This article first briefly examines the textual structure of the Brāhmaṇa Saṃyutta of the Pāli Saṃyutta-nikāya in conjunction with two other versions preserved in Chinese translation in Taishō vol. 2, nos 99 and 100. Then it compares the main teachings contained in the three versions. These three versions of this collection on the subject of the Brāhmaṇas represent three different early Buddhist schools within the Sthavira branch. This comparative study of these three different versions focuses on three major topics: the outcaste, the dharmas that are good for a layperson, and alms. It reveals similarities and significant differences in structure and doctrinal content, thus advancing the historical/critical study of early Buddhist doctrine in this area.

This essay argues that the rise and circulation of large numbers of Sanskrit literary anthologies as well as story traditions about poets in the second millennium together index important changes in the ‘author-function’ within the Sanskrit literary tradition. While modern ‘empirical authorship’ and external referentiality in Sanskrit has long been deemed ‘elusive'by Western scholarship, the new forms of literary production in the second millennium suggest a distinct new interest in authorship among wider literary communities. This new ‘author-function’ indexed a shift in the perceptions of literary production and the literary tradition itself. Focusing on the famous sixteenth-century work known as the Bhojaprabandha as both an anthology as well as a storybook about poets, this essay further argues that the paradigmatic courts of kings like Vikramāditya and Bhoja (but particularly the latter), placed not in historical time but in an archaic temporality, became the mise en scène for the figure of the poet in the second-millennium literary imagination. They were courts where the finest poets of the tradition appeared and where their virtuosity could be savored and reflected upon by generations of readers.

I offer some reflections here on the set of articles gathered in this special issue on divine sovereignty and further develop some thoughts first adumbrated in a piece published in JRAS 25/3 (2015).

The Gurjara Pratīhāras have long been recognised as the leading royal house of northern India during the ninth and tenth centuries. A considerable number of copper plate and stone inscriptions have survived from Pratīhāra times and these have provided the requisite data for a reconstruction of the dynasty's political and social history. Following conventions established in the Gupta period if not before, the copper-plates of the Pratīhāras record grants of villages or land, while stone inscriptions typically recount the building of temples and the provision of gifts to enshrined divinities. A large number of temples from the Pratīhāra age have been preserved; some of these buildings have enjoyed the recent scholarly attention of the team working on the Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture as well as the Temple Survey of the Archaeological Survey of India. In contrast, palatial architecture is virtually unknown. This is neither surprising nor unusual, there being little left of such buildings in any part of India from before the fourteenth century. This is due to the wide use of perishable building materials, notably wood, brick and stucco. In the case of the Pratīhāra rulers there is also the fact that their capital city of Kannauj (anc. Kānyakubja) has been completely destroyed. That the Pratīhāras were responsible for some building at Kannauj is indicated by the inscription, dated Harṣa year 276 (A.D. 882–3), from the shrine of Garībnāth at Pehowa. This inscription records, among many other things, that a temple of Viṣṇu Garuḍāsana was built by the Brāhmaṇa Bhūvaka on the banks of the river Gaṅgā in Bhojapura near Kānyakubja.

When the Tang dynasty took power in 618, it inherited the multicurrency system of earlier dynasties. The zuyongdiao tax system, in effect from the start of the dynasty, required each taxpayer to submit taxes in grain, labour and cloth. At the same time, the government also minted coins, which constituted some 10 per cent of the total money supply. A persistent shortage of copper limited the number of minted coins the government could issue. Accordingly, officials tried to ensure that sufficient coins and textiles circulated so that both forms of money remained in use. They displayed no consistent preference for one form of money over the other but devised policies to encourage the use of whichever form was then in short supply.

This paper is named and given in memory of Mark Zebrowski, friend and respected colleague, who contributed much to life, art history and the culture of India, including his pioneering Gold, silver and bronze from Mughal India. I will focus on the brass vessels inlaid with silver and gold which were produced for one Mamluk sultan, al-Nāṣir Muhammad (1293–4, 1299–1309, 1310–41), whose name and titles are inscribed on more than forty-six objects (see Appendix).

This article begins by surveying the commercial structure of nineteenth-century Yazd, centring on the economic activities of its Zoroastrian inhabitants. Next, we examine the house of Mehrabān, arguing that they were intermediate figures in Persia's transition from a pre-capitalist to an inchoate capitalist mode of production. Throughout the mid- to late nineteenth century, the Mehrabāns were significant socio-economic players and precursors for later generations of prosperous, worldly Iranian Zoroastrians. Ardeshir in particular epitomised the gradual emergence of an Iranian bourgeoisie in the urban centres of Persia, specifically Yazd. Concurrently, the rise of prominent members of the Mehrabān family was intimately related to their education, ‘cultural capital’, socio-economic connections, and business ventures in Bombay as well as their constantly developing political clout in Persia and India.

ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661)—a revered figure in Islamic history as both the first Shiʿi imam and the fourth caliph—serves as a significant image of sacral power in the Persianate world and beyond. ʿAlī's authority underwent a profound reimagining in the early modern era as he emerged as a captivating imperial emblem from the Timurid renaissance to the Safavid revolution, rivalling other prominent figures of political authority such as Chinggis Khan (d. 1227), and becoming a symbol of human perfection for both Sunni and Shiʿi intellectuals alike. ʿAlī transcended his role as a Shiʿi imam to assume the status of a cosmic figure, gradually becoming an ideal symbol for imperial branding. However, there is little scholarly knowledge and appreciation of his changing role in this period. This article examines how al-Ḥāfiẓ Rajab al-Bursī's (d. circa 814/1411) Mashāriq al-anwār, which has remained highly popular throughout the Persianate and Shiʿi world, contributed to the reshaping of ʿAlī's image, portraying him as the quintessential archetype of sacral power and unmatched authoritative feats.

This essay examines the theme of inter-religious translation in the context of early modern India. More specifically, it considers the prominent 18th century Sufi master and scholar Mirzā Maẓhar Jān-i Jānān's (d.1781) translation of Hindu thought and practice as reflected in his Persian letters on this subject. Through a close reading of the content and context of his translation project, I show that while according the Hindu ‘other’ remarkable doctrinal hospitality, Jān-i Jānān's view of translation was firmly tethered to an imperial Muslim political theology committed to upholding the exceptionality of Muslim normative authority. Interrogating his negotiation of hospitality and exceptionality and the notions of time that undergirded that negotiation occupies much of this essay. I also explore ways in which Jān-i Jānān's translation of Hinduism might engage ongoing scholarly conversations regarding the rupture of colonial modernity in the discursive career of religion in South Asia. In the Euro-American study of religion, many scholars have shown the intimacy of modern secular power and the reconfiguration of religion as a universally translatable category. But what conceptual and historiographical gains might one derive by shifting the camera of analysis from the colonial reification of religion to the inter-religious translation efforts of a late 18th century thinker like Jān-i Jānān who wrote at the cusp of colonial modernity? This question hovers over the problem-space of this essay.

The extensive documentary evidence collected and analysed in the previous studies in this issue suggest a preliminary conclusion that can be summarised as follows: from the collapse of the Han dynasty to the glorious days of the Tang dynasty, the peoples living in the Western Regions along the Silk Road used multiple co-existing forms of money – grain, cloth and coins – with one of these three items becoming predominant according to changes in political and/or economic circumstances. However, this multicurrency system did not outlive the political, economic and fiscal upheavals that shook the Tang empire from the mid-eighth century onwards. As far as the materials from Turfan and Dunhuang are concerned, the latest evidence for this monetary system is provided by a manuscript found at Dunhuang (P 3348 V°), already quoted in Arakawa Masaharu's article, which permits us to see how such a complex monetary system worked in real life once the silk shipped by the Tang government arrived in the Western Regions. In particular, a subsidiary account (P 3348 V°2 B) inscribed in this accounting report reveals how a local official called Li Jingyu 李景玉, who was vice-commissioner in the army stationed in that region, received his salary for the first semester of the year 745 ce.

By the end of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), olfactory culture in China had evolved significantly as coveted aromatics continued to be imported and in increasing quantities from Southeast Asia. Although there is no surviving treatise dedicated to aromatics from this period, anecdotes in prose literature describing the uses and curation of scents reveal a process in which imported aromatics were being actively incorporated into existing olfactory culture and accrued new social, aesthetic, and ritual significance. This process is discernible in two major respects. First, a discourse of connoisseurship for aromatics arose in contrast to the conspicuous consumption of imported aromatics that flaunted wealth and status. Secondly, aromatics that were once the privilege of the very few began to be circulated among a wider (admittedly still elite) population, as seen in the case of the dragon brain aromatic in late-Tang and Five Dynasties accounts. By delving into these and related prose narratives and by cross-examining these accounts against other types of records, this article examines how imported aromatic goods shaped the Tang elite's perception of how scent was—and could be—used as part of a socially rooted sensory experience.