The Persian land reform, both in its successes and failures, has lessons for other developing countries, not least Ethiopia. There are many similarities between the two countries. But there are also differences. Both are monarchies, and in both the head of state plays a key role in the government of the country. The Ethiopians and the Persians are both an ancient and proud people. Ethiopia and Iran are both enormous countries with a low population density. Both are characterized by immense variety, climatically, physically, in the different peoples which inhabit the country, and in their social structure. Both have frontier provinces with a population the same on both sides of the border. In both control by the central government of the outlying areas is fairly recent. Their land tenure systems have some resemblances, but that of Ethiopia is much more complex. Farming in both until recent times was mainly subsistence farming. Both have, on the whole, a robust and hard-working peasantry. Both have a large semi-nomadic population as well as a settled population. In both the vast majority of the population derive their livelihood from the land. Both have problems of soil erosion. Drought is common to both. But Ethiopia is much more favourably situated than Iran in these two respects: it has a much higher rainfall over most of the country and, on the whole, better soil conditions. But here perhaps the similarities end.

There is no need to explain what I mean by “Biblical Hebrew” (BH): I refer, of course, to the language of the major part of the Old Testament (OT) which is written in a Canaanite tongue clearly distinguished from the few chapters in Daniel and Ezra which are composed, or at any rate extant, in Aramaic. While we have no knowledge of the precise nature of the language spoken by the Hebrew immigrants into Canaan, it is likely that from a linguistic point of view the OT owes more to the vanquished Canaanites than to the conquering Hebrews. The latter are called 'iḇrīm already in the Patriarchal narratives (Gen. xiv, 13, xl, 15, etc.), but their language ('iḇrīṯ) is never as such mentioned in the OT. This may, of course, be owing to one of those purely fortuitous circumstances in the transmission of the ancient Hebrew vocabulary with which this paper is in part concerned. Whether yәhūḏīṯ ‘Jewish’ (2 Kings xviii, 26, Isa. xxxvi, 11, etc.), śәṗaṯ kәna'an ‘the language of Canaaan’ (Isa. xix, 18), and 'iḇrīṯ ‘Hebrew’ (first attested in the prologue to Ben Sira) are wholly identical is—as I have endeavoured to show elsewhere—not fully established.

Hebrew grammarians use the terms tō'ar, tō'ar haššem, and šēm hattō'ar to translate the Arabic

The following is an account of the spoken Arabic of Mecca. The present work does not attempt a comprehensive description but is confined to the phonology of the syllable and the morphology of the verb and affixes; such a study is perhaps the most economical way of showing the character of the dialect and its relation to other dialects. My thanks are due to Mr. M. H. Bakalla, a post-graduate student of this school and a native of Mecca, for his constant help in the preparation of this article.

In the first part of this study ‘framing’ bāj have been considered in connexion with religious rituals celebrated in the fire-temples, and with acts for achieving or maintaining ritual purity, mostly by pāw-mahal priests. Here it is proposed to consider such bāj as are needed and used in daily life.

In two previous articles, pp. 60–218 of Johannes Benzing's edition of Das chwaresmische Sprachmaterial einer Handschrift der ‘Muqaddimat al-adab’ von Zamaxśarī have been subjected to a close scrutiny. Benzing's work, a combined cornucopia and Pandora's box, holds the seeds of a number of tares which it is my endeavour to remove, before they nourish, from among the good seed of the certain or possible items of Khwarezmian glossary to be reaped from the Muq. The ultimate publication of a full glossary will provide the opportunity to grade the whole harvest, but meanwhile it seems useful to provide a commentary on the existing publication.

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.

That the Khotanese version of Ravigupta's Siddhasāra was made from the Tibetan translation extant in the Tanjur has been known since H. W. Bailey's convincing demonstration in BSOAS, X, 3, 1940, 599–605. But it is clear that the situation is more complicated than would at first appear. There are very numerous instances where the Khotanese version shows a correct understanding of the original Sanskrit while the Tibetan translation is in error. In fact the translation is at times so good that one wonders why the translator ever let himself be led astray by the Tibetan. There can be little doubt that the translator of the Khotanese knew Sanskrit far better than he knew Tibetan. Nevertheless, the evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the Khotanese rendering was based on a combination of the Sanskrit original with the Tibetan version.

At the beginning of the thirteenth adhyāya of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa occurs a story which narrates how the metre Gāyatrī brought from heaven soma for gods and sages. Having gone to heaven, she frightened the guardians of soma, picked it up in her feet and mouth, and started to return. At this point, one of the guardians of soma, Kṛśānu by name, shot an arrow at her which cut off the nail of her left foot. From that nail arose a porcupine (śalyakaḥ), and the fat (vaśam) that flowed became a barren cow (vaśā). The Brāhmaṇa text (as read by Keith, following Aufrecht) then goes on to say: atha yaḥ śalyo yad anīkam āsīt sa sarpo nirdaṁśy abhavat sahasaḥ svajo yāni parṇāni te manthāvalā yāni snāvāni te gaṇḍūpadā yat tejanaṃ so 'ndhāhiḥ so sā tatheṣur abhavat. Keith (Ṛgveda Brāhmaṇas (HOS, XXV), Cambridge, Mass., 1920) translates the passage as follows: ‘The socket and the point became a serpent, not biting; from its swiftness (came) the viper; the feathers became flying foxes, the sinews earthworms, the shaft the blind snake. Thus became the arrow’.

The Kirgiz original of the Smert' Kukotay-khana i ego pominki (= K), long thought to have survived only in Ch. Valikhanov's celebrated translation, was discovered in Leningrad in 1964 by Valikhanov's distinguished editor-in-chief, Professor Alkey Margulan of the Kazakh Academy of Sciences. He announced his discovery in the August (No. 8) issue of his Academy's ‘Herald’ (Khabarši/Vestnik) of 1965 and printed in adapted Cyrillic transliteration excerpts from the text totalling 885 (out of over 3,000) lines, together with a 13-page introduction in Kazakh dealing chiefly with the biographical background of Valikhanov's recording of the text.