bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Secret History of the Mongols: some fresh revelations
Authors: Barrett T. H.
Published: January 2010

As is well known, the Secret History is the only surviving source on the rise of the Mongol empire produced by the Mongols themselves, yet controversy continues to surround its value, its purpose, even its date. The fullest and earliest attested version of the text does not even survive in the Uyghur script employed by the Mongols, but only in a transcription into Chinese characters, accompanied by Chinese translation; a transposition carried out at an unkown date under circumstances which are not entirely clear. Chinese sources, it is true, have been used to throw a certain amount of light on the transmission of the Secret History, notably in a lengthy and detailed article published forty years ago by William Hung,1 but as the summary by F. W. Cleaves of the problems surrounding this evidence in the introduction to his translation of the Secret History makes abundantly clear,2 much has remained a matter for conjecture.
The Loss of the person-marker t- In Jibbali and Socotri
Authors: Testen David
Published: January 2010

Johnstone (1968, 1975, 1980, 1981) has pointed out that two of the Modern South Arabian group of Semitic languages, Jibbali (Śḥeri) and Socotri, systematically lose the person-marking prefix t- (whether it mark the second person or the feminine third person) in certain types of verbs. An example of this phenomenon from Jibbali may be seen in the passive paradigm of the basic stem, which is given below alongside the active-voice paradigm of a ‘stative’- type basic verb, the conjugation of which (aside from the person-markers under discussion) closely matches that of the passive form. In the active voice, the tappears in the positions in which we expect it on the basis of the cognate prefixes in the other Semitic languages, while in the passive voice the t- is absent.
British Orientalists' co-operation: a new letter of Sir William Jones
Authors: Cannon Garland , Grout Andrew
Published: January 2010

The purpose of this Note is to make available to scholars the text of a new letter by Sir William Jones (1746–94) to Richard Johnson (1753–1807), recently discovered in an antiquarian book and manuscript catalogue issued in 1924 by Maggs Brothers, the London dealers, and otherwise unpublished and unrecorded.

Johnson, an important though neglected figure in the history of the British ‘discovery’ of Hinduism, held a number of influential posts within the East India Company's administration during his sojourn in India from 1770 to 1790. But it is for his investigations into Indian literature and music, including his substantial and important collection of Indian miniatures and Persian and Sanskrit manuscripts, that he deserves to be better known.
Dahma Āfriti and some related problems
Authors: Boyce Mary
Published: January 2010

The Yazata of the benediction known as the Dahma Āfriti is a figure whose importance in the Zoroastrian pantheon has been obscured, it seems for two main reasons. One is that, although she was apparently originally accorded a place among the thirty ‘calendar’ divinities, she subsequently lost this, probably in an Achaemenian calendar reform. The other is that later still her identity became confused through her name acquiring several Middle Persian forms: Dahm Yazad, Dahmān Āfrīn, Dahmān, the last, since it is a formal plural, causing some misunderstandings in her veneration locally.

The Avestan adjectivedahmais understood to have meant originally ‘instructed’, that is, in the Zoroastrian faith; but, to judge from its use in context, it developed the sense of ‘pious, devout’, occurring frequently withašavanas a term for a good Zoroastrian. The name of the benediction is accordingly generally rendered as the ‘Pious Blessing’. Much power was attributed by Zoroastrians to solemnly pronounced words, and the compilers of the extendedyasnaliturgy set the ‘Pious Good Blessing’,Dahṃa VaohviĀfriti, after theAhuna Vairya, Ašəm VohūandYenhē hātąmas the fourth of the mighty utterances which crush and destroy Anra Mainyu and his hordes (Y.61:l–2). (The other three form a group because together they precede theGāthās, and together are the subject of the commentary which forms (Y. 19–21.)
Translating the ancestors: S. I. J. Schereschewsky's 1875 Chinese version of Genesis
Authors: Eber Irene
Published: January 2010

Partial and complete Bible translations into classical Chinese existed well before Protestant missionaries actually began to work actively among the Chinese. Translation work accelerated once missionaries gained a foothold in the newly opened treaty ports after 1842, and the entire Bible or portions of it were translated into Fuzhou, Amoy, Canton, Hakka, Suzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai dialects. S. I. J. Schereschewsky's (1831–1906) translation of the Old Testament (OT) into the northern vernacular in 1875 opened a new chapter. His translation was accessible to larger numbers of people and, in contrast to the OT in classical Chinese, was readily understood when read to the illiterate. Moreover, unlike previous translations, it was prepared entirely from the Hebrew original.

The purpose of this essay is to examine some of Schereschewsky's views on translating and several of the techniques which he employed in rendering into Chinese the Book of Genesis. My basic assumption is that translation is an interpretative activity. When a text is transposed from one language into another, changes are introduced that are consonant with the receiving languages and culture. Translation is affected by interpretations from within the receptor tradition which, in turn, makes possible the acceptance of the translation and the ideas which it contains. Thus the Old (as well as the New) Testament translations represented one of the initial steps in the signification of Protestant Christianity.
The Queen of the Habasha in Ethiopian history, tradition and chronology
Authors: Andersen Knud Tage
Published: January 2010

It is well known from relatively recent Ethiopic tradition that Ethiopia was once ruled by a queen called Gudit, Yodit, Isat or Gaՙwa, with both positive and negative characteristics. On the one hand she was a beautiful woman of the Ethiopian royal family, much like the Queen of Sheba, and on the other she was a despicable prostitute who, at a time of political weakness, killed the Ethiopian king, captured the throne, and as a cruel ruler destroyed Aksum, the capital, persecuted the priests, and closed the churches.
The ‘Uqūd rasm al-muftīof Ibn ‘Ābidīn
Authors: Calder Norman
Published: January 2010

John Dryden's ‘Religio laid’, a defence in rhyming couplets of English Protestantism, is not an obvious point of departure for this study of a Muslim poem about juristic authority. There is value however in the comparison for the contrasts that emerge. Dryden's poem first defends Christianity against an Enlightenment Deism, and then situates English Protestantism between the two extremes of Papism and ‘the private spirit’ (‘Occasioned by great zeal and little thought’). Ibn ‘Ābidīn's ‘Chaplets on the mufti's task’, written in the nineteenth century, is a highly condensed version of a conventional academic work of the type sometimes called ‘manuals for muftis’ oradab al-muftī. It aims to inform the professional mufti and the educated jurist of a methodology for the discovery of a rule of law. It speaks of secure authority; very different from the challenged, if triumphant, authority of English Protestantism in the seventeenth century.
The Analects and reputation: a note on Analects 15.18 and 15.19
Authors: Makeham John
Published: January 2010

In this note I shall re-present an old solution to a small problem that was noted by Arthur Waley a little over fifty years ago.2 In the course of doing so, I shall also challenge the view that the Analects does lend support to the view that Confucius maintained that it was important for the gentleman (jun zi) to secure a reputation. Finally, I shall comment briefly on the significance that my overall analysis has for the view that the Analects, despite its composite nature,3 can nevertheless be read as a text which has been consciously edited such that it presents internally consistent themes.
The game of leaves: an inquiry into the origin of Chinese playing cards
Authors: Lo Andrew
Published: January 2010

A passion for card games, like a delight in drinking tea, is something which nowadays unites China with the rest of the world; and, as with tea drinking, many have surmised that the pastime of playing cards arose in China and spread westwards. I begin this study with a consideration of the rules of card games, and suggest that the rules themselves may offer, in some cases, evidence of transmission from East to West. To those interested in past cultural contacts, this suggestion in itself illustrates the value of trying to reconstruct the regulations of early games long forgotten, quite apart from the value of such research to sinologists. But it is not just the rules of play which need to be considered in such a context. The format of the playing card as a physical object that is small, portable and suited to mass production has prompted the thought that cards may have been one of the easiest samples of Chinese printing technique to pass between East and West. For this reason, the main focus of my study in reconstruction is on a pastime, theyezi xi(game of leaves), which dates to about the same time as our earliest sources on the origins of printing, but which eventually died out, to be superseded by other amusements. Are the surviving materials sufficient to confirm or deny existing speculations about its form? And if this was not a card game, when precisely did such games develop? But before considering such sinological questions, let us start closer to home.
Tughluqabad, the earliest surviving town of the Delhi sultanate
Authors: Shokoohy Mehrdad , Shokoohy Natalie H.
Published: January 2010

Tughluqabad is the first of many sultanate and Mughul towns which were purposely planned and constructed on previously uninhabited sites. Built early in the fourteenth century, Tughluqabad was to serve as the capital of the newly established Tughluq dynasty. There were, of course, three earlier Muslim capitals in the vicinity, the first the Delhi of Rāi Pithūrā, converted to an Islamic town after the Ghurid conquest in 588/1192–3; the second Jalāl al-dīn Khahīs Shahr-i naw, which was founded by Muՙiẓẓ al-dīn Kai Qubād (685–8/1286–9) at Kīlukharī (or Kīlugharī) but left incomplete at the time of his death, and the third Sīrī, built by Alՙ al-dīn Khaljī between 698/1298–9 and 700/1300–1 in the fields outside the walls of the older Delhi, but nothing has remained from these towns except parts of the fortification walls and some isolated monuments. The ruins of Tughluqabad, on the other hand, are enshrined in a time capsule. Built between 1320 and 1325 by Ghiyāth al-dīn Tughluq, the town had a brief life, and within a generation was abandoned and its population reduced to the size of a small village. As a result, most of its remains are datable to the short period of its duration in the first half of the fourteenth century. The only exception, as we shall see, are the remains of a small settlement which continued to exist around the old town centre, and in the late Mughal period also occupied the citadel.
Tan Sitong and the ether reconsidered
Authors: Wright David
Published: January 2010

The main subject of this paper is the influence of Western science on the philosophy of the young scholar Tan Sitong(1865–98) who was active in the reform movement of the late Qing dynasty. It seeks to show that his understanding of Western science was not as confused and superficial as some commentators have claimed, and that in fact his conception ofyitaidrew on views of the ether and electricity which were held by some at least of the most eminent Western scientists of his time. It also demonstrates thatyitaiis the direct descendant of theqiof the Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhang Zai(1020–77), and shows how Tan developed the views of Kang Youwei(1858–1927) on the relationship ofqito consciousness.
The social organization of Ling and the termphu-nuin the Gesar Epic
Authors: Karmay Samten G.
Published: January 2010

In recent studies of the Tibetan epic, much effort has been spent on analysing the origins and types of material that make up the epic literature, but no study presents an overall view of Ling (Gling) society. In the paper I gave at the second Symposium on the Epic of King Gesar at Lhasa in 1991, I therefore discussed the theoretical basis upon which the whole of Tibetan epic literature is built. I demonstrated that the Tibetan epic reveals a basic principle as well as a ‘chronological order’ in its development. Without this theoretical basis, Tibetan epic literature appears as a tangled web of material which is moreover still growing in complexity.
Taxation in the amirate of Mecca during the medieval period
Authors: Mortel Richard T.
Published: January 2010

The amirate of Mecca was established by sharifs of Hasanid ancestry in the middle of the fourth century a. h./tenth century a.d. The territory traditionally under its direct control included the holy city of Mecca and its immediate hinterland, the nearby hill town of Ṭā'if, and the Red Sea port of Jedda. In addition, the sharifs often exercised a tenuous hold over certain tribal areas in the Sarāt Mountains south of Ṭa'if, as well as the coastal plain south of Jedda, known as the Tihāma.
‘So rich as to be almost indecent’: some aspects of post-war rehabilitation in Brunei, 1946–1953
Authors: Horton A. V. M.
Published: January 2010

The small, oil-rich state of Brunei (population c. 40,000 in 1940) is situated in north-west Borneo. The ‘Abode of Peace’ became a British protectorate in 1888 and a Residential System along Malayan lines came into operation at the beginning of 1906. For most of the Second World War the country was under Japanese Military Administration, a period of three and a half years beginning in December 1941. Allied, predominantly Australian, landings took place in early June 1945 (Fahey 1992: 325–8; Monks 1992: 7–53) and the sultanate was speedily cleared of enemy forces, though not before the latter had successfully executed a scorched-earth programme. Most crucially of all, the Seria oilfield (discovered in 1929 by the Shell company) was set alight, the flames shooting ‘like giant blow-lamps’ at least thirty feet into the air. The last well fire was not extinguished until 27 September 1945 (Harper 1975: 21–4). A report in the Straits Times of 20 July 1946 gives some impression of the problems faced by the returning Western engineers:

Most of the [Seria] wells were surrounded by blazing lakes, and the oil experts had to blast their way through. Because of the intense heat it was difficult to get near enough to ‘cap’ them and so seal the fires. In some cases aircraft were used, the fire-fighters advancing through the slipstream of the propellers which blew the flames and oil back. It then became possible to get near enough to thrust forward on long steel arms heavy charges of explosives.
A preliminary version of thekitāb al-Adwār
Authors: Wright O.
Published: January 2010

Taking as a yardstick the number of copies made (and commentaries provoked), there can be little doubt that the most influential of all Arabic treatises on music has been thekitāb al-Adwār(referred to henceforth asKA) by Safi al-Dīn 'Abd al-Mu'min b. Yūsuf b. Fākhir al-Urmawī (d. 693/1294). Nevertheless, despite its obvious historical significance, this seminal work still awaits a satisfactory critical edition, one of the most important tasks of which should be to investigate the complex relationship between the form(s) in which it is now known and the markedly different version found in an Istanbul MS, Süleymaniye Fatih 3662 (referred to henceforth as F). Pending the more thorough analysis that should attend publication, an attempt is made in the present article to provide a general introduction to this hitherto neglected text.
On the concept and presentation of yamaka in early Indian poetic theory
Authors: Sohnen Renate
Published: January 2010

Figures of repetition occur very early in Sanskrit literature. In the oldest stratum, the hymns of the Rgveda, this phenomenon seems to be restricted to the repetition of words with the same meaning, its function being either to express continuation or regularity, i.e. in the case when a single word, normally an adverb, is duplicated (āmreḍita, e.g. dive-dive), or to give a special emphasis to a phrase, preferably at the end of a number of stanzas of a hymn (refrain type). Both kinds of repetition continue to be used in later literature, such as the Pāli Jātakas and the two epics, Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa.
Understanding Basava: history, hagiography and a modern Kannada drama
Authors: Leslie Julia
Published: January 2010

This paper is a meditation from a religious studies perspective on the twelfth-century Vīraśaiva saint, Basava (c. 1105–68); that is, its primary focus is religious experience rather than literary evaluation or the historicity of the past. By exploring a variety of sources—ancient and modern, fact and fiction—and by making connections with urgent twentieth-century concerns, it seeks to bring into focus the religious aspirations and social implications of Basava's world. Part 1 is derived from history and hagiography. It provides an outline of Vīraśaiva belief and practice, and then proceeds to discuss the religious context of twelfth-century Karnataka, the debate regarding the origins of this ‘new’ religion, and a key inscription in the debate. It ends with a summary of the tradition's account of Basava's life. Part 2 focuses on a play written in Kannada (Taledaṇḍa, ‘Death by beheading’, 1990) and then rewritten in English for a pan-Indian and international audience (Talé-Daṇḍa: a play, 1993), in both cases by Girish Karnad. Karnad is not the first playwright to focus on Basava, and he will not be the last. In the preface to the Kannada version, he explains that ‘it becomes inevitable for every Kannadiga to return, like a tongue that returns again and again to a painful tooth, to the victories and agonies of that period.’ Karnad's dramatization of Basava's catastrophic final year is discussed in the context of the historical and hagiographical material considered in Part 1.
The begs of Xinjiang: between two worlds
Authors: Newby L. J.
Published: January 2010

The Xinjiang People's Publishing House recently produced a series of booklets on the historical characters of Xinjiang. Included among the accounts of the region's heroes and heroines are the stories of some five hakim-begs, the local chief administrators during the Qing. They have all won inclusion in this series for demonstrations of loyalty to their Manchu conquerors and assistance rendered in the suppression of revolt against the Chinese empire. Heavily edited as these accounts may be, historical evidence of the hakims' co-operation with their conquerors is irrefutable.
Oral mnemonics in Korean music: data, interpretation, and a musicological application
Authors: Hughes David W.
Published: January 2010

The use of oral mnemonics in the transmission of instrumental music is a well-known and persistent feature of East Asian musics. In both Korea and Japan, there are several such systems for different instruments. There are also various systems of written mnemonics, that is, musical notation; many originally oral systems have come to be used as notations as well. Following Western scholarly usage, we shall often refer to oral mnemonics in general by the term solfège; although etymologically dubious, this practice at least helps avoid over-use of the unwieldy expression ‘oral mnemonics’.

The present paper will deal with one type of oral mnemonics in Korea, known collectively as yukpo or sometimes as kuŭm (cf. Lee, 1981: 31–4; Hahn, 1973: 79–83; Howard, 1988: 68, 91, 115, 182, 212, 227).3 Yukpo exist or are known to have existed for most string and wind instruments and even for percussion. By the sixteenth century at least, these originally oral syllables had begun to be written down as a kind of musical notation. The first mention of yukpo is in the Annals of King Sejo (A.D. 1470): ‘ Formerly there was only [for musical notation] the use of mnemonic sounds, called the Yukpo … The complexities are difficult to comprehend’ (quoted in Lee, 1981: 31, Condit 1976: 205, 207 has a more extensive but interpretive translation). This quotation suggests that yukpo were already considered both old and obscure by Sejo's time.
Bahing and the Proto-Kiranti verb
Authors: Van Driem George
Published: January 2010

Data on the Bahing verbal agreement system were collected in the first half of the nineteenth century and in the second half of the twentieth century. The current periphrastic model of the Proto-Kiranti verb is evaluated in the light of a morphemic analysis of the Bahing conjugation. This re-assessment leads to a refinement of the model of the Proto-Kiranti verb
Again on taḍmīn in Arabic theoretical discourse
Authors: Sanni Amidu
Published: January 2010

In my earlier examination of the phenomenon oftaḍmīnin Arabic poetry, I attempted to show how it evolved from the status of a defect into a poetic device. But I could not at that time offer any explanation that would reasonably account for this development. Moreover, I have come to realize that my treatment of the term as referring to those instances where the full meaning of an idea started in one line emerges only in the succeeding line(s), viz. enjamb-ment, did not adequately account for its subtleties; and, more importantly, it ignored other phenomena which are also subsumed under the term, though they have no obvious connection with enjambment. It is precisely these lacunae that I intend to fill in the present study. For purposes of analysis I will designate the over-running of lines as ‘grammaticaltaḍmīn’ since the relationship in such cases is either syntactic or semantic, although still other, subtler relationships within this broad classification are demonstrable. The term is also used for cases where a poet deliberately quotes, with or without indication, from poems or statements by others: this will be discussed under ‘rhetoricaltaḍmīn’. Yet another use of the term arose from the introduction of philosophical thought into theoretical speculation, specifically in the area of scriptural interpretation: this I will designate as ‘hermeneuticaltaḍmīn’.
Tamīm al-ārī
Authors: Cook David
Published: January 2010

Tamīm al-Dārī was one of the Prophet Muḥammad's companions and an early convert to Islam from Christianity. His name is most closely associated with the eschatological traditions concerning the Dajjāl (the Muslim Antichrist), and various early ascetic ideas. The best known story involving him is in fact his meeting with the Dajjāl, after he and others of his tribe are shipwrecked on a mysterious island. He is taken by a creature calledal-jassāsato meet a chained man in a monastery, who asks the tribesmen a number of questions about the state of the outside world, most of which are related to the area of the Rift Valley in Syria. After they answer him, he proclaims himself to be the Dajjāl and announces that he is about to be let loose on the world. Somehow Tamīm and his companions manage to leave the island and come to visit the Prophet, who hears their story and relates it to the populace of Medina. However, in spite of this story, historical material about him, as is common with the Prophet's companions in general, is hard to come by. In this article I will explore some of the historical traditions connected with this figure and try to establish which material is reliable and which is not.
On two Xerxes inscriptions (Plates I, II)
Authors: Schmitt Rudiger
Published: January 2010

Being engaged in the preparation of an edition of the Old Persian inscriptions of Naqš-i Rustam and Persepolis for theCorpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum(CII), the present author was given the privilege of looking through the relevant material collected by Émile Benveniste (1902–76), who had been entrusted by the Council of theCIIin August 1954 with the task of preparing the edition of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achaemenid kings. In this collection there were found photographs of two minor Old Persian texts of King Xerxes I, previously documented only in the form of drawings by Ernst Herzfeld. These photographs are presented for the first time in this short paper.
A Late Mamluk Document Concerning Frankish Commercial Practice at Tripoli
Authors: Richards D. S.
Published: January 2010

Much has been written about the trading relations of the Italian states with the Levant in the period of the Crusades and the late Middle Ages. The bulk of the material that has made these studies possible has been provided by the voluminous archives of the various Italian cities, which also contain a few treaties and letters that originated from Muslim authorities (largely of the Mamluk period) and have been preserved in the original and/or in translation. The document to be presented here was addressed to various officials in Tripoli, that is, Tarābulus al-Shām, and dates from near the end of the Mamluk sultanate. It is an order for the attention of the Mamluk authorities only, intended to govern commercial dealings in Tripoli as they were unilaterally understood. The document is not to be thought of as comparable with the so-called ‘treaties’, which were draw up after a process of negotiation although they were ultimately expressed as independent decrees of the Sultan. One can only wonder at the chance survival of this undoubtedly genuine piece. It is now held in the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago, under the number OIM 13787. It was purchased in 1929 from Dr Bernhard Moritz, one-time librarian of the Khedivial Library in Cairo, and its provenance beyond that point is unknown. Three other Mamluk documents of the same period, which are relevant to affairs at Tripoli, survive in the archives of St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, namely nos. LXIX, LXX and LXXI of those published by Ernst. The first of these three refers to the monastery's waqf property at Tripoli, but the other two have absolutely no connection with any interests or affairs of the monastery, and it is difficult to imagine how they found their way there.
A New Publication on the Date and Historiography of the Buddha's Decease (nirvāṉa): a Review Article
Authors: Ruegg D. Seyfort
Published: January 2010

The date of the demise, or (Mahapāri)Nirvāṉa, of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni is one of the key chronological markers in early Indian history, one which has therefore been of pivotal importance to modern scholarship on ancient India. Whilst the dates of the conquest of Gandhāara and Sindh by the Achaemenid empire and the dates of Alexander's campaigns in the subcontinent are among the very oldest established for the history of north-western India, that of the Nirvāna of the Buddha has long been regarded as the oldest more or less fixed chronological value in the history of north-eastern India. The dating of the Buddha has a crucial significance for the dates of certain ancient Indian kings-Bimbisara of Magadha and Prasenajit (Pasenadi) of Kosala -and for that of the Jain Tīrthaṅkara Mahāvīra, for the development of Jainism and the Śramaṉa movement, and for the earlier history of the Brahmanical religion and the oldest Indian philosophy, including the thought of the Upaniṣads. Moreover, quite apart from its importance for South Asia alone, the consensus (apparently) obtaining among scholars about the time of the Buddha contributed to the elaboration by Karl Jaspers, in his book of 1955 entitled Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, of the concept of an Axial Age (‘Achsenzeit’) around 500 B.C. when a number of epoch-making events are thought to have taken place in the ancient Eurasian world.
Tone Rules in Kalam Kohistani (Garwi, Bashkarik)
Authors: Baart Joan L. G.
Published: January 2010

Kalam Kohistani is a Dardic language spoken in the upper parts of the Swat and Panjkora valleys (Swat Kohistan and Dir Kohistan), in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. In the literature, the language is known by different names, the most familiar of which are Garwi and Bashkarik. The name Garwi occurs in the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI, 8/2: 507ff.), while Bashkarik is used by Morgenstierne (1940), which is the standard reference on the language to date.
The Dark Gate, the Dungeons, the royal escape route and more: survey of Tughluqabad, second interim report
Authors: Shokoohy Mehrdad , Shokoohy Natalie H.
Published: January 2010

Tughluqabad, situated 18 kilometres south-east of New Delhi, is the oldest surviving sultanate town in India. It was built by Sultan Ghiyāth al-dīn Tughluq between 1320 and 1323, and its well preserved walls, its street layout and the remains of its buildings provide us with the earliest existing example of Indo-Muslim urban planning and its architectural components. The town was designed by Ahmad b. Ayāz, an Anatolian architect and a nobleman of the Tughluq court, who was responsible for the design of many of the early Tughluq buildings1 and who was later raised to the rank of Grand Vizier at the time of Muhammad b. Tughluq (1325–51), but was put to death by Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq (1351–88) in the early days of his reign.
Ritual and classification: a study of the Booran Oromo terminal sacred grade rites of passage
Authors: Kassam Aneesa
Published: January 2010

In her deconstruction of the category ‘ritual’, Bell (1992: 6) suggests that all theoretical discourse on this subject is based on the opposition between thought (beliefs, symbols and myths) and action (the enactment of such cultural templates). Bell further demonstrates that this basic distinction has generated two other homologized structural patterns in ritual theory. In the second pattern, (represented in the works of Durkheim, Tambiah and Turner), there has been an attempt to produce a synthesis of the initial dichotomy. In the third pattern (represented in the studies of Geertz), this opposition and integration has led to another permutation of the original pattern, in which ‘ritual participants act, whereas those observing them think’ (Bell, 1992: 28).
An introduction to the history of modern Persian Sufism, Part I: The Ni'matullāhī order: persecution, revival and schism
Authors: Lewisohn Leonard
Published: January 2010

Following the political upheavals of 1978, the history and development of Shiite religious thought in modern-day Persia has been the subject of detailed scholarly studies, but the modern development of Sufism—the mystical tradition that lies at the heart of traditional Persian culture, literature and philosophy, which is, from the cultural and literary point of view at least, the most fascinating aspect of the Perso-Islamic religious tradition—remains almost completely uncharted. In contrast to the classical and medieval periods of Persian Sufism which have undergone much scholarly investigation in recent years, the study of the modern period of Iraniantasawwuf, though far better known and documented, has been seriously neglected by scholars.
Invented origins: Muromachi interpretations of okina sarugaku
Authors: Pinnington Noel J.
Published: January 2010

Okina , a ritual play without plot, a collection of old songs and dialogues interspersed with dances, can be seen in many parts of Japan, performed in various versions. In village festivals, it may be put on by local people using libretti derived from oral traditions, and in larger shrines professional players might be employed to perform it at the New Year. Puppets enact Okina dances at the start of Bunraku performances and Kabuki actors use them to open their season. Such Okina performances derive from Nō traditions, and as might be expected, the Nō schools have their own Okina, based on texts deriving from the Edo period, which they perform at the start of celebratory programmes. These ‘official’ versions feature, among other roles, two old men: Okina and Sanbasō (). Before the fifteenth century, when Nō traditions were being established, it was common for a third old man known as Chichi no jō () to appear as well (I shall refer to this ‘complete’ form as Shikisanban, three ritual pieces, a term used by Muromachi performers). These old men are marked out from all other Nō roles by their use of a unique type of mask, having a separated lower jaw connected by a cord (the so-called kiriago).Erika de Poorter, in her introduction to Okina, suggests that actors dropped the third section because its Buddhist content conflicted with a trend away from Buddhism towards Shinto (a trend she refers to as ‘the spirit of the times’). She supports her theory by adducing a similar ideological shift in contemporaneous interpretations of Okina and legends about the origins of Nō. De Poorter tells us little about these interpretations, as is perhaps appropriate for an introductory essay. This study, however, aims to give a full account of them, starting with a Buddhist reading, recorded near the beginning of the Muromachi period, proceeding to interpretations current among performers in the fifteenth century, and concluding with the purely Shinto explanation taught by the Yoshida lineage in the mid-sixteenth century.
The racecourses at Sāmarrā’
Authors: Northedge Alastair
Published: January 2010

At Sāmarrā’ there are the remains of a number of ‘Abbāsid walled tracks which appear to be racecourses. Ernst Herzfeld found one track in the course of the German expedition of 1911–13 to the ‘Abbāsid capital at Sāmarrā’, and the outline of two more became known from a series of maps of the Sāmarrā’ district made by the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force in 1917. Herzfeld published his first brief discussion of these courses in 1948 in hisGeschichte der Stadt Samarra’, and a further description was published posthumously in hisPersian empirein 1968. At about the same time in 1948, a fairly extensive discussion was published by Ahmad Susa in hisRayy Sāmarrā’, though without much illustration. Sūsa enumerated five courses, but it has proved necessary to exclude two, for they seem not to have been for racing. One further course has been added here, not identified before.
The way of the peasant
Authors: Brett Michael
Published: January 2010

The book under review here is to be compared with the volume published over ten years ago under the editorship of Michael Cook, Studies in the economic history of the Middle East (London, 1970). It covers essentially the same subject over the same period of time in the same fashion, by a series of papers contributed to a major international conference. It differs first of all in the length of time it has taken to produce the work, seven years from the original conference at Princeton in 1974, compared with three from the conference at S.O.A.S. in 1967 to the publication of the earlier collection. It is in fact much longer, with more space and time allowed to the contributors to rewrite their papers and annotate them, in great and often discursive detail. The editor is to be complimented on the very high standard of the production of the mammoth tome which results. The weight is heavily on the countryside and the agricultural economy; neither trade, nor industry, nor urban life make much of an appearance except as their adjuncts. Only historical demography (4 articles) stands in any way as a separate subject. More usual is the emphasis upon Egypt, which once again receives the greatest attention, in ten or eleven out of the total twenty-four contributions. Atypical as the Nile valley may seem, its source materials continue to influence the pattern of research in the much wider field of the book's title. Elsewhere it is something of a shock to find, in the papers of Morony on seventh-century Iraq, Talbi on ninth-century Ifrīqiya, Burns on fourteenth-century Valencia, and Rafeq on eighteenth-century Syria, the wealth of detail that comes from a legal literature, an archive or court records, and to realize how few and far between such studies are outside Egypt.
On the antiquity of Zoroastrian apocalyptic
Authors: Boyce Mary
Published: January 2010

‘Apocalyptic’, it has been pointed out, ‘is only another word for “revelation”, and apocalyptist for “revealer”. Essentially, therefore, prophecy and apocalyptic [are] identical.’ Prophecy in its turn has been defined as ‘the declaration of knowledge which cannot be apprehended through the ordinary faculties, but is acquired either by revelation from a deity or by some other mantic power inherent in te seer himself’. Through the accidents of history a distinction came to be drawn by students of Jewish sacred literature between ancient prophecy and later apocalyptic, the latter flourishing in the intertestamental period; and in the Jewish tradition it is apocalyptic which, it has been said, ‘was the first to grasp the great idea that all history, alike human, cosmological and spiritual, is unity. … Apocalyptic sketched in outline the history of the world and of mankind, the origin of evil, its course, and inevitable overthrow, and the final consummation of all things’.
Processes of redaction: the case of the Tamīmite delegation to the Prophet Muḥammad
Authors: Landau-Tasseron Ella
Published: January 2010

The Year 9 A.H. is known as 'ām al-wufūd, ‘the year of the delegations', on account of the many tribal delegations which came at that time to the Prophet at Medina. One of the most impressive was that of Tamīm. The accounts of its meeting with the Prophet are rich in detail, and involve both Qur'ānic verses and poems. As is often the case with our sources, there is a considerable amount of confusion between the various accounts. In this instance, however, the confusion is the result not merely of falsifications of failures of recall but also of the conception which guided the Muslim scholars in their redaction of the material. The compilers, rather than their primary sources, are responsible for the confusion which is the main subject of thispaper.
Tsong Khapa's Speech of Gold
Authors: Williams Paul
Published: January 2010

The greatness of Tsong Khapa as a Mādhyamika philosopher lay in his daring originality (which, to the chagrin of his opponents, he traced to a revelation from Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom) and his stress on human reason as an integral factor in the path to enlightenment, a stress which made him value above all a form of Madhyamaka which was systematically coherent. Tsong Khapa's interpretation of Madhyamaka ranges across the entire Madhyamaka corpus, organizes, clarifies obscurities and, above all,makes sense(which is not the same thing as saying that it is true). Madhyamaka thought can be difficult, and in the hands of a scholastic thinker whose temperament and outlook was akin, I suspect, to Aquinas, so Madhyamaka thought becomes extremely difficult. Tsong Khapa moulded Tibetan into a language of considerable philosophical subtlety and sophistication. His writings are renowned for their difficulty among Tibetans, and they are despairingly difficult to translate.
CollaborateurversusAbstentioniste (Tu'ờng versus Trị): a political polemic in poetic dialogue during the French acquisition of southern Việt-Nam
Authors: Davidson Jeremy H. C. S.
Published: January 2010

Poetry has traditionally been the major vehicle of literary expression in Việt-Nam. It has also been the principal means for the presentation of educational, social, political and other information, hence one may say that among its purposes it was, and is, used for the exhortation of patriotic, nationalist spirit, the warning to outsiders of the seriousness of consequence if they intruded and, during periods of unwanted foreign presence or, even worse, of foreign dominance, it was used for the expression of all varieties of political opinion.
The confidential memorial system of the Ch'ing dynasty reconsidered
Authors: Huang Pei
Published: January 2010

Students of traditional Chinese political institutions cannot afford to disregard the importance of the Ch'ing confidential memorial system. Essentially, this dynastic institution had existed for centuries, but it reached maturity only in the Ch'ing dynasty. Under this system, government officials in various positions from many regions outside the capital submitted confidential memorials which reached the imperial desk through special channels. After reading and commenting on them in vermilion ink, the ruler returned the memorials to their authors confidentially via the same channels. This system resulted in direct communication between ruler and officials, and under the vigilant Ch'ing emperors, it enhanced imperial autocratic power in several ways

In the traditional Chinese state the ruler, however enlightened or benevolent, was an autocrat. His words were law; his decisions final. Without his sanction, no state affairs or government plans could proceed. His authority could only be circumvented or manipulated within the bureaucratic procedure and for this reason he worked hard to safeguard his authority by keeping a close eye on his officials throughout the empire.
An Armenian gospelbook in the SOAS collection (MS 11521)
Authors: Cowe S. Peter
Published: January 2010

Although the existence of 12 Armenian manuscripts in the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies has been known to scholars for some time and partial listings of their contents have appeared, they have not as yet been the subject of any more detailed publication. The collection features only one gospelbook which, in consequence of losing its original binding, also lacks its final colophon which would inform us precisely on such matters as date, provenance and, where appropriate, patron.

From other data the copyist can be identified as Movsēs. Moreover, since he describes himself simply as scribe (grič‘), we may deduce that he occupied only one of the minor clerical orders. He refers to assistance he received in lining the manuscript, which probably explains the awkwardness of the openings of two of the gospels where, despite the page being arranged as usual for two columns of writing, the scribe has elected to ignore the divisions and treat it as one. Similarly, his reference to his teacher confirms the impression left by his employment of the diminutivegrč‘akat one point that he was still under instruction in the art at a monastery. This is further compatible with the comparatively low level of technical excellence exhibited by the illuminations. Paleographically, the codex might be assigned to the seventeenth century, a date supported by some of the later grammatical forms which appear in the surviving colophons.
Recent studies in Neo-Aramaic dialects
Authors: Macuch Rudolf
Published: January 2010

Since the beginnings of Neo-Aramaic studies in the second half of the last century, with the work of pioneers such as Stoddard (1855), Sachau (1865) and Noldeke (1868) in East-Neo-Syriac, Prym and Socin (1883) in West-Neo-Syriac (Tur ‘Abdln) and Parisot (1898–9) in West-Aramaic of Ma'lūla and related dialects, research in the field of Neo-Aramaic dialectology has never known such an intensive upsurge as there has been in the second half of this century. Although harsh religious persecution by the Muslims and other unendurable hardships, particularly in this century, exterminated a large proportion of the speakers of these dialects or drove them from their original sites to Russia, America, various European countries and even Australia, where their idioms are likely to die within the next few generations, the interest in their more or less modest remnants is increasing. It is as if Aramaists had finally responded to an earnest last-moment appeal and understood the need to save this linguistic heritage before it disappears totally. However, it is symptomatic that researchers trying to record a dying dialectin situ(Krotkoff, Aradhin in Iraqi Kurdistan 1959, published 1982; Jastrow, Hertevin in East Turkey 1970, published 1988) were unable to find more than a single reliable informant on the dialects of the villages of their respective research
The science/technology interface in seventeenth-century China: Song Yingxing on qi and the wu xing
Authors: Cullen Christopher
Published: January 2010

This paper is a contribution to the study of the relations between science and technology in seventeenth-century China. I hope that its unusual perspective may help to illuminate the problem of how these two areas of human activity relate to each other in a more general context. Outside the small group of interested scholars the relations between science and technology are not seen as problematical. In the popular stereotype, scientists are trie people who make discoveries, while technologists simply find out how to use what they have discovered. This crude view has some support from historical fact. Over the last hundred years there has undoubtedly been a steady flow of useful ideas from (for instance) the physicist to the engineer and from the biochemist to the agronomist.
The exegetical genre asbāb al-nuzūl: a bibliographical and terminological survey
Authors: Rippin A.
Published: January 2010

‘Thus Ḥājjī Khalīfa, the Ottoman bibliographer of the eleventh/seventeenth century, introduces his listing of books contained within the genre of exegetical literature connected to the Qur'ān entitled asbāb al-nuzūl. That account of the genre has barely been exceeded in more recent scholarship. Ignaz Goldziher in his Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung finds occasion only once to mention the ‘classic’ work of the type, that by al-Wāḥidī (d. 468/1075), and devotes no further space to consideration of the literature. Régis Blachère in his Introduction au Coran deals with the genre in a brief footnote while Bell/Watt's Introduction to the Qur'ān confines comment to a dozen or so lines. The standard tome of scholarship, Nöldeke/Schwally, Geschichte des Qorāns, II: Die Sammlung des Qorāns, gives the longest treatment known, extending for almost two pages of text. The introduction to the section is worthy of quotation:Die unter dem Namen Asbüb al-nuzūl gehenden Werke unterscheiden sich von den Kommentaren dadurch, dass sie nur das auf Veranlassung der Offenbarungen bezüigliche Material enthalten. Da dieses aber den religionsgeschichtlich wie literargeschichtlich wichtigsten Teil der Kommentare ausmacht und hier, alles stö:renden Beiwerkes entkleidet, besonders leicht zu übersehen ist, begreift es sich leicht, wie gross der Wert dieser Bücher für die Forschung ist. Die Muslime haben, wie es scheint, weniger Verständnis dafür gehabt, sonst würde die Zahl der einschlägigen Werke, von denen wir Kunde haben, nicht so gering sein.
Ravigupta and Vāgbhaṭa
Authors: Wujastyk D.
Published: January 2010

The text-historical problems surrounding the medical works attributed to Vāgbhaṭa are well known and have been excellently outlined by Vogel (1965: introduction) and again briefly by Meulenbeld (1974: 423–5). From the published colophons of both theAṣṭāṅgasaṅgraha (As.)and theAṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā (Ah.)we learn that Vāgbhaṭa was the son of Siṃhagupta. This is stated again in the text of theAs. (VI.50, end) where it is further stated that the author's grandfather was also called Vāgbhaṭa, and was also a doctor. We are in addition told that the author was born in the Sindhu region and that his teachers were Avalokita and, to a greater extent, his father Siṃhagupta. Thus we have the following family tree.