For some time Western sinologists have acknowledged the importance of the Buddhist monasteries as a social and economic force in medieval China. However, the historians have been understandably reluctant to embark on extensive reading in Buddhist sources, with their never-ending problems of technical language, while the Buddhologists have for the most part remained preoccupied with philosophical and doctrinal questions. Thus very little has been done to clarify the situation. In recent years a beginning has been made by a number of scholars, but anyone wishing to pursue the matter in a systematic way was forced to depend in the main upon the researches of the Japanese historians of Buddhism, who have built up an extensive secondary literature on the social and economic aspects of Buddhism in the last three decades. Even in Japanese, however, there exists no general survey of the whole problem of the monasteries in the broad context of their external relationships, and these studies have tended to be piecemeal, and over-concerned with points of detail.

The existence of an Arabic MS known as Kitāb al-barakafi 'l-sukūn walharaka wa-hiya 'l-marsuma bi-'ida‘ al-nusūkh man akhadhtu ‘anhu min shuyūkh was known to Delafosse who believed it to be the work of a paternal uncle of Sultan Bello. A. Brass has deduced from internal evidence in the Tazyīn al-waraqāt of ‘Abdullāh ibn Fodio that the work belongs to ‘Abdullāh, and has accepted the title in the form given by Delafosse. Georges Vajda has shown that this title arises from the confusion of two different works, and that the title of ‘Abdullāh's work is 'Idā‘ al-nusūkh man akhadhtu ‘anhu min al-shuyūkh.

In the study of the early history of South East Asia the nature of the shipping which operated between India and the regions to the east has been the subject of much discussion. Sources for this study are rare enough and the fact that one of them, Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, § 60, is either corrupt, as Müller believed, or contains a difficult hapax legomenon, has proved something of a stumbling block. The text of the Periplus rests upon a single MS (Heidelberg: Cod. Palatinus Gr. 398 saec. X ineuntis) of which there is a fourteenth or fifteenth century copy in the British Museum (Add. Mss. 19391)

Twi in this paper means Akuapem, Akyem, and Asante. For these three dialects V(owel) H(armony) can be stated in almost identical terms. It is in fact so stated by Christaller in the grammar1 but only briefly under ‘Euphony’. We give below some additional notes, approaching the problem somewhat differently.

The only publications in this dialect1 of the Galla language are translations of the Gospels of St. Luke2 and St. John3 and the Acts of the Apostles.4 The orthography used in these texts, obviously, has practical aims in view and dispenses with much of the phonetic detail which would be of interest to a linguist. As far as I know, there are no published works which would give a description of this dialect. The grammars of Borello,5 Hodson and Walker,6 Moreno,7 Nordfeldt,8 and Tutschek9 all deal with other dialects of Galla, which differ from Borana in many details.

This paper is a study of the verbal forms of Bilin,1 which is spoken in and around the town of Keren in Eritrea. Bilin is usually regarded as one of the dialects of the Cushitic language of Agau,2 but it differs considerably from the Agau dialects of Ethiopia proper, and, while undoubtedly to be classified as Cushitic, has much phonological, and a little morphological affinity with the neighbouring Semitic languages of Tigre and Tigrinya. Research was undertaken in the field in 1952–3; several informants were employed, but much of the material was provided from the speech of one man, Teclamaryam Tecruray, and all the material presented here was verified as valid for his speech.

Wilhehn Spitta in the body of his Zur Geschichte Abu'l-Hasan al-Aś‘ari's (Leipzig, 1876) published the text (pp. 138–40) and translation (pp. 101–4) of a brief but important tract by al-Ash‘arī on the uncreatedness of faith: Mas'ala fi 'l-īmān. (This treatise is recorded in C. Brockelmann, GAL, I, 195, as Risālat al-īmān; presumably it is the same as the Kitāb al-īmān mentioned in Suppl., I, 346.) Spitta's edition, which is in general excellent, was based on a Cairo manuscript, believed until now to be unique.