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 ՙAlbāުiyya are the followers of al-ՙAlbā՚ b. Dhira՚ al-Dawsī, who set ՙAlī above the Prophet, saying that Muḥammad had been sent by ՙAlī, whom he called a divine being. … Some believe in the divinity of both ՙAlī and Muḣammad, but still think ՙAlī superior; these are called the ՙAyniyya. Others who think them both divine put Muḣammad first; these are called the Mīmiyya. Yet others believe in the divinity of all five Companions of the Cloak, Muḣammad, ՙAlī, Fāṭima, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, as equally imbued with the spirit of God.

It is one of the most tantalizing features of the ancient history of southern Asia that there is no generally accepted solution to the dating problems of the Kushan dynasty. The wide divergences of opinion still current with regard to this question were well evidenced by the lively discussions which took place at the Conference on the Date of Kanishka, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies from 20 to 22 April I960. It was rightly appreciated that numerous questions of Oriental history and archaeology depend on the correct solution of this problem.

A Mongst the Kurds there is found a considerable variety of religions, which has caused unfavourable observers to regard them as idolatrous. Not only are the Christians of several dominations represented among them, but also the Muslims, who form the predominant millah or creed among the peoples of Kurdiâstan in addition to these there are several less important sects, of which by far the most important are the Qizilbâsh and the Yazîdî Kurds.

It was remarked by the Czech linguist Pavle Ivi that it would be possible for particular linguistic landscapes to fit easily into particular theories about linguistic diffusion. He was referring especially to the difference between the Stammbaum or family tree theory and the Wellentheorie or wave theory as expounded by the Neo-grammarians. The family tree theory sees dialect features as genetically transmitted and traceable to the homeland of the group concerned. The wave theory on the other and concentrates more on the present geographical location of the speakers and traces the geographical diffusion of dialect features across the landscape independently of the movement of groups of people. If a distinction between family tree landscapes and wave theory landscapes is possible, as Ivi suggests, then the dialectology of the bedouin tribes of north-eastern Arabia falls quite definitely into the first group. In a previous article the writer described the dialect of the Muṭair tribe of Eastern Arabia which a dialect of the Central Najd type akin to the dialects of Central Najd and the 'Aniza tribes of the Syrian Desert. The Ḍhafr, although direct neighbours of the Muṭair to the north and west, speak a dialect of a quite different kind, basically North Najd, akin to the speech of the Jabel Shammar and the Shammar tribes, but with some admixture of Central Najd features. It seems that in this area dialect is a marker of tribal identity and since there is no gradation between membership of the Ḍhafr tribe and membership of the Muṭair, the dialects are similarly clearly demarcated geographically. The boundary between the Ḍhafr and the Muṭair also Muṭair also constitutes a more far-reaching boundary between Ahl al-Shiml and Ahl al-Jinb, northern and southern bedouin. This division is marked by dialect features and also certain other cultural externals such as dress and tent structure.

The publication of the first volume of M. René Groussef's history of the Crusades, which is review'ed elsewhere in this issue, brings out again, and all the more vividly because of its wealth of detail and effort to present a complete and rounded-off picture, the very serious gaps in Orientalist research on this period. Whereas the study of the Western and Greek sources has progressed to a point at which it may be said that little more remains to be done, research on the Oriental sources is incredibly backward.

Vasumitra in his famous work‘Origin and doctrines of early Indián Buddhist schools’ (Samaya-bhedoparacanacakra)1 enumerates the following four doctrines as characteristic of the Sautrāntika school: '(i) The skandhas transmigrate from one world to the other: hence the name Saṃkrānti-vāda; (ii) There are mulāntika-skandhas and eka-rasa-skandhas; (iii) An average person (prthagjana) also possesses the potentiality of becoming a Buddha (lit. in the statě of average man there are also divine things, drya-dharmas); (iv) There are paramārtha-pudgalas '.2

Attaining just a glimmer of an understanding of Chinese or Japanese in the seventeenth century required prodigious feats of imagination and the abandonment of widely-held convictions about the nature of language. Progress towards a rational and sophisticated understanding was held up by persuasive but fantastical theories to which lifetimes were devoted in vain. In their very different ways both languages were subversive of contemporary notions of language, and the conceptual frameworks for adequate descriptions had to be generated from scratch. The difficulties can scarcely be overestimated: the Chinese language was vigorously attacked in 1678 as the language of the devil on the ground that its pictographic nature would occasion a breach of the Second Commandment if the name of God were written, and the following year Leibniz drew up a list of questions concerning Chinese which ask, among other things, ‘whether the Chinese language was artificially constructed, or whether it has grown and changed by usage like other languages’. Japanese attracted less interest, but the difficulty of the two languages was legendary: in 1708 the Dutch scholar Adrian Reland (1676–1718), who published numerous works on Persian, Jewish and Islamic studies, wrote of the immense numbers of characters to be learnt by anybody who wished to know Chinese or Japanese, with awe at the thought that ‘a man's life would scarcely suffice to attain perfect knowledge of one language’.

Sīstān (Sijistān or Sāgistān) came within the scope of British Indian frontier defence during the Napoleonic era. Lord Minto sent out missions to the Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan, Afghanistan and Persia in order to acquire reliable information about the borderlands. Captain Charles Christie and Lieutenant Eldred Pottinger in 1810 explored the route westward into Persia from Baluchistan. Christie separated from the others at Nushki and travelled to Herat via Sīstān before joining Pottinger in Iṣfahān. According to Christie: Seistan is a very small province on the banks of the Helmind, comprising not more than five hundred square miles, bounded on the north and northeast by Khorasan, on the west by Persia, and on the south and south-east it is separated from Mukran by an uninhabited desert.

The significance of Political Philosophy for the philosophy of Islam and A Judaism in the Middle Ages has been recognized in recent years, and the importance of Plato's Republic and Laws together with Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics for the falāsifa is becoming increasingly evident. Attention has been drawn to Alfārabī's political treatises, to Ibn Bājja, to Averroes' Commentaries on Plato's Republic and on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, to Ibn al-Ṭiqṭaqa and to Ibn Khaldun. The reception of Platonic and Aristotelian political ideas conditions—in varying degrees—the attitude of the falāsifa to the State as such, to the Muslim State in particular, and therefore to the Sharī‘a of Islam and to Greek philosophy, both practical and theoretical. This is already clear from the writings of Alfārābī, but in his attempt at blending and harmonizing Greek-Hellenistic and Islamic conceptions no Alfarabian philosophy proper with distinct features of a definitive, authoritatively formulated synthesis emerges. It was left to Averroes—to use the name by which Ibn Rushd was generally known to the West—to work out a peculiarly Islamic religious philosophy. He establishes in unequivocal terms the supreme authority of the Sharī‘a and its identity of purpose with falsafa, religious philosophy in the Faṣl al-maqāl, the Manāhij, the Tahāfut al-tahāfut and his Commentary on Plato's Republic. The last named forms the main subject of the present article. In an earlier study it was considered in connexion with his Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics already, but not with his other treatises just mentioned. This is, however, necessary in order to gain a correct, balanced view of his philosophy, and especially of his political thought. It is equally important to see his political Commentaries against the background of his active life as qāḍī and of contemporary Muslim history in the Maghreb.

The text presented below has been transcribed from a verbal account given by the Mntwana (Princess) Constance Magogo kaDinuzulu, of the Zulu Royal family. The Princess is the sister of the late Paramount Chief Solomon Maphumuzana Nkayishana, and great-aunt to the present Paramount Chief of the Zulu. Her late husband was Chief Mathole Buthelezi, and her son, Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, is at present Chief Executive Councillor of the kwaZulu Government. Princess Magogo is widely acknowledged as the greatest living authority on the subject of Zulu music. As a performer, her musical repertoire is prodigious, encompassing traditional items dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and possibly earlier. Her reply, when asked how she came to learn so much of the Zulu musical repertoire, was as follows: ‘When I was a young girl, I slept in the huts of my grandmothers, the wives of King Cetshwayo, and one could not escape hearing a great deal of our traditional music’. Besides her accomplishment as a singer, the Princess is the last remaining player of the classic Zulu instrument for song-accompaniment, the ugubhu musical bow. The present discourse, on Zulu music and its role in traditional life,, provides insight of a kind that is beyond the reach of an outside observer, since the Princess has drawn on a lifetime of personal experience. To provide relevant illustrations, she frequently broke into song during her discourse. Musical transcriptions of these songs appear at the end of the present paper, in Appendix 1. The tonality of the music is briefly discussed in Appendix 2.

The Bornu quranic manuscripts with interlinear ajami glosses in a Kanuri dialect were discovered by A. D. H. Bivar in the late 1950s. The unique corpus of written evidence for the Kanuri language as spoken over 300 years ago has never been analysed in any depth. The first part of the paper contains a general description of the collection and a discussion of codicological and palaeographical characteristics of the manuscripts. The second part comprises a brief note on the Kanuri language and a description of the Bornu writing system used for quranic commentary in this language. The third part explores the phonological and morphological properties of selected examples of glosses. Finally, a preliminary view on the dialect affiliation of the language of the glosses is suggested.

This article explores the careers of craftsmen and other commoners, who succeeded in joining the bureaucratic system and occupying high positions in the Mamluk administrative establishment, eventually acquiring great power and even political authority. At the same time Sufi shaykhs, also men of common origin and beneficiaries of Mamluk philanthropy, emerged as mighty and authoritative figures, venerated equally by the aristocracy and the populace. The newly privileged groups also figure as founders of Friday mosques following a flexible new attitude on the part of the authorities. This social fluidity, often criticized by historians of the period, was the result of the pious patronage of the Mamluk aristocracy, which brought academic education to the reach of a large part of the populace. Towards the end of the Mamluk period, the structure of religious institutions had itself been levelled: the Friday mosque with Sufi service replaced the earlier madrasas and khanqāhs. The article also discusses how the visual arts of the period mirror the social changes with new aspects of artistic patronage.

The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, an indigenous Chinese composition written in the guise of an Indian Buddhist treatise, is one of the most influential texts in the history of East Asian Buddhism. Its outline of the doctrines of buddha nature (foxing), buddha bodies (foshen), and one mind (yixin), among others, served from the medieval period onwards as one of the main foundations of East Asian Buddhist thought and practice. The Treatise is putatively attributed to the Indian writer Aśvaghoṣa, and its current Chinese version was traditionally conceived of as a translation from an original Sanskrit text. In the course of the twentieth century, however, many important scholars of Buddhism have called into question the textual history of the Treatise. Even if the specific circumstances of its creation are still largely unknown, the view that the Treatise is an original Chinese composition (not necessarily written by a native Chinese) is now prevalent among scholars. Meanwhile, and for more than one hundred years, the text has also become a source of knowledge of Buddhism in the West thanks to a number of English translations. After examining the early textual history of the two existing versions of the text, this article will offer some examples of its modern appropriation by a novel group of readers and interpreters, an appropriation that took place during the first decades of the twentieth century amidst efforts to re-envision Chinese and East Asian Buddhist history and the place of Buddhism in modern society.

The chinese have held to the architectural standards of the past no less tenaciously than to other traditions of their ancient civilization. Buildings standing at the present day testify to this fact, and innumerable written records indicate a continuity of architectural practice lasting more than 2,000 years. The probability is that foreign importation has affected Chinese architecture least of all the arts.

The book which passes under the name of Ho-kuan-tzu, ‘Master of the pheasant cap’, an otherwise unknown teacher supposedly of the third century B.C., expounds a variety of syncretism which roots the fa decreed by the ruler in a Yin-Yang cosmological scheme. It is remarkable for presenting no less than three contradictory programmes for ideal government, two of them described at length and ascribed to sage emperors missing in orthodox historiography; one is roughly classifiable as Legalist, one as Yin-Yang, the third as Taoist anarchist. It attracted little attention until recently because of lack of evidence as to its date. But with the discovery in 1973 of the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts of Laotzu it was noticed that the ‘Yellow Emperor’ documents attached to manuscript B are closely related to it; and Wu Kuang has since pointed out that the first two chapters observe the taboo on the personal name of the Ch'in First Emperor.

The study of Muslim lexicology concerned with the Qur'ān has a short but illustrious bibliography, the highlights of which may be summed up for the purposes of the following discussion by mentioning four people: Arthur Jeffery, whose Foreign vocabulary of the Qur'ān contains a lengthy introduction concerning various classical Muslim attempts to come to grips with the Qur'ānic lexicon; Chaim Rabin, who in his Ancient West-Arabian attempts to use a text which deals with dialect words in the Qur'ān as one of Ms sources for the reconstruction of ‘pre-literary Arabic dialects’; Lothar Kopf, who, through his articles and posthumously published dissertation extracts, exposes many of the trends and pitfalls in Arabic dictionaries, most notably those features which result from the influence of the Qur'ān; and John Wansbrough, who via his Quranic studies has treated us to his analysis of some of the early texts and has provided some very cogent and persuasive arguments concerning the motivations behind the compilation of such treatises.

Yenitsa, in Ottoman Turkish Yenije-i Vardar or Vardar Yenijesi, is a small town some 50 km. west of Thessaloniki. Situated at the foot of Mount Païkon, near the lake of the same name (which was drained several years ago), it was in the Ottoman period an important Turkish military and cultural centre, particularly as being the base of the ghāzīs, the ‘warriors for the Faith’, who had followed the great march-lord (uj-begi) Evrenos on his campaigns in Thrace and Macedonia. Very early, perhaps as early as 1372, Evrenos had come to Central Macedonia with his followers and settled in this place, where already there was probably a Byzantine castle. There soon grew up a township, from which Evrenos and his sons and grandsons set out on repeated raids in all directions, devastating the countryside and preparing the way for the definitive occupation of Macedonia, and later of Albania, by the ‘central’ apparatus under the command of the sultan. It is probable that the several occupations of various towns in this area, such as Veria (Turkish: Karaferye) and Thessaloniki, were the achievement of these raiders. Yenije soon had a con-siderable Turkish population, so that in 1430, after the final occupation of Thessaloniki, Murad II was able to order the deportation from there to the newly-conquered city of a thousand Turkish families without reducing Yenije's prosperity.

In the course of their expansion into Central Asia the Muslims came into contact with Turks, either settled and Iranized or else nomadic and marauding in their mode of life. As early as the time of the Caliph ‘Uthmān, when the conquest of Khurāsān was barely complete, there were, according to the historical sources, a number of incursions by Turkish nomads into that province in the neighbourhood of Marw and even as far as Nīshāpūr. Under the Umayyads, however, the Muslims came into direct contact with both the Western and the Northern Turkish states. In the period 86–96/705–15, under Qutaiba b. Muslim, the famous Umayyad governor, the Muslims won their first important victory over the Western Turks. Under Naṣr b. Sayyār, in the year 121/738–9, the Muslims broke the power of the Western Turks by defeating the dominant group amongst them, that of the TürgeshKhāqāns. The empire of the Northern Turks was destined to come to an end shortly afterwards in the year 744.

IN October 1948, the Governor of Hong Kong appointed a committee to consider the position of Chinese law and custom in that colony. The report of this committee, which was published in February 1953,1 will have drawn attention to the fact that the old family law of China, quite apart from the limited recognition given to it by the courts, continues to exercise considerable influence on the lives of millions of Chinese, not only in Hong Kong, but in the other British territories of South-East Asia. In China itself, as regards matters of the family, the Civil Code of the former National Government had never, over most of the country and for the mass of the people, any very eifectual force, and the customary law continued to exist in almost undiminished vigour until the establishment of the People's Government in 1949.2 Since then the situation has changed completely. New laws regarding marriage and property are effectively enforced, and have everywhere replaced the old customs and, what is still more important, an extremely efficient system of mass-education in the principles of Communism will before long have expelled from people's minds those beliefs on which the old Chinese law was based. From now on, apart from Formosa, it is only in Hong Kong and among the communities of overseas Chinese throughout South-East Asia that Chinese customary family law will continue to exist, but even with such limitations it is still of sufficient importance to make its study of practical significance.