Perhaps the first point which attracts the attention of the European lawyer who begins to study the treatment of qatl (homicide) in the text-books of Islamic law is that it is there treated, in modern parlance, more as a tort than a crime. To understand the offence properly, however, no such simple classification will suffice: instead, it is essential to view it in its historical setting and detailed development.

Under the heading of ‘uqūbāt, or punishments, Muslim lawyers treat primarily the very limited number of offences for which definite penalties (hudūd, singular hadd) are expressly prescribed in the arīa, although reference is also frequently made to the discretionary power of the Ruler or Judge suitably to punish other wrongdoing. Offences in general, moreover, are normally sub-divided into those which are regarded as exclusively involving the “right of God”, those in which both the “right of God” and the right of some individual is recognized but the former is held to preponderate, and those in which the latter is regarded as predominant. In the first category all jurists include sariqa in its two degrees (theft and brigandage), zinā (illicit sex relations), urb (wine drinking) and, when placed in this context, irtidād (apostacy from Islam); in the second, some jurists place qaf (the unproved assertion of a chaste person's incontinence), although others put this in the third category; while in the latter all include homicide and wounding. In effect an offence in which the right of God (as the Head of the community) is held to be exclusive or preponderant more or less corresponds to the modern crime, and one in which a private individual's right is regarded as predominant to the modern tort, for the chief practical difference is that in the former neither the party primarily injured nor, indeed, the Court may drop the case or allow a settlement once it has been started, while in the latter the injured party may do either at his or her discretion.

The main doctrines of the Shī'a are well known; Ibn Babuye, in his book The Reasons for Laws, gives a more popular view of theology.

The imam

‘Alī said: But for us God would not have created Adam, Eve, paradise, hell, heaven and earth. How shall we not be better than the angels? We knew our Lord before they did, our spirits were the first He created, and He made us speak of His unity. Then he created the angels and, when they saw that our spirits were one light, they glorified us; but we praised God that they might know that we too were created creatures. It is said that God created the five, Muḥammad, ‘Alī, Fāṭima, Ḥasan and Ḥusain seven thousand years before the world; they were before the throne. Ḥusain said: We were forms of light, circling round the throne of the Merciful; we taught the angels to praise, laud and magnify. Another expression is: A brilliant light, which was the substance (clay) of ‘Alī, passed before the angels. God created the hearts and bodies of the prophets from the substance of the highest places (‘illiyūn). An imam said: God created us from the highest places and our spirits from something higher; He created the spirits of our followers from the highest places and their bodies from something lower, so they are kin to us and their hearts yearn towards us. Then God created Adam and placed us in his loins; He commanded the angels to bow down to him to honour us. Their prostration was worship of God and respect and obedience to Adam because we were in his loins.

Students of Moslem philosophy and mysticism have often observed the highly eclectic character of that type of human thought. All Moslem speculation, philosophical and theological, no less than the Sūfī literature of the more theosophical kind, as represented for instance by Ibn ‘Arabī and Suhrawardī of Aleppo, displays this eclecticism. Yet no definite answer has been given to the question how or why the main current of Moslem thinking came to be of that type of mixture in which ideas from Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Philo Judæus, the Catholic thinkers of the Christian Church, the Gnostics, and the Neoplatonists are brought into one harmonious whole and mingled together in such an extraordinary manner. Certain attempts have been made in studying individual thinkers of Islam to trace their systems back to their respective sources, for no one source can satisfactorily explain such a diversity of doctrines as we find in Moslem literature. This was done by scholars who studied, e.g. al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, al-Ghazālī, and was done by myself in studying the mystical philosophy of Muhyid-Dln Ibn ‘Arabī. In each case the fundamental ideas of the Moslem thinker were traced to the special source or sources which were deemed to have influenced his thought.

One important question, however, has always been overlooked, whether it is possible that the Moslem thinkers were not themselves responsible for mixing together those irreconcilable elements of Greek philosophy with other ideas derived from the prevalent religions of the East. In other words, was the eclecticism of Moslem thought only a reappearance of another kind of eclecticism which existed long before ? Some of the aspects of this problem will be dealt with in this paper.

Mr. A. Chester Beatty has recently acquired a shigle leaf which comes from a fourteen-century MS. and is interesting in more than one respect. I am greatly indebted to him for permission to give an account of it here.

This isolated folio, measuring 13 × 18 cm. (Pis. 22–3), slightly damaged and torn at the edges, is the last leaf of a work entitled “ ThexTear of the Weeper” (Dam'at al-bākī). This information is supplied by the colophon, which also makes it clear that it was written by the well-known author, Ibn Fadlallah al-'Umarī, at Damascus in 745/1345. With the help of this leaf, it will be possible to identify any other Surviving MSS. and notes in the handwriting of Ibn Fadlallah. Furthermore, it constitutes a good palseographic specimerfof the hand of a cultured man of the mid-fourteenth century, writing not an official document but for his own enjoyment. The leaf is especially interesting for the fact that at the bottom, taking the place of a vignette, there figures an attractive miniature which, as will be seen, is contemporary with the colophon. The fragment sets various problems which deserve to be examined in a wider context.

§ 1. Muhammad Nasawi, the biographer of the Khwarāzm-shah Jalāl al-dīn, several times refers to the story of Nuṣrat al-dīn Muhammad (*Mahmūd) b. *Bīshkīn. When in 614/1217 the atabek of Azarbayjan, Özbek, was expelled from Isfahan by the Khwārazm-shāh Muhammed, Özbek's vassal Nuţrat al-din led the army back to Azarbayjan and thus enabled his master to escape with a small detachment. In Miyāna Nuṣrat al-din was taken prisoner by the Khwarazmians and brought to Hamadan. Wishing to humiliate him and other distinguished prisoners, the Khwārazm-shāh ordered them to stand on their feet while he played polo on the hippodrome. One day the conqueror's interest was aroused by the pair of unusually large ear-rings which Nusrat was wearing. Nu๣rat explained (p. 18) that his grandfather was captured by Alp Arslan during his expedition into Georgia (possibly that of 456/1064). Later, Alp Arslan liberated the prisoners but ordered them (as his slaves) to wear ear-rings with his name.

The reign of Erekle II over the united kingdoms of Kakhet‘i and K‘art‘li, which lasted from 1762 until 1798, may be regarded as the swan-song of the Georgian monarchy. Through the king's personal ability and the enfeebled state of Persia, Georgia was enabled to enjoy a period of somewhat precarious political independence before being absorbed by Russia as soon as Erekle's death removed the only force capable of maintaining any semblance of Georgian unity, and committed the responsibilities of government to his moribund heir, George XII.

Photographs of unpublished Parthian and Sogdian manuscripts were taken recently in Berlin by Captain J. A. Dabbs, of the University of Austin, Texas, and sent by him to Professor Henning, who kindly allowed me to look through the Parthian material at once. One fragment, M 741, proved to be of considerable interest. It contains portions of two hymns, which are alphabetic and may therefore be presumed to be original work in Parthian. The device of beginning every verse with a letter of the alphabet limits each hymn to some twenty-four verses; but in this case the two hymns are connected in their subject-matter and possibly formed part of a sequence. Several hymn-cycles have been identified in Parthian and Middle Persian, but the alphabetic device is not used in any of them. The hymns in M 741 have as their subject two myths of the creation, following chronologically one upon the other. The narrative would be difficult to follow, however, without some previous knowledge of the mythology, for the handling is poetic and allusive. Words and phrases occur which can be found in other similar texts, having been taken presumably from the prose scriptures which were the authority for all later renderings of the Manichsean myths. The author could assume a general familiarity with these scriptures, and so allow himself some freedom in his retelling of the stories.

The first hymn, which contains a new Parthian name for a divinity, has for its subject the seduction of the Archontes and the descent of active evil to the earth.

Dans les Mémoires du Comité des Orientalistes, F. A. Rosenberg a publié une coupe sassanide inédite, entrée il n'y a pas longtemps au Musée de l'Ermitage, et qui avait appartenu avant au Musée de l'Oural. Son décor comprend le sujet bien connu de la chasse du roi Bahrain Gor, et est semblable à, celui du plat qui appartint à 1'ancienne collection Likhatcheff et qui est conservé au Musée de Kazan.

Le plat de l'Oural porte une inscription gravée sur la partie extérieure du fond. F. A. Rosenberg publie cette inscription ainsi que deux autres qui sont gravees en pointillé, au même endroit, sur deux autres coupes sassanides. Pour simplifier la comparaison, nous les reproduisons dans l'ordre donné par Rosenberg.

1. prūva- ‘military post, fort’

Akhotanese word prū has already appeared in print in the article Gāndhārī (BSOAS 11. 765), but it could not at that time be explained. Since then a bilingual source has brought the solution.

Under the traditional titles of Assimilation and Dissimilation, we are presented with two linguistic phenomena apparently involving a principle similar to that which is known in physical science as ” action at a distance ”—-regularly in the latter case, occasionally in the former (under special titles, such as “dilation”, “Fernassimilation”). The classical example of this type of assimilation is provided by the Sanskrit “cerebralization” (nati) of n, with reference to which the term “action à distance” has, in fact, been used. In connection with the physical principle, it may be of interest to recall Newton's words:—

“It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation, of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact.”

Speech-sound, of course, is not “brute matter”, and it would be a dangerous and unnecessary principle to submit linguistics to physical criteria, but Newton's uneasiness may at least serve to lead us to a reconsideration of similar postulates of our own science. Amongst these the conception of an articulation A at one point in the temporal dimension exercising a form of “gravitational influence” upon an articulation B at a distant point would appear to be one that is only tolerable faute de mieux.

The whole principle of assimilation in descriptive linguistics has already been assailed more than once, on the ground that the implied change is only metaphorical, having reference to a hypothetical “basic” form derived from the consideration of other contexts or of earlier stages of the language, and leading to such definitions as “the extension of an element of articulation out-side its proper sphere”.

For the remaining eight sections of this stotra the Tibetan text has not been published. The version here reproduced is that of the Snar than edition of the Bstan hgyur (Bstod pa, folios 100–110), for the loan of which I am indebted to the Librarian of the Commonwealth Relations Office. It contains a thirteenth chapter of thirty-two slokas for which the Sanskrit MSS. have no equivalent (cf. JRAS., 1948, p. 57), and which is therefore omitted here.

Perhaps the most interesting of these sections is the seventh, with its elaborate (and to European taste frigid) parallels between Brahmanical and Buddhist vocabulary. In establishing Mātṛceṭa's identity and date, Sect. VIII, v. 23, which proves him to have been a Mahāyānist, is of capital importance. I should add that my own conclusions, summarized on p. 672, n. 2, of the last issue of this journal, were reached independently of this (corroborative) piece of evidence.

Section 1. General

Until the publication in the Gaekwar's Oriental Series XXXVII of the Apabhramśakvyatrayi (AKT) (edited with Sanskrit Introduction, Notes, and Appendices by the Jain pandit Lalchandra B. Gandhi) in 1927, the existence of prose Apabhramśa was unknown. This work, however, able though it is, is not much utilized or even consulted, and the extracts from the Kuvalayamālā Kahā, which he uses as illustrations, have never been discussed from a linguistic point of view. The whole of the Kuvalayamālā (as it is also called) has never been published, and it is an original work of linguistic importance.

In certain types of Old Bodish transitive verbs (Types 2, 7, 8), the initial of the imperative is regularly aspirated and would correspond to what Li believed to be the primitive form of the verb except for morphophonic change.

But aspiration of these stems does not occur in the imperative in West Bodish, as it does in Old and Central Bodish. Citable examples from Sbalti and Burig are almost wanting. For Burig, Francke gives the imperative tog, corresponding to O.B. t'ogs “fasten!”, and Bailey has tsăt-“awake”, im. tsot. The last might have been aspirated if aspiration were characteristic of the West Bodish imperative; however, the only related form in Old Bodish is sod-pa, sad-pa. But it is significant that neither Read, pp. 46–7, nor Bailey, p. 17, in their discussion of the changes occurring in the West Bodish imperative, mention any alteration of the initial. Nor does Jäschke in his Tibetan Grammar. On the contrary, Jaschke does provide some positive proof that aspiration does not occur hi the West Bodish imperative in the few West Bodish (Ladwags or Lahul dialect) imperative forms in his grammar (99–101), and still more in his dictionary:—

The work on which this article is based was done during my visit to the Northern Provinces of Nigeria, 1948–9. Selected material was studied, as spoken by Hausas, first in Zaria, then in Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, Daura, and Damagaram (Zinder). In Zaria I made certain statements from my observation of the utterances, which permitted me to classify the words according to the behaviour of their final syllables. Although there were dialectal differences, my observation of the utterances in other areas gave me no reason to alter my classification. The study of the final open syllable in Hausa has already interested others; in America, J. H. Greenberg and C. T. Hodge, and in this country, Dr. G. P. Bargery and Major R. C. Abraham. In this article I shall consider the final open syllable of the nominal only, by which I understand that class of word in Hausa which can be followed in close syntactical relationship by one of the enclitics, ne or ce.

This most convincing identification by Dr. A. F. L. Beeston would gain in strength by a more plausible explanation of how the form has come about.