All extant Pahlavi-Vīdēvdād (PV) manuscripts derive from a single copy. The binding of this copy was damaged early on, and some folios were lost and others displaced. A detailed analysis of the extant manuscripts allows us to reconstruct the original order and to discover where some folios are lost, but in previous editions (especially of the Pahlavi translation), this fact was not always noted appropriately and numerous errors occurred. Moreover, other typical transmission errors in this common source have slipped into all extant PV manuscripts and caused omissions of several fragments of the Avestan text and its Pahlavi translation, hence the importance of the Sādes for the edition of the Avestan text of the Vīdēvdād. Geldner was, unfortunately, too confident in the quality of the PV manuscripts and omitted from his edition Avestan texts that should have been included. But not every difference between the Avestan text of the Sāde and Pahlavi manuscripts can be attributed to the transmission. One of the most important differences is the omission of fragard 12 in the Pahlavi-Vīdēvdād manuscripts. Since its omission cannot be attributed to transmission, an alternative explanation for this important difference is proposed.

The study of codified law under the T'ang dynasty is greatly complicated by the fact that, of the four main categories of laws only the penal Code (lü ) is preserved in full. The chief secondary category of law, the administrative Statutes (ling) have been painstakingly reconstructed on the basis of their Japanese adaptations, by reassembling the very large number of quotations which are preserved in T'ang sources, and we have a tolerably complete picture of their form and content. The other two categories of centrally codified law, the Regulations (ko) which codified the major amendments to and supplements to the Code and Statutes which had been promulgated from time to time in imperial Edicts, and the Ordinances (shih) which provided detailed rules for the local implementation of the other categories of law, have disappeared almost completely, and virtually the sole substantial surviving fragments are included among the Tunhuang manuscripts.

In the history of Indian art some areas are in very much better order than others. For those whose interests are concentrated in the Mughal period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), the study of the history of painting has been vastly advanced in the last 20 or 30 years. Every year increases the great number of paintings known to exist in public or private collections, or passing through the sale-rooms and the stocks of dealers in three continents, and almost every year there are significant discoveries and publications. In the field of Mughal architecture, perhaps, the same rapid progress is not visible. Some attractive coffee-table books figuring it have recently been published but there is a disappointing lack of analytical examination.

In general outline the pattern of government in Outer Mongolia during the Manchu dyasty in not unfamiliar and it is a well-known fact that there was no judiciary as such, the administration of justice being only one of the various duties of local officials at various levels. A certain amount of work has been done on problems of law and justice, but there remain many problems of detail to be both raised and commented upon. Two lines of inquiry are open. On the one hand it is instructive to see how the processes of investigation and trial worked—how an alleged offence came to offical notice, who investigated, how evidence was recorded, what instances a case passed through, and how, and on what legal basis, it was disposed of. Other closely related technical questions concern the form and language of official documents. On the other hand, examination of criminal cases will afford insight into the social status, living conditions, and perhaps the psychology, of the persons concerned. It is in fact largely through the medium of legal and other official documents that we shall glean whatever information there is to be had about the day to day lives of individual persons in Mongolia under the Manchus, since other sources of information—journalism, biography, fiction, letters, memoirs, and so on—are non-existent. Apart from reports of criminal cases, some of which have been dealt with in model fashion by Klaus Sagaster, much information can be found in other types of official document, such as complaints submitted by ordinary people against officials, but in the present article we shall be concerned exclusively with the report of one criminal case dating from the late eighteenth century.

MS Or. 2529 in the British Museum contains three Karaite Judaeo-Arabic fragments written in Hebrew script. The first two fragments (folios 1–95) are, according to the catalogue, ‘copies of Mahommedan philosophical works in defence of Mu'tazilite doctrines’. No author's name is given. It appears that the only reference to one of these two fragments, in an attempt to identify their author, was made by A. Ya. Borisov in his article on the Mu'tazilite MSS in the State Public Library, Leningrad. In that article Borisov described in detail 13 fragments which constitute part of the Firkovich collection. The contents of all 13 fragments are of a distinct Mu'tazilite character, but in only two of them (nos. 2 and 11 in Borisov's list) are the titles and the authors' names explicitly stated: al-Muḥīṭ, by 'Abd al-Jabbāar, and Dhakhīrat al-'ālim wa-baṣīrat al-muta'allim by al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā. Contrary to Borisov's expectations, his article has apparently not attracted the attention of scholars, except for some short bibliographical references.

This paper compares the relationship between the vāsudeva Kṣṇa and his prativāsudeva rival Jarāsandha in the Jaina tradition (primarily in Hemacandra's Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacarita) with Kṣṇa Vāsudeva's rivalries with Jarāsandha, Śiśupāla and Pauṇḍraka in the Mahābhārata and Hindu purāṇas. Three main points arising from this comparison are proposed. First, the Jainas conflated characteristics of the Hindu figures Jarāsandha, Śiśupāla and Pauṇḍraka in order to create a new Jarāsandha, who was now a single powerful nemesis for Kṣṇa. Second, this new relationship between Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha provided the template for a new class of Illustrious Beings (śalākāpuruṣas) in the Jaina Universal History: the recurring and paradigmatic vāsudevas and prativāsudevas. And third, this evolution of Kṣṇa mythology in the Jaina tradition may have influenced the parallel development in the Hindu tradition, including the creation of the vaiṣṇava ten avatāras doctrine, and the expansion of the purāṇic mythology surrounding both Jarāsandha and Śiśupāla.

The official chronicle of the short reign of the Emperor Shun-tsung (28 Feb. to 31 Aug., A.D. 805) was composed by Han Yü, the most famous prose writer of the T'ang dynasty. To this we owe the survival of what purports to be this chronicle, as a unique example of the ‘Veritable Records’ (shih-lu) composed in the T'ang History Office. I say purports to be because it is not at all clear what relation the version we now possess bears to that which came from Han Yüs brush. Mr. Solomon1 has given a brief, lucid analysis of the problems regarding this text but he has not, I think, examined quite all the evidence or considered all the possible interpretations of it. I shall deal more fully with this point below.

The three publishing houses of Wen-wu in Peking, Shanghai shu-tien, and Ku-chi in Tientsin joined forces to produce a new edition of the Taoist Canon. The Tao-tsang they published in 1988 is meant to be an improvement on the so-called Cheng-t'ung Tao-tsang printed in 1921–23 by the Han-fen lou branch of Shanghai Commercial Press. The latter takes as its foundation the copy of the Ming Canon from the archives of the Pai-yün Kuan (White Cloud Abbey) in Peking. The woodcut edition of the Ming Canon contains two components. The core collection appeared under the title Ta Ming Tao-tsang ching in the years 1444–45 of the Cheng-t'ung reign period. A small supplement entitled Hsü Tao-tsang ching was issued in 1607.

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.

The gerund here studied is a grammatical form of great interest on account of its phonological variations and the wide range of its syntactical relationships. It occurs in the single form, gide, in a strengthened form, giderek, and in a pair form, gide gide. We find it as an independent gerund and in verbal combinations which vary from mere association to complete fusion, such as gidememek and gideyor (gidiyor). It also has a tendency to become specialized in use as a post-gerund, and numerous particles have originated in this way. It has had a long history, being one of the basic grammatical forms of Turkish, a common feature of the Turkish family of languages from the time of the early inscriptions of northern Asia. In Ottoman Turkish its importance (except in the -erek and pair forms) has gradually declined during the last 500 years, and it is now used only to a very limited extent; but in Old Ottoman it was fairly widely employed, and the texts which have survived provide ample material for study. It is, however, a complicated study. In the work which has been done it would seem that investigators have usually relied on insufficient data, or have applied methods unsuitable for this case. For example, the method of general comparison between Ottoman on the one hand and various speech forms such as Uighur, Chaghatai, and modern Anatolian dialects on the other, cannot give satisfactory results. There are too many unknown factors, too many imponderables. Such a procedure inevitably leads to the comparison of mere isolated examples which do not really prove anything. I have therefore confined myself to Old Ottoman, and my method has been to take whole texts and collect and classify all the examples of this gerund which they contain. This is laborious, but it produces results which cannot be obtained in any other way.

In the first part of this study ‘framing’ bāj have been considered in connexion with religious rituals celebrated in the fire-temples, and with acts for achieving or maintaining ritual purity, mostly by pāw-mahal priests. Here it is proposed to consider such bāj as are needed and used in daily life.