The long-awaited Greek-letter inscription discovered, on 6 May 1957, by the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan in the course of their excavations at ‘Surkh-Kotal’, the ancient Bagolango, has now been made public by M. André Maricq under the title of ‘La grande inscription de Kaniṣka et l'étéo-tokharien, l'ancienne langue de la Bactriane’, JA, CCXLVI, 4, 1958, 345–440. It is wonderfully well-preserved and, once one gets accustomed to the somewhat barbaric forms of certain letters, offers not the slightest difficulty to the reading. The difficulties lie elsewhere: this is the first substantial, and at the same time readable, document of the Iranian language once spoken in Bactria and, appropriately to a text in an unknown language, is slow in yielding its meaning to the scholar, who inevitably has to be guided partly by often contradictory internal evidence, partly by uncertain comparisons with related languages. All those devoted to Central Asian history and languages will be grateful to M. Maricq for his painstaking work and for his unselfishness in publishing this superb monument before being able to submit more than a partial interpretation.

Of the Primitive Indian stops it is true to say, as Dr. J. Bloch says of their descendants in Marāthī, that in most of the modern Indo-Aryan languages they have in principle remained unchanged. This is certainly true of initial stops; and although single intervocalic stops have with the exception of the cerebrals disappeared, new intervocalic stops, double or single, have been introduced as the result of assimilation among consonant groups.

The most exciting experience I had during my visit to Morocco in the winter of 1951–52a visit made possible by the generosity of the Eockefeller Trust was the discovery, in the famous Qarawūyūn Library in Fez, of a manuscript containing one half, the second half, of an Arabic translation of the Nicomachean Ethics.The shortness of my stay in that ancient and fascinating Moorish city, and the disabling indisposition that befell me there, made it impossible for me to do more at the time than take note of the existence of this precious codex; but later the authorities of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Marocaines in Rabat, to whom I am infinitely obliged, procured for me a microfilm of the manuscript. It is now my high privilege to publish this preliminary note, in anticipation, I hope, of a full edition later on.

One of the arduous problems of ancient geography is the location of the furthest points in Atropatene (Azarbayjāan) which were reached by Antonius in 36B.C., by the Byzantine allies of Khusrau II in A.D.591 and by the Emperor Heraclius in A.D. 624–7.

The study of fortification in the Indian subcontinent is a discipline not only of intrinsic merit but also of considerable extrinsic value, for the material it may be expected to yield is of relevance to the archæologist, antiquarian, and historian, taking these terms in the broadest sense; indeed, it is these, in somewhat narrower terms perhaps, who have helped to amass the not inconsiderable body of material which is at present available on the fortified sites in the subcontinent, most of which have long been known to archæologists and art-historians. The old series of Archæological Survey of India Reports (1862–84), largely reports of tours by Cunningham and his associates, contain much material on the major fortified sites of the subcontinent, although some of this is merely incidental to the main purposes of the reports; the New Imperial Series of the Archæological Survey, including the regional surveys, presents more precise and detailed description of individual sites, and this is supplemented by the Archæological Survey of India Annual Reports, from 1902 onwards, and the reports of various states with autonomous departments of archæology, most notably the Nizām's Dominions whose sometime Director, Dr. Ghulam Yazdani, has in addition to considerable work on the Deccan sites published in those reports produced two valuable monographs. These works have supplemented the evidence of the sites themselves with the available historical material, documentary and epigraphic, and further epigraphic material is available in the volumes of Epigraphia indica and Epigraphia indo-moslemica, as well as in some of the Memoirs of the A.S.I. Less reliable technically, but always useful and often suggestive, is the information available in the gazetteers of the various provincial governments and states. The journals of learned societies with an Indian interest add more to this material, as do the catalogues and journals of Indian museums.

Among the many controversies between the Sautrāntika and the Vaibhāsika recorded in the Abhidharma-koś-bhāsya of Vasubandhu, 1 a large number are devoted to discussions of the reality of a Vaibhāsika category called cittaviprayukta-samslāras (tr. ‘pure forces’ by Stcherbatsky).2 The Vaibhāsikas enumerate thirteen such samskāras 3 and declare them to be distinct from the traditional three categories of dhannas, viz. rūpa (matter), citta (mind), and caitasikas (mental concomitants). Whereas the first ten of these samskāras have a bearing on the Buddhist theories of causation, unconscious

On savait depuis longtemps que Hamdullāh al Mustaufī al-Kazwīnī, dans la partie d'histoire naturelle de son Nuzhatu-’l-ḳulūb de 1339, avait donné les noms de beaucoup d'animaux, et parfois de minéraux et de plantes, en turc et en mongol, mais le texte n'était accessible qu'en manuscrit ou dans une médiocre édition lithographique de Bombay parue en 1893-4.

IN my book Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande (1937) there emerged from the treatment of these three topics a picture of some features of the Zande mind, revealing itself often as a suspicious, distrustful, hostile mind. Another facet of this mentality is revealed in the Zande concept of sanza (pi. asanza).

Malay is one of the best-studied of all Austronesian languages, both synchronically and diachronically. We would not therefore expect a study of Malay historical phonology to uncover much that is new. In this paper, however, I will suggest that a basic change has been overlooked in past work on the language.

Bi-polarity is the use of the same term to denote both speaker and addressee. It is possible to distinguish broadly three types of bi-polar term in Kuwaiti Arabic (KA). The first type is characterized in form by the use of the monolexic kin-terms: /yuba/ ‘father’, /yumma/ ‘mother’, /yaddi/ ‘grandfather’, /yadda/ ‘grandmother’. The second type consists of the vocative particle /ya/ + the KA kin-term for brother /?ax/ + 2nd person pronominal suffix. The third type of KA bi-polar term consists of the joining word /wa/ ‘and’ + the personal pronoun /ana/ ‘I’ + one of the monolexic kin-terms + 2nd person pronominal suffix. In this paper a comparison is made between these three types of bi-polarity exploring the relationship between their respective forms and functions.

Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Stories) is India's leading comic book series, featuring hundreds of mythological titles about the Hindu gods. Founder Anant Pai initially eliminated all miracles, believing them to be unscientific interpolations. But while producing Tales of Durga (no. 176, 1978), he declared that the comic must be an “authentic” recreation of the Devī Māhātmya scripture, and that all miracles in the classical Sanskrit text must be faithfully rendered in the comic. This article examines the discourse of authenticity that surrounds the production of Tales of Durga in particular and this comic book series more generally. Through a careful reading of the Devī Māhātmya, content analysis of Tales of Durga, a consideration of the unique characteristics of the comic book medium, and interviews with comic book producers, this study provides insight into modern interpretations of the Devī Māhātmya and evolving Hindu attitudes towards the martial goddess Durga.

The present paper discusses the synchronic status and the origin of the semi-vowels /j/ and /w/ in Old Tibetan on the basis of modern Tibetan languages and other Sino-Tibetan languages, in particular Rgyalrong and Lolo-Burmese.

Immediately after his successful conquest of Muslim Sicily (1060–92), Roger de Hauteville set about dividing the spoils amongst the small band of Norman, French and Italian knights who were his closest followers. This distribution of the land of Sicily and its inhabitants was in part based upon the fiscal documents of the Muslim administration, which were salvaged and adapted to post-conquest circumstances by a small cadre of Greek bureaucrats imported from Calabria. The documents were of two types: lists of tax-payers, known in Arabic as jarā 'id (sg. jarīda; Greek plateia; Latin plated); and descriptions of estate boundaries, known as hudud (sg. hadd; Greek periorismos; Latin divisa). These were the foundations of the Arabic administration of Norman Sicily.

R. C. Abraham's The principles of Tiv, though a teaching grammar which designedly avoids technical terms, contains the most careful and systematic treatment of the Tiv verbal system that has been published, and this and his other books are the only works on Tiv giving tonal details. But his classification of verbs, though based appropriately on their structure and tonal behaviour, is not entirely consistent, nor the most convenient basis for a clear and concise description of the whole verbal system. The present study is based on an analysis of the material provided in Abraham's books—particularly his excellent dictionary—checked and supplemented by several years' practical experience of the language in the field, and more recent detailed research with various informants in London.

IN an article published several years ago we have collected evidence corroborating al-Maqrīzī's statement (mistrusted by Quatremère in Histoire des Mongols) that siyāsa, the legal code of the Mamlūks, was founded upon the Great Yāsa of Chingiz-Khān. The Great Yāsa was not merely a code of criminal and civil law but a system of rules governing the entire political, social, military, and economic life of the community which adopted it. The expansion of this system outside the Mongol nation was due to the belief that it was responsible for the extraordinary military success of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, and that it might be regarded as a talisman ensuring victories on the battle-field. The Yāsa rules concerning communal organization were even more important from this point of view than the laws treating of the behaviour of individuals. It is natural, therefore, to suppose that not only the Mamlūk criminal, civil, and commercial law but also the general organization of the Mamlūk state was based upon the Yāsa. The present article, inspired by the attempts made in modern times to collect and systematize the fragmentary evidence concerning the contents of the Yāsa, is intended to show that this organization is indeed comprehensible only in the light of such evidence. Some preliminary remarks are necessary.

The purpose of this article is to re-examine some of the ways in which tone has been stated in certain of the spoken Tibetan dialects, and to apply to the Nominal Phrase in one of them, Lhasa Tibetan (LT), the suggestion that such statements can be more profitably associated not with the syllable, as hitherto, but with the word.

Navarātri (Tam. Navarāttiri) is one of the most popular and important annual festivals in the south Indian city of Madurai. The same is true elsewhere in the state and, in somewhat different forms, the festival is also popular in many other regions of India, notably Bengal (where it is known as Durgā Pūjā) and Karnataka (where it is called Dasarā). Navarātri means ‘nine nights’ and throughout India the festival is celebrated on the first nine lunar days (tithi) of the bright fortnight (i.e. the fortnight ending on full moon) of the lunar month of āśvina. In the Tamil calendar, however, the year is divided into twelve solar months and Navarātri is said to occupy the nine lunar days beginning with the day after new moon in the solar month of puraṭṭāci (September-October). Very occasionally, the Tamil formula may supply the wrong date. In many years, the festival only lasts eight weekdays, as two lunar days may fall within one weekday. (In some parts of India, a Navarātri festival is celebrated in the spring, but that is not discussed here.)

The two principal obstacles to the study of the older forms of Marathi language and literature are the shortage of definitive texts of early works and the dearth of critical bibliographies from which one might discover what texts are available and in what form they exist. Date's Marāṭhī-grantha-sūc¯ is of course invaluable for anything published before 1937, but even this work is not exhaustive and the idiosyncrasies of its arrangement according to subject-matter make it sometimes difficult to discover how many of the works of any particular early writer exist in printed form. For an unpublished work, unless one is fortunate enough to find it in the British Museum or India Office Library catalogues of Marathi MSS, one can only consult the index of a general history of Marathi literature such as V. L. Bhave's Mahārāṣṭstra-sārasvata. There one may well find numerous references to and quotations from the work in question, but only exceptionally will there be any indication of the source of these quotations. One is left to conjecture whether they are from a MS belonging to the author or from some early printed pothī that has escaped the attention of Date. On occasions the same quotation is repeated in a different part of the book with substantial variations in its text, and when a work is described but not quoted one can never be sure whether it is in fact extant or whether description and perhaps even short quotations are not taken from some intermediate secondary source or commentary.

At the beginning of the Nirukta Yāska mentions the four parts of speech (noun, verb, upasarga, and nipāta), and gives definitions of the first two: verbs are chiefly concerned with being-and-becoming (bhävapradhānam ākhyātam), while nouns are chiefly concerned with existants (sattvapradhānāni nāmāni). After a brief discussion, with examples, he proceeds to give an argument against the possibility of classifying the parts of speech. This somewhat cryptic passage, which has been the subject of a considerable amount of discussion, is as follows:—

indriyanitya vacanam audumbarāyaŋa. tatra catuşvam nopapadyate, 'yugapad-utpannānā vā śabdānām itaretaropadeśa śāstrakrto yogaś ca. vyāptimattvāt tu śabdasyānīyastvāc ca śabdena sajnā-karaŋa vyavāhārārtha loke. teşä manuşyavad devatā-bhidhānam. puruşavidyānityatvāt karmasampattir mantro vede.