The scarceness of published material renders difficult a true estimate of the development of political ideas in Egypt in the nineteenth century. Nor is it any less difficult to trace the origins of the first political parties.

The Arabi Rebellion of 1881-1882 was preceded by a long period of unrest, which finally crystallized in a self-styled National Party. This faction, led by army officers and civilians, kept its secret character for a few years, coming into the open only at the beginning of the Arabi Rebellion. Its importance in the anti-foreign struggle, however, has drawn attention to its humble but interesting origins. Research has provided us with fairly adequate, if still incomplete, material on this point. But hardly anything has been published, on the other hand, about another secret organization of that time, called ‘Young Egypt’.

The Mahasin al-majalis of Ibn al-'Arif (†536/1141) is a Sufi treatise of minor dimensions and inconsiderable importance, one of a multitude of such summaries that bridge the gap between the classical works of Kalabadhi, Qushairi, and Makki, and the phenomenal productivity of Ibn al-'Arabi. For all that, the essay (for it is little more) is not without interest; it is allusive and elliptical in style, thus affording material for commentators; and the author begins his discourse proper by quoting, though not by name, the Mawdqif of Niffari; as Ibn al-'Arabi afterwards used Ibn al-'Arif quite freely and approvingly, it is always possible that he got to know and take an interest in Niffari through this intermediary.

The document here edited is one of the large collection of papers presented by B. H. Hodgson to the library of the India Office, being vol. 29, no. 8 (34/3), ff. 48–51. At the top of the first page is written, presumably by Hodgson,“Ethics and Ritual of Buddhism”; but the word“Ethics”here refers simply to the fact that the text is followed (ff. 52–53) by the standard lists of the ten kuśalas, the ten pāramitās, the four brahmavihāras, the thirty-seven bodhipāksika-dharmas, and so forth, the first two lists being given also in the body of the text. The main text gives in outline the chief rites of Buddhism, daily, monthly, and annual ceremonies (forming, so to speak, a Buddhist “Church′s Year ”), followed by accounts of the thirteen sacraments.

In Sino-Tibetan (1972) P. K. Benedict has offered two different accounts of the significance, for Tibeto-Burman (TB) and Sino-Tibetan (ST) reconstruction, of the three types of ‘vocalic alternation’ in the Written Tibetan (WT) verb, a/a/o, e/a/o and o/a/o. His original account (c. 1942–3) reads: ‘Tibetan, however, shows a puzzling type of vocalic alternation in its verbs, in which stems in a regularly take o in the imperative and often either o or e in the present… The e of the present stem is possibly to be interpreted as an effect of the prefixed element’- <*a- [ə-]. Similarly, the o of the imperative stem has perhaps been conditioned by an archaic imperative suffixc -o…' (pp. 126–7). His revised version (1972) reads: ‘The Chinese vowels cannot be explained without setting up a 7-vowel system for ST … and Tibetan verb forms reflect this early system as follows:

ST/TB *a = T aa (no alternation, except in the imperative)

ST/TB *â = T ao

ST/TB *ə = T ae

We can now, by way of illustration, reconstruct TB *g-sât (T gsod-pa, Pf.bsad) …; also TB*səm “breath, voice, spirit”: T sem(s)-pa. Pf. semsbsams “think” …' (p. 126, n. 344).

The question primarily at issue is whether da and desu in modern, chiefly conversational, Japanese, together with other forms commonly held to belong to paradigms of da+ and desu+ viewed as inflected items, should be called copulative forms; whether, that is to say, they perform the grammatical function of linking a subject with a predicate. The question also concerns combinations consisting of de followed by one of the forms of aru+, arimasu+, or gozaimasu+. In general, these combinations have when positive the same uses and senses as forms of da+ and desu+ and are when negative the only available negative counterparts of those forms. Some attention will be given to what has been said about the verb nari+ (< ni ari+) and the combination nite ari+ of the now obsolete Classical Literary style, though no attempt will be made to reach conclusions about them.

The horizontal division of Indian societies into hierarchically ranked castes and sub-castes has been the subject of a considerable literature, and recent anthropological studies of individual villages have largely concentrated on analysing the function and interrelation of such caste groups. The internal organization or vertical divisions of endogamous castes have, on the other hand, received little attention, though the work of Louis Dumont in Tamilnad, of Kathleen Gough in Malabar, and of Adrian C. Mayer in Madhya Bharat, which is for the most part still unpublished, promises to throw considerable light on the internal structure of castes in these areas.

In Somaliland God is universally known by the names Allaah and Rabbi, both of Arabic origin, but the full list of His 99 Arabic names is known only to sheikhs and wadaads.1 In addition to the Arabic names, however, there are a considerable number of purely Somali titles for Allaah. The majority of those recorded here will be seen to be praise-names referring to God's attributes and in many cases direct equivalents in Somali of the corresponding titles in Arabic.

The following loan-words are taken from two newspapers, the Kheḍā vartamān of 5th December, 1928, and the Gujarat Times of 1st January, 1929.

The editors are both Hindus and the readers were for the most part Hindu also. The newspapers contain only a few words in English characters, perhaps eight or nine in each number. The proportion of English loan-words to the total may be about 2 per cent, but this is inevitably only a rough estimate.

The words have been transliterated faithfully with two exceptions—

(1) Inherent a of final consonants is omitted.

(2) Inherent a (not final) is omitted, if not pronounced. In such cases it is indicated by a dot. In Gujarati, however, there are certain consonants which do not alter their form when conjunct, such as “ ka ”. For practical purposes, this is of little importance, as conjunct consonants are often not used, when permissible.

In preparing the list some very uncommon words and transitory political expressions like “Sāyaman gobek” have been omitted. There are one or two words included, which are not English, e.g. peseṭā and Mādrīd, which have been included for their interest. Peseṭā has probably been taken for the English version of the Spanish word, as the t is retroflex. It is not clear, however, why the dental d is used for Mādrīd.

The articles in which few, if any, loan-words occur, are the political leading articles, a notice of a meeting of Brahmans, and a serial story about old Rajputana.

Though not invariably susceptible of demonstration, the influence of Classical Arabic upon the popular literature of Arabic-speaking Muslims in North Africa may safely be assumed. ‘Popular’, indeed, the early Islamic verse forms (ši'r mawzūn) and the later stanzaic compositions (klam or ālat al-andalus) have remained, and in these, even when modified by local tradition, the source of inspiration is easily recognized. Less clear is the transfer pattern of classical elements in the strictly vernacular poetry (klam melḥūn) of the same people. It is this category of composition with which the following observations are concerned, and wḥich suggested selection of the term ‘vernacular’ rather than ‘popular’. A further factor contributory to isolation of this topic is the existence of a vernacular literature amongst non-Muslim Arabic speakers in North Africa: the Jewish communities. There, owing both to Judaeo-Arabic orthography and to confessional motives in the selection of theme, the tyranny of Classical Arabic is considerably weakened, to some extent a consequence of social (educational) lines of demarcation. Important, however, are the affinities between the vernacular compositions of both groups, especially in matters relating to rhetorical convention and prosodic structure.

Grassmann, in his Wörterbuch zum Rig-Veda (1872), has two separate entries kīrí subst. (m) and kīrín both adj. and subst. (m). To the former he assigns the meaning ‘singer’ and to the latter ‘praising’ and ‘singer’. He lists three occurrences of the forms of kīrín, two as instr. sg. kīríṇā 5.4.10 (= TS 1.4.46.1) and 5.40.8, and one as nom. pl. kīríṇas 5.52.12. But the form kīríṇā can as well be derived from kīrí and for this form a separate stem kīrín would not be necessary. But this is not true of kīríṇas. For its derivation, a stem kīrín would be necessary. The verse where the form in question occurs runs: chandaḥstúbhaḥ kubhanyáva útsam ā kīríḥo nṛtuḥ. The line refers to the dancing of the Maruts near the útsa The author of the Padapāṭha gives the Saṃhitā word as kīríṇas, and following him scholars have interpreted the form as nom. pl. of kīrín and translated it as ‘bards’ or ‘singers’. But it is also possible to analyse the Saṃhitā text kīríṇo nṛtuḥ as kīríṇā u nṛtuḥ where kīríṇā could be instr. sg. and can come from the stem kīrí. The line would then mean that the Maruts danced, and the singer of the hymn, to whom they had manifested themselves (té me … āsan dṛśí … ‘they (i.e. the Maruts) appeared to me’ 5.52.12) danced with them too. In this interpretation we are going against only the Padapāṭha.

For the meaning of ttāgutta, listed in BSOS., VIII, 138, further evidence has now been found to replace the conjectural meaning there assigned. It is necessary for this purpose to quote, however reluctantly, from still unpublished texts, but it is time to make the correction. It will be seen that not all the quoted passages can yet be translated in full.