therefore “verlockt” is satisfactory; E. Benveniste affirms the identification and translates “appâter, enjôler, δελεχειν”.

To the outside observer the history of Hindu sectarianism often appears as a disorganized tangle, lacking clarity and precision. The whole process is made if anything more complex by the ill-defined relationship of sect and non-sect. As Renou remarks: Though no statistics are available, even for the present day, we have grounds for supposing that the most active sects were themselves only isolated groups within the great body of believers. From another point of view, however, the history is more understandable. A considerable part of sectarian activity during the past 1,500 years has been concerned with the spread and regional development of a single great devotional movement. Seen from this position, the uniformity and theological coherence of the sects, whether they be called Vaiṣṇavite, Śaivite, or by some other name, is remarkable and often overrides the no less real disparities of doctrine or detail at another level. Again, in this process regional variations have arisen in no small measure as a result of the popular character of the writings of particular saints. Thus, for example, Basava or Purandara Dāsa hold pride of place in the Karnāṭka, the one Vīra Śaiva, the other Vaiṣṇava; in Mahārāṣṇra devotion has in no small part been moulded by the thought of Jāân Dev or Tukā Rām; in the Pañjāb by Nānak; and in the Hindī region by Kabīr Dās, Tulsī Dās, and Sūr Dās. Throughout north India the influences which lay behind the movement were largely, but by no means exclusively, Vaiṣṇavite; yet other streams contributed, Śaivite, Buddhist, Tāntrika, Yogī, etc.

In pursuit of my research on the development of mosque architecture with special reference to pre-Mughal Bengal, I came across a number of elegantly carved inscriptions on black basalt in the British Museum. Some of them are in an excellent state of preservation, others merely fragmentary. On the basis of their calligraphic style and material contents, the undated as well as the dated inscriptions have been assigned to the Sultanate of Bengal (a.d. 1338–1538). In the following pages two of these inscriptions are republished with facsimiles.