In this article I offer two versions of the Kurdistani folk-tale ‘Khajo and Syabando’ in Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic, one of the rarest and most highly endangered modern Aramaic languages, spoken in Israel by no more than twenty elderly Jews from the regions of Barzan and ʕAqra in Iraqi Kurdistan. Three dialects of this language were discovered during the years 1996–2000: Barzan, Shahe and B[ecy ]jil. The latter dialect is already extinct. The narratives that served for the texts were furnished by two speakers of the Barzan dialect. The texts are accompanied by observations related to etymology, comparative dialectology, vocabulary and various aspects of grammar.

The ‘appendix’ to a mid- to late seventh-century East Syriac history includes a detailed account of the conquest of Khu¯zista¯n by Muslim armies between c. 635 and 642. This article translates this section of the ‘appendix’ (along with another dealing with the conquest of Egypt), subjects it to detailed analysis and criticism, and compares it with Arabic accounts of the conquest of Khu¯zista¯n that survive in the much later historical and legal traditions. The results of this exercise—using an early and local source to control the Islamic tradition—is in some measure mixed, but some striking agreement suggests that the transmission of conquest history in early Islam was not as discontinuous as has been previously argued.

This article is a description and analysis of the twelve-day renovation ritual or kumbha¯bhiseka (‘water-pot bathing ritual’) celebrated in the Mi¯na¯ksi¯ Temple in the south Indian city of Madurai in 1995. After briefly discussing the historical background, the article describes the priests' division of labour at the kumbha¯bhiseka, the preliminary rituals—including the transfer of the deities' power from their images into water-pots—and the most crucial rituals: the series of ya¯gapu¯ja¯ (‘sacrifice-worship’) rituals, which mainly consisted of fire-sacrifices to enhance the power in the water-pots, and the culmination of the entire event, when the pots were emptied over the Temple's towers and images, so that the power flowed back in. The article concludes that despite its extreme elaborateness, the kumbha¯bhiseka's symbolic logic and purpose, especially as displayed in the spectacular destruction of the fire-sacrifices and then the final water-pouring, are unusually transparent compared to many other temple rituals.

This article attempts to shed new light on the significance of the Zhouyi (Changes of Zhou or Book of Changes) in Zhong Hong's intellectual biography, and sets forth insights into the way in which intellectual influences of philosophical strata are interwoven in the Shipin (Kriterion Poietikon), one of the major contributions to Chinese literary criticism during the Nanbeichao period. Departing from comments made by Zhong Hong's biographers about his expertise on the Zhouyi, the intricate textual fabric of his writings is explored in the light of the intellectual discourse of his day. The Shipin is read as a complex blend of scholarly traditions and original insights, a number of its underlying structural principles are interpreted as allusions closely linked to conceptual kernels which originate from the Zhouyi and its exegetical literature.

Though early Buddhist texts are concerned with giving alms and all aspects of the merit to be gained by so doing, the sharp, perhaps witty, categorization of donors that we find in Mishna¯h, ’Avôt 5:13 (one of the six groups of four) has no other counterpart in Pali sources despite the fact that numbered categories are very common in Buddhist texts. The parallel between the Mishna¯h and its Buddhist counterparts is explicable. The two civilizations were at one on the point: Jewish merchants were prepared to expound significant Jewish learning; the first Christian missionaries were Jewish; the items from which Mishna¯h 5 was concocted, especially anonymous ones (as here), could have existed well before the third century and a contact about 200 CE would not offend any known criteria.