bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Mongol Wars with Hsi Hsia (1205–27)
Authors: Martin H. Desmond
Published: March 2011

There can be few events in history so little known as Chinghiz Khan's wars with Hsi Hsia. Even in works dealing with the conqueror's life, one finds hardly more than a brief sketch of his conquest of this state. Doubtless this is due to the principal records extant on Hsi Hsia being written in Chinese. Many of these must include material originally drawn from Hsi Hsian documents, but to-day the latter are very rare, and until recently there was no one who could read them. Hence most of what has come down to us is from the pens of enemies, and even this is little known to students of Chinese or Mongol history. Yet in its day Hsi Hsia ranked among the great powers of Asia, and next to the empires of Chin and Khwarizm, was the strongest state overthrown by Chinghiz Khan.
“The Mysterious Paiśācī”
Authors: Master Alfred
Published: March 2011

Konow's “The Home of Paiśācī” (24 pages) was printed in ZDMG., 1910, and Grierson's reply (38 pages) in ZDMG., 1912. Konow concluded that “the Paiśācī described by Prakrit grammarians was based upon a dialect spoken in and about the Vindhyas, and perhaps further to the south and east” (p. 118). Grierson believed that “the home in India of the Piśācas was in the North-West of India, where these (the ‘modern Piśāca’) languages are spoken, and that— the nidus of Paiśācī Prakrit was also in the North-West” (p. 85). The theories of previous scholars as stated by Konow and Grierson were that Pai. was a hill dialect (Lassen), a low Prakrit spoken by Dravidians identifiable with Apabhraṃśa (Hoernle), a Prakrit of the North-West (Pischel), and (the Pai. of Guṇāḍhya, author of the Bṛhatkathā only) based upon an Aryan language of the north-west or west, but spoken by non-Aryan peoples (Lacôte).
The Mongol Army
Authors: Martin H. Desmond
Published: March 2011

Grenard has said, “it is largely because of human nature's delight in superlatives, that the world's famous captains have always been given perfectly fabulous hosts. Great generals must have huge armies. The names of Genghis Khan (Chinghiz Khan), Timur, Alexander, and Xerxes mount like wine to the brain of the historian. His figures become figures of speech: ‘one hundred thousand’ becomes his minimum. He soon leaps to ‘one million’. He does this with a sense of relish but also because he knows that his reader will tremble with pleasurable awe at the passing of a conqueror who leads countless warriors.”
The Origin of the Islamic Doctrine of Acquisition
Authors: Watt William M.
Published: March 2011

Considerable obscurity surrounds the introduction into Islamic thought of the orthodox doctrine that it is God who “creates” the acts of man, whereas man merely “acquires” them (kasaba, iktasaba). The doctrine is sometimes attributed to al-Ash'arī, but in his Maqālāt al-Islamīyīn he himself frequently uses the term in his accounts of the views of other writers. This paper examines the various uses of kasaba and iktasaba in that work to see what light is thrown on the origin and development of the conception.
Archæological Notes form the Hindukush Region
Authors: Stein Aurel
Published: March 2011

This is a preliminary account of some finds of archæological interest which have recently come to my notice in the tracts comprised within the Gilgit Agency south of the Hindukush. Separated by high ranges from the northern extremity of the Indian North-West Frontier, these tracts are too remote for their population of Dardic speech to have directly shared in the development of Indo-Aryan civilization in the great plains along the Indus and Ganges. Nor have they been immediately exposed to the invasions and cultural influences from the west which have affected that civilization within historical times. Apart from reliable but very scant notices in the Chinese Annals, such written records of the past of these tracts as exist do not reach back much further than the advent of Islām. Hence any relics attesting the conditions prevailing there in earlier periods may claim special interest.
Archæological Discoveries in Trialeti—Caucasus
Authors: Schaeffer C. F. A.
Published: March 2011

The Academy of Sciences of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic published in 1941 through the Institute of History, Tiflis, a report in Russian (231 pp. + 132 illustrations and 126 plates, of which 19 are coloured) by Mr. B. A. Kuftin on some remarkable archæological discoveries in Trialeti. The report contains a 16 page summary of its contents in English and an up-to-date bibliography of more than 500 references. The appearance in the middle of the war of a volume devoted to Russian research is in itself an event. It is evidence of the vitality of Russian archæology and of the confidence of the author and editor in ultimate victory at the very moment when the invader was carrying fire and sword to the foot of the Caucasus.
Folklore Motifs in Canaanite Myth
Authors: Gaster T. H.
Published: March 2011

The Canaanite poem of Aliyan Ba'al and Mot, discovered at Ras Shamra (Ugarit), is now familiar to most students of ancient Semitic literature. As I have repeatedly pointed out, it is the libretto of a seasonal pantomime representing the victory of Rain over Drought. By comparison with the Arabic terms ba'l and mawulh, the names of the two antagonists may be rendered “Sir Rain” and “Sir Drought”.
A Motif in Indonesian Art
Authors: Winstedt R. O.
Published: March 2011

There are many isolated data in the Malay Archipelago that still await scientific explanation. Dr. G. de Hevesy claimed to have discovered a kinship between the script of Easter Island and that of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro (Bulletin de la Socéité préhistorique Française, 1933, Nos. 7–8; The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, E. R. Hunter, London, 1934); Sir Elliot Smith detected Egyptian influence in the banners of Alur Islands (Human History, 1930, p. 339); Dr. Paul Rivet discovered a Sumerian element in Oceanian languages (Proceedings of the Fourth Pacific Science Congress, Batavia, 1930, vol. iii, pp. 519–527). And to these unsolved problems may be added the art motif of a bird perched on an animal.
Masterpieces of Oriental Art. 4
Authors: Gordine Dora
Published: March 2011

Rarely has the art of East and West blended more happily than in this superb seventeenth century portrait of a painter. In so many Persian miniatures figures and drapery are rendered conventionally in a style tradition has made classical; and the classical, as Greece as taught us, is so apt to become “faultily faultless, splendidly null”. Here instead of any vacuous type is a definite individual with personality expressed in hands and arms, in the droop of the neck and in the intense concentration of the refined sensitive face. It is the portrait of a fastidious artist scrutinizing a picture with analytical gaze. The Persian beauty of flowing lines and tenuous fabric has been almost usurped by the Venetian beauty of rich texture and voluminous material. The prodigal richness of the thick brocade is emphasized by the translucency of the austere face and the hands. The thickness of the velvet is further brought out by the light cambric of handkerchief and turban. For huge though the turban is, it is not heavy, and with Persian virtuosity the painter has given rotundity to its folds without shading.
Kingship and Enthronement in Malaya
Authors: Winstedt R. O.
Published: March 2011

There are two rulers in Malaya who claim descent from a Bichitram (? = Vicitram), reputed kinsman of the Sri Maharajas of Sri Vijaya, the Buddhist empire (fl. a.d. 750–1350) that extended over Sumatra and Northern Malaya and for a while Java. The name Bichitram is whispered into the ear of every Perak Sultan at his enthronement as that of the ancestor of the Perak (and old Malacca) dynasty. And Bichitram, according to the Sejarah Melayu, was brother of the first king of Palembang (= Sri Vijaya) and Singapore, and was himself ancestor of the Minangkabau line, from which the Yang di-pertuan of Negri Sembilan claims descent.
The Manichæan Fasts
Authors: Henning W. B.
Published: March 2011

In an excursus to his article on “The Early Sasanians” in BSOAS., xi, 42 sqq., S. H. Taqizadeh has given a full and illuminating discussion of the Manichæan two-day fasts which preceded the feast of the Bema. All hitherto known about these fasts is contained in a passage in the K. al-Fihrist, 333, 28–334, 1, which runs as follows:—

As regards the fasting—

(1) when the sun is in Sagittarius and the moon is full, they fast two days without break,

(2) then when the New Light appears, they fast two days without break,

(3) after this, they fast two days when the moon is full (and the sun is) in Capricornus,

(4) then when the New Light appears and the sun is in Aquarius and eight days have passed of the (lunar) month, they fast for thirty days, but break the fast each day at nightfall.
The Date of Śyāmilaka's Pādatāḍitaka
Authors: Burrow T.
Published: March 2011

In 1922 a collection of four Bhāṇas was published from South Indian Manuscripts under the title of Caturbhāṇī by M. Ramakrishna Kavi and S. K. Ramanatha Sastri. In a short introduction the editors discussed the age and authorship of these works and assigned them varying degrees of antiquity. As the type of dramatic composition in Sanskrit known as bhāṇa, although ancient in origin, had hitherto been represented only by very modern examples, it was naturally a matter of considerable interest and importance for literary history, if the plays should turn out to belong to an early period as the editors claimed.
The Plague and its Effects upon the Mamlûk Army
Authors: Neustadt David
Published: March 2011

From the close of the eighth century A.H. till the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in A.H. 922 the Mamlûk army underwent a slow but steady decline. There were three main causes:—

(a) Economic: the exhaustion of Egypt's rich resources due to the predatory economic system of the Mamlûks.

(b) Military: deterioration of discipline in the army; its excessive occupation with politics; the corrupt practice in one section of the army to obtain, for payment, exemption from participation in military expeditions; neglect of the traditional military training (based mainly on the furûsiyya games); the insufficient use of new methods of warfare arising from the introduction of firearms.

(c) Reduced manpower: the continuous decrease of the population in the native countries of the Mamlûks (especially the steppes of Southern Russia and the Caucasus); the outbreaks of plague in Egypt.
Magical Terms in the Old Testament
Authors: Guillaume A.
Published: March 2011

My article in the Journal (1942,111–121) has evoked two repliesfrom Professor Driver: the first I answered (1943, 251–254) under twelve heads; Professor Driver has dealt with four only in his second article. If this interchange is to go on I hope that it will follow the precedent set by Professor Driver's controversy with Professor Rowley in the Z.D.M.G. Professor Driver had put forward the theory that the Hebrew preposition was a dual form and not a plural and that it was originally the noun “buttocks”. He stated his case and his opponent wrote his reply to each point of the argument. The advantages of this method are that the disputant has to rebut or concede his opponent's points, and the reader does not have to wait six months or more to read a reply to a halfforgotten controversy.
Recent Malayan Excavations and some Wider Implications
Authors: Wales H. G. Quaritch
Published: March 2011

During 1937–38, with my wife's tireless co-operation, I archæologically explored the Malay States of Kedah, Perak, and Johore, with the primary object of obtaining data on the spread of Indian civilization in South-East Asia. The full report, including that of the systematic excavation of many sites of the “Hindu period” in Kedah, was published in JRASMB, vol. xviii, part 1, 1940, with 89 plates and 15 figures. Subsequently we excavated one or two other sites in Kedah and also explored Province Wellesley. The report of this supplementary work, delayed by the war, will shortly appear in JRASMB. The object of the present paper is to give a summary of our main Malayan results in the sphere of cultural history, as well as to point out some wider implications in conjunction with my earlier excavations in Siam, which these Malayan investigations do much to complete and illuminate.
The Author of the Hor-chos-ẖbyuṅ
Authors: Roerich G. M.
Published: March 2011

G. Huth, when translating the Hor-chos-ẖhbyuṅ (Geschichte des Buddhismus in der Mongolei, i, Strassburg, 1892), attributed this chronicle to ẖJigs-med nam-mkhaẖ, a high incarnate bLa-ma of the great bLa-bran bKra-śis-ẖkhyil monastery in the Amdo Province of North-Eastern Tibet. For over fifty years this attribution remained unchallenged, notwithstanding the fact that it is based on a wrong translation of the Tibetan text of the closing paragraphs of the chronicle. An attentive perusal of the Tibetan text shows that ẖJigs-med nam-mkhaẖ, whose short biography is given on p. 225 of the Tibetan text of the Hor-chos-ẖbyuṅ (ed. G. Huth), and on p. 356 of Huth's translation (Geschichte des Buddhismus in der Mongolei, ii, 1896), was not the author of the chronicle, but the inspirer of the work which was carried out at ẖJigs-med nam-mkhaẖ's command by Gu-śri (kuo-shih or State Preceptor) dKaẖ-bcu Su-dhī (Śuddhi) Ā-yu-warta (Āyurvarta), also known by the name of dbYaṅs-can sGeg-pahi blo-gros ẖJigsmed Rig-paẖi rdo-rje. The author of the chronicle met with ẖJigsmed nam-mkhaẖ during the latter's visit to the Barūn Türned principality in Eastern Mongolia (see Hor-chos-ẖbyuṅ, pp. 227–8). This ẖJigs-med nam-mkhah, better known by his title of Zam-tsha sku-zabs rin-po-che, was one of the “Four Golden Pillars” of bLa-bran in Amdo.1 Soon after A.D. 1803 (chu-phag lo, Water- Hog year) ẖJigs-med nam-mkhah was appointed to the abbot's chair (chos-khri) of the Yung Ho Kung () monastery in Peking. Later he was nominated tamaya lama (tha-ma-ka bla-ma) of Dolōn-nūr (mTsho-bdun) in Chakhar (E. Mongolia).
Greeks and Sakas in India
Authors: Marshall John
Published: March 2011

Owing to the exigencies of war I failed to get my copies of the Journal of the American Oriental Society between 1939 and 1945, and it is only within the last few days that I have seen Dr. Ludwig Bachhofer's most interesting article on “Greeks and Sakas in India” which appeared in the Journal as far back as December, 1941. In that article Dr. Bachhofer pays a warm tribute to Dr. W. W. Tarn's epoch-making work on The Greeks in Bactria and India, but at the same time challenges some of the views expressed by that great scholar. Though very late in the day I hope I may be allowed to add a few comments on what Dr. Bachhofer has said. I do so with no little hesitation, because failing eye-sight now makes it difficult for me to read or write, and still more difficult to re-examine the numismatic data and other minutiæ referred to by Dr. Bachhofer. On the other hand, half a life time spent in excavations at Taxila and other sites on the North-West Frontier of India has put me in possession of many relevant facts, of which it is evident that Dr. Bachhofer is still, through no fault of his own, in ignorance; and it is clearly my duty to make these facts known to others without loss of time. Already, it is true, I have written a full and comprehensive account in three volumes of the results of my long labours at Taxila, but though the manuscript of this book was sent to the Cambridge University Press at the end of 1945, I fear that in prevailing conditions it may be a year or two before it can be published; and in the meantime eminent scholars like Dr. Bachhofer may be spending valuable hours on problems which have in effect already been solved.
Minor Sanskrit Texts on the Prajñâ-pâramitâ 1. The Prajñâ-pâramitâ-piṇḍârtha of Diṅnâga
Authors: Tucci Giuseppe
Published: March 2011

The palmleaf manuscript containing the text of the Prajñâpâramitâ-piṇḍลrtha by Dinnâga was found in the monastery of Žalu which I visited in autumn 1939. It consists of three leaflets without indication of any date. This small book is an epitome of the Aṣṭasâhasrikâ-prajñâ-pâramitã and it is intended to classify the arguments expounded in this treatise and to adapt its long repetitions to the logic of a rational and intelligible scheme.
“The Shooting of the Boar” and the Social Divisions of the Sinhalese
Authors: Godakumbura C. E.
Published: March 2011

A Description of several social grades of the Sinhalese occur in the rite called the Ūrā Yakkama (Shooting of the Boar) contained in the Kohombā-kankāriya. Its context is as follows: The chief performer enacts the killing of the boar and the sharing of its flesh among the various craftsmen. From the remarks made about each recipient and the treatment which the representative of each trade receives, one sees what value was attached to the work of each from the point of view of the dancer. The function of each in the social order is also mentioned. Below is given the text of this part of the ceremony as it has been gathered, from oral tradition from different districts in Ceylon. As may be expected, many variant versions exist, but only a few have been noticed here.
Text, Sources, and Bibliography of the Prajnñāpāramitā-hṛdaya
Authors: Conze Edward
Published: March 2011

The Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya sūtra is a religious document of the first importance. It carried Hiuen-tsiang through the Gobi desert, was reproduced, in writing, on stones, in recitation throughout Asia from Kabul to Nara, and formed one of the main inspirations of the Zen school, occupying in Buddhist mysticism about the same place the “Mystical Theology” of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita occupied in Christian. Unlike other very short Prajñāpāramitā-sūtras, the Hṛdaya is of great philosophical interest. The Svalpākṣara, and other abbreviations, were designed to bring the benefits of Prajñāpāramitā within the reach of those unable either to study or understand it. The Hṛdaya alone can be said to have gone really to the heart of the doctrine. The historical analysis of its sources can contribute to the understanding of this sūtra, by restoring its component parts to their context in the larger Prajñāpāramitā sūtras.
Pottery and Glass Fragments from the Aden Littoral, with Historical Notes
Authors: Lane Arthur , Serjeant R. B.
Published: March 2011

The pottery and glass fragments examined here were collected in 1941 from three sites on the Aden littoral. They were picked up on the surface at (1) Kawd am-Saila, the “Dune of the Flood-Course”, a large isolated mound situated on the main Aden-Lahej-Yemen road, (2) Al-Ḥabīl, lying north-west of Lahej, just a little off the main Yemen route, and (3) Zingibar. The lastnamed site lies within the Abyan oasis on the coastal plain, some 35 miles north-east of Aden. For an area of some miles there, extending almost to the foothills, the surface is covered with potsherds of all kinds and periods, both glazed and unglazed. In places the ground is quite red with fragments of unglazed earthenware. Abyan is a site of great antiquity well known to Arab authors, and in pre-Islamic inscriptions, but the other two places have not yet been identified.
Bentinck and the Taj
Authors: Spear Percival
Published: March 2011

For many years the official folk-lore of British India has included a story that Lord William Bentinck once contemplated the demolition of the Taj Mahal in order to sell its marble. The point of the story has varied with the mental climate of the time: at first it was an illustration of Bentinck's supposed meanness; the arch “clipper” would even lay hands on the Taj in order to make money. Later it became evidence of the supposed vandalism of the British in early nineteenth-century India; even Bentinck, the otherwise praiseworthy economical reformer, saw nothing in the Taj worthy of preservation. For many years, after the circumstances of its origin and its early expressions had been forgotten, the story lived on in the realm of verbal folk-lore, but more recently it has been revived in print and its truth largely taken for granted. The story, if true, would be a serious reflection on Bentinck according to the standards of any civilized age, and it is therefore worth asking with some particularity upon what basis of fact it rests.
A Sufi Tract
Authors: Arberry A. J.
Published: March 2011

A hlwardt describes in his Berlin catalogue a Ṣūfī tract entitledby him kitāb al-asfār, which he attributes to the wellknown Quṭb al-Dīn al-Jīlī (d. 832/1428). Vollers, who found a second copy of the same work at Leipzig, but there entitled (as it proves, more correctly) al-isfār 'an natā'ij al-asfār, follows Ahlwardt's lead in naming al-Jīlī as the author. These facts have naturally resulted in Brockelmann including the book in the list of al-Jīlī's writings.
Preliminary Note on a Prajñāpāramitā-Manuscript
Authors: Conze Edward
Published: March 2011

In Sir Aurel Stein's Serindia, E. Hoernle describes a palm-leaf Pothī of sixty-nine folios, marked Ch 0079 a, and found in Tun-Huang. Hoernle saw that this was a manuscript of the large Prajñāpāramitā. A consideration of the numerals led him to the inference that he had to deal with fragments of the Śatasāhasrikā (= Ś). Hoernle did not, however, compare the text of this manuscript with that of other manuscripts of the Prajñāpāramitā. Such a comparison shows that Hoernle's reading of the numerals was, in some instances, not correct, and that Ch 0079 a represents a recension of the Aṣṭādaśasāhasrikā prajñāpāramitā(= Ad).
The Plague of the Philistines (1 Samuel v, 6–vi, 16)
Authors: Driver G. R.
Published: March 2011

According to ancient tradition the malady called with which the Israelites were once threatened and the Philistines were once plagued was “emerods” (E.V.), i.e. “hæmorrhoids” or “piles”, but according to modern scholars “buboes” or “plague-boils” (Hitzig). Which view is correct?
Georgian Relations with France during the reign of Wakhtang VI (1711–24)
Authors: Lang D. M.
Published: March 2011

Research undertaken recently at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has resulted in the discovery of a number of fresh documents which throw light on the relations between Georgia and France in the early eighteenth century, and in particular on the journey to Versailles of Sulkhan Saba Orbeliani. The objects of this mission were to secure French intervention in favour of King Wakhtang VI of K'art'li, since 1712 detained by the Persian Shah at Isfahan, and to arrange for the dispatch of French missionaries to Western Georgia, whence the Theatines had been obliged to withdraw towards the end of the seventeenth century.
A Relic of Śāktism in Muslim Malaya
Authors: Winstedt R. O.
Published: March 2011

In Malay Poisons and Charm Cures by the late Dr. J. G. Gimlette (London, 1929, pp. 79–94 and 274–280), and in Danses magiques de Kelantan, by Jeanne Cuisinier (Travaux et mémoires de l'lnstitut d'Ethnologie XXII, Paris, 1936, ch. 8), there are descriptions of a propitiary ceremony to cleanse that Malay state (pūjā něgěri) by séance, dancing, and sacrifice, conducted by a male or female shaman termed for the occasion “princess” (putrī). Who was this “princess” ? Folklore speaks of a putrī Sadong adopted by a queen of Kelantan 600 years ago and also of a putrī Sakdom.
Sūrat and Soraṭh
Authors: Master Alfred
Published: March 2011

From the beginning of Indian studies in Europe Sūrat and Soraṭhh have been constantly confused. Denison Ross continues this confusion (Arabic History of Gujarat, vol. i, p. x): Surat is spelt indifferently and although the two places are distinguished in the index and in chapter 13, CHI, vol. iii. Elliott and Dowson (History of India told by its own historians, v, 350, n. 4) distinguish the places, but derive both names from the Sanskrit Saurāsṭra, which is absurd. More recently the authors of the Advanced History of India, R. C. Majumdar, H. C. Raychaudhuri, and K. Datta, uniformly spell the first name as Surāt; and Jules Bloch, Les Inscriptions d'Asoka, 103, n. 9, equates with Saurāṣṭra with Surate.
The Pre-Indian Basis of Khmer Culture
Authors: Wales H. G. Quaritch
Published: March 2011

In his review of my book The Making of Greater India (JRAS, 1951, p. 216) Professor Heine-Geldem said that he could not agree that the local genius which moulded Khmer culture and art was that of the Older Megalithic. He considered that the evidence I adduced pointed only to the existence of megalithic elements in the pre-Hindu culture of the Khmers, and he saw no evidence of their ever having had a “full megalithic culture”. He asks why, if megalithic monuments in the plains were destroyed or used for temple building by Indianized Khmers, no such monuments have been reported from among related tribes surviving in the neighbouring hills, where there would have been no incentive to build temples. And he concludes: “I am fully prepared to revise my view if megalithic monuments of the respective type should be discovered in south-eastern Indo-China, but I cannot see how the terraces and stepped pyramids of the Khmer could be derived from megalithic terraces and pyramids, the nearest of which are found at a distance of many hundred miles in the hills of Burma and Assam.” So Professor Heine-Geldern sees nothing in my characterization of the Khmer cultural evolution incompatible with my premise that it is guided by the Older Megalithic genius, but requires further evidence which the present paper will show to be available.
Wellesley's Settlement of Mysore, 1799
Authors: Bennell A. S.
Published: March 2011

The defeat and settlement of Mysore was at once the first and the most dramatic of Wellesley's offensive measures during his Governor-Generalship. Aided by the prestige gained from this achievement, he set out to refashion the political framework of the Indian subcontinent.
Sculptures and Inscriptions from Shabwa
Authors: Brown W. L. , Beeston A. F. L.
Published: March 2011

The stone fragments here published were recovered from the ruins of Shabwa, in the Hadramaut, in 1938 by Major the Honourable R. A. B. Hamilton (now Lord Belhaven and Stenton) and presented to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford in 1952. The finder has described his work at Shabwa in a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society, published in the Geographical Journal, and in his book The Kingdom of Melchior.
A Notable Chinese Bronze
Authors: Yetts W. Perceval
Published: March 2011

As is usual with bronze inscriptions the terms of these two offer no decisive clue to the historical setting. Year, place, queen, chieftain, and court-official are named in a way which no doubt was adequate at the time of drafting when to name the reigning king would have been redundant. Without his name any attempt made now to correlate the terms and scanty history is only guesswork. On style we must base our judgment: style of the vessels' design and of the script. Parallels are found among bronzes of the First Phase near its end. Failure to match also the phraseology is not surprising seeing how few pre-conquest inscriptions there are which extend beyond brief formulas. Moreover, the presence of the spurshaped figure of unknown significance at the end of the tsun inscription (b) is almost conclusive. It occurs often on pre-conquest bronzes. Investigation led Karlgren to decide it “was obsolete at the time when the Chou dynasty started”, doubtless meaning the conquest (6,21–3). In short, the possibility that here are products of the Chou before they defeated the Shang-Yin cannot be denied. Though no such bronze has yet been recognized, surely they existed. Not only the Chou but other principalities may come to be identified as bronze-makers during the Shang-Yin period. To assign the Huan Yu and Tsun to the reign of T'ai Wang (perhaps ca. 1150 b.c.) is admittedly a rash guess, but to my mind no more rash than the guesses quoted above and less questionable. It may be objected that his title of “king” was only a posthumous one according to tradition. On the other hand, bronze inscriptions reveal that many styled themselves “kings” unknown to history, and Tan-fu may have been among them. Another likely objection is the presence of nien for “year”, since everyone knows that ssă was the term used commonly under the Shang-Yin and sometimes after the conquest. Again a negative generalization would be risky in the absence of evidence of earliest Chou practice. Of course the assumption that “the King” was a Chou king can be defended only on grounds of plausibility. Finally “Huan” may not be the right pronunciation of the Registrar's name; perhaps it was “Yüan” or “Ch'iung”.
The Inscriptions of Uruzgan
Authors: Bivar A. D. H.
Published: March 2011

In the summer of 1953, while visiting Kabul, I learnt from Dr. Ahmed Ali Khan Kohzad, Director of the Kabul Museum, that a report had reached him of the existence at Uruzgan of an inscription in unidentified script. Uruzgan is a small town and district headquarters situated about 175 miles to the north-west of Kandahar, on the Tirin River, and about midway between the upper waters of the Rivers Helmand and Arghandab, in Central Afghanistan. We discussed the report several times, and with Dr. Kohzad's encouragement I decided to visit Uruzgan and investigate the matter.
Biographical Material from the Ṣiwān al-Ḥikmah
Authors: Dunlop D. M.
Published: March 2011

The history of learning among the Arabs in the great age, i.e. from about a.d. 700 to 950 or about 80 to 340 of the Hijrah, is not so well known that we can afford to neglect any source which promises to throw light on it.
The dervish's disciple: on the personality and intellectual milieu of the young Ignaz Goldziher
Authors: Conrad Lawrence I.
Published: March 2011

When theTagebuchof Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) was published in 1978, it was widely expected that the work would prove to be a mine of information on the life and career of its celebrated author. What was not expected was that so much of this information should consist of bitter criticism and empassioned invective directed against leading personalities in the social and intellectual circles of Budapest and Hungary, particularly in the Jewish community of which Goldziher himself was a leading member. The contrast between the image of the dispassionate and meticulous researcher presented to the public in so many of Goldziher's seminal studies on the religion and culture of Islam, and that of the outraged and sorrowing diarist manifest in theTagebuch, was most striking.
A Damascus scroll relating to a waqf for the Yūnusiyya
Authors: Richards D. S.
Published: March 2011

The Yūnusiyya is one of those small-scale, largely family-based Sufi orders which proliferated in the later Middle Ages. Little is known of its growth and development. The eponymous founder, one Yūnus ibn Yusuf Ibn Musā'id al-Shaibānī, was a holy man of the type described asmajdhūb, which is explained as meaning that he had no shaikh and was self-initiated into the life of devotion and sanctity. He died in 619 (1222–3), approaching ninety years of age, in the district of the Mesopotamian town of Dara, in a village called al-Qunayya. As our source, Ibn Khallikān, adds, “His tomb there is wellknown and an object of pilgrimage”.
Manuscripts and editions of Bal‘amī'sTarjamah-i Tārīkh-i Ṭabarī
Authors: Daniel Elton L.
Published: March 2011

In the year 352/963, according to independent evidence and the author's own testimony, the Samanid ruler Manṣūr b. Nūḥ sent an order via his major-domo and closest confidant, al-Fā'iq al-Khāṣṣa, to his minister Abū 'Alī Bal'amī, commissioning the latter to prepare a translation into court Persian of the famous historical annals written in Arabic by Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī. Bal'amī completed this task, producing a book whose popularity in many ways eclipsed that of the original text throughout the Persian-speaking world and beyond (being translated into various Turkish dialects and even, ironically enough, back into Arabic). Unfortunately, exploitation of this source by modern scholars has been hindered both by its identification as a “translation” of Ṭabarī's work and by the lack of a suitable edition of the Persian text. This article attempts to explore these problems and the extent to which they have been rectified by recent studies and editions of this important work.
The Mamlūk institution in early Muslim India
Authors: Jackson Peter
Published: March 2011

When Muslim forces under the Ghurid sultan, Mu'izz al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sām, made their first major breakthrough into Hindūstān in the 1190s, they brought with them two institutions that had long since taken root in the Islamic world. One was the iqṭā' or assignment of land or its revenue, in some cases in return for military service (sometimes misrepresented as “fief” on the Western European model). The other was the mamlūk, or military slave. Mamlūk status, it should be stressed, bore none of the degrading connotations associated with other types of slavery: mamlūks – generally Turks from the Eurasian steppelands – were highly prized by their masters, receiving both instruction in the Islamic faith and a rigorous training in the martial arts, and were not employed in any menial capacity. The mamlūk institution, whose origins go back to the first century of Islam, came into vogue from the first half of the third/ninth century, as the ‘Abbasid Caliphs built up a corps of Turkish mamlūk guards and their example was followed, with the disintegration of their empire, by the various autonomous dynasties that sprang up in the provinces. Turkish slave officers themselves went on to found dynasties, as in the case of the Tulunids and the Ikhshidids in Egypt and the Ghaznawids in the eastern Iranian world. The institution surely entered upon its heyday in the seventh/thirteenth century, with the military coup of 648/1250 in Cairo: a group of mamlūk officers overthrew the last Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and inaugurated a regime in which slave status was the essential qualification for high military and administrative office.
Masʽūdī on love and the fall of the Barmakids
Authors: Meisami Julie Scott
Published: March 2011

Midway through his account of the fortunes of the Barmakids in hisMurūj aldhahab wa-ma'ādin al-jawhar, al-Masʽūdī (d. 956) introduces a debate on love said to have taken place in themajlisof Yaḥyā ibn Khālid al-Barmakī. Yaḥyā, described as a man of great learning devoted to philosophical discussion, invited the theologians who frequented his salon, and who had previously debated on a variety of philosophical and theological topics, “to speak of love ['ishq], without disputing, each presenting whatever occurs to him as it comes to his mind”. A number of definitions are offered, followed by additional comments by Mas'ūdī; the whole constitutes a substantial digression which intervenes between the depiction of the Barmakids at the height of their power and the account of their fall from favour.
Some Tamil folklore texts: Muttuppaṭṭaṉ Katai, Kāttavarāyaṉ Kataippaṭal, Paḻaiyaṉur Nīli
Authors: Zvelebil Kamil V.
Published: March 2011

The following contribution is based on several assumptions: First, it is assumed that the oral traditions of verbal art, whether “fixed” in writing/print or not, belong legitimately to the bulk of a national literature; second, it is assumed that such oral traditions have been grossly neglected, misunderstood and/or misinterpreted; third, when speaking of a “tradition”, what I have in mind is not an authoritative dogmatism based on set doctrines, but a fountain-source from which stems a continuous stream of thought and culture, irrespective of whether it is orally transmitted, or fixed in literary texts.
Notes on Some Pali Words
Authors: Johnston E. H.
Published: March 2011

Some apology is perhaps needed for publishing these notes, which are not the work of a professed Pali scholar, and I would plead in extenuation that, apart from a few cases suggesting new interpretations of certain difficult terms, most of the words have been chosen for discussion because of their interest for Sanskrit lexicography and other general Indian subjects and that I have avoided Buddhist technical terms.
The Eighteenth International Congress of Orientalists (Leyden, 1931) and some papers which were read there: The Eighteenth International Congress of Orientalists, 1931
Authors: Devonshire R. L.
Published: March 2011

The number of subjects now labelled as Oriental and the increasing development of knowledge concerning each, of these subjects, make it materially impossible for an individual to derive more than a fraction of the advantages offered by a Congress such as that recently held at Leyden. There were no fewer than nine sections (in fact, there should have been ten, a special section for Islamic Art having been eliminated) and over 200 papers were read during the five days that the Congress lasted, some of the sections sitting nearly five hours a day. It was inevitable that keenly interested delegates should again and again have to choose between equally attractive papers, especially where the third section (Central and Near Asia) and the eighth (Islam) were concerned.
Notes on the Gutian Period
Authors: Smith Sidney
Published: March 2011

A Letter from a man called Ishkun-Dagan has been published by M. Thureau-Dangin in Revue d'Assyriologie, xxiii, pp. 23 ff. Another letter of this man has recently been presented to the Trustees of the British Museum by Dr. N. L. Corkill, formerly Civil Surgeon, Baghdad, who very kindly allowed me to study and copy it at Baghdad; it is now numbered 121205. The tablet was obtained in Nasiriyah, and though the statement of the fellaḥ to whom it once belonged that it was found at Sinkarah is of no value, it certainly came from a site in the Muntafik area, very possibly from illicit excavations which are known to have been conducted at Warka. The tablet was probably found at the same time and in the same place as the tablet now in the Louvre, so that they were found in the archive of the sender, not of the addressee, a curious circumstance for which many parallels could be cited. The writing is delicate, very accurate, and large. Owing to an accident when I was examining the tablet at Baghdad, after making my copy of the text which was then complete, the tablet was broken and some signs have now been injured in lines 21–4.
Saddle Querns and Stratigraphy
Authors: Sankalia H. D. , Deo S. B.
Published: March 2011

While reviewing our book—Report on the Excavations at Nasik and Jorve—Dr. Allchin has raised a very important point. He says that the “legged grinding stools” found at Nasik and ascribed by us to period II A “would have been happier in II B or even III”. The question is when an object is found in a well-stratified deposit in a lower layer, should it be dated to a later period because at some place—here Sirkap II—it has been found in a later period, or should the entire layer be dated to the later period even though well-sealed by an upper layer? In this particular case the legged quern has undoubtedly a comparatively short duration as pointed out by Sankalia much earlier; but it is very widely spread in India. This immediately cautions us to be careful in assigning a date to objects found nearly 1,500 miles apart.
Samprasāraṇa in Middle Indo-Aryan
Authors: Norman K. R.
Published: March 2011

It has become customary to use the term “samprasāraṇa” in discussing a variety of cases where there is vocalization, or apparent vocalization, of a semivowel in Middle Indo-Aryan. It would seem desirable to examine and classify the circumstances in which the term is used.
A Bāz-Nāmah and a Faras-Nāmah
Authors: Storey C. A.
Published: March 2011

In 1908 and 1911 the late Lieut.-Colonel D. C. Phillott published in the Bibliotheca Indica two Persian works which he described on the title-pages as The Qawānīnu 'ṣ-Ṣayyad [sic, for 'ṣ-Ṣayyād] of Khudā Yār Khān 'Abbāsī and The Faras-nāma of Zabardast Khān. Curiously enough the person named on each title-page is not the author but the author's father. Colonel Phillott was evidently unfamiliar with what may be called the Ibn i Fulān Fulān formula [cf. PL. I, p. 21618] and so he misunderstood Dā'ūd ibn Yār- Muḥammad 'Abbāsī when he called himself Ibn i Yār-Muḥammad faqīr Dā'ūd (p. ix) and Ibn i Yār-Muḥammad 'urf Khudā-yār Khān Dā'ūd 'Abbāsī (p. xxi).
The Elephant and the Aryans
Authors: Singh Sarva Daman
Published: March 2011

The association of man and elephant dates back to remote antiquity. The bones of the animal unearthed at Mohenjodaro, the realistic figurines, and the representations on the seals of the Indus sites point to the beginnings of this fateful friendship; the docility, intelligence, and easy obedience of the elephant must have quickly led to its domestication, once it was known and captured. That the prosperous civilization of the Indus used the elephant for riding and other purposes, appears almost certain; “the representations on the seals show the two breeds recognized today in India, the Kamooria Dhundia with its flat back, square head, and stout legs, and the inferior Meergha, less heavily built and with a sloping back.” The proto-Australoids were perhaps the first people to domesticate and train the elephant; the wordsgajaandmātaṅgahave been traced to the pre-Aryan peoples of India speaking Austric languages.
A New Inscription of Khri Srong lde Brtsan
Authors: Richardson H. E.
Published: March 2011

The sixth inscription, which is described in the MSS. as being “on the stone pillar at the bridge-head at 'Phyong-rgyas”, relates to the reign of Khri Srong Lde Brtsan (755–797) and is hitherto unknown.
Sir William Jones and the British Attitudes towards India
Authors: Mukherjee S. N.
Published: March 2011

James Mill in his efforts to belittle the achievements of the Hindus took Jones as his chief antagonist; he tried to show how the Orientalist suffered from illusions about the Hindus and tended to magnify their importance without having any idea of what the term civilization meant. He said that Jones's description of the life of the Arabs and Hindus far surpassed the “rhapsodies of Rousseau on the happiness and virtue of savage life”. To Mill, Jones was a misguided man who failed to grasp the problems of India; his reason gave way to the romantic fascination of the East and so in his judgment on India he was uncritical. Ever since the first publication of Mill's work in 1817 the history of the British policy in India had been presented as if it were a struggle between Jones and Mill, the romantic versus the rationalist. This theme was developed in a recent conference on Indian historiography. Elsewhere Jones is described as a medievalist. In fact most of these writers presented Jones as James Mill had depicted him, even though their sympathies may have been with him.
A New Document of Indian Painting
Authors: Pal Pratapaditya
Published: March 2011

The Cambridge University Library has in its collection a well preserved manuscript of the Buddhist Tantric text Kālacakratantra whose painted covers are of considerable significance to the history of Indian painting. According to the colophon the manuscript was written in Bihar in the 15th century, a period from which we have no documentary evidence of such painting in Eastern India.
An Early Work from the School of al-Māturīdī
Authors: Tritton A. S.
Published: March 2011

The British Museum has a manuscript (Or. 12781), a long pamphlet of 82 folios, octavo size; folio 1r carries the title and 82v is blank. The page has 13 lines of big writing with 10 or 11 words to the line. It is modern with no author's name or indication of source; the title is “The book of refutation of the heretics, entitled al-sawād al-a‘zam according to the doctrine of the most great imām, Abū Ḥanīfa”. The author is Abu'l-Qāsim Isḥāq b. Muḥammad al-Māturīdī († 342). He may have been a brother of the more celebrated al-Māturīdī who was the founder of the school; at any rate, he studied. fiqh including theology under him; he “took taṣawwuf” from Abū Bakr al-Warrāq (Muḥammad b. ‘Umar al-Ḥakīm) and others. It is a popular work addressed to a wide audience; some passages suggest the hedge-preacher rather than the scholar. At the Judgment there will be a bridge in seven divisions, all more slippery than a mirror and darker than night and each with three sections, every one a thousand years long, being climb, descent, and level. On them seven questions will be asked about faith, prayer, fasting, alms, pilgrimage, ablutions, and duty to parents (30r). When Muḥammad went up to heaven God commanded him to fast six months in the year; on the advice of Moses this was cut down to one month (76r). One who has killed 100,000 Muslims and had illicit intercourse with 100,000 Muslim women is still a believer if he repents (1Ov, cf. 80v). The aṣḥāb al-kahf lived 80 years after Jesus (38v); another story is that they met one of His disciples.
Rāmisht of Sīrāf, a Merchant Millionaire of the Twelfth Century
Authors: Stern S. M.
Published: March 2011

The geographer Ibn Ḥawqal, who wrote his invaluable description of the Muslim world in the 10th century, devotes a paragraph to Sīrāf, the great port of the Persian Gulf. In the 12th century an anonymous author made an epitome of Ibn Ḥawqal's book, adding, however, a number of remarks concerning his own period. In the description of Sīrāf he interpolated the following passage:

Its inhabitants are very rich. I was told that one of them, feeling ill, made his testament; the third part of his fortune, which he had in cash, amounted to a million dīnārs, not counting the capital which he laid out to people who undertook to trade with it on commenda basis. Then there is Rāmisht, whose son Mūsā I have met in Aden, in the year 539; he told me that the silver plate used by him was, when weighed, found to be 1,200 manns. Mūsā is the youngest of his sons and has the least merchandise; Rāmisht has four servants, each of whom is said to be richer than his son Mūsā. I have met 'Alī al-Nīlī from the countryside of al-Ḥilla, Rāmisht's clerk, and he told me that when he came back from China twenty years before, his merchandise was worth half a million dīnārs; if that is the wealth of his clerk, what will he himself be worth! It was Rāmisht who removed the silver water-spout of the Ka'ba and replaced it with a golden one, and also covered the Ka'ba with Chinese cloth, the value of which cannot be estimated. In short, I have heard of no merchant in our time who has equalled Rāmisht in wealth or prestige.
“Translation” and “Embellishment” in an Early Burmese Jātaka Poem
Authors: Okell John
Published: March 2011

Pyo and jātaka. A considerable proportion of the corpus of Burmese literature consists of translations or adaptations from Buddhist texts in Pali. Some works are prose translations, but Pali texts also formed a basis for verse, particularly in the type of poem called “pyo”. There are a few pyo which merely enumerate precepts for virtuous conduct, and a small number dealing with secular subjects, but the majority narrate an episode from the Buddha's life or re-tell one of the jātakas. These are not exact translations: pyo have been described as written “by extracting suitable stories from the life of the Buddha and the jātakas, which are found in the Buddhist scriptures, and embellishing them in Burmese verse”, as “embellished translations”, and as “ornate translations”.
Jewish Persian from Isfahan
Authors: MacKenzie D. N.
Published: March 2011

In the new journal of the Faculty of Letters of Isfahan University there is an article by Aziz Pajand entitled “Purim”. It comprises facsimiles of two texts, two pages in square Hebrew script of Hebrew described as klâsik, and four pages in Rashi script of ‘ebri-ye maḥalli-ye Eṣfahân, with a close Persian translation of the latter, describing the origins of the festival of Purim to a Persian audience. Apart from its content, however, the text in Isfahani Jewish Persian is of considerable dialectological interest. It is therefore reprinted below, with a transcription, translation, and linguistic notes.