The ‘problem of myth’ for Western philosophers is a problem of interpreting the meaning of myths and explaining the phenomenon of myth making. The ‘problem of myth’ for the sinologist is one of finding any myths to interpret and explaining why there are so few—for myth-making is generally assumed to be a universal faculty of mankind. One explanation for the paucity of myth in the traditional sense of stories of the supernatural in ancient Chinese texts is the nature of Chinese religion. In China, gods, as well as ancestors and ghosts, were believed to be dead men, spirits who had lived in this world at a certain place and time and continued to need sustenance from the living and to exert influence over them. They related primarily to those who gave them ritual offerings and little thought was given to any possible interaction between them

The dialects spoken in the Najd of Saudi Arabia have striking features which not only are unknown or unreported in other dialects but also retain some characteristics of the 'Arabiyya and of ancient dialects of the peninsula reported by the Arab grammarians. On both these counts, they are of paramount importance for synchronic, comparative and historical dialectology. Yet little is known of them and published materials remain scanty. It is the purpose of this article to describe in some detail the morphology of the verb, i.e., the stem, the subject markers and the object pronouns, and in the process, present phonological features and processes, in a dialect spoken in the North of the Najd, specifically that of Hāyil. This is an important town on the edge of the Jabal Shammar mountains just south of the Nafud, and some 350 miles to the north-west of Riyādh. Although the dialect manifests features which are typically Najdi, in the sense that investigation shows them to exist in other dialects of the Najd, it also possesses peculiarities all its own.

It seems an odd coincidence that within the last three years there should have appeared four different studies devoted to the work of Ibn Khaldūn, considering that in the half-century following the issue of de Slane's translation of the Muqaddima, apart from von Kremer's study and a few short articles drawing the attention of a wider circle of students in various countries to its significance, it was not until 1917 that the first monograph on the subject was published by Dr. Ṭāhā Ḥusain. This work, like most of the earlier articles, dealt primarily with the sociological aspects of Ibn Khaldūn's historical theory, and the same interest predominates in all but one of the three or four articles published since 1917. Of the latest studies it may be said that, though still giving prominence to the social aspect,they cover as a whole a rather wider ground. Dr. Gaston Bouthoul, indeed, limits himself in his title to Ibn Khaldun's “Social Philosophy”, but the contents of his essay overleap these bounds, especially the first thirty pages, devoted to a very suggestive analysis of the personality and intellectual outlook of the historian. Professor Schmidt's tractate is in the nature of a survey of the field ; he assembles and examines the views of earlier writers on different aspects of Ibn Khaldun's work, but does not put forward any synthesis of his own. Lastly, the two recent German works of Drs. Kamil Ayad and Erwin Rosenthal mark a return towards the more strictly

3.0. The nominal system

The description of the nominal system will be divided into three sections, the first, two dealing with nouns and pronouns, and the last with categories of items which are dependent upon nouns.

The first thing which strikes the student of the Arabic literature of this period is the remarkable number of works attributed to Rifā،ah, but, in reality, there is nothing new or startling about the quantity, for the eighteenth century provides us with the names of many Egyptian scholars who produced long lists of works on all the subjects in which the learned were interested and for which there was a constant demand in scholastic circles. Rifā،ah had a gift for writing which was encouraged by the exceptional circumstances in which he found himself once he had become absorbed into the military system created by Muḥammad ،Alī. What is so pleasing about Rifā،ah is the variety of his literary interests, and he must be credited with having been the principal actor in laying the foundations of the “new” literature. His verses, too, were admired by his contemporaries; as a student in the mosque of al-Azhar, he wrote an urjūzdh on tauḥīd which attracted the attention of one of his teachers, Shaikh al-Faḍḍālī, but it was never published.

MY purpose is to draw attention to the rather puzzling problem laid before the student of early Ottoman history by the apparently complete incompatibility of the devshirme with the shari'a. The periodical forced levy of children from the Sultan—s Christian subjects for the recruiting of his standing army, and the forced conversion of those children to Islam must, indeed, appear—as it always did—as a flagrant disregard of the Holy Law which accords to the Christian subjects the status of dhimmi, implying personal liberty and the right to keep, and exercise freely, their religion. Only recently, making himself the voice of Muslim conscience, Professor Massignon has branded the devshirme as ‘un manquement à la Dhimmat ar-rasul’2

The flourishing of Ṣūfism in al-Andalus during the first half of the sixth/twelfth century with mystics like Ibn al-‘Arīf, Ibn Barrajān (who both died in 536/1141) and Ibn Qasī(d. 546/1151) has been interpreted in different ways. For M. Asín Palacios it reflects the influence of the mystical tradition initiated by Ibn Masarra in the second half of the third/ninth century, although he himself does not fail to mention the impossibility of providing evidence for such influence. For other scholars, it was mainly due to the influence of al-Ghazālī's works and thought. D. Urvoy, for his part, has shown how in the ‘image’ of Andalusian Islam during the fifth/eleventh-seventh/thirteenth centuries presented by scholars like Ibn Bashkuwāl and Ibn al-Abbār, Ṣūfism appears to be almost non existent. The question of what religious, intellectual and sociopolitical background allowed figures like Ibn al-‘Arīf, Ibn Barrajān and Ibn QasīT to appear, is still to be answered.

The rise of political consciousness in the Arab Provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century has long been referred to as an era of rebirth or resurrection (nahḍa), and from its earliest stages this period saw a dual process of aspirations to political emancipation and creative waves of cultural regeneration. Thus George Antonius was moved to attribute the beginnings of the Arab national movement to the foundation of a modest literary society in Beirut in 1847; the two figures who dominated the intellectual life of Syria in the mid nineteenth century—Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī and Buṭrus al-Bustānī—were ded icated to the resurrection of the lost world of classical Arabic literature, to the virtual re-creation of Arabic as one of the languages of the modern world, and to preaching the virtues of education based on inter-confessional tolerance and patriotic ideals. The most distinguished area of the early history of modern Arabic literature is neo-classical poetry, whose revival of the achievements of the golden age of the ‘Abbāsids provided the foundation on which the first tentative steps towards the renewal of the great tradition were to be based. Indeed the technical excellence of the neo-classical mode was such that it dominated poetry in Egypt at least until the late 1920s, and for even longer in Iraq and the rest of the Levant.

During its first half-century of existence, from the time of the revolution of 132/749 to the death of Hārūn al-Rashīd in 193/809, the 'Abbāsid caliphate embraced a huge area. From Ifrīqiya to the banks of the Indus and the deserts of Central Asia, governors were appointed to rule provinces, taxes were collected and armies sent to punish any who dared to rebel against the authority of the Commander of the Faithful. It is a very impressive achievement. If we seek an explanation of how this was possible from the great chroniclers of Islam, al-Ṭabarī, Ibn al-Athīr or al-Ya'qūbī, we are left with the impression that it was all very simple; the provinces were ruled by governors sent by the caliph and their authority was absolute until they were dismissed by their master. If any of the local people were so misguided as to attempt a rebellion, then units of the great Khurāsānī army, which had brought the dynasty to power, could be drafted in to chastise them. The system was, in short, an absolute military dictatorship.

The importance of the Soma-plant in Vedic religion has never been underestimated. Among the rituals of the Yajurvedic texts, the soma-sacrifices are among the most elaborate and important, and are described in minute detail in the Brāhmaṇas and Śrauta-sūtras. These later texts nevertheless continue a direct tradition from the Ṛgveda, which can be seen to reflect an earlier stage in the development of the ritual, doubtless of a less rigidly formalized and probably less elaborate nature. Even so, the Ṛgveda is, so to speak, permeated by Soma. Understandably, therefore, from the early days of Vedic studies in the West, many scholars have speculated on the botanical identity of the plant in question. Numerous candidates have been nominated, the most frequently favoured being species of the genera Ephedra, Sarcostemma, Periploca, and latterly Cannabis, and even Rheum. Not a single one of these conjectures has gained general assent, and the opinion is widely held that the problem is insoluble.

This paper discusses certain aspects of an esoteric, secretly organized, religion in China called Hsien-t‘ien Ta-tao (or Hsien-t‘ien Tao) ‘The Great Way of Former Heaven’ (or ‘The Way of Former Heaven’). It is based mainly on material discovered in Singapore during 1954–5.

The name Hsien-t‘ien Tao has been recorded elsewhere as that of a Chinese ‘sect’. Evidence suggested that it might have links with several other groupings but the exact nature of connexion was obscure.

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

The word Gāndhārī has been chosen to head this study as a term sufficiently wide in its scope to embrace the forms of the one Middle Indian dialect of the north-west of India, centred in the old Gāndhāra region, around modern Peshawar, and which we meet in most varied sources. Under this name I propose to include those inscriptions of Aśoka which are recorded at Shahbazgaṛhi and Mansehra in the Kharoṣṭhī script, the vehicle for the remains of much of this dialect: To be included also are the following sources: the Buddhist literary text, the Dharmapada found in Khotan, written likewise in Kharoṣṭhī, of which a new reading of the text available in facsimile is given in BSOAS 11. 488–512; the Kharoṣṭhī documents on wood, leather, and silk from Caḍ'ota (the Niya site) on the border of the ancient kingdom of Khotan, which represented the official language of the capital Krorayina, K 572, 512 lou-lan <ləu-lan (lou in a series with alternation of k and l) of the Shan-shan kingdom, and of one document, no. 661, dated in the reign of the Khotana maharaya rayatiraya hinajha dheva ṿijida-siṃha. With this more copious material must be grouped the scattered traces of the same Middle Indian dialect in Khotanese, Tibetan, Agnean, Kuchean, the earlier Chinese Buddhist transliterations, as, in particular, in the Dīrghāgama of the Dharmaguptaka ṡect and the remains in Sogdian, Uigur Turkish, and in Mongol (in living use), and also in Manchu texts. The modern Dardic languages Ṣiṇā, Khowar, Phalūᵛa and others represent the same type of Middle Indian. Much material in Chinese texts, for most of us hidden and inaccessible, remains to be gathered and sifted. The preliminary studies of P. Pelliot in Les noms propres dans les traductions chinoises du Milindapañha (JA 1914. 2. 379–419), of Fr. Weller in his paper Über den Aufbau des Pāṭikasuttanta (Asia Major 5. 1928), and of E. Waldschmidt in his Bruchstücke buddhistischer Sūtras aus dem zentralasiatischen Sanskritkanon I, 1932, have hardly realized the importance of this North-Western Prakrit.

The history of the industrial and commercial district between al-Raqqa and al-Rāfiqa is reconstructed on the basis of literary sources, numismatic finds and aerial views from the early twentieth century. It probably came into being during the 160s/780s when the ‘old market of the caliph Hishām’ was transferred from within al-Raqqa to the free land between the two cities. The decision of Hārūn al-Rashīd to reside in al-Raqqa created a new demand, and consequently glass furnaces and pottery kilns were set up for mass production. A road running from the east gate of al-Rāfiqa connected this area. After 198/213 the governor of the west, Tārhir ibn al-Husain, erected a wall north of the area in order to protect it from Bedouin raids. During the third/ninth century at the latest the area developed into a third urban entity. Al-Muqaddasī mentions an al-Raqqa al-Muhtariqa. The identification with the commercial and industrial area is proposed. The decline of al-Raqqa al-Muhtariqa began in the 270s/880s and 280s/890s. The devastating rule of the Hamdânids probably marks its end.

In 1962 I published some evidence based on Han and early post-Han transcriptions to show that Chinese still had a sibilant final in certain departing tone rhymes at that period. I can now add some still later examples which bring the date down to the beginning of the sixth century, at least in the south. As will be shown below, the transcription evidence is also supported by contemporaneous rhyming practice, which still allowed contacts between Middle Chinese -j' < -s and -t.

The term ‘Object Marker’ is used to refer to analytic particles or prepositions which signal the direct object status of a nominal. These are attested in a variety of forms in Semitic languages. For instance: 'eṯ, which is used in Hebrew and in the language of the Moabite stone, 'yt, which is attested in Phoenician and also in early Aramaic (e.g. Zakir inscription 5; Sefire I B/32, III/11, III/13; Aššur Ostracon 6). wt, which is found with a 3rd person pronominal suffix in the Old Aramaic Hadad inscription 28. yt, frequently employed in the Aramaic Targums (generally in slavish imitation of Hebrew 'eṯ) and also in other Western Aramaic dialects, e.g. Nabataean, Palmyrene, and Galilean Aramaic; in Christian Palestinian Aramaic it occurs regularly before pronominal suffixes but not before full nouns. It is only sporadically found in the Eastern Aramaic dialects, e.g. in early Syriac (about 12 times in the Peshitta, once in the ‘Hymn of the Soul’) and in Biblical Aramaic (once— Dn 3/12). l-, used in many dialects of Aramaic as an Object Marker, also occasionally in the Hebrew of the Priestly Source (e.g. Num. 32: 15) and quite frequently in Late Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew. Akkadian ana, sometimes employed as an Object Marker in the later periods of the language, viz. Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Late Babylonian, also sporadically in other periods, e.g. Middle Assyrian. In the South Semitic area may be listed Arabic 'iyyā and Gə'əz kiyya, both of which are used only with pronominal suffixes; Gə'əz lā-; the suffix particle -n in Amharic and Gafat, and the prefix particles n- in Tigrinya and nä- or yä- in Soddo.

It is well known that during the course of their histories a number of Indo-European languages, all of them members of the Indo-Iranian branch of the family, developed an ergative construction. Thus, in certain tenses of the verb, their grammars came to treat in forlly identical manner the subject of an intransitive verb and the logical object of a transitive verb, the agent (or logical subject) of this latter being given a different morphological marker. Now although ergativity has been studied in a wide variety of languages as a synchronic phenomenon, the opportunities for examining it from a diachronic point of view are in the great majority of cases severely limited by lack of historical documentation. The Indo-Iranian languages, however, form a notable exception. These, thanks to the availability of texts from closely related languages covering a time-span of some three millennia, provide us with a chance to observe both the development of the construction and its subsequent decline. The present paper will do no more than attempt to trace a part of this process, namely the way in which the ergative construction has disappeared from a certain area of western Iranian. It bases its arguments upon the assumption that the geographical continuum of the Kurdish dialects, whose grammars exhibit the whole range of possibilities from fully ergative systems in the north to fully accusative systems in the south, reflects the successive stages of a diachronic process. This being granted, it should be possible by ordering the synchronic patterns of representative dialects from the northern, the central and the southern regions, to arrive at a picture of the historical sequence of events which has led to the loss of ergativity in the southern dialects and to isolate the mechanisms involved in their resultant restructuring. The wider problems of precisely how the construction arose historically and of why within the Indo-European family it appears to be confined to Indo-Iranian will not be dealt with here.

If our present knowledge of the history of the Muslim Maghrib is in general unsatisfactory, few periods remain as obscure as the fifteenth century.

The extant sources are very scarce. Contemporary Maghribī historical writings are practically non-existent and, with few exceptions, this is still an epoch for which Christian chronicles are not yet really relevant. Only fragmentary and partial information can be extracted from the contemporary Spanish and Portuguese documents. Therefore, we have to rely for our knowledge on the so-called manāqib literature or hagiographic dictionaries which proliferated in Morocco during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These volumes—many of which were lithographed in Fās during the nineteenth century—cannot be considered a first-rate source. They are posterior to the period dealt with and appear as versions of a traditional history composed over the years by agglomeration, repetition, and revision from a series of original stories which may be doubtful, even though they are hallowed by time and usage, and fortified by the weight of respectability. Committed to writing, they have acquired the seal of authority and have seldom been challenged.

Shī'ī scholars from Jabal 'Āmil, the hill-country which lies inland from Ṣaydā and Ṣūr in southern Lebanon, claim that theirs is the oldest of all Shī'ī communities. They attribute its foundation to Abū Dharr, a Companion of the Prophet and one of the first supporters of the claims of 'Alī to be his successor. He is said to have gone from Madīna to Damascus, and to have been exiled from there to the country districts of Bilād al-Shām, or Syria in the broader geographical sense. There is a mosque associated with his name in the village of Mays al-Jabal.

The Leningrad branch of the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. possesses a collection of nearly 150 Sogdian fragments recovered from various sites in Central Asia between 1893 and 1915. During the first three decades of this century a few texts were published by F. Rosenberg and C. Salemann. Thereafter the collection was for a long time ignored, while Russian Sogdianists turned their attention to the important archive of Sogdian documents discovered in 1933 at Mt. Mugh in Tajikistan. Everyone concerned with the languages and culture of medieval Central Asia will be deeply grateful to A. N. Ragoza, whose efforts have finally resulted in the complete publication of these interesting fragments. Her edition, reviewed here, includes texts, translations, commentary, glossary, and 69 pages of facsimiles.