bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The literary form of prayer: Qur՚ān sūra one, the Lord's Prayer and a Babylonian prayer to the Moon God
Authors: Sperl S.
Published: January 2010

In his article ‘Lecture de la Fātiḥa’ Muhammad Arkoun develops principles for a contemporary rereading of scripture which differ markedly from those of classical exegesis. The latter rests upon the dogmatic certainty that scripture constitutes the only truth and the whole truth; hence it sees its task as rendering this truth accessible by recourse to a wide range of explanatory techniques. Arkoun's principles, on the other hand, are based upon the realization that in the present circumstances man's understanding of himself must be acquired not by remaining within the fold of one assumed source of truth but by transcending the panoply of ‘biophysical, economic, political, linguistic constraints’ which delimit his condition. As result, such knowledge must consist in repeated and risky forays ‘beyond the enclosures which all cultural traditions tend to erect after a phase of intensive elaboration’ (Arkoun, 1982: 50).
Sithila, Kathā, and other Current Topics in Pali
Authors: Wright J. C.
Published: January 2010

The Pali Text Society has most usefully brought together as Collected papers, v, another 16 of K. R. Norman's recent articles on MIA and Pali philological problems; and as Selected papers on Pāli studies, 18 of O. von Hinüber's German-medium articles which, published between 1967 and 1987, have also signally advanced our understanding of the origins and transmission of Pali texts. For the reissue, the latter have been rendered into English, partly by their author, and updated mainly by annotation.
Indexing of Folk and Oral Literature in the Islamdominated Cultural Area
Authors: Jason Heda
Published: January 2010

Galland's translation of the Arabian Nights in the eighteenth century brought to the wider European readership an awareness of the wealth of written folk literature of medieval provenance in the Near and Middle East. During the Romantic movement, popular translations or rewritings from Arabic, Turkish and Persian medieval folk literatures proliferated (see Appendix 1 below, Chauvin, no. 6; Marzolph, no. 10).
Notes on the Khotanese Saṅghāṭasūtra
Authors: Maggi Mauro
Published: January 2010

TheSaṅghāṭasūtra(Sgh) is one of the most extensively preserved Old Khotanese texts, together with theBook of Zambasta(Z) and theSuvarṇabhāsasūtra(Suv).1Unlike Z which is known chiefly from one manuscript and only a few fragmentary variants from other manuscripts, the Sgh is represented by a large number of fragments belonging to several manuscripts. We now have Giotto Canevascini to thank for the publication of virtually all the extant manuscript material belonging to the Khotanese Sgh, originally the author's doctoral dissertation prepared under the supervision of R. E. Emmerick and submitted in 1992 at the University of Hamburg.2It constitutes a major contribution to Khotanese research and to Iranian and Buddhist studies as well: it is of note, for instance, that Canevascini could demonstrate that the oldest manuscript of Sgh already contains textual corruptions revealing that it is actually a copy from a still older manuscript (p. xv), and that his chronological arrangement of the manuscripts provides definitive evidence that the spellings g, ś and ṣ precede, in Old Khotanese, the spellings gg, śś and ṣṣ (pp. xv–xvi) as suggested by E. Leumann,Buddhistische Literatur, nordarisch und deutsch, I. Teil, Nebenstücke(Leipzig, 1920), 92 (cf. Ṡgs., xix).
A sociolinguistic view ofhazlin the Andalusian Arabicmuwashshaḥ
Authors: Hanlon David
Published: January 2010

The documented history of the theory of themuwashshaḥand one of its constituent parts, thekharja, spans almost 800 years: from Ion Sanā' al-Mulk (d. 608/1211) to the present day. Apologists for the various theories broadly belong to one of two schools, which for the sake of convenience I shall label ‘integralist’ and ‘partialist’. The integralist view holds that themuwashshaḥis an indivisible poetic unit with a coherent internal structure; partialists, on the other hand, divide themuwashshaḥinto two separate units where certain linguistic criteria are applicable: the main body of themuwashshaḥin Classical Arabic and thekharjaif it employs a Romance and/or Arabic vernacular.
‘Tea-trading Ship’ and the Tale of Shuang Chien and Su Little Lady
Authors: Dolby William
Published: January 2010

One of the great ‘lost’ stories of Chinese tradition concerned a magistrate, a courtesan, and a tea-smuggler. It was probably based on real-life events, and was one of the most popular tales during the Southern Sung (1127–1279) and Yüan (1280–1368) dynasties. Yet the piecing together of its outline has entailed much effort, much painstaking sifting and mooting. A tentative reconstruction of it runs as follows:
Some thoughts on Lamberti's Die Shinassha-Sprache: a review article
Authors: Hayward R. J.
Published: January 2010

It is hardly possible to praise the work which is the subject of this article too highly. It follows quite rapidly in the wake of a quartet of volumes devoted to the study of the languages of the Horn (Lamberti 1986, 1988a, 1988b; Haberland and Lamberti, 1988), and together with the more recently published Materialien zum Yemsa, (Lamberti, 1993b) constitutes a deeply impressive contribution to this area of scholarship. It is the present writer's long-held opinion that within this field the most pressing need continues to be good synchronic descriptions and dictionaries of the lesser-known languages and dialects. The work in hand meets just that need. As it happens, Shinassha has not been altogether neglected by previous research (cf. Grottanelli, 1941; Plazikowsky Brauner, 1950; Rottland, 1990), but every reader of this book will agree with me when I say that we now have a treatment of the language far beyond anything we have had previously. Indeed, as far as ‘Westkuschitik’ (alias ‘North Omotic’) languages are concerned, this bids well to be the most thoroughgoing description yet. Of course, it goes without saying that, short of reduplicating the researcher's fieldwork, it is impossible for any reader of such a book to vouch for the forms presented; but such is the scrupulous attention to detail in transcription, the accuracy in cross-referencing, and the general internal consistency in this particular work that little doubt could be entertained as to its being anything but authoritative.
Continuity and Change in Yoruba Pottery
Authors: Allsworth-Jones P.
Published: January 2010

Mrs. A.K. Fatunsin's Yoruba pottery (Lagos, 1992) is the outcome of a project funded by the Ford Foundation (grant no. 875–1066) as part of its continuing programme ‘to preserve and interpret diverse aspects of West Africa's cultural heritage’. The intention of the project as suggested to them in 1985 by this author was that it should ‘go beyond the mere collection of artefacts’. Emphasis was to be ‘placed on techniques of pottery manufacture, sources and types of raw material, methods of forming the pots, decoration and firing, as well as forms and functions including the designated names for the pots in the different parts of the Yoruba speaking area.’ Also investigated would be the uses to which the pots were put; and the organization, beliefs and customs of the potters themselves. The monograph resulting from the work would be designed to show pots ‘not just as art objects but as basic components of the entire economic, social, and religious life of the people’.
Free Rhythm: Ethnomusicology and the Study of Music Without Metre
Authors: Clayton Martin R. L.
Published: January 2010

Like many other rhythmic terms, ‘free rhythm’ is widely enough used to be recognized as part of the vocabulary of musicology, without ever having been convincingly studied or even denned. In general, this term and its various synonyms refer to music without metrical organization. ‘Free rhythm’ is an important musical phenomenon which has been largely neglected by the field of ethnomusicology. This paper discusses the deeper theoretical and methodological problems underlying this neglect.
Notes on a recent study of the Topkapi scroll: a review article
Authors: Rogers J. M.
Published: January 2010

Although it is difficult to envisage the history of Islamic art without considering the role of ornament, many distinguished scholars have found it an embarrassment. Professor Necipoğlu's achievement here is to have written an exhaustive historical analysis of the angular interlace (girih) and its 3-dimensional counterpart, the muqarnas and their place in the ornament of Islam as a whole.
A tonal analysis of Gurung, with separate systems for register and contour pitch features
Authors: Sprigg R. K.
Published: January 2010

The Gurung language made itsBulletindébut in 1955 with an article by Burton-Page: ‘Two studies in Gurungkura: I. tone; II. rhotacization and retroflexion’ (BSOAS, 17/1, 1955, 111ff.). Since tone is the subject of one of these studies, it might seem that there would be little point in adding a further study of that same topic, important though it is; but a different dialect can lead to a considerable difference in the appearance of Gurung phonology as a whole, and so, too, can a difference in technique of analysis. As Burton-Page himself writes: ‘it should be mentioned that the material presented here is relevant only to the Ghandrung dialect, which of the four or five major Gurungkura dialects is accorded the greatest prestige-value by the Gurungs themselves’; his informant was G./Lieut. Ganesh Gurung, M.C., 1/2nd K. E. O. Goorkha Rifles (Burton-Page, 1955: 111).
Japanese medical and other books at the Wellcome Institute
Authors: Kornicki P. F.
Published: January 2010

Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936), the founder of the Wellcome Trust, left at his death a superb collection of oriental materials relating to medicine which is now housed in the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London.1 Although he had a keen interest in China, which is reflected in the substantial collection of Chinese materials, he never made any systematic effort to acquire Japanese materials. Nevertheless, the Japanese collection contains a number of rarities and items of bibliographical or medical interest, and the most significant are described below.
The Feng-tao k'o and Printing on Paper in Seventh-Century China
Authors: Barrett T. H.
Published: January 2010

One of the arguments for supposing that the ‘world's earliest printed book’, the Diamond Sūtra in the Stein collection in London, is actually the outcome of a long process of development relies on the very high quality of the images contained in the frontispiece. It is possible, of course, to point to much more crudely formed Buddha images stamped on paper from the same source at Tunhuang, but the dated examples that have been studied are actually later than the Stein Diamond Sūtra itself.1 The practice of printing Buddha images on paper and silk in India is attested in 792 by the Nan-hai chi-kuei nei-fa chuan of I-ching who was in India 673–85, and Paul Pelliot for one was prepared to believe that this practice, using Chinese materials, was originally derived from China itself.2 Frustratingly enough, however, no Chinese source has so far been identified which clearly mentions printing on paper at any point earlier than I-ching's text, which itself does not antedate by more than half a century or so the earliest printed materials we actually possess, notably in the form of a dharaṇī from Korea.3
On the constituent elements of certain sixteenth-century Ottoman documents
Authors: Ménage V. L.
Published: January 2010

The tercentenary year of the second siege of Vienna by the Turks has seen the first-fruits of a long-planned venture, the publication in full of the Ottoman documents preserved in the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv. This first part presents, in facsimile and with full transcription and translation, the texts of 36 documents issued in the name of Süleymān the Magnificent (1520–66), one being addressed to Charles V as ‘King of Spain’, 28 to Ferdinand I as ‘King of Austria’ and later as Emperor, and seven to Ferdinand's son and successor, the Emperor Maximilian. The earliest, a remarkably splendid fragment, is the beginning of afetḥnāme, probably sent from Baghdad in December 1534 to report victories in Persia to Ferdinand as being (ostensibly) a friendly neighbour after the conclusion of peace the previous year; nos. 2–8 relate to negotiations during the war-years 1541–7; nos. 9–15, mainly recriminations over frontier skirmishes but with another finefetḥnāme(no. 11) of 1549, belong to the brief period of uneasy peace; nos. 16–27 concern peace-feelers and embassies during the war-years 1551–62, no. 25 being the 'ahdnāme; a main topic of the remainder is the tribute, while no. 32 is the renewal of the 'ahdnāmeof 1562 in favour of the new emperor Maximilian.
Dharma and Abhidharma
Authors: Bronkhorst Johannes
Published: January 2010

Most commonly it is presented as a list of beneficial psychic characteristics (kuśala dharma) or simply psychic characteristics (dharma). Sometimes practising the items of this list is stated to be a precondition for liberation from the intoxicants (āśrava). Or else the list is said to constitute the ‘cultivation of the road’ (mārgabhāvanā). In a few instances the items of the list are characterized as ‘jewels’ (ratna). This characterization occurs where doctrine and discipline (dharmavinaya) are compared with the ocean, and finds its justification in this comparison.
Swahili gestures: comments (vielezi) and exclamations (viingizi)
Authors: Eastman Carol M. , Omar Yahya Ali
Published: January 2010

In this paper a number of gestures used by Kenya coastal Swahili speakers is described. We describe gestures that are associated with speech in various ways ranging from some requiring speech as they are performed to others referred to via verbs or phrases which are performed non-verbally. We attempt to place the verbal-dependent gestures on a continuum of verbal—non-verbal communication. We also describe verbally-independent gestures and gesturally independent speech forms that function similarly in discourse.
Ontaḍmīn(enjambment) and structural coherence in classical Arabic poetry
Authors: Sanni Amidu
Published: January 2010

The importance of poetry as the chief aesthetic experience of the Arabs as well as the principal repository of materials on their life and thought had long been recognized by the Arab and, following them, non-Arab students of Arabic culture. The fact that all the technical terminologies of Arabic verse which were formalized in ‘ilm al- ‘aruḍ(Prosody) are derived from the components of the bedouin tent—a highly prized possession—indicates the significance of the art to the Arab mind. The pride of place enjoyed by poetry in Arabic literary thought derives primarily from the hieratic idiom associated with it, as well as from its structural coherence, which relies on the harmony of prosodic factors (al-‘awāmilal-‘arūūiyya) associated with poetic praxis.
New studies on the verbal system of Old and Middle Iranian
Authors: Sims-Williams Nicholas
Published: January 2010

Despite the similar titles of the two books reviewed here, they are very different in aims and scope. While Samadi's book is primarily an etymological dictionary of verb forms, Kellens's is in effect the first volume of a comprehensive Avestan grammar, as a companion to which the author promises ‘ in the near future' (p. 435) a complete lexicon of the Avestan verb. What they do have in common, in addition to the relationship in subject-matter indicated by their titles, is a comprehensiveness which ensures that they will both become standard works of reference. It is this characteristic above all which seems to justify reviewing them in more than usual detail.
Verb agreement in Proto-Tibeto-Burman
Authors: DeLancey Scott
Published: January 2010

My purpose in this paper is to outline a preliminary reconstruction scheme for the agreement morphology of the Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB) verb. I will deal with two separable issues: the provenence of the widespread suffixal agreement paradigm, and that of a less widely attested set of prefixes. The suffixal paradigm has, since the work of Bauman (1974, 1975, 1979, see also DeLancey 1980, 1981b) been recognized by some, but by no means all, Tibeto- Burmanists as being reconstructible for PTB. The prefixes, on the other hand, are as far as I know currently universally viewed as of secondary origin (although Bauman (1975) attributes a PTB provenence to one of the morphemes involved, he does not consider it to have been part of an original agreement system). I will show, however, that there is good evidence on which to base an argument that these also are of PTB provenence, and in fact very likely older than the suffixes.
Madrasas in Mecca during the medieval period: a descriptive study based on literary sources
Authors: Mortel Richard T.
Published: January 2010

The madrasa as an institution dedicated to the teaching of one or more of the fourmadhhabs, or schools, of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence, often in conjunction with the ancillary Islamic sciences, including Arabic grammar, the study of quranic exegesis (tafsīr) and Prophetic Traditions (ḥadīth) alongside more secular disciplines such as history, literature, rhetoric, mathematics and astronomy, began to proliferate in the eastern Islamic lands from the fifth century/eleventh century, although its origins are traceable as far back as the early fourth/tenth century in eastern Iran. As the religion of Islam and its accompanying civilization spread into new territories, e.g., Anatolia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent, the institution of the madrasa not only accompanied this diffusion but also lent it active support.
Wealth and the Western Zhou
Authors: Cook Constance A.
Published: January 2010

In stratified societies, accumulated material goods—be they made of metal, stone, cloth, bone, or even foodstuffs—represent the wealth and privilege of the élite within a social hierarchy. Anthropologists have shown that goods symbolic of wealth generally fall between two absolutes: alienable goods (items not tied to social membership and produced for giving, trading, or selling), and inalienable goods (items tied to social membership and imbued with a sense of the sacred history of the owner; relics found or crafted specifically to be treasured and saved). (See Weiner, 1982; Appadurai, 1986: ‘Introduction’.) The value of these objects is a measure of the power of the owner over the acquisition and distribution of desired goods. The objects in turn represent the cycles of production and exchange that provide them with a social value (Webb, 1974: 351–82). This is particularly evident in redistributive economies, such as the Native American societies of the North-West Pacific and South Pacific island communities, or certain highland South-East Asian societies where goods are collected by Big Men or chiefs and redistributed at ritual occasions. Gift-giving, often performed in association with ritual feasts involving lineage representatives, both living and dead, is a feature many of these complex societies share with ancient China.
Evidence for stages of meditation in early Taoism
Authors: Roth Harold D.
Published: January 2010

The role of some form of breathing meditation in most of the world's great mystical traditions has long been known, but few have seen much evidence for this in early Taoism. By ‘early Taoism’ I mean the formative stages of the tradition, from its mysterious origins to the completion of theHuai-nan-Tzu(139 B.C.). Perhaps scholars have seen so little evidence of meditative practice in early Taoism because they have tended to focus almost exclusively on its famous foundational works,Lao-TzuandChuang-Tzuand have, furthermore, tended to treat them as works of abstract philosophy. In my research I have been particularly interested in the experiential basis of the philosophy found in theLao-Tzuand theChuang-Tzuand in a variety of other related texts that have hitherto been generally overlooked as sources for early Taoism. In order to clarify the context for the present investigation of meditative stages, I would like to present briefly the most relevant hypotheses from this research:
A bactrian god
Authors: Sims-Williams Nicholas
Published: January 2010

The Kushan god μοζδοοανο is attested on a group of rare coins of Kanishka I, where he is depicted as a bearded male bearing a trident in his right hand and riding a two-headed horse. It has been universally assumed that the name μοζδοοανο is connected in some way with that of Ahura Mazda, the supreme deity of the Zoroastrian religion, the second element of the Bactrian form being generally interpreted as an epithet meaning ‘victorious’.
Inheritance in Seleucid Babylonia
Authors: McEwan G. J. P.
Published: January 2010

The normal method of settling questions of inheritance in Babylonia was not by testament but according to a division among the male heirs. In legal terms, then, inheritance was normally ab intestato in Babylonia. The regulation of the size of the portions of the various heirs in a family varied according to local custom and regulation. Testaments are known sporadically from Old Assyrian and Middle Assyrian sources but are not found among the documents from Babylonian proper. In place of testaments we find posthumous regulations of inheritance among the heirs and parental regulation of inheritance by means of gift, i.e. donatio mortis causa. Such documents are infrequent, and we must assume, not only that normal inheritance was ab intestato, but also that frequently, and perhaps as a general rule, the parental estate was administered jointly by the heirs.
‘We were not ordered with entering it but only with circumambulating it.’Ḥadīthandfiqhon entering the Ka'ba
Authors: Hawting G. R.
Published: January 2010

Works offiqhoften have chapters or sections concerned with various questions related to the topic of entering the Ka'ba, usually signalled by headings such asFī dukhūl al-Ka'baorAl-ṣalāt fī(jawfi)'l-Ka'ba. In them a number ofḥadīthsare referred to, many of which are to be found in the classical collections and some of which occur as well in ‘historical’ literature such assīraandta'rīkh. This paper discusses the way in which this material is presented and developed, both infiqhand inḥadīthand ‘historical’ literature, what sort of questions it is concerned with, and what reasons there may be for its existence. This last question is taken up at the end of the paper but here it may be said that I think that thefiqhandḥadīthmaterial is relevant to an understanding of the development of the Muslim sanctuary and that it illustrates a tension, which is also observable in other traditional material, between two concepts of the sanctuary: is it ‘open’, comparable to a temple or church, or is it ‘closed’, like an ark or sacred stone? Both concepts exist within Muslim tradition, and it seems to me likely that the material discussed in the following two sections has been generated, originally, by the tension between them.
Le contrat de quasi-aliénation des awqāf à Alger à la fin de la domination turque: étude de deux documents d' ‘anā’
Authors: Hoexter Par Miriam
Published: January 2010

La loi musulmane n'admet, en principe, que des baux à courte durée pour les awqāf. Toutefois, les juristes dans les différentes parties du monde musulman admettaient, dans certaines circonstances, des baux divers à long terme équivalant à une quasi-aliénation. Quelques-uns de ces contrats, par exemple le ḥikr égyptien, l'inzāl tunisien, les djalsa et djazā' marocains, ont été traité d'une manière approfondie. Le contrat d'‘anā’ — le bail à long terme le plus répandu à Alger à l'époque turque — n'a cependant pas suscité une attention analogue de la part des chercheurs, à cause, peut-être, du manque d'intérêt dans un contrat, qui ne signifiait plus grand chose sous l'égide de la législation française, laquelle supprima le caractère inaliénable des awqāf.
Recent studies in Palestinian Aramaic
Authors: Macuch Rudolf
Published: January 2010

Although the discovering of a complete Palestinian Targum in the Codex Vatican Neofiti 1 (N) erroneously marked in the spine as ‘ Targum Onkelos ’ was not of archaeological but merely archival nature, it was an event of major importance in Aramaic studies. Its announcement by the discoverer, Alejandro Diez Macho, a former student of P. E. Kahle, in Estudios Biblicos, 16, 1956, 446 ff., and Sefarad, 17, 1957, 119 ff., and especially the impressive voluminous publication by the same scholar, Neophyti 1 Targum Palestinense MS de la Biblioteca Vaticana (Madrid-Barcelona, I, Genesis, 1968; II, Exodo, 1970; III, Levitico 1971; IV, Numeros, 1974; v, Deuteronomio, 1978), provided with detailed scholarly introductions to each volume as well as translations of the edited text into Spanish (by the editor), French (by R. Le Déaut) and English (by M. McNamara and M. Maher), aroused great and justified enthusiasm among scholars. Meanwhile, a facsimile edition in 140 copies was published by Makor in Jerusalem (1970), which helped to clear up certain problems in Macho's edition (esp. the omission of the Hebrew lemmata at the beginning of each verse and errors obliterated by the copyists) deplored by David M. Golomb in his recently published thesis, A grammar of Targum Neofiti (p. 1 f.).
A grammatical sketch of Khamtanga—II
Authors: Appleyard D. L.
Published: January 2010

The simplest, irreducible part of the verb is the root, which carries the lexical information, and to which are suffixed markers of person, tense, mood, etc. Most verb roots end in a consonant, the commonest shapes being CVC- and CVCC-, but also VC- and VCC-: qal- ‘see’, wäš- ‘hear’, arq- ‘know’, abz- ‘finish’, mars'- ‘choose’, ward- ‘play’, aq- ‘be’, is'- ‘curse’, and so on. Dissyllabic roots are extremely rare in the material and almost all appear to be loans from Ethiopian Semitic: wływär- ‘throw’, färaq- ‘be wide’, mikwir- ‘try’, addin- ‘hunt’, tinfis- ‘breathe’; dissyllabic Agaw roots are is'aq- ‘send’, iqa- (also shortened to qa-)‘wash’. In addition there is a comparatively small number of roots with the shape CV-: xwa/t- ‘eat’, fi- ‘go out’, gwi- ‘get up, rise’, bi- ‘lack’, yi- ‘say’, and so on.
A letter in Thai from Thalang in 1777
Authors: Simmonds E. H. S.
Published: January 2010

The subject of this communication is a letter in Thai (Siamese), dated the equivalent of 1777, to Francis Light who occupied the island of Penang as agent of the East India Company in 1786 and became its first Superintendent. Light had been a trader on the coast since about 1771 where he was particularly concerned with Kedah and with the island of Thalang (Salang)usually known to Europeans as Junk Ceylon. His sphere of activity extended westward to the ports of the Coromandel coast and to Bengal and eastward as for as Bangkok. At the date in question thecapital of Siam was at Thonburi on the west bank of the Chao Phya river before its transfer to its present site on the east bank in 1782. The whole area had long been konwn as Bankok or Bankok to foreign traders
Quelques remarques supplementaires concernant le papyrus de Wahb b. Munabbih
Authors: Khoury R. G.
Published: January 2010

Tout récemment M. M. J. Kister, Professeur à l'Université de Jérusalem, a eu l'amabilité de se pencher sur lesMaghāzī rasūl Allāhde Wahb b. Munabbih que nous avions publiées ensemble avec ‘La légende du roi David’ attribuée au même auteur. Nous tenons à le remercier ici vivement pour l'intérêt qu'il leur a porté. S'il nous est permis de prendre à cet endroit position vis-à-vis de ses observations, c'est tout simplement dans l'intention de montrer l'idée de base qui a dirigé l'édition des deux papyrus et qui a amené des divergences de point de vue inévitables, et non point de répondre à tout prix à un collègue que nous n'avons pas eu l'honneur de connaître personnellement, et pour lequel nous avons la plus haute considération.
Alternation of final vowel with final dental nasal or plosive in Tibetan
Authors: Simon Walter
Published: January 2010

As was pointed out in the ‘Addenda’ (by A. H. Francke, assisted by W. Simon) to the 1929 reprint of Jäschke's Tibetan grammar (pp. 120–1), we observe an alternation of final vowel with final dental nasal or plosive in a number of closely related words. The examples adduced show sometimes a tripartite scheme, a final vowel in the case of verbs, a dental nasal in the case of adjectives, and a dental (voiced) plosive in the case of nouns, as e.g. dro-ba ‘to be warm’, dron-po (or -mo) ‘warm’, and drod ‘heat’. A bipartite pattern, which is in fact more frequent, has also been observed and illustrated by a few examples, such as za-ba ‘to eat’ and zan ‘food’.
A Study of Giulio Aleni's Chih-fang wai chi
Authors: Luk Bernard Hung-kay
Published: January 2010

There exists a considerable body of scholarly literature on the contributions of the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the knowledge of geography in China. Much of this literature is centred around the world maps of Matteo Ricci. Studies have been made on the different editions of these maps, on the sources of information (both European and Chinese) that Ricci must have used, on the reception by the Chinese literati of Ricci's time of the maps and the world-view represented by them, and on the possible influence of Renaissance cartography on Chinese map-making. Writers differ on the importance and utility of these maps and their influence.
The Arapacana syllabary in the old Lalita-vistara
Authors: Brough John
Published: January 2010

The tenth chapter in the Lalita-vistara, entitled Lipiśālāsaṃdarśanaparivarta, is well known for the list of 64 different forms of writing which were mastered by the Bodhisattva in his schooling. The text continues by describing how his 10,000 fellow-pupils, by reason of his supernatural power (adhiṣṭhānena), when they pronounced the individual syllables (mātṛkā), produced for each sound a symbolic or esoteric phrase beginning with the syllable in question. Thus, yadā akāraṃ parikīrtayanti sma, todā anityaḥ saroasaṃskāraśabdo niścarati sma ‘When they recited the syllable a, then there arose the sound (phrase) “Non-eternal are all the saṃskāras”’. (I refrain from attempting to improve the dubious grammar of the edition; but the sense is not in doubt.) The remainder of the Sanskrit syllabary is dealt with in a comparable manner, in the normal order, a, ā, i, ī, … ka, kha, ga, gha, ṅa … ha.
Hebrew Verse: apostrophe and epanalepsis
Authors: Wansbrough John
Published: January 2010

In the recently published volume of his collected papers Professor S. E. Loewenstamm includes two studies (here amplified) dealing with a feature of Semitic prosody described by him as ‘expanded colon’.His thesis is disarmingly straightforward: non-contiguous and, in some cases, contiguous repetition exhibits under certain conditions the deliberate expansion of a primary poetic structure, called ‘basic formula’ (p. 287), ‘simple basic formula’ (p. 289), ‘basic formulation’ (p. 291), ‘basic colon’ (p. 293). Production of an ‘expanded colon’, in contrast to mere ‘repetitive parallelism’ (p. 283 n. 8), requires (1) a ‘repetitive formula’, (2) an ‘intervening formula’, and (3) a ‘complementary formula’ (pp. 284–5, 293–4). Component (1) must at first utterance be grammatically incomplete; component (2) may consist of a vocative and/or grammatical subject; component (3) must render the ‘repetitive formula’ at second utterance grammatically complete. Thus, CTA 2:IV:8–9

in which the first tow segements (‘ Now your enemy, O Baal/Now your enemy you shall smite’) constitute the ‘expanded colon’, the third (‘Now you shall subdue your oppressor’) being merely parallel.
Levantine weights and standard parcels: a contribution to the metrology of the later Middle Ages
Authors: Ashtor E.
Published: January 2010

Scholars dealing with sources which cite the names of weights and measures of capcity used in the countries of the Near East in the Middle Ages will have recourse to the classic treatise of H. Sauvaire and the monograph of W. Hinz. Sauvaire collected his materials mainly from Oriental sources, while Hinz also included data from various European sources such as travelogues and a few Merchant Guides. A significant number of these medieval Merchant Guides, often called ‘Pratica della mercatura’ or ‘Tarifa’ by the Italians, has been preserved in European libraries and MSS collections, and others, additional to the few cited by Hinz, have been printed. There is also an abundance of revelant data concerning Levantine weights in the registers of the Venetian and Genoese customs offices of the later Middle Ages and in judicial acts referring to their activities. In theses records both the weights used in Venice and Genoa those of the Levantine emporia are accurately noted and these data are very reliable. Finally, there is much information to be gleaned from the protocols of the pleadings before the Venetian tribunal of the Guidici di petiziòn, a law court dealing with commercial litigations. These acts too contain authentic data, although those comprised in the claims of the litigants should be accepted cumgrano salis. The purpose of this paper is to present materials from these European sources which complement and, it would seem, correct those collected from the theoretical treatises of Oriental authors of the Middle Ages. Although the various Oriental weights are often confused in these souces, they do make it possible to clarify certain questions in teh field of historical metrology.
Pietro della Valle: the limits of perception
Authors: Gurney J. D.
Published: January 2010

With few surviving chronicles and the loss of almost all the state archives, historians of the later Ṣafavid period have to rely to a disproportionate degree on the accounts of European travellers. Fortunately some of these, such as Chardin, Tavernier and Olearius, have left pre-eminent examples of the genre, but even so, few attempts have been made to explore their preceonceptions, prejudices or the extent of their understanding of Persian society. Almost all travelled for a well-defined purpose, as members of diplomatic missions, military advisers, missionaries or merchants, and their attitudes and the kind of information they recorded naturally were determined by these preoccupations. They did not necessarily ask the kind of questions that interest historians today and rarely reached levels of Persian cultural and intellectual life beyond the Court and provincial officialdom.
A medieval Persian satirist
Authors: Haidari A. A.
Published: January 2010

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are outstanding chapters even in such an eventful history as that of Persia. The former witnessed the Mongol invasion and occupation; the latter ended amidst the campaigns to Timur. Although the Mongol onslaught caused much destruction, the unexpected literary outburst of the period remains a monument to the indestructible spirit of man. It is ironic that an age of terror and devastation should bring in its wake an unprecedented flowering of culture, as though the phoenix rises renewed from the ashes. For this very period produced the three greatest Persian poets, namely, Rūmī, Sa‘dī and Ḥāfiṣ, and the age in which they lived is by common consent regarded as the Golden Age of Persian poetry. In prose too, although to a lesser extent, fine work was produced, most notably of course, Sa‘dī's Gulistān.
The Sasanian caravanserai of Dayr-i gachīn, south of Ray, Iran
Authors: Shokoohy Mehrdad
Published: January 2010

Numerous Arab geographers and Persian literary texts refer with a variety of detail to an important desert caravanserai known as Dayr-i gachīn (Ar. Dayr al-jiss), situated to the south of Ray. The word dayr, meaning in Arabic ‘monastery’, or perhaps ‘hospice’, seems a natural term for a caravanserai. That the term could also mean a domed building and a fire temple is suggested by both the Burhān-i qāti' and the Farhang-i Ānandrāj. The Burhān-i qāti', under ‘Khwarnaq’, states:

Khwarnaq is the arabized word for Khuwarna, and this was a most excellent building which was built for Bahrām-i Gūr by Nu'mān b. Mundhir … and the other palace, which had three domes, one inside the other, and was built as a temple and a place of worship, they called Si-dayr since in Pahlavi they call a dome ‘dayr’.
Un modele formel de la conjugaison bafia (a l'indicatif)
Authors: Bessong D. P. Aroga , Mel'čuk Igor A.
Published: January 2010

La langue. Le bafia est une langue bantou parlée dans le centre sud de la République Unie du Cameroun, plus précisément par les autochtones de la ville de Bafia (chef-lieu du département du Mbam) et de ses environs. Cette ville se trouve à quelque 150 km au nord-ouest de Yaoundé, la capitale du Cameroun.
Rhetorica Semitica
Authors: Wansbrough John
Published: January 2010

Although any lingering doubts about the lexical value of the Semitic particlebalought by now to have been dispelled by the observations of Labuschagne and Aartun, a few further remarks on the problems involved in contextual analysis might not be altogether superfluous. While this particular instance of etymological overkill is not included there, the several pitfalls encountered in the practice respectively of comparative philology and textual emendation are meticulously documented in Barr's monograph on methodology. And the dangers of ‘pan-Ugaritism’ have been signalled more than once. The purport of these caveats is clear: textual problems will not always (or even often) be solved by reference to cognates. Occasional solutions may be lexical, seldom morphological, and even more rarely syntactic, since ‘meaning’ is, in the final analysis, a product of context.
A letter attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem on the rebuilding of the Temple
Authors: Brock S. P.
Published: January 2010

Before he set off on his fatal Persian expedition Julian appears to have issued certain instructions about the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. Whether the initiative for this came from the Jewish community, or was from the emperor himself, is unclear, the sources being as divided on this point as they are on the exact nature of the events that brought the work to a halt. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, the one pagan account that survives,

‘… magnitudine operum gestiens propagare, ambitiosum quondam apud Hierosolymam templum, quod post multa et interneciva certamina, obsidiente Vespasiano, posteaque Tito, aegre est expugnatum, instaurare sumptibus cogitabat immodicis, negotiumque maturandum Alypio dederat Antiochensi, qui olim Britannias curaverat pro praefectis. cum itaque rei idem fortiter instaret Alypius, iuvaretque provinciae rector, metuendi globi flammarum prope fundamenta crebris assultibus erumpentes, fecere locum exustis aliquotiens operantibus inaccessum, hocque modo elemento destinatius repellente, cessavit inceptum’.
Five documents regarding salt production in Ordos
Authors: Serruys Henry
Published: January 2010

The notebooks of the late Reverend Antoine Mostaert (1881–1971) contain five documents relating to salt production in the Banner of Otoγ, South Ordos: they appear in notebook 11 (Otoγ) as NT. 46 (May 1920), Nr. 61 (October 1921), Nr. 62 (1886), Nr. 67 (no date), and Nr. 68 (1921, no month or day). These texts are in transcription, evidently copied from originals kept at the Banner administration. Although Fr. Mostaert is mentioned in one of the documents, none was addressed to him, so we cannot assume that the archives of the church of Boro-Balγasuna possessed copies of these documents, unless somebody had copied them from the originals.
The prepositions 'ad/'al in Aramaic and Hebrew
Authors: Greenfield Jonas C.
Published: January 2010

In a recent issue of the Bulletin, Mr. Sims-Williams argued that in the Sogdian ‘Ancient letters’ the ideogram usually read 'R, found in the address formula, is to be read 'D. Mr. Sims-Williams's arguments were based on palaeographic and on inner Sogdian linguistic considerations. At first glance the Aramaist might be reluctant to accept this reading for the ideogram since in the address formula of letters in the Arsham correspondence, both the material published by G. R. Driver and that found earlier at Elephantine, and in later texts such as the Bar Kokhba letters, the standard form before the addressee is 'L ‘to’. The purpose of this note is to show that there is ample evidence for the interchange of 'D and 'L in both Aramaic and Hebrew to make the use of 'D for the more usual 'L in a branch of the Achaemenian chancery plausible and the use of 'D in the ‘Ancient letters’ probable.
Nasales instables en turc khotanais du Xesiècle
Authors: Hamilton Par James
Published: January 2010

Parmi la trentaine de manuscrits ou de fragments turcs en écriture ouïgoure provenant de la célèbre grotte de Touen-houang dont je prépare l'édition, il y en a deux, sans doute du Xesiècle, écrits à coup sûr par des habitants de Khotan. Il s'agit dans un cas d'une lettre à propos d'événements survenus ‘ici à Khotan’, et, dans l'autre, d'une série de notations écrites à Cha-tcheou (Touen-houang) au dos d'un rouleau desûtrachinois par un envoyé de ‘l'État d'Or’ (altun el), expression désignant Khotan, bien attestée dans les manuscrits khotanais de Touen-houang.
Ibn Abi 'L-Surūr and His Works
Authors: Rafeq Abdul-Karim
Published: January 2010

Several biographical notices on the seventeenth-century Egyptian chronicler Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Abi ‘l-Surūr b. Muḥammad b. ‘Alī al-Bakrī al-Ṣiddīqī al-Miṣrī al-Shāfi’ī al-Wārthī al-Ash’arī sibṭ Abi ‘l-Ḥasan, better known as Ibn Abi ‘l-Surūr, have been written in more than one language, but most of them contain misleading, and sometimes erroneous, statements about his birth and death dates and works. The new edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, for instance, in its brief notice ‘al-Bakrī, b. Abi ‘l-Surūr’, states that this is the ‘name of two Arab historians of the notable family of Egyptian shaykhs of the Bakriyya ṭarīḳa’, viz. (1) Muḥammad b. Abi ‘l-Surūr b. Muḥammad b. ‘Alī al-Ṣiddīḳī al-Miṣrī, d. 1028/1619; (2) Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Abi ‘l-Surūr Shams al-Dīn Abū ‘Abdallāh, son of the above, b. c. 1005/1596, d. c. 1060/1650. While the entry ‘ al-Bakrī b. Abi ‘l-Surūr’ really refers to the first, it does not, as such, apply to the alleged second historian whose identity, supposed works, and relationship to the first have to be established. The notice, moreover, gives wrong dates and erroneously ascribes some of the works of Ibn Abi ‘l-Surūr to his supposed son.
A New Look At Brugmann's Law
Authors: Burrow T.
Published: January 2010

InBSOAS, XXXIV, 3,1971, 546 I suggested the possibility that the development of Indo-Europeanotoāin Sanskrit, which, according to Brugmann's well-known and much contested theory, had been held to take place only in open syllables, may in fact have taken place in other environments also,. namely before consonant groups. The proposal was made in view of certain word equations quoted in connexion with the development of spontaneous cerebrals in Sanskrit, notably between Skt.κāṇḍα-‘section between two joints, phalanx’ andbhāṇḍα-’ furniture, utensils, movable property’ on the one hand, and Gk.
The tomb of Buhlūl Lōdī
Authors: Digby Simon
Published: January 2010

The important series of pre-Mughal monuments in the Lodi Gardens (the former Lady Willingdon Park), set in the midst of the residential area of New Delhi, is familiar to most visitors to the city. Apart from a handsome Mughal bridge (the Āṭhpula) and some small and insignificant outbuildings, there are five main structures which lie along a south-south-west to north-north-east axis. The most southerly monument is the domed octagonal tomb thought to be of Muhammad Shāh Sayyid (r. 838–49/1435–46): and the most northerly is another domed octagonal tomb in a square fortified enclosure thought to be that of Sikandar Shāh Lōdī (r. 894–923/1489–1517).
A Gzer-Mig Version of the Interview Between Confucius and Phyva Keṅ-Tse Lan-Med
Authors: Karmay Samten G.
Published: January 2010

In recent years the question of the antiquity of gZer-mig1 has been brought to the surface by some Tibetologists, but the problem is still far from being solved.2 Neither its history nor its contents have yet been fully studied.
Buddhist Chinese etymological notes
Authors: Brough John
Published: January 2010

The name of Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī naturally appears frequently in early Buddhist texts, and in the Chinese translations a number of transcriptions and translated versions of the name are well known.1 The former need not detain us: with a few variations in the characters chosen, they represent clearly either Prakritic pajāpadī, pajāpadī, or Sanskrit prajāpatī. One Middle Indian version may be singled out as showing a different development:p***e-*** ***ayuâ-dei, i.e. piyāvadī.2 We shall come back to this later.
Iotization and palatalization in classical Tibetan
Authors: Simon Walter
Published: January 2010

When surveying the examples listed below it will be noticed that there are no examples of iotized dental s(tem) i(nitial)s, the likely reason being that after dental s. i.s an original y was absorbed in the ensuing process of (full) palatalization. In the case of guttural s. i.s, however, we witness in some cases both the retention of y and its absorption by palatalization. This can be illustrated by the presence of such doublets as skyon-pa ‘to put astride ~ gśon-pa (IIA, ex. 4) or skyuṅ-ka (<*sklyuṅ-ka) ‘jackdaw’ ~ lćuṅ-ka (IIA, ex. 2).
Marcel Cohen
Authors: Strelcyn Stefan
Published: January 2010

The death of Marcel Cohen on 5 November 1974 was a grievous loss to linguistic scholarship, and to the study of Hamito-Semitic, above all of Ethiopian languages. Indeed, Hamito-Semitic studies owe to him their ‘ennoblement’ during the first half of this century. In Ethiopian studies Marcel Cohen acquired a pre-eminent position and became one of our masters along with Ludolf and Dillmann, Praetorius, Mittwoch and Littmann, Guidi and Conti Rossini, who had preceded him since the seventeenth century.
The historical notes of Liqä-Ṭäbbäbt Abbä Yeräfu
Authors: Tafla Bairu
Published: January 2010

The elders of North-East Africa have long been renowned for their powers of memory on which their compatriots relied for genealogical lineages, rights of ownership, Procedures of law, marrige customs and the like. Literate of otherwise, they all for the most part imparted their accumulated knowledge by word of mouth. Unlike the griots of West Africa, however, quite a few made use of written documents, at least in the form of notes. These documents are different from and independent of the royal and ecclesiastical records which are well known to scholars. These are private papers intended for personal use and as such contain valuable, Uncensored, historical information. I realized how ubiquitous the practice was during my research travels in the various regions of the Ethiopian Empire during the years 1965–75. Whenever such an informant failed to recall a particular name, date of fact during an interview, of doubted the accuracy of the sequence of his narrative, he would quickly pull out his mnemonic aid from a box under his bed or would call for a family member to hand him the desired item. The mnemonic aid often consisted of scribbled scraps of paper, letters, Photographs, invitation cards to weddings of com memorative feasts. Some possessed thin school notebooks comprising sketches in Amareña, Tegreña of Arabic, sufficient to prompt the memory to produce a fluent narrative. The contents of such a notebook, and indeed a typical one of its kind, consitute the boby of the present article.