bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Obelisk of Maṭara
Authors: Ullendorff Edward
Published: March 2011

The obelisk of Maṭara has long been known to bear the oldest Ethiopic inscription extant. Maṭara is a small village near Senafe, in the province of Akkele Guzay, on the frontier between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and the obelisk stands on one of the most majestic sites of the Abyssinian highlands. When Littmann visited Maṭara at the beginning of this century he found the obelisk, broken into two parts, lying on the ground. The Italian Administration later had the broken monument repaired by means of two iron bars (see Photograph I) and set upright again in what was (wrongly !) believed to be its original position.
A Forgotten Persian Poet of the Thirteenth Century
Authors: Robertson D. S.
Published: March 2011

I recently purchased a Persian manuscript, dated a.h. 981 (= a.d. 1573), containing the Dīvān of a poet named Ḍiyā-yi Fārsī. The manuscript, which is in good condition, contains 149 folios, each of fifteen lines, amounting in all to about 4,400 couplets: my knowledge of its contents is due to the kindness of Professor R,. Levy and Professor V. Minorsky, who have both examined its text.
Masterpieces of Oriental Art. 17: Representations of the Bodhisattva Going to School, in Gandhāra Reliefs
Authors: Hargreaves H.
Published: March 2011

In the Exhibition of Indian Art held in London at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1947–48, was a Gandhāra sculpture No. 106, lent by Major-General H. L. Haughton, C.B., C.I.E., C.B.E. It is now in the possession of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Its official Museum number is I.S. 51–1948. It measures 35 cm. in length and 32 cm. in height (PI. IV, fig. 1).
Masterpieces of Oriental Art. 18. The Hsin Po Kuei, An Early Chinese Bronze Ritual Vessel
Authors: Hansford S. Howard
Published: March 2011

This beautiful vessel is in the collection of Mrs. B. Z. Seligman of London. It measures 7 inches in height and 9⅜ inches in width across the handles. The merit of the design lies in its dignity and fine simplicity of form, rather than in the superficial decoration. Indeed, one has here a foretaste of that Chinese genius for plastic form in vessels which attained its full manifestation some 2,000 years later in the ceramic triumphs of the Sung Dynasty. The beauty of the bronze is enhanced in modern eyes by the fine, smooth, blue-green patina that covers the surface. The shape and decoration are characteristic of the First Phase of archaic bronze design, associated with the Shang-Yin and Early Chou periods, the style and content of the inscription favouring the latter of these two alternatives and suggesting a date in the late eleventh or the tenth century b.c. The vessel was publicly shown for the first time at the Exhibition of Early Chinese Bronzes held by the Oriental Ceramic Society in London last autumn.
Ḥafṣ b. Albar—the last of the Goths?
Authors: Dunlop D. M.
Published: March 2011

It is a well-known fact that descendants of the Visigothic kings lived on in Spain under Muslim rule for several centuries. An important early historian of Muslim Spain, Ibn al-Qüṭīyah (died 367/977), owes his name—“son of the Gothic woman”—to descent from the princess Sara, granddaughter of King Witiza, and in his Iftitāḥ gives an account of the destinies of several members of the family. The following pages will, I hope, serve to throw light on one of these and at the same time to clear up a bibliographical problem which has never been properly solved.
A Ninth Century Inscription from Rkoṅ-po
Authors: Richardson H. E.
Published: March 2011

During my stay in Tibet from 1946 to 1950 I undertook to edit the late Sir Charles Bell's material on the inscriptions at Lhasa and Bsam Yas. This work led me to try to trace as many ancient Tibetan inscriptions as possible, and my inquiries took me to the rdo riṇs at Mtshur Phu, Saṅs Rgyas Dgon-pa, Hphyoṅ Rgyas, and Žva-ẖi Lha Khan, as well as to many likely but unproductive sites such as ẖu Žaṅ and Lha-Khaṅ Rdzoṅ. I also heard vague rumours of an old inscription somewhere near Rtse Bla Sgaṅ, on the Gtsan-po (Brahmaputra). As it would have needed more than six weeks' absence from my duties at Lhasa, I was not able to visit the place myself but I eventually enlisted the help of the young but very learned Bkaẖ Rgyud-pa Lama, Bdud ẖjoms Rinpoche, whose monastery is in that area and who was engaged on building a new lha-khan at an ancient site called Zans Mdog Dpal Ri. He had seen the inscription which, he said, was carved on a pillar or rock face beside the track along the north bank of the Gtsan-po, in an area known as De-Mo Sa. It was said to be sheltered by shallow stone walls supporting tiled eaves and to be almost completely buried in sand. The few lines which were visible were reported to refer to Khri Sroṅ Lde Brtsan and to contain the words “Kon Jo”, from which local tradition assumed that it referred to the Chinese princess who was (incorrectly) said to be the mother of Khri Sroṅ Lde Brtsan.
A Rhymed Ballad in Pahlavi
Authors: Tavadia J. C.
Published: March 2011

The Pahlavi text presented here has already been published, summarized, and translated (once with and once without transcription). Its contents cannot be said to be of great value, since no new light is thrown on the main theme—the advent of Shah Vahrām after the end of the Zaratušt-millennium. Yetthe text deserves to be treated again, if only for the fact, hitherto unnoticed, that it is a poem with rhyme. This fact must be welcomed for several reasons: firstly, as being of interest in itself; secondly as providing fresh material for the general study of prosody in pre-Islamic times; and finally as affording valuable help for the correct interpretation of the text.
The Text of the Dharmasamuccaya
Authors: Bailey D. R. Shackleton
Published: March 2011

Of the Dharmasamuccaya, a collection of stanzas from the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānā Sūtra and the only part of that Siitra known to survive in Sanskrit, the first five chapters were published in 1946 by the late Mr. Lin Li-Kouang from a modern Devanāgarī transcription of a presumably still extant twelfth-century Nepalese MS. From this deeply corrupt source (how far the corruptions derive from the original and how far from the copy I cannot say) it would be impossible to construct anything like a satisfactory text were it not for the existence of a Tibetan version of the Siitra in the Kanjur. The relevant verses in this and in two out of three extant Chinese versions were extracted by Lin Li-Kouang from their prose environment and accompany the Sanskrit in his edition. But even with these aids many uncertainties remain. For the Tibetans were evidently working from a text which had already suffered some deterioration and their renderings must be used with more than ordinary circumspection. Of the two published Chinese versions the first contains some helpful indications but, as is usually the case, its value as a clue to the original is small in comparison with the more literal Tibetan. The second is so free as to be nearly useless.
Daḳā'iḳ al-Ḥurūf by ‘Abd al-Ra’ūf of Singkel
Authors: Johns A.
Published: March 2011

Orthodoxy, as a rule, makes less appeal to the imagination than heresy, and this holds true of seventeenth-century Sumatran Suiism as of mysticism elsewhere. Some of the works of Shamsu'1-Dīn and Hamzah, the foremost exponents of the heterodox pantheistic mysticism of that time, have been published. al-Rānīrī, as an accomplished polemist, cuts a colourful figure whose Tibyān fī ma'rifat al-adyān has been photographically reproduced. The works of ‘Abd al-Ra'ūf, of Singkel, apart from Rinkes’ thesis and one or two monographs have been comparatively neglected. This neglect is not surprising. His works are largely translations and his favourite subject, the dhikr (recitation), does not arouse such a sjympathetic interest as the metaphysical speculations of the heterodox which find an echo in form as well as substance in the history of Western thought.
PersianBahmān“so-and-so”: an ancient survival?
Authors: Sims-Williams Nicholas
Published: March 2011

In this short article marking Sir Harold Bailey's 90th birthday on 16 December 1989 it seems appropriate to take up and develop one amongst the many fruitful insights with which he has enriched our understanding of the languages of India, Iran, and Central Asia.
Henry Miers Elliot – a reappraisal
Authors: Wahi Tripta
Published: March 2011

Henry Miers Elliot's first specifically historical work on India appeared one hundred and forty years ago in 1849. Four years later his small book on the Arabs in Sind was published. Between 1866 and 1877 appeared the magnum opus with which Elliot's name has since become identified, the History of India as told by its own Historians (8 vols.), edited, arranged and completed by John Dowson.
Orthodox Variants from old Biblical Manuscripts
Authors: Sheppard H. W.
Published: March 2011

In our days and in our country very little interest is taken in the contents of MSS. of the Hebrew Bible. This statement is supported by the facts of my own experience. For five years, 1917–22, I was working among Bible MSS. in the Library at Trinity College and in the University Library at Cambridge, and for the last seven years I have been working among similar treasures in the British Museum. The Register of MSS., given above in Section I, will shew that at present I have in use what is practically the whole collection of MSS. of ancient date belonging to the Museum which contain the Hebrew Psalms, as well as MS. 42, kindly lent me by the Council of Trinity College, Cambridge, and MS. 20, reproduced as regards Psalms in photograph. And throughout all these years it has always been matter of surprise when, at rare intervals, some other scholar has applied for permission to consult some one of the many MSS. in use by me. So it is that the corner of the field in which I find myself growing old is a very lonely corner; indeed, the whole field, as well as my corner in it, cries aloud for workers, and is unheeded. By the rulers of Biblical studies in our times the field of the Hebrew MSS. of the Bible has been treated as an expanse of desert, wholly unprofitable for working, and rightly condemned to be left severely unvisifeed. As regards my own corner of this field, under date 11th July, 1925, the whole bulk of my own work among the Bible MSS. and Editions, itself in manuscript, was accepted by the Trustees of the British Museum, under the title “Studies in Hebrew Bible”, and with the Press-mark for the whole, Oriental 9624. The number of volumes of notes and texts to be eventually included will be large, but the first seven volumes already catalogued and available for use by scholars are complete in themselves, in so far as they contain the whole of the Text of Psalms in Ginsburg's (1913) edition, with full tables, notes, and a complete Concordance of the accents of every word of Psalms in that edition.
The Geographical Names in the Staël-Holstein Scroll
Authors: Clauson G. L. M.
Published: March 2011

The “Staël-Holstein Scroll” is a convenient name to give to the document on which are inscribed the texts recently published by Professor Thomas and Professor Sten Konow in “Two Mediaeval Documents from Tun Huang”, Oslo Etnografiske Museums Skrifter, Bind 3, Hefte 3 (Oslo, 1929). It bears on one side a Buddhist Sūtra in Chinese and on the other one document in Tibetan and one in the Śaka language (also sometimes called “Khotanese” and “Nord-Arisch”). These latter have no relation to the Chinese text and were written on it when it had become waste paper.
An Ismailitic Work by Nasiru'd-din Tusi
Authors: Ivanow W.
Published: March 2011

The connection of Naṣīru'd-dīn Ṭūsī with the Ismailites is a well-known fact, familiar to every student of Persian literature. Even a beginner cannot pass without paying attention to his important treatise on ethics, the Akhlāq-i-Nāṣirī. This latter work was composed for and dedicated to the enlightened Ismailite governor (ra'īs) of the province of Quhistān, Nāṣiru'd-dīn Muḥtasham, or 'Abdu'r-Raḥīm b. Abī Manṣūr, of Qā'in, who was a well-known patron of men of letters. The original version of the work (as Ṭūsī himself states in the preface to the book as it stands at present) was subsequently altered by him when he dissociated himself from the Ismailites; it included apparently a doxology with praises to Ismailite Imams.
A New Factor in the Problem of Sumerian Origins
Authors: Langdon S.
Published: March 2011

This year M. L. Ch. Watelin, director of excavations for the Oxford Field Museum Expedition at Kish, has found another seal of the early Indus Valley civilization at plain level, 9 metres below the surface of the soil. According to our stratifications at this site, the object should be pre-Sargonic, but it was found with a stone pommel bearing an inscription clearly not earlier than Sargon of Agade. Both objects, therefore, may have fallen from above.
An Aramaic Inscription on a Piece of Black painted Ware from Nineveh
Authors: Thompson R. Campbell , Hamilton R. W.
Published: March 2011

While excavating at the side of the foundations of the Temple of Ishtar in some Parthian houses on Kouyunjik in 1930–1, we found a quantity of black-painted pottery, to all appearances of an early date, of the same kind as appeared in 1927 and 1929, when Mr. Hutchinson was in charge of the pottery. This painted ware, while reminiscent of the well-known ware from Susa and Babylonia, has a distinct type of its own, and we are still in doubt about its exact date, but it is presumably of the Third Millennium. Its presence in Parthian levels led us to assume that some Parthian archaeologist had collected it.
The History of the Ismā'īlī Da'wat and its Literature during the last phase of the Fāṭimid Empire
Authors: Al-Hamdānī Husain F.
Published: March 2011

The Fāṭiāmid Khilāfat, which had sprung into existence as the result of the widespread Ismā'ili propaganda at the end of the third century a.h., was at first consolidated on the soil of Northern Africa in the year 297 A.H. During the reign of al Mu'izz billāh, the centre of influence of the Fāṭimid Empire was transferred to Egypt, a change that was responsible for the foundation of Cairo. But the Fāṭimid conception of the state would not be contented merely with sovereignty over Egypt and the surrounding countries. The Fāṭimid movement strove to engulf the whole of the Islamic world and to unite the various small Islamic principalities in one 'Alid kingdom.
Mauryya Chronology and Connected Problems
Authors: Bhattasali N. K.
Published: March 2011

A Student of Indian History is often surprised to find that what he has been accustomed to look upon from boyhood as sheet anchors of Indian Chronology prove, on closer scrutiny, to be very far from being so. The year 322–321 B.C. for the accession of Candragupta Mauryya is one of such dates.
An Achaemenian Tomb-Inscription at Persepolis
Authors: Davis A. W.
Published: March 2011

In vol. xxix of the Abhandlungen der königlichen sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Professor F. H. Weissbach published a number of the inscriptions which appear above the figures supporting the throne of Darius the Great on his rock-hewn tomb at Naqsh-i-Rustam, nine or ten miles northwest of Persepolis. Three other tombs of the Achaemenian kings exist at Naqsh-i-Rustam, but they are unfortunately uninscribed. Three similar Achaemenian tombs are found at Persepolis itself, two in the mountain face immediately behind the palace platform and one, unfinished, a little way off towards the south. These tombs, being quite easy of access, have often been visited and described. They have always been believed to be lacking inscriptions. Two, the North Tomb and the Unfinished Tomb, have in fact no inscription, but the South Tomb has a well-preserved trilingual inscription which so far as the writer is aware has hitherto completely escaped notice. The inscription is found above the heads of the figures supporting the throne of the Great King, exactly as in the tomb-inscription of Darius the Great, but in a far better state of preservation.
An Assyrian Chemist's Vade-mecum
Authors: Thompson R. Campbell
Published: March 2011

I Append some suggested explanations for some of the receipts in an Assyrian text, of which several recensions exist, which may be considered as a vade-mecum for chemists.

These recensions are:—

A. K. 274 + 5986 (CT.. xiv, 42, cols, iii–iv) + 4163 (ib., cols, i–ii–iii, a new join) + 8764 (col. iv, copied afresh, a new join); the lower part of this tablet is K. 4140, B (ib., 42–3, cols, i–ii) + 14077 (ib., 33, joining col. iii, a new join).
Symbols of Parentage in Archaic Chinese
Authors: Hopkins L. C.
Published: March 2011

A Few lines of introduction to the following paper seem advisable before presenting to readers of the Journal a summary of an essay by that ultra-modern Chinese scholar, Mr. Kuo Mo-jo. On the other hand it may be that the limited but steadily growing body of students of Chinese art and archæology in America and Europe will, so to speak, sniff at any “introduction” to Mr. Kuo. However, let it go. In brief the author is deeply versed in the history no less than the writing of ancient China, equally so as these are disclosed on the multitudinous bronze vessels, and on those fragmentary entries on the broken pieces of bone and tortoiseshell which are known as the “oracular sentences”, or pu tz'ῠ by the Chinese epigraphists. Nor is Mr. Kuo unacquainted with (nor, I think, uninfluenced by) Western literature on the subjects relevant to his own researches, as I infer from the several German authors whom he mentions by name.
The East India Company's Education of its Own Servants
Authors: Bowen John
Published: March 2011

During the eighteenth century the East India Company did not consider the education of its own European civil servants as a necessary care. Appointment was by patronage, and it was assumed that the parents and friends of a writer would have subjected him to the ordinary education of his class. With no more than this background a young writer would sail for India at the age of about seventeen years. The Indian Service was confined to comparatively few families and he might reasonably expect to find relatives or friends of relatives at any of the three Presidencies, and these would give him hospitality and guidance. His initial employment would be as a copying clerk; as such hewould become familiar with the routine of the service before being given a post of responsibility. The only concession made by the Company to his need for any other instruction than that given by his daily employment was the payment to him of a Munshi's allowance, so that he might hire an Indian to teach him Persian and the local language.
Turkish Ghost Words
Authors: Clauson Gerard
Published: March 2011

This is a fuller version of the paper which I read at the recent International Congress of Orientalists at Cambridge. It has been prepared in compliance with several requests from those who heard it for something on paper which they could study at leisure.
James Fitzjames Stephen (1829–94)
Authors: Roach John
Published: March 2011

The influence of English law upon Indian history and politics has been considerable and merits further examination. One approach to this lies through a study of the nineteenth century Law Members, of the Viceroy's Council, who held a distinctive position among the high officials of Indian government. They were not normally professional administrators or Indian residents; coming out from England, they brought to bear upon Indian affairs a point of view which-reflected current English conditions far more closely than that of their colleagues. Among the eminent men who held the office were T. B. Macaulay, H. S. Maine, and C. P. Ilbert. Another important figure whose work as Legal Member deserves reassessment is J. F. Stephen, whose short tenure (1869–72) marks an important stage in the completion of the Indian codes. When he was appointed in 1869 he was a man of forty. After Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he had become a moderately successful barrister, who had written on the history and principles of the criminal law. He had also made a considerable reputation as a journalist, and had been a leading light, both of the Saturday Review and of the Pall MallGazette. His stay in India was cut short by financial worries and family responsibilities, but, after he went home, he maintained a great interest in Indian affairs. He wrote on them in newspapers and periodicals, and his attack on English Liberalism, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873), was primarily inspired by his Indian experiences. He was the friend and confidential correspondent of Lord Lytton (Viceroy, 1876–80).
The Kārimī Merchants
Authors: Ashtor E.
Published: March 2011

The important rôle which the Kārimī merchants played in Oriental trade at the end of the Middle Ages has been touched upon by some outstanding orientalists. The last to treat the subject exhaustively was W. J. Fischel in his paper “Über die Gruppe der Kārimī-Kaufleute”, published in 1937 in the series Analecta Orientalia (of the Pontifical Bible Institute) no. 14. The Arabic historical works of the later Middle Ages contain, however, additional material, which partly corroborates and partly modifies Fischel's conclusions. A good many of the notices on the Kārimīs to be quoted in this paper are taken from the hitherto unpublished chronicle Inbā' al-ghumr bi-abnā al-'umr of Ibn Ḥajar al-'Asqalānī (d. 1449), MS. Constantinople, Yeni Cami 814 and the Who's Who of the fifteenth century composed by al-Sakhāwī (d. 1497) and called ad-Ḍau' al-lāmi' fī a'yān al-qarn al-tāsi' (Cairo, 1353–55).
A Note on Qapqan
Authors: Clauson Gerard
Published: March 2011

Turcologists will all be extremely grateful to Mr. Sinor for his paper on Qapqan in JRAS., Pts. 3 and 4, 1954. It is most important that “delousing” operations of this kind should be performed before delusions get too firm a grip on the public mind. With his general thesis that the word is purely Turkish and not Iranian I wholeheartedly agree, but, with respect, I do not agree with his suggested etymology, and I should be grateful for an opportunity to make some supplementary observations.
Remarks on the South-Arabian Inscriptions Hamilton 3–13
Authors: Jamme A.
Published: March 2011

The South-Arabian inscriptions Hamilton 3–13, as well as a few small sculptures, were found by Major the Hon. R. A. B. Hamilton in Šabwat (Ḥaḍramawt) in 1938 and given to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, in 1952. Both sculptures and texts were published recently in this journal (April, 1954, pp. 43–63) by W. L. Brown and A. F. L. Beeston in a very interesting article on “Sculptures and Inscriptions from Shabwat”.
Note on Mahābhārata II 28
Authors: Gurner Walter
Published: March 2011

Edgerton's identification of a reference to Rome in the Mahābhārata deserves fresh attention in view of Sir Mortimer Wheeler's discovery in 1945 of traces of an Indo-Roman trading station at Arakamedu, near Pondicherry, with its train of consequential archæological implications. The passage in the Mahābhārata occurs as part of the “Digvijaya” of Sahadeva in the Sabhāparva (Mah. ii, 28/47–9, B.O.R.I. ed):—

“By means of envoys he brought under control and made to pay tribute the one-footed people, the Kēvalas who live in the forest, the city of Sañjayanti—the Pānḍyas Draviḍas together with the Chodras and Keralas, the Andhras and Talavanas and Kalingas. By means of envoys he made to pay tribute and brought under control Antioch and Rome and the city of the Yavanas,”
Imported Mediterranean Amphorae from Kolhapur
Authors: Sankalia H. D.
Published: March 2011

While reviewing our report on the Excavations at Brahmapuri (Kolhapur) in JRAS., 1954, p. 90, Mr. P. S. Rawson said that “the main excavations, however, yielded little more evidence of Roman contacts”. This is true as far as the published evidence goes.
From Indian Waters: Some Old Letters
Authors: Duggan G. C.
Published: March 2011

There came into my hands last year a packet of old letters written in the latter end of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century mostly by members of the Irish family of Purefoy whose home was at Woodfield, near Eyrecourt, in the Co. Galway. Apart from those of purely domestic interest, there are a number written from India by James Purefoy who spent most of his life in the East as a merchant-ship-officer and trader. He went out to India in 1792 and did not return home for twenty-seven years. His extant letters were written either to his sister Mary or to her husband Robert Turbett, a Dublin merchant. Few as they are, they give a realistic if prosaic picture of the ups and downs of a merchant seaman's life during his inevitable long years of exile from his native land.
Four-line Yamaka in the old Javanese Rāmáyaṇa
Authors: Hooykaas C.
Published: March 2011

When we know that the first 56 per cent of the tenth century OJR has been modelled after the first 65 per cent of BHAṬṬI's mahā-kāvya Rāvaṇavadha, the Bhaṭṭi-kāvya (BhK.), dating from the seventh century, it is possible to compare broadly their contents and form. The most conspicuous literary form in the BhK is that of the yamaka, of which BHAṬṬI, near the middle of his poem, demonstrates twenty different types, that (with the following stanzas on arthâlaṅkāra) interrupt his grammatical exercises. To show how far these examples haye been followed in the OJR, the BhK X.1–22 is printed here (stanza 1 on Anuprāsa, assonance, being included for the sake of continuity of narration). The technical terms added to BHAṬṬI's examples are those given to them by his commentators.
The Karma-pa Sect. A Historical Note
Authors: Richardson H. E.
Published: March 2011

By the Great Ming Emperor the Karma-pa GŽu'u la'i ta'i ba'u hva waṅ ta'i śiṅ rtsi tsa'i hu'o was invited and was made chief of all the ban-dhe (Buddhist monks) in the Empire. At Liṅ-gu svi-sde (temple) he performed a great service of prayers for the Great Imperial Father, Tha'i Ju, and the loving Queen-mother in order to deliver all creatures in the world from the round of transmigration and from hell. The service began on the fifth day of the second month of the fifth year of Yun Lo. On the first day there appeared an iridescent cloud of five colours, beautiful to see, expanding and contracting in various ways, in brilliance like the Wish-granting Gem. Also, above the mchod-rten (stupa) of Relics a ray of light, like the full moon, shone out unblemished and flickering a little. Also, two bands of golden rays rose above the dwelling place of the Precious Essence of all Bygone Buddhas, the Religious King, Powerful through Great Compassion, the Karma-pa gŽu'i la'i ta'i ba'u hva waṅ zi then ta'i śin tsi tsa'i hu'o, the place where he performed the ceremony after having made the dkyil-'khor (mandala).
The Translations of al-Biṭrīq and Yaḥyā (Yuḥannā) b. al-Biṭrīq
Authors: Dunlop D. M.
Published: March 2011

Accounts of the two notable translators into Arabic, al-Biṭrīq and his son Yaḥyā are, even in our best works of reference, inadequate and often confused. One gathers the general impression that their translations were displaced by the works of Ḥunain b. Isḥāq and his school, who flourished about sixty years later. It is to this loss of popularity, it would seem, that the paucity of information about the two earlier translators and the limited number of existing MSS. of their works are due. Enough survives, however, to make clear that the translations of Yaḥyā b. al-Biṭrīq and his father covered a wide field, and that at one time their numerous works were well known.
James Augustus Grant and the Gorakhpur Opium, 1789–1796
Authors: Wright H. R. C.
Published: March 2011

In 1789 James Augustus Grant wrote that he had resided for several years in Benares as a free merchant under the protection of the East India Company. He evidently specialized on trade with the Gorakhpur district of Oudh. “I have for some time past and by the force of unremitting exertion and a great expense been enabled to establish factories in Gorruckpoor, etc., in the [Nawab's] Dominions for the manufacture of cloths, sugar, opium, etc., and I effected these establishments without any interest or influence except that which became the result of my own industry.” He had incurred considerable initial losses and expenses, chiefly in propitiating various Indian functionaries and landholders and especially the Nawab's land-revenue officers (amils). The amils seem mostly to have farmed the privilege of collecting the land-revenue on short leases and to have been constantly changing, a fact which made all business concerns highly precarious.
Thomas More and Joseph the Indian
Authors: Derrett J. Duncan M.
Published: March 2011

The purpose of this article is two-fold: firstly, to illustrate by means, particularly, of two examples how far Thomas More based the Second Book of his masterpiece,Utopia, upon Indian, or more strictly, indological sources; and secondly to reintroduce to historians of IndiaIosephus Indus, “Joseph the Indian.”
Western Science in India before 1850
Authors: Larwood H. J. C.
Published: March 2011

The establishment and consolidation of the British Empire in India occurred at a time of expanding interest and achievement in science in Europe. In India there was certainly an appreciation of the importance of this European science, for the growth of science education there in the early nineteenth century compares not unfavourably with that in England. But what kind of scientific interests and activities were to be found in India up to about 1850, and who were the men who pursued them ?
Assizes of Antioch
Authors: Kurdian H.
Published: March 2011

Antioch, under the government of the Crusades, for 200 years was ruled judicially by a series of assizes the original text of which remains lost.

In 1870 an Armenian scholar-priest, Father Hovhaness M'krian of Constantinople, published a letter in an Armenian periodical to which he added a few notes, stating that he had discovered an Armenian manuscript belonging to a Mr. Manoug Aslanian that contained various codices. This collection of religious and civil laws was copied in a.d. 1331 for the king of Armenians, Levon, son of Oshin. The scribe of this manuscript was the well-known Sarkis, surnamed Bidzag, who illuminated it and decorated it with a fullpage miniature in gold and colour, showing King Levon seated in court to pass judgment. In this law book was incorporated an Armenian translation of the Assizes of Antioch with seventeen articles about liege lords and serfs, and their rights as well as their obligations towards each other, and twenty-one assizes dealing with civilians. This manuscript was secured for the library of the Mekhitarists in Venice and is kept there now.
List of Malay Manuscripts in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London
Authors: Voorhoeve P.
Published: March 2011

This list contains the titles of the Raffles and Farquhar MSS., drawn from Van der Tuuk's catalogue as edited by R. Rost in Miscellaneous Papers relating to Indo-China and the Indian Archipelago, vol. ii, 1887, pp. 1–56 (after the original in JRAS., N.S., vol. ii, pp. 85–135, revised from the Dutch translation in BKI, III, 1, pp. 409–474, and with additional notes by Rost). I have added dates of MSS. and references to Van der Tuuk's notes about them found in some Leiden MSS. For the Maxwell collection this list reproduces Blagden's inventory (JRAS., 1899, pp. 121–129) with small corrections and the addition of other Malay manuscripts since presented by other donors. Some references to printed editions for which the R.A.S. MSS. have been used are also added. In a few cases some new notes about the contents of the texts have been given, mostly taken from information supplied by Sir R. O. Winstedt, who has also made the descriptions of the additional MSS. Maxwell 106 et sqq.
Nephrite Jade in West Pakistan
Authors: Butler B. C. M.
Published: March 2011

Two pebbles of the nephrite variety of jade were found by the author in 1955 in the river bed of the Teri Toi in Kohat District of former North-West Frontier Province of West Pakistan; the positive identification of the compositions of the pebbles was, however, not made until February, 1962. This appears to be the first authenticated record of either of the true jade minerals (nephrite or jadeite) in Pakistan or India, and the discovery is of significance in relation to the unsolved problem of the origin of the raw material of Indian carved jade.
On Translating Medieval Hebrew Writing
Authors: Gertner M.
Published: March 2011

This essay is intended to appear in place of a review of two recent publications, one an English version of a famous work of medieval Hebrew poetry, published in this country, and the other a translation of a classic of the middle ages, a treatise in legal prose, issued in the United States. The first is Solomon Ibn Gabirol's (Avicebron's) great religious hymn Kether Malkhuth, The Kingly Crown; the second is Maimonides' Sepher Haphla'ah, The Book of Asseverations, the sixth of the fourteen sections of his halakhic code Mishneh Torah, or Yad hazaqah. The Kether was composed in the eleventh century in Arabic Spain and in the course of time became part of Jewish Synagogue liturgy; the Yad was compiled in the twelfth century in Egypt and soon came to be considered as the authoritative codification of Jewish religious law. Gabirol wrote his poem in the Hebrew idiom of the Bible, a style commonly employed by the poets of his era and area. Maimonides, dealing with talmudic law (and sources) used in his code the Hebrew diction of the post-biblical Mishnah, a literary innovation considering the fact that hitherto rabbinic works had been written in the Aramaic of the Talmud. His contemporary critics, therefore, occasionally also accused him of mistranslating (and halakhically misinterpreting) his Aramaic sources of the Talmud.
Sir Alexander Cunningham (1814–1893): The First Phase of Indian Archaeology
Authors: Imam Abu
Published: March 2011

In recent years some admirable attempts have been made to offer a connected story of the development of the science of archaeology in various parts of the world in the last hundred years or so. No comparable account is available of its development in India. Archaeology developed in Denmark, in the Aegean, in Egypt and in Cranborne Chase — as it were, so many laboratories in which the methods and techniques of the new discipline were perfected. The question naturally arises in the mind as to why these methods did not grow in India, where literally hundreds of sites were at the archaeologists' disposal. What circumstances prevailed in the Indian archaeological scene to account for the remarkable delay in introducing developed concepts and techniques? To answer this question we must examine the phase when archaeology in India was dominated by Cunningham and Burgess.
The Easter Fire at Jerusalem
Authors: Tritton A. S.
Published: March 2011

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

He said: How shall I neglect the judgement of the teacher? The fire comes down in the church of the Resurrection in the mosque al-Aqṣā. The story of this fire is that on the night in which God lifted Jesus up to heaven, the night of the 15th of Nisan, in that night every year fire comes down from the ether so that men see it and it lights the lamps of the Church of the Resurrection though there is no window or opening in the roof of this building. But the fire strikes the roof without igniting the timbers and then it lights the lamp and the torches. When dawn comes, it is extinguished. Abū Zaid Yaḥyā b. 'Adī (†974), a pupil of Abū Naṣr al-Fārabī, wrote a book about it and explained that it was a natural occurrence.
Some Literary References to the History of the Gurjara-Pratihāras Mahendrapāla and Mahipāla
Authors: Nigham M. L.
Published: March 2011

The Gurjara-Pratihāras were the last Hindu power of early Indian history who strove to unify the whole of Āryāvarta under one parasol, and the dynasty produced a brilliant galaxy of monarchs such as Nāgabhaṭa, Mihira-Bhoja, Mahendrapāla and Mahipāla who, apart from their military genius, were great patrons of learning and art. The archaeological remains of this dynasty have been brought to light from Pihova (Pṛthūdaka) in the north to Deogarh and Gwalior in the south, and from Kathiawar in the west to Bihar and Bengal in the east. Rājaśēkhara, the great Sanskrit poet-dramatist, was the spiritual preceptor (upādhyaya) of Mahendrapāla alias Nirbhayanarendra. He continued to grace the Pratihāra court till the reign of Mahipāla, the son and successor of Mahendrapāla, in whose presence the play Bālabhārata was staged. Besides the Bālabhārata, three other dramas, Bālarāmāyaṇa, Karpūramañjarī and Viddhaśālabhañjikā, and Kāvyamīmāṃsā, an elaborate work on poetics, were written by the same author. Being closely associated with the political life of the court, Rājaśēkhara's dramas, although based on conventional themes of love, give us glimpses of the political condition of northern India at that time.
“God Will Never Disgrace Thee” (The Interpretation of an Early Ḥadīth)
Authors: Kister M. J.
Published: March 2011

The well known tradition in al-Bukhārī, told on the authority of al-Zuhrī—'Urwa— 'Ā'isha, about the conversation between the Prophet and Khadīja after he received his first revelation contains at the end a phrase variously interpreted by Muslim scholars and translated in modern times in various manners.
Dvāravatī in South-East Asian Cultural History
Authors: Wales H. G. Quaritch
Published: March 2011

The Buddhist kingdom referred to by Hiuan-tsang under the name of T'o-lo-po-ti (Dvāravatī), as situated to the west of Iśanapura (Cambodia) in the middle of the 7th century a.d., was recognized by Professor Cœdès in 1928 as having been peopled by Môns and responsible for the earlier Buddhist remains that have come to light around the head of the Gulf of Siam. As recently as 1963 he had the satisfaction of seeing his identification confirmed by two silver medals, found at Nak'on Pathom. Each was inscribed in Sanskrit of the 7th century: “foundation of the king of Śrī Dvāravatī.”
The Name of the Third Kind of Rus and of their City
Authors: Pritsak Omeljan
Published: March 2011

In the works of the 10th-century Arabic classical geographers, as represented by al-Iṣŭakhrī (c. 318–321/930–933) and Ibn Ḥawqal (c. 367/977), there appears a passage which deals with three “kinds” (ṣinf) of Rus. At the mention of the first kind of Rus, only the name of their city is given, while the name of the city of the second “kind”—apart from that of the kind themselves—though mentioned by Ibn Ḥawqal, is not given by al-Iṣṭakhrī.
The Elegies on the Prophet in their Historical Perspective
Authors: Arafat W.
Published: March 2011

Of the poems found in the Sīra, four only are introduced as elegies on the death of the Prophet Muḥammad, all of which are ascribed to Ḥassān b. Thābit. They can, however, be seen on internal evidence to be the work of later Anṣarīs, and to reflect the inferior status to which the Anṣārīs were reduced after the sack of Madlna in 63/683; a consciousness of the restriction of their importance to the part they, as a community, played in supporting the Prophet in the early stages; a degree of resigned resentment at their meagre share in the fruits of power, and an intense sentimentality in concentrating their thoughts on the Prophet himself, with whom their glorious past was closely connected. They wished to view this as a personal relation and a privilege which by then was in fact a consolation. Occasionally one also senses Shi'ī undertones in the sentimental adulation of the Prophet (clearly a remote figure), and, as will be demonstrated below, one also notices the occurrence of the epithet “mahdi” and words of the same root. Both these tendencies are of particular significance in relation to the late Umayyad and early ‘Abbāsid periods.
The Inscription at the Tomb of Khri Lde Srong Brtsan
Authors: Richardson H. E.
Published: March 2011

In JRAS, 1964, I edited an eighth-century inscription from 'Phyong rgyas known only through its survival in a collection which once belonged to Rig-'dzin Tshe-dbang Nor-bu of Ka-thog monastery, a famous lama of the 18th century (hereafter referred to as RT). The present article is concerned with his copy of another inscription described as “at Srong-brtsan Bang-so”. That is the popular name not only for the tumulus called Bang-so dMar-po and known as that of Srong-brtsan sGam-po but also of the whole burial area near 'Phyong rgyas. The inscription comes from a pillar near the tumulus attributed to Khri IDe Srong brTsan, who reigned from c. 804–815. Professor Giuseppe Tucci, the first Western visitor to examine the royal burial ground, has edited it in his Tombs of the Tibetan kings (TTK), Rome, 1950; and in CAJ, June 1963,1 have added some information about the pillar and the burial ground as a whole as the result of a visit in 1949, not long after Professor Tucci. Describing the pillar in TTK, p. 36, Professor Tucci writes “the surface of the stone is nowadays much damaged and a great part of the inscription is effaced. The lower portion is completely gone and a few lines are underground.”
Quelques Cas Complexes De Dérivation En Cambodgien
Authors: Lewitz S.
Published: March 2011

I. Beaucoup d'auteurs ont consacré une grande partie de leurs recherches au sujet vaste et riche qu'est la dérivation dans les langues mon-khmères. Le champ d'investigations le plus important est évidemment celui du mon et du khmer, du fait de la quantité de textes préservés jusqu'à l'heure actuelle. Les chercheurs sont arrivés à des résultats remarquables, dont l'aboutissement est l'établissement de tableaux des différentes catégories d'affixes (préfixes et infixes) et leurs fonctions grammaticales. A partir de là il ne semble plus difficile de reconstituer les families de mots. On traite les dérivés par un procédé quasi-mathématique: on “soustrait” les affixes des mots considérés et on peut retrouver assez aisément les racines qui, dans la plupart des cas, sont communes à beaucoup de langues mon-khmères.
Tatar Poets of the First Great War
Authors: Clauson Gerard
Published: March 2011

The First Great War was remarkable for the number of groups of people who started it fighting on one side and finished it fighting on the other. In the east the best known group was the Arabs, who started the war in the Turkish army and finished it taking part in the liberation of their countries from the Turks. A much less well-known group was the Turkish-speaking Moslems, mainly Tatars, who started the war in the Russian army and finished it in the Turkish army.
Tokharika
Authors: Bailey H. W.
Published: March 2011

In the Učenye Zapiski, XVI (1958), 280–308, the late V. S. Vorobiev-Desiatovsky published facsimiles of some Central Asian fragments preserved in Leningrad. One fragment contained a bilingual text, a traveller's guide, a type familiar elsewhere in Saka of Khotan, in Buddhist Sanskrit and Saka; and also in Chinese and Saka. The two languages in the new fragment were Buddhist Sanskrit and Kuchean, the language of ancient Kuci, modern Kucha, the so-called Tokharian B.
Some aspects of the impact of Rome on Palestine
Authors: Kenyon Kathleen M.
Published: March 2011

Sir Mortimer Wheeler has made innumerable contributions to the archaeology of the Roman period in Britain, and in his inaugural lecture as Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Provinces he declared his faith in training in Romano–British archaeology as the best training for would-be excavators, a faith to which I emphatically adhere. When he extended his field to India, he sought for and found datable products from Rome, Arretine ware, to provide a hitherto completely lacking fixed point in chronology, by means of which he established a chronological framework for much of the 1st millennium b.c. in the Indian sub-continent. Between Britain and India lies Palestine. Probably not many people know how nearly Sir Mortimer went to Palestine c. 1936, as Director of Antiquities. Political events made it impossible, but he has maintained his interest in this area. It seems not inappropriate to offer an article on the Roman impact on Palestine to this volume in his honour.
Copper vehicle-models in the Indus civilization
Authors: Piggott Stuart
Published: March 2011

a well-known find of a vehicle-model in the Indus civilization is the fragmentary copper representation of a covered cart found at a depth of 10 feet 6 inches in Stratum IV of Mound F at Harappā (Vats 1940, I, 99, 452; II, Pl. CXXV, 35), illustrated here by a drawing made from the original in 1943 (Fig. 1). It has a virtually exact counterpart from Chanhu-dāro (Mackay 1943, Pl. LVIII, 2) which, however, lacks not only the draught animals but the figure of the driver. The Harappā model clearly shows that in its unbroken condition it had a central draught-pole, with model animals projecting from the body of the cart on rods, the broken stumps of which look for a moment deceptively like an anachronistic pair of shafts. Both models would originally have possessed a pair of wheels carried on an axle turning in the loops below the vehicle.
The Sanskrit Dhyānas of Johnson Album 35 and the Rāga Descriptions of Subhaṅkara's Saṃgītadāmodara
Authors: te Nijenhuis Emmie
Published: March 2011

Although the rāgamāla miniatures are well known among art historians, scholars have hitherto paid little attention to the texts occurring on them. This remarkable fact might be attributed to the indifference of the art historians, for whom the chief interest lay in the paintings themselves. It should, however, be borne in mind that to those scholars who were also interested in the texts—as for instance O. C. Gangoly, who in the second volume of his famous book Rāgas and Rāginīs traced a number of Sanskrit dhyānas and Hindī dohās appearing on the front or reverse of rāga miniatures—the musical treatises to which these texts often refer were almost inaccessible, because most of them existed only in manuscript. Only very recently have a number of saṃgīta texts been edited.
aw̬ ha hku ve: The Lahu Nyi Rite for the Recall of a Wandering Soul
Authors: Walker Anthony R.
Published: March 2011

The primary purpose of this article is to present three Lahu texts, each recited by a different ritual specialist during identical rites for the recall of a wandering soul. In order to put these texts in context, I shall give a detailed account of the recall rite. It will be necessary also to explain briefly the Lahu Nyi theory of multiple souls.
A Note on Some Mongol Manuscripts in the University Library, Aberdeen
Authors: Bawden C. R.
Published: March 2011

The activities of the K‘eng ze čin wang, the seventeenth son of the K‘ang-hsi emperor of the Ch‘ing dynasty, as a promoter of translations of Lamaistic texts into the Mongol language, have been fairly well documented. In 1957 the present author published a brief description of a number of manuscripts associated with the name of this prince, which were then, and still are, in the possession of the University Library, Cambridge. For the sake of bibliographical completeness there follows a concise account of a small collection of manuscripts, some complete and some fragmentary, also associated with him, which have come to light in the past few months. These manuscripts belong to the University Library, Aberdeen, and were shown to me by Mr. Howard Nelson of the British Museum, to whom they had been submitted for identification.