Aramaic possesses, besides the ordinary (active) participles, certain additional forms of a similar meaning, mainly appearing in substantival use and commonly called nomina agentis. As far as the so-called derived stems of the verb are concerned, these nomina agentis are formed from the participle of each verbal stem through the addition of the ending-ān. In the basic stem of the verb, the ordinary participle of which has the form qātil (qātel), the nomen agentis appears as qātōl.

Eugen Mittwoch, the distinguished orientalist, died in London in 1942 at the age of 66. His writings, particularly in the field of Ethiopian languages, have retained their value and importance even at a time when much progress has been made in this branch of studies.

One of the several branches of Islamic law in which practice diverged most sharply from theory was the law of commerce. The divergence is especially striking in two respects: regular imposition of taxes regarded by the shariī‘a as illegal, and reliance upon written documents as legal proof of transactions for which juridical theory demanded only oral evidence of witnesses. A third problematical aspect of commercial law was the juridical status of the non-Muslim merchant in Dār al-Islām. Matters pertaining thereto were loosely subsumed by the jurists under the term amān, associated specifically with the law of war, and defined by recourse to as much precedent as could be gleaned from the Qur'ān and from the example of the Prophet and of the earliest Muslim communities. The consequences of this procedure have posed several historical problems upon which it is hoped the present paper will throw some light.

One of the outstanding examples of the degeneration of the Ottoman administration in Palestine in the eighteenth century was the situation in the military field. Army units were stationed permanently in those towns which were important to the Ottoman régime. The locations had been determined in the very early stages of the Ottoman conquest, but the same criteria were still being applied in the eighteenth century, without being re-examined. This does not mean that the system was entirely inflexible: army units were brought to man those new strongholds (Haifa, Jaffa) which the supreme authorities decided to establish in order to strengthen the security network. But it appears, as these examples show, that this was done mainly in the coastal towns. It was there that the Ottoman régime felt itself to be exposed to the greatest danger, since it was, in one way or another, threatened by the uncertain whims of the Christian pirates. It should be noted that from the objective point of view their fears were greatly exaggerated, if not unfounded, in the eighteenth century, since the pirates did not even try to expand their activities beyond the harassment of merchant ships sailing along the coast. But according to the Weltanschauung of the Ottoman rulers this constituted a grave threat to the Muslim state. When the construction of these strongholds was ordered an additional reason for their establishment was given: the need to prevent Bedouin attacks. There was a certain amount of truth in this story but, again, it should be regarded in correct perspective: the Sublime Porte recognized the need to curb the Bedouin raids which constituted an acute problem in the eighteenth century. But if this had been the main reason it would have been necessary to establish new strongholds, or strengthen existing ones, in inland regions and on the border of the desert rather than in Haifa or Jaffa. This was not done since the Bedouin were, after all, Muslims, and according to the concepts of the Ottoman régime, could not seriously threaten the existence of the empire, at least not to the same extent as the Christian infidels. In retrospect we see that the damage which the Bedouin wrought to the Ottoman state in this period was undoubtedly greater than that caused by the Christian pirates; but, as has been stated, this was not recognized at the time.

The word bāj (older wāj) has been an important part of Zoroastrian religious vocabulary from at least Sasanian times; and the act of ‘taking the bāj ‘is so general and significant that in a Jewish-Persian text the Zoroastrians are distinguished thereby from those of other faiths: gabragān abā bāj-stānš ān ‘the Zoroastrians with their taking the bāj ‘.1 Down the centuries the word has acquired additional meanings; but the range of its usages in older times was already so wide that E. W. West, working on the Pahlavi texts, applied for an interpretation of them to Tehmuras D. Anklesaria. This Anklesaria admirably provided, in a letter which he himself subsequently published among the appendixes to the Gujarati translation of the first part of the Dādestdn ī dīnīg, made by him in collaboration with S. D. Bharucha.2 This was the pioneer treatment of the term.

As a preliminary, merely, to the long task of compiling a dictionary of ‘Islamic’ Khwarezmian, it is my purpose here to scotch as many as possible of the ghost-words and misunderstandings which mar the otherwise useful publication Das chwaresmischeSprachmaterial einer Handschrift der ‘Muqaddimat al-adab’ von Zamaxšarī, by J. Benzing. A beginning has been made, dealing with more than 150 such errors in the first 70 pp. of the chapter ‘Verbs’ (Benzing, 60–129 = his ‘Zm’, better Muq., 73–199). I continue here in the same vein, i.e. by dealing only with debatable entries in the ensuing pages (130–218 = Muq., 199–344).

The Siddhasāra of Ravigupta, son of Durgagupta, is known in three main versions, the original Sanskrit, the Tibetan, and the Khotanese. Each is important for certain reasons. The Sanskrit text is important mainly because of its date. Although the extant MSS are late—they have been assigned to A.D. 1374 and 1443 respectively —the original must be earlier than A.D. 1000, after which date we have no Khotanese. It is likely to be considerably earlier, but we have no evidence at present to enable us to fix the date with precision. If the Jinamitra who, with Ādityavarman and Candra, translated the Tibetan version is the same as the Jinamitra who took part in the compilation of the Mahāvyutpatti in the first quarter of the ninth century, the date of the composition of the Sanskrit text must precede A.D. 800. The occasional line is identical with one in Suśruta or in Caraka, but in a land of floating traditions this may not amount to much. In the colophon, preserved imperfectly in one of the two Sanskrit MSS and given in full in Tibetan, Ravigupta acknowledges only two sources by name: Dhanvantari and Ātreya, the two sages who are usually held to have been involved in the transmission of medical knowledge from on high. This too is unhelpful.

Hayashi Kenzō has presented evidence of close links between the notation-signs of the Tun-huang musical MS, Pelliot No. 3808 (henceforth P), and those for biwaand shōin current Tōgaku part-books. In addition to this relationship, however, there are also extensive parallels in technical terms, not hitherto examined. In many instances, these same terms appear in the brief musical text preserved in early Yüan printings of the Shih-lin kuang-chi(henceforth SLKC), reproduced in facsimile in Pian. The Tōgaku part-books evidently reflect Chinese and indeed T'ang idiom.

In a recent article in BSOAS the writer called attention to the existence of a very detailed passage on mahōrasop entertainments in a Thai manuscript of part of the tale of Suthon and Manōrā in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. That passage is incomplete because it occurs at the end of one of the folding books in which the version was written down. The Royal Asiatic Society library possesses only the first book, but the writer has since found that the National Library of Thailand, Bangkok, has a set of six books containing a complete version of the tale and therefore a continuation of the mahōrasop passage found in the Royal Asiatic Society manuscript.

The problem whether or not West Malaysia passed through a distinctive Bronze Age has been the subject of a good deal of discussion since the second World War, and is again raised by the remarkable discoveries in 1964 of four bronze ‘Dông-so'n’ (Heger Type I) drums, two at Kampong Sungai Lang in the Kuala Langat District of Selangor, and two at Batu Burok near Kuala Trengganu on Malaya's east coast. With these and the remains of two other Heger Type I drums found in 1926 at Batu Pasir Garam on the Tembeling River, Pahang, and at Bukit Kuda, north-east of Klang, Selangor, in 1944, West Malaysia can now boast more ‘Dông-so'n’ drums than Sumatra, but not so many as Java where more than a dozen drums or fragments of drums have been found.