bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Kipchak connection: the Ilkhans, the Mamluks and Ayn Jalut
Authors: Halperin Charles J.
Published: January 2010

In 1260 an army of Egyptian Mamluks, led by Sultan Qutuz, defeated a Mongol army from the Ilkhanate led by Ketbugha, at the battle of Ayn Jalut (Ain Jalut), ‘Goliath's Well’, in Palestine. Because this campaign marked the furthest advance of the Mongols in the Middle East, scholars have paid considerable attention to its military and political significance. However, one potential aspect of Ilkhanid-Mamluk relations has only been mentioned casually; examination of the role and image of the Kipchaks in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries may illustrate a much broader feature of the history of the Mongol Empire and its successor states.
Towards the Afro-Asiatic etymology of Egyptianzš‘to write’
Authors: Takács Gábor
Published: January 2010

It is not necessary to emphasize the importance of writing in the culture of Ancient Egypt. The ancient Nile Valley dwellers' cult of writing is famous, while the Egyptian language has the longest written continuity known in history. At the same time, however, we linguists know painfully little about the origin of the Egyptian verbzš‘to write’ because of the apparent lack of reliable Afro-Asiatic cognates.
The Arabic origins of the muwashshaḥāt
Authors: Abu-Haidar Jareer
Published: January 2010

In a recent study entitled ‘The muwashshaḣāt: are they a mystery?’, I described the muwashshaḣāt as the product of the simple and natural attempt by the Arab literati to extend the proliferation or permutations of rhyme in Arabic prose to Arabic poetry. I pointed out also that in order to accommodate this proliferation of rhyme or to make it possible in poetry, Arabic verse forms had to undergo two notable and quite pervasive developments:
Controversy in the tonal analysis of Tibetan
Authors: Sprigg R. K.
Published: January 2010

Tonemade its appearance in descriptions of Tibetan pronunciation as early as 1881, when Jäschke introduced the term into an account of the prosodic features of the spoken Tibetan dialects: ‘A system of tones has been introduced. … I am told by European students of reputation, who have made the Tonic languages of eastern Asia their special department, that only the first principles of what are known as thehigh and low Tones, have made their way into Tibetan. … Here, as in the languages of Farther India, generally, which possess an alphabetic system of writing, the Tone is determined by the initial consonant of the word.
European japanology at the end of the seventeenth century
Authors: Kornicki P. F.
Published: January 2010

Attaining just a glimmer of an understanding of Chinese or Japanese in the seventeenth century required prodigious feats of imagination and the abandonment of widely-held convictions about the nature of language. Progress towards a rational and sophisticated understanding was held up by persuasive but fantastical theories to which lifetimes were devoted in vain. In their very different ways both languages were subversive of contemporary notions of language, and the conceptual frameworks for adequate descriptions had to be generated from scratch. The difficulties can scarcely be overestimated: the Chinese language was vigorously attacked in 1678 as the language of the devil on the ground that its pictographic nature would occasion a breach of the Second Commandment if the name of God were written, and the following year Leibniz drew up a list of questions concerning Chinese which ask, among other things, ‘whether the Chinese language was artificially constructed, or whether it has grown and changed by usage like other languages’. Japanese attracted less interest, but the difficulty of the two languages was legendary: in 1708 the Dutch scholar Adrian Reland (1676–1718), who published numerous works on Persian, Jewish and Islamic studies, wrote of the immense numbers of characters to be learnt by anybody who wished to know Chinese or Japanese, with awe at the thought that ‘a man's life would scarcely suffice to attain perfect knowledge of one language’.
The ‘Battle of the Pass’: two Consequential readings
Authors: Agha Saleh Said
Published: January 2010

Among revisionist works on the so-called ‘Abbāsid Revolution, which argue for an Arab ethnic character of the constituency of the revolution, M. A. Shaban's stands out as the most influential. Shaban's methodology and conclusions have been generally and specifically criticized. Patricia Crone aptly remarks: ‘Shaba's imaginative efforts are visible on every page [of] his books’; and, Elton Daniel, in his critique of Shaban's interpretation of the wordtaqādum, perceptively comments: ‘Instead of basing his theory on the meaning of the word, he seems to have simply invented a meaning on the basis of his theory.’ To these ‘imaginative efforts’ and ‘inventions’ also belongs Shaban's treatment of the source material on the ‘Battle of the Pass’ and its aftermath.
On ‘Sino-Bodic’ and other symptoms of neosubgroupitis
Authors: Matisoff James A.
Published: January 2010

The higher-order subgrouping of Tibeto-Burman has been recently up for debate. The modern era of TB/Sino-Tibetan subgrouping began with Benedict 1972 (henceforth /STC), where that great comparativist refrained from offering aStammbaumof the conventional type, leaving several individual languages and language groups unclassified, and placing Jingpho at the centre of diversity of the whole vast TB family (see Fig. 1.) Despite several peculiarities, notably the special position accorded Karenic and the lack of information on Baic (then called ‘Minjia’) or Qiangic, this scheme showed a healthily agnostic approach.
Apologia for ‘the Sabaean cultural-political area’
Authors: Korotayev Andrey
Published: January 2010

Firstly, I accept Beeston's proposal to refer ‘to linguistic data as Minaic, Sabaic, Qatabanic and Hadramitic, leaving Minaean etc. for non-linguistic contexts’ (Beeston, 1987a: 13). His argument (at least with respect to the distinction between the ‘Sabaean’ and the ‘Sabaic’) looks entirely convincing:

The Sabaeans were the inhabitants of the area around Ma'rib. But they shared a common language(no doubt with dialectal varieties) with the peoples of the desert fringes between Ma'rib and Wadial-Jawf, of a considerable part of Wadi al-Jawf itself, and of the high plateaux lying in the angle of those two areas—Arḥab, Qā‘ al-Bawn, Qā‘ Ṣany‘ā’ etc. It is dubious whether these other peoples would have called themselves Sabaeans,1 and it might be preferable therefore to term the language Sabaic rather than Sabaean’ (Beeston, 1979: 115).
Three Old Tibetan contracts in the Sven Hedin collection
Authors: Takeuchi Tsuguhito
Published: January 2010

Among the Tibetan texts in the Sven Hedin Collection now preserved in the Ethnographical Museum (Folkens Museum), Stockholm, there are three documents which are considered to belong to the Old Tibetan period. Their photos were first published in Bailey (1973), together with comments on a few Khotanese-related words, the texts being numbered Hedin 1, 2 and 3. But since then, they have not been paid due attention. In May 1990, I was able to examine these three manuscripts by courtesy of the Folkens Museum and Professor Staffan Rosén, secretary of the Hedin Collection.

On examination, I realized that all three texts are contracts, but of different kinds: that is, Hedin 1 is a sale contract, Hedin 2 a loan contract, and Hedin 3 a contract of hiring. Each exemplifies one of the three major types of Old Tibetan contract. Although different in kind, they show a close resemblance in both form and content: they are written on paper of similar size and quality. The left edge of each document is torn off in a similar way, but my attempts to join them together showed that they were not likely to have formed one piece. Paleographically, the three texts are written in similar styles, though apparently by different hands. They also have in common somenames of the persons concerned (cf. §IV). All these shared features clearly suggest that these three texts, even though they were not originally one, belong to the same period and location.
Early Islamic theological and juristic terminology: Kitāb al-Ḥudūdfi 'l-uṣūl, by Ibn Fūrak
Authors: Abdel-Haleem M. A. S.
Published: January 2010

In our very first grammar lesson at the primary school of al-Azhar we were introduced to al-mabādi’ al-‘ashara, ‘The Ten Introductory Aspects’ with which the textbook began. We learnt then that these ten aspects, as handed down by the ancient tradition, were points to be considered when embarking on each fann (branch of knowledge). ‘They said: it is incumbent upon him who sets out to expound a book to deal in the introduction with certain things before he begins with the intended subject matter’ Such was the importance of ‘The Ten ’ in traditional Islamic education that they were formulated in two lines of verse, in more than one version, to aid the memory of learners.
Subordinate clauses of time and condition in Bedouin dialects
Authors: Ingham B.
Published: January 2010

A number of recent studies have examined conditional clauses in Classical Arabic. However, to date I have not seen anything devoted to the study of these structures in a colloquial dialect, although most teaching manuals devote a section to this. The following is an attempt to describe conditional clauses and the related time-clause structures in certain Bedouin dialects. My interest in them originated in the difficulty I myself found in mastering this area of syntax, and from a perception of them as being more complex than such structures in English. A further point of interest which led me to investigate this area was the multiplicity of conditional and time particles including in, lo and āān signifying ‘if’, lamman and yōm signifying ‘when’ and ila signifying ‘if’ or ‘when’. I was interested to find out what factors, if any, conditioned the choice of these particles. The reason for broadening the study to take in time clauses also, is that in this dialect, in one area of conditional sentences, the two types: conditional and time clause, come very close together and are in some cases indistinguishable, or to put it another way, one would not know whether to translate the sentence into English with ‘if’ or ‘when’. The two types of sentence also share various characteristics which will be pointed out below, but in particular, many of them show a marker on both the main and subordinate clause.
The dental/alveolar contrast in Javanese
Authors: Hayward K. M. , Muljono
Published: January 2010

The present paper describes a palatographic investigation of Javanese coronal stops. Javanese exhibits stop consonants at both dental and alveolar places of articulation. In the current roman orthography, the dentals are represented by the single letterst, d, while the alveolars are represented by the digraphsth, dh. Thus, for example,titik[titI?] ‘full stop’ contrasts withthithik[titI?] ‘a little’.
RS 1.009 (CTA 36, KTU 1.46): reconstructing a Ugaritic ritual
Authors: Pardee D.
Published: January 2010

In an article published in UF, 16, 1984, entitled ‘The ritual KTU 1.46 (= RS 1.9) and its duplicates’, M. Dijkstra proposed that to the large fragment of the ritual tablet RS 1.009 should be joined four fragments. None of these is supposed to be a physical join, neither with RS 1.009 nor with any other of the smaller fragments, but all five fragments are said to have originally been part of the same tablet. To Dijkstra's transliteration (pp. 71–2) is added a sixth fragment, RS 1.009A, about the ascription of which to RS 1.009 Dijkstra is not sure (see p. 70). The reconstruction, with assumed proper placement of each of the five primary fragments was illustrated in a collage made up of Dijkstra's own copies of the small fragments and Virolleaud's copy of the primary fragment (p. 76). My intention here is to discuss the validity of the hypothetical reconstruction. The texts given below, based on new collations, are presented here for the first time. Philological aspects of the interpretation of the texts will not be dealt with here; for such matters see my forthcoming edition of the Ugaritic ritual texts.
Community, dialect and urbanization in the Arabic-speaking Middle East
Authors: Holes Clive
Published: January 2010

The purpose of this paper is to explain how changes in the social structure of the countries of the Arabic-speaking Middle East are being reflected in new patterns of dialect use. The last 30 years have seen an enormously increased interest in Arabic as a living mode of everyday communication, reflected in many dialectological, typological and sociolinguistic studies. As a result, we now have a much clearer overall picture of the dialect geography of the eastern Arab world, and the beginnings of an understanding of the dynamics of language change. Inevitably, the focus of many studies has been geographically specific, so that the area-wide nexus between social change and linguistic change has not always been seen in a sufficiently broad context. By examining three case studies documented in the literature, I aim to point up similarities in the dynamics of change which are often obscured by distracting local particularities.
Christian Sogdian texts from the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen II: Fragments of polemic and prognostics
Authors: Sims-Williams Nicholas
Published: January 2010

The purpose of the present article, as of its predecessor, is to make known a group of fragments surviving only in the form of transcriptions in the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen. Neither the original manuscript nor photographs seem to be extant. Olaf Hansen's handwritten transcripts, which I had the opportunity to study in Kiel in 1985, are published here by kind permission of his son Lars Hansen.
Symbols of power and communication in pre-Confucian China (on the anthropology ofde) preliminary assumptions
Authors: Kryukov Vassili
Published: January 2010

If Clifford Geertz's definition of religion as a culturally determined system of symbols is valid, then it can be argued that the religious ideology of pre-Confucian—Early (or Western) Zhou—China is centred around the symbols of power and communication. Heaven, sacrifice, and gift-decree are some of the categories of this religious system, the majority of them reducible to the themes of a sacred hierarchy and communicative relationship between its subjects. The crucial position in this context is occupied by the concept of.
Christian Sogdian texts from the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen I: Fragments of the life of Serapion
Authors: Sims-Williams Nicholas
Published: January 2010

The Nachlass of Olaf Hansen, which I was able to examine in Kiel in 1985 through the kindness of his son Lars Hansen, includes transcriptions of several Christian Sogdian texts of which neither the original manuscript nor even a photograph seems to be extant. In such cases Hansen's transcriptions attain the status of primary sources. Amongst them are four fragments belonging to two different manuscripts of the Life of Serapion, the Syriac text of which was published by Bedjan,AMSv, 263–341.
On the whereabouts and identity of the place called ‘K'ung-Sang’ (Hollow Mulberry) in early Chinese mythology
Authors: Henricks Robert G.
Published: January 2010

One of the places that plays a role in a number of myths and legends that survive from ancient China is the place called K'ung-sang, Hollow Mulberry. Confucius is said to have been born in a place called K'ung-sang, and Yi Yin, the man who served as chief minister to T'ang, founder of the Shang or Yin dynasty (traditional reign dates, 1766–1753 b.c.) was born in anactualhollow mulberry tree. By force of the Confucius connexion, commentaries often identify K'ung-sang as a place in the state of Lu, if not precisely Ch'ü-fu, the home town of Confucius. But K'ung-sang is located and identified in a number of ways in early texts: it is a mountain in the North or the East; it is a place that is being attacked by a demon; it is the capital of various Ti(emperors or gods); and in one source at least, it is the name of a musical instrument, a zither (se).
Jaina monks from Mathura: literary evidence for their identification on Kuṣāṇa sculptures
Authors: Jaini Padmanabh S.
Published: January 2010

Among the thousands of Jaina images found throughout India, those from Mathura produced during the Kuṣāṇa period are unique, for they alone contain representations of unclothed Jaina ascetics holding a single small piece of cloth in such a way as to cover their nudity. These curious figures cannot be identified with monks of the present-day Jaina sects of the Digambaras, who practise total nudity, or of the Śvetāmbaras, who wear two long pieces of unstitched white cloth wrapped around their bodies and occasionally a white blanket over their left shoulders. The veteran art-historian, the late Dr. U. P. Shah, inAspects of Jaina art and architecturebriefly mentions these figures, noting that ‘nowhere in the above references from Śvetāmbara as well as Digambara texts do we come across a reference to those figures on thesiṃhāsanaof a Jina which we find in a number of sculptures of the Kuṣāṇa period from the Kaṅkāli Tīlā.’ Subsequently, inJaina-Rūpa-Maṇḍano, he calls these figuresardhaphālakas(monks with partial covering) and speculates that these figures might be Yāpanīya monks, another Jaina sect that is now extinct, and states that these figures need further investigation. In addition to Shah, N. P. Joshi has also discussed theseardhaphālakaimages. He states that ‘all the monks seen in the bas-reliefs, except one known to me, seem to belong to the Ardhaphālaka sect. … Besides the monks seen in the bas-reliefs, those hovering in the air (vidyā cāraṇas) or seen on some of theśilāpaṭṭāsare allArdhaphālakas. This suggests that during the pre-Christian and early Christian centuries a large number of Jainas at Mathura followed this sect’.
The inscription at RA Tshag Dgon-pa
Authors: Richardson H. E.
Published: January 2010

In Tibetan Studies, Peking, 1990, there was an article on an early inscription on a stone pillar at Ra Grwa dgon-pa in the Tolung valley west of Lhasa. Unfortunately I have mislaid it apart from a copy of the inscription which, as the authors say, contains words that are difficult to read and others which are completely illegible. In addition, as in all eye-copies, I found dubious readings; also there appeared to be a lack of punctuation signs, and the text was shown continuously, not divided into lines. It was, therefore, desirable to obtain a photographic record and this has been generously supplied by Mr Anthony Aris who visited the place in 1992. His assistant also made an eye-copy of the text.
The dream of the king and the holy war against the Dutch: Thekôteubahof the Acehnese epic,Hikayat Prang Gômpeuni
Authors: Wieringa Edwin
Published: January 2010

When the Aceh War finally broke out in 1873 it did not come as a surprise to most contemporaries. In colonial historiography Aceh, a ‘nest of pirates’, according to the Dutch, had obviously precipitated the war by its ‘treason’ in turning to Turkey, America and other foreign powers for support against the Dutch. The discussions with the American consul in Singapore early in 1873 on a possible Acehnese-American treaty constituted acasus belliin the eyes of the Dutch.
The MSS ofSěrat Cabolek
Authors: Ricklefs M. C.
Published: January 2010

Sěrat Cabolekis a problematical but very interesting work concerning the court of Kartasura in the reign of Pakubuwana II. It tells of a religious controversy which became the subject of debate at the court, involving some of the most important figures in the realm, including the young king himself.
Sati: a review article
Authors: Menskt Werner
Published: January 2010

The last recorded case of sati in India, the murder (for such it undoubtedly was) of Roop Kanwar, which took place in the large Rajasthani village of Deorala in 1987, has had many reverberations. In particular, it has served as a focus for international and Indian women activists' opposition to continuing gender violence and to male domination in general. Not surprisingly, the responses have been wide-ranging, from individual and collective acts of feminist solidarity to various attempts at local level, mainly by men and political agencies, to discredit this particular women's movement.
The mystery at Chùrchuro: conspiracy or incompetence in twelfth-century Sicily?
Authors: Johns Jeremy , Metcalfe Alex
Published: January 2010

Immediately after his successful conquest of Muslim Sicily (1060–92), Roger de Hauteville set about dividing the spoils amongst the small band of Norman, French and Italian knights who were his closest followers. This distribution of the land of Sicily and its inhabitants was in part based upon the fiscal documents of the Muslim administration, which were salvaged and adapted to post-conquest circumstances by a small cadre of Greek bureaucrats imported from Calabria. The documents were of two types: lists of tax-payers, known in Arabic asjarā 'id(sg.jarīda; Greek plateia;Latinplated); and descriptions of estate boundaries, known ashudud(sg.hadd; Greekperiorismos; Latindivisa). These were the foundations of the Arabic administration of Norman Sicily.
Indian influences on early Chinese ophthalmology: glaucoma as a case study
Authors: Deshpande Vijaya
Published: January 2010

Allusions to Indian medicine appear in Chinese literature from the fifth century A.D. onwards. At first through translated Buddhist texts, and then through the incorporation of material by later Chinese authors in the form of medical theories, diagnostic, surgical methods and prescriptions, a substantial element of Indian medical knowledge permeated into Chinese medicine. Ophthalmology held a unique position in these transmissions. It was invariably associated with the famous name of Nāgārjuna, which is connected with almost all kinds of protoscientific activity in early medieval India. This has given rise to a longstanding debate among scholars regarding the origin of this material, as well as the credibility of its attribution to Nāgārjuna.
An Introduction to the History of Modern Persian Sufism, Part II: A Socio-Cultural Profile of Sufism, from the Dhahabī Revival to the Present Day
Authors: Lewisohn Leonard
Published: January 2010

The revival of the Dhahabī order in modern Persia took place several decades earlier than that of the Ni'matullāhī through the person of Quṭb al-Dīn Nayrīzī (d. 1173/1759), the thirty-second in line from the Prophet. Nayrīzī was well-versed in all of the various Islamic sciences of his day and among his followers are counted a number of notable Shiite clerics, such as Shaykh Jaՙfar Najafī, Mullā Miḥrab Gīlānī, Shaykh Aḥmad Aḥs¯'ī and Sayyid Mahdī Ṭabāṭaba'ī (‘Baḥr al- ՙUlum’). In the Tadhkirat al-awliyā-yi Dhahabiyya, a versified history of the Dhahabī masters by Āqā Mīrẓā Bābā Shīrāzī, the studies, exploits, compositions, charismatic powers and travels of Nayrīzī are recorded in detail. Nayrīzī was also the author of numerous poetical works and prose treatises in Persian and Arabic, including Risāla-yi Faṣl al-khiṭāb, Shams al-ḥikma, Kanz al-ḥikma, Anwār al-wilāya, Nūr al-hidāya and Risāla-yi ՙIshqiyya. ‘Faṣl al-khiṭāb’, his celebrated Arabic poem of some 8,000 couplets, expounds the tenets of Akbarian theosophy and details his mystical experiences. While attacking the corruption of the Safavid clerical establishment, it records in detail the persecution endured by the Sufis and the destruction of their khānaqāhs at the hands of the ՙulamā-yi ẓāhir.5 Nayrīzī's Faṣl al-khiṭāb also apparently formed the literary model for Hādī Sabzavārā's (d. 1878) celebrated Arabic Manẓūma-yi Ḥikmat.
Commentaries, Print and Patronage:hadīthand the Madrasas in Modern South Asia
Authors: Zaman Muhammad Qasim
Published: January 2010

Recent work on the impact of print on Muslim societies has been much concerned with debating how conceptions and structures of religious authority may have been altered, and a new era of religious change inaugurated, through this technology. It was only in the nineteenth century—the latter half of that century in case of the Indian subcontinent—that print came to be wholeheartedly embraced by the Muslim religious élite as a vehicle for the effective dissemination of their ideas. Some scholars have emphasized the role of print in enabling the ՙulam¯' to reach wider audiences than could ever be conceivable in a manuscript age. Though print threatened to undermine the age-old styles of person to person transmission of knowledge, and conceptions of authoritative transmission associated with those styles, what the ՙulamā' gained was not only a new, effective, and—compared to the costs of the manuscript age—relatively inexpensive medium to reach and influence new audiences, but also access to religious classics which were hitherto available only to a select few, but which would now undergird new movements of revival and reform in their societies. While acknowledging these aspects of the impact of print, other scholars have seen the adverse effect of print on ‘traditional’ religious authority to be the more noteworthy. Precisely because religious classics were now accessible, often through translations into the vernacular, the special claims of the ՙulamā' as the guardians and authoritative interpreters of religious texts came to be disputed. As Francis Robinson has put it, ‘Increasingly from now on any Ahmad, Mahmud or Muhammad could claim to speak for Islam.’
Is There a Chinese Word for ‘Confucius’? A Review Article
Authors: Barrett T. H.
Published: January 2010

The dissolution of ideological identities that had seemed since the middle of this century fairly stable would appear to be one of the characteristics of our times. In place of the struggle between Capitalism and Communism, Samuel Huntingdon would wish to erect a more fragmented competition between civilizational blocs, bearing such labels as the Confucian East and the World of Islam. Yet even such an analysis seems already distinctly old-fashioned, imposing a questionable cultural stability on more labile phenomena. As an alternative Lionel Jensen suggests that the first of these labels, at any rate, is in no small measure the creation of early European observers, and that far from basking in any unproblematic sense of identity, some of the best minds of twentieth-century China actually expended much of their ink on a highly problematic search for the origins of an identifiable Confucian group in the early Chinese past.
Pottery in the written sources of the Ayyubid-Mamluk period (c. 567–923/1171–1517)
Authors: Milwright Marcus
Published: January 2010

Vast quantities of ceramic shards of the Ayyubid-Mamluk period have been recovered from excavations of major urban sites such as Fusṭāṭ and Ḥamā, as well as from numerous smaller settlements in the Levant. Knowledge of the range of glazed and decorated wares has been supplemented by the publication of complete vessels in museum collections. As a result of archaeological and art historical research some production sites have been identified and broad chronological divisions established within the ceramic repertoire. Less well understood, however, is the social and economic environment within which pottery was produced and utilized. In addition, analysis of the objects themselves reveals little about the value ascribed to ceramics in relation to the other craft media of the period. This paper will attempt to provide further insights into the manufacture, trade and consumption of pottery in the Levant in the Ayyubid-Mamluk period (including some comments concerning the Crusader states in Palestine) by using contemporary Arabic and Western written sources.
The supplement to Ludwig Alsdorf's Kleine Schriften: a review article
Authors: Wright J. C.
Published: January 2010

Continuing the work of Jacobi and Lüders, Ludwig Alsdorf made a decisive contribution to Middle Indian studies, above all to the elucidation of its prosody and the evolution of its narrative literature. He died some four years after the appearance in 1974 of his original Kleine Schriften, edited by Albrecht Wezler.1 The supplementary volume, also edited by Wezler,2 includes six articles from the period 1974–78, together with a welcome reprinting of the important monograph of 1962 in which he surveyed the distinctly non-vegetarian appreciation of the cow that helped to give rise to the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain literatures of Ahiṃsā.3
City names of the western Steppe at the time of the Mongol invasion
Authors: Ostrowski Donald
Published: January 2010

Section 274 of the Secret History of the Mongols (Yuanchao bishi) tells us that Khagan Ögödei placed governors over the conquered peoples whose cities were ‘Asud, Sesüd, Bolar and Mankerman-Kiwa’. I present the entire passage, first, in the transliterated edition published in 1972 by Igor de Rachewiltz, then in two English translations, the first by Francis Woodman Cleaves, the second by Rachewiltz:

batu büri güyük möngge teri'üten olon kö'üt qanglin kibca'ud-i bajigid-i oro'ulju ejiljayaq meget balaqasu ebdeljü orusud-i kiduju ülüttele talaba asut sestüt bolar man-kerman kiwa teri'üten balaqad-un irgen-i dawuliju else'üljü daruqacin tammacin-i talbiju qariba.
On the use of the Chinese Hsuan-ming calendar to predict the times of eclipses in Japan
Authors: Steele John M.
Published: January 2010

According to the Nihongi, a chronicle of Japan written in A.D. 720, the first Chinese calendar was brought to Japan in the year A.D. 554. It is now generally agreed that before this time there was no native calendrical system and that earlier dates given in the Nihongi were calculated retrospectively, and in some cases inaccurately, using Chinese systems (Nakayama, 1969: 7–8). The Chinese calendar was not only a method for keeping track of the days but also a complete astronomical system for calculating the movements of the heavenly bodies.
Anatolian Evidence and the Origins of the Indo-European Mediopassive
Authors: Hart Gillian R.
Published: January 2010

The discovery of the Anatolian family of languages early in the present century' confronted Indo-Europeanists with a verbal system of considerably less complexity than that which had been assumed, largely on the basis of Greek and Indo-Iranian evidence, to have existed in the latest common period of the parent language. This raised questions which are still keenly debated today. Did the simplicity of the Anatolian system represent something more primitive than the classic image of Indo-European, out of which the latter could be explained as a subsequent development, or was it the simplified outcome of an originally more complex system, close to that which had been reconstructed before the Anatolian family was known? Where Anatolian had isolated features (such as the ending -i(š) of the 3 s. preterite of the –ḫi conjugation) corresponding to features which characterized the whole of a paradigm in Indo-European (such as –s– in the sigmatic aorist), had it preserved a relic of a once fully-formeds– aorist which had been largely lost as a result of merger with other categories, or was this a 3 s. ending which had subsequently become incorporated into the stem to form a new kind of paradigm?.
Proto–Chamic and Acehnese mid vowels: towards Proto–Aceh–Chamic
Authors: Durie Mark
Published: January 2010

The aims of this paper are: (i) to report new dialect data for a vowel contrast in Acehnese which was not recorded in earlier descriptive work, (ii) to show that this contrast is cognate with a contrast reconstructed for Proto–Chamic, and (iii) to reconstruct this part of the vowel system of Proto–Aceh–Chamic.

A close genetic relationship between Acehnese and Chamic was first suggested by Nieman (1891). Although a contrary view was expressed by Blagden (1929), the issue has been conclusively put to rest by the work of Cowan (1933, 1948, 1974, 1981, 1983, 1988), Shorto (1975, 1977) and Collins (1975) who all agree on the existence of a distinct Aceh–Chamic sub–group within Austronesian.

Unfortunately, comparative work on Aceh-Chamic (Cowan: Chamo- Achehic, Shorto: Achino-Cham) has been hampered by problems of access to the data. In Lee's (1966) and Burnham's (1976) reconstructions of Proto-Chamic no mention is made of Acehnese. On the other hand, Cowan and Shorto, the two scholars who have furthered Aceh-Chamic studies the most, have not had access to Lee (1966), nor, in more recent works, to Burnham (1976). Another problem has been that Acehnese source materials have been restricted to just one dialect, as reflected by Djajadiningrat's (1934) and Kreemer's (1931) Acehnese-Dutch dictionaries.

This paper represents one step towards addressing some of these problems, by comparing new Acehnese dialect data with the comparative Chamic wordlist compiled by Lee and augmented by Burnham. I focus here upon a specific
Records of solar eclipses in Arabic chronicles
Authors: Said Said S. , Stephenson F. Richard , Rada Wafiq
Published: January 2010

Of the many astronomical observations which are recorded in ancient and medieval history, perhaps the most interesting and useful relate to solar eclipses. Obscurations of the Sun are often noticed by the casual observer and may indeed leave a profound impression on him if the degree of obscuration of the Sun is very large. In particular, total solar eclipses are responsible for the onset of sudden and intense darkness, during which the brighter planets and stars may become visible. Hence ancient and medieval accounts of solar eclipses (and to a lesser extent lunar obscurations) are not confined to treatises on astronomy. They also tend to be reported fairly frequently in chronicles and other writings of a historical nature. The only other celestial phenomena regularly to attract widespread attention in ancient and medieval times were comets. However, in chronological studies, eclipses have a distinct advantage over comets. Both solar and lunar obscurations last for only a few hours and their exact date of occurrence can be computed, as well as the time of day (or night) when the event took place. Comets, on the other hand, often remain visible for several weeks and only for Halley's Comet can useful computations of visibility be made.
Soma I and II
Authors: Falk Harry
Published: January 2010

It was a common idea in the last century, and one which can be found even today,2 that Soma/Haoma was a drink which led to ecstasy, and drugs which produce such an extraordinary state of mind have always been objects of curiosity. Therefore, the search for the plant which was used by the Indo-Iranian peoples in their solemn rituals was never abandoned, although the variety of candidates brought forward made the question look unsolvable.Some of the strong drugs suggested for the original Soma had to meet with statements from the Rgveda or Avesta which ran contrary to their shapeor properties. The effects of others on the human mind are so unspectacular that it was difficult to accept them as the plant so highly praised in antiquity.
The Vedic verb pávate ‘goes, moves, (wind) blows, (Soma) flows'
Authors: Burrow T.
Published: January 2010

The Vedic verb pávate occurs with great frequency in the ninth book of the Ṛgveda with reference to the preparation of the Soma drink. It is normally rendered in Sāyaṇa's commentary as Kṣarati ‘flows'. There is nothing in the contexts to suggest that this meaning is inappropriate, since the flowing of Soma is continually referred to, and by a variety of synonyms. Such are arṣati ‘flows', dhāvati ‘runs', yāti ‘goes', īyate ‘goes', and so forth. There is no contextual reason why we should not accept the authority of the commentator and regard this verb as yet another synonym describing the progress of the liquid during the course of its preparation.
Pramāṇabhūta, *pramāṇa(bhūta)-puruṣa, pratyakṣadharmanandsākṣātkṛtadharmanas epithets of theṛṣi, ācāryaandtathāgatain grammatical, epistemological and Madhyamaka texts
Authors: Ruegg D. Seyfort
Published: January 2010

The expression pramāṇabhūta is attested in a number of Indian grammaticaland philosophical texts, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, its existence in texts no longer accessible inSanskrit being inferable from their translations in Tibetan where we find its standard equivalenttshad mar gyur pa. But the grammatical correctness and the interpretation of the term have given rise to a good deal of discussion and exegesis. Some commentators have taken up the grammatical question as to why we have the formpramāṇabhūtarather than the at first sight perhaps more normal formpramāṇībhūta. And in the Buddhist Pramāṇa-school a problem arises as to the precise meaning of the expressionpramāṇabhūtaemployed as an epithet of a person. For by Dignāga and Dharmakirtipramāṇahas been exhaustively divided intopratyakṣa‘(direct) perceptual knowledge’ andanumāna‘inferential knowledge’, so that in the usage of their school at least a person (puruṣa, pudgala)—as opposed to knowledge or a cognition (jñāna=šespa, ordhi/buddhi=blo)— would not strictly speaking be considered in the first instance as apramāṇa.
Linguistic convergence: the Tamil–Hindi auxiliaries
Authors: Schokker G. H. , Menon A. Govindankutty
Published: January 2010

The subject of the Indianization of the Indian languages has occupied the thoughts of scholars for more than a century. But during the last four decades it has become a field of intensive investigation. The study of the process of convergence in the Indie area began with a hesitant study of common lexical items in Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Munda. The initial conviction was that grammatical traits may not travel across genetic boundaries. However, scholars like Kuiper and Emeneau not only proved the contrary but also laid the foundation for future research on the ‘unexpected’ structural similarities among the above–mentioned three major language families of the Indian subcontinent.
A new Kharoṣṭhī wooden tablet from China
Authors: Meicun Lin
Published: January 2010

Many Kharoṣṭhī documents have been unearthed from the buried cities in the shifting sands of the Taklamakan Desert in the last thirty years. I went to the south of the Desert and conducted an archaeological survey along the Silk Road in the summer of 1986. A Kharoṣṭhī wooden tablet happened to be on display in the Khotan Museum when I visited there, but no serial number had been given to the new document. It was allegedly collected by Mr. Li Xuehua, an officer of the Min Feng county, when he explored the way to the Niya site for the shooting of a television programme on the Silk Road in 1981. However, he did not leave any further information on the exact place where the tablet was found in the vast area of Niya.
Towards a date for theChin-so liu-chu yin
Authors: Barrett T. H.
Published: January 2010

TheChin-so liu-chu yinis a text of twenty-nine fascicles preserved in the Taoist canon in the form of a revelation to Chang Tao-ling, the late Han founder of the Taoist religion, to which comments by Li Ch‘un-feng(602–670) are attached. Though scholars have not so far addressed the question of the origins of the text itself, a certain willingness to accept the attribution of the commentary has already been made manifest. Yet to the eye of the expert in Sung Taoism this attribution raises serious doubts: text and commentary display features much more reminiscent of Sung religion than that of the early T'ang. It has already been noticed that Li Ch'un-feng provides information on the cult of the city gods (ch'eng-huang shen) and on Thunder magic; the former religious development may be traced back before the T‘ang but only achieved prominence towards the end of the dynasty, while the latter is unattested in T‘ang Taoist literature. One might add that Li displays a detailed knowledge of the legend of Hsü Sunin a developed form—again a cult v with early origins hardly noticed until the late T‘ang. The text also provides information (though separately) on the Buddhist warrior-king Vaisravana (P‘isha-menPI) and on the seventh-century warrior-hero Li Ching(571–649): these two figures were eventually to merge.
The Ethiopic version of the Lives of the Prophets, II: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Elijah, Elisha, Nathan, Ahijah, and Joel
Authors: Knibb Michael. A
Published: January 2010

In an article published un Vol. XLIII (1980) ofBSOASI reported the identification of the Ethiopic version of the Lives of Ezekiel and Daniel, and I there presented the text and an annotated translation of these two short pieces, which belong in the pseudepigraphic work known as the Lives of the Prophets. A substantial further portion of the Ethiopic version of this work was subsequently identified by MR. Roger Cowley in a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and he very kindly drew this to my attention. My purpose in this article is to publish the text and a translation of this new material. Mr. Cowley has also identified a fragmentary Ethiopic text containing a Life of Job and the beginning of a Life of Moses. I hope to consider this text on a future occasion and would merely obserce here that its contents are different in character from those of the work that is conventionally known as the Lives of the Prophets. I would like to record here my very grateful thanks to Mr. Cowley for his kindness in informing me of the existence of both these texts.
Khotanese v- < Old Iranian *dw-
Authors: Skjærvø Prods Oktor
Published: January 2010

In his Dictionary of Khotan Saka (p. 377), Bailey has the following entry: ‘vara- “door?”’ with the following comment: ‘possibly vara- “door” from var- “to close, shut”; or a dialectal v- < dv- would permit connexion with dvar-, Av dvar∂m, dvar∂ “gate” (…) Note Tumshuq Saka vitana “a second time” with vi- < dvi-.' Bailey's suggestion that this vara- means door, is certainly correct. The Passage in question (KT, III, 124) is quoted below.
A note on Bactrian phonology
Authors: Sims-Williams Nicholas
Published: January 2010

A central Problem of Bactrian Phonology, to which Georg Morgenstierne devoted the greater part of one of his last articles, is the origin of Postvocalic t, which is found in a small number of words of disputed etymology. Since OIr. postvocalic t generally gives Bactrian d, as in G[raeeo-Bactrian] οδο, M[anichean Bactrian] 'wd, 'wṭ[ud] ‘and’ <*uta or G κiρδo, M qyrd ‘made’ <*kṛta-,it seems that some oter orgin must be sought for Bactrian t—unless, indeed, G δ and τ may be regarded merely as alternative notations of [d], as has been Proposed. Such a Possibility was first suggested by G oτo ‘and’, which accoriding to W. B. Henning is ‘not differne from οδο ’, and which I. Gershevitch has explained either as a historical spelling or as a generalized sandhivariant of οδο. However, a crucial objection to the identifieation of οδο and οτο lies in the fact, the implications of which have not yet been fully appreciated, that they differ not only in form but also in function.
Tamil and Japanese—are they related? The hypothesis of Susumu Ohno
Authors: Zvelebil Kamil V.
Published: January 2010

There has to be something deeply unsatisfactory, disturbing and provocative about a linguistic family which is ‘isolated’, particulary when the family is as large as the Dravidian group of languages (spoken by almost 150 million in India), or when the language is so politically, economically and culturally interesting and important as Japanese.
The Mīm, the ՙAyn, and the making of Ismāՙīlism
Authors: Brett Michael
Published: January 2010

The ՙAlbāުiyya are the followers of al-ՙAlbā՚ b. Dhira՚ al-Dawsī, who set ՙAlī above the Prophet, saying that Muḥammad had been sent by ՙAlī, whom he called a divine being. … Some believe in the divinity of both ՙAlī and Muḣammad, but still think ՙAlī superior; these are called the ՙAyniyya. Others who think them both divine put Muḣammad first; these are called the Mīmiyya. Yet others believe in the divinity of all five Companions of the Cloak, Muḣammad, ՙAlī, Fāṭima, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, as equally imbued with the spirit of God.
The Barāhima: literary construct and historical reality
Authors: Calder Norman
Published: January 2010

John Wansbrough's rebukes to historians find their wittiest expression in his ‘Res ipsa loquitur’, an essay in which the nub of the problem seems to be this, that he thinks historians are writing novels and they think they are presenting the facts. Accused of engaging with language games, narrative structures and creative mimesis, a wise historian might decide to be flattered, and stick to his last. Wansbrough, after all, is also a historian: a typological assessment of his work will not (yet) find that he has slipped into the genre of novel, or theology. Even his extensive exercises in literary criticism are part of an effort to tell the history of a community. His objections are to the arbitrarily privileged position of ‘reality’, the tyranny of some narrative structures, the eschewal of interpretative versatility, and a lack of methodological and literary self-consciousness. Significant criticisms, but presented in a context which implies not only serious concern with but enjoyment of the achievement of these historians, novelistsmalgré eux.
‘Even an Ethiopian slave’: the transformation of a Sunnī tradition
Authors: Crone Patricia
Published: January 2010

It is well known that the Khārijites rejected genealogical qualifications for the caliphal office. As they saw it, the most meritorious Muslim should be elected whatever his ethnic origins might be; personal merit overruled considerations of descent. Modern Islamicists regularly imply that they also held personal merit to overrule considerations ofstatus libertatis: the Khārijites allegedly held the most meritorious Muslim to be eligible for the caliphal office ‘even if he were a black/Ethiopian slave’. But this has long been known to rest on a mistake. The mistake goes back to Goldziher who based himself on a Prophetic tradition exhorting the believers to obey theamīr‘even if he be an Ethiopian slave (‘abd ḥabashī); but as Goitein and Lewis have pointed out, the tradition in question has nothing to do with Khārijite views on the caliphate. So why does the claim persist? The answer is that al-Shahrastānī also credits the Khārijites with the tenet that theimāmmay be a black slave (‘abd awḥar), or at any rate a slave (Cureton's text has ‘abd aw ḥurr).
The transformation of reality and the Arabic novel's aesthetic response
Authors: Hafez Sabry
Published: January 2010

The rapid pace of the change sweeping through the Arab world over the last few decades has profoundly affected both its various cultural products and its writers' perception of their national identity, social role and the nature of literature. The aim of this paper1 is to discuss the major changes in the sociopolitical reality of the Arab world, the cultural frame of reference and the responses of one of the major literary genres in modern Arabic literature: the novel. It is assumed here that there is a vital interaction between the novel and its socio-cultural context, in that novels encode within their very structure various elements of the social reality in which they appear and within whose constraints they aspire to play a role. Their generation of meaning is enmeshed in a variety of cultural, psychological and social processes, and their reception therefore brings into operation an array of experiences necessary for the interpretive act.