This paper deals with the contest of the “vital functions” for superiority in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, in the Aitareya Āraṇyaka and others. The paper concentrates on two particular approaches to deciding the superiority question, namely (i) singly leaving or entering (breath, sight, etc. leave one after another or enter one after another), and (ii) alternating withdrawal (breath leaves and returns, sight leaves and returns). The paper defends two claims. First, it can be shown that the commentators were aware of the generalizable nature of these two approaches. Second, these two approaches are closely related to the so-called Shapley value developed in cooperative game theory.

In ancient Iran there was evidently a strong sense of existence after death, which was reinforced by Zoroaster's reform and his teachings about heaven and hell, so the life on earth came to be lived with the hereafter continually in mind. An orthodox Zoroastrian combines an appreciation of the good creation of Ōhrmazd, and an acceptance of his allotted tasks within it, with a conviction that this world is nevertheless only a halting-place, and that true life comes after death. The moral requirements of his faith make him self-reliant, bearing the responsibility for his own conduct and ultimate fate; yet there is also a striking sense of community, of a bond between all those of the ‘good religion’, united by their common purpose and way of life. This senṣe of community extends to a remarkable degree to the righteous dead, to those souls ‘who have overcome for righteousness’ (yōi ašāi vaonarə). Religious works from the remote past (notably the Farvardīn Yašt) show that the Irani and Parsi Zoroastrians are at one with their ancestors in being aware of the spirits of the departed, in wishing to please them, and in rejoicing at a sense of their continuing care and protection.

This article examines the attitudes of the Quranic mushrikūn to the resurrection and the afterlife, focusing on those who doubted or denied the reality of both. The first part of the article, published in a previous issue of BSOAS, argued that the doubters and deniers had grown up in a monotheist environment familiar with both concepts and that it was from within the monotheist tradition that they rejected them. This second part relates their thought to intellectual currents in Arabia and the Near East in general, arguing that the role of their pagan heritage in their denial is less direct than normally assumed. It is also noted that mutakallims such as Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq and al-Māturīdī anticipated the main conclusions reached in this paper.

This article is based on a study of selected utterances in ‘ Lhasa Tibetan’ (LT) as spoken by Mr. Rigẖdzin dBaṅpo (R.) in a particular style (‘ speaking style ’). The term LT is used for the class-dialect spoken by members of the sku-drag class in Lhasa and elsewhere, and also by other Tibetans who associate with members of this class. R.'s utterances may be considered in terms of three styles, ‘ spelling style ’, ‘ reading style ’, and ‘ speaking style ’, each requiring a separate statement at phonetic, grammatical, and lexical levels alike. The material presented below is drawn from utterances in the ‘ speaking style ’; all utterances appropriate to the reading and quoting of written texts, ‘ reading-style ’ utterances, have been excluded from it.

Ancient and medieval sources from Greece to Korea speak of the morally reprehensible habits of the Persians, who engage in close-kin marriage. Indian Buddhist texts also preserve similar ideas. One interesting passage in a narrative text makes use of this motif in a particularly interesting way, thereby indicating the character who appeals to the trope as ethically beyond the pale. The present paper explores the background of this common depiction of Persian marriage customs for its own intrinsic interest, and as a means to explicate the passage in question.

Thangmi is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in central-eastern Nepal and north-eastern India. The majority of Thangmi speakers live in Nepal and still inhabit their traditional homeland of Dolakhá district. There are ethnic Thangmi in many of the other districts of the kingdom, especially in the neighbouring districts of Sindhupálcok, Sindhulī and Rámecháp. The Thangmi population in India is largely concentrated in Darjeeling and is the product of an emigration earlier this century.

The likely reaction of a Semitist on reading for the first time a Mehri grammar or text, is to assume that, in forms like ɧayd (ḥayd) ‘hand’, ɧawguur (ḥawgûr) ‘slave’, ɧəyuum (ḥeyûm) ‘sun’, the ɧ(a)– element represents a definite article. A later reaction might be that the ɧ(a)– element, since few forms so affixed occur without this prefix, is perhaps a fossilized definite article.

Through work on the large collection of Mandaic lead rolls in the British Museum and collations of incantation bowls in various museums and libraries, it appears that Mandaic gnostic incantation formulas were often translated into Babylonian Aramaic and Syriac, but not the reverse. In Late Antiquity, Mandaic Vorlagen seem to have dominated the field of magic in Mesopotamia. Although, only a scanty amount of pre-Islamic Mandaic incantation material has been published so far, classical Mandaic literature already gives many hints of this fact. It turns out that many solutions to puzzling words or spellings in Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls can be explained in the light of a Mandaic Vorlage.

Voici une dizaine d'années encore, bien peu de travaux avaient été consacrés à la poésie en Mauritanie ou du moins au ġne, la poésie en dialecte hassāniyya. Nous n'avons toujours pas I'équivalent pour le ġne du fameux al-Wasīt que le mauritanien Sid Ahmed Ould Alamīn publia en Egypte au début du siècle et qui comporte une anthologie du ši'r, la poésie mauritanienne en arabe classique. Cependant, ces dernières années, beaucoup de poésies dialectales ont été recueillies et transcrites, quelques-unes sont publiées, d'autres devraient I'être ou ont fait I'objet de mémoires À I'École Normale Supérieure de Nouakchott (cf. bibliographic).

T he Mandaean, or Nasoraean religion is a system with no definite theology. It is, and apparently was from the first, an elaborate system of symbolical rites, meticulously preserved and performed by an hereditary priesthood. These priests, to judge by scrolls reserved for priests only, appear to have concealed gnosticconceptions in symbolical myths, personifying abstract conceptions and so veiling, even in priestly texts, high and metaphysical truths which only the especially endued could perceive if fitted to understand.

In 688/1289 Nawrūz Aqa, a leading Mongol magnate, began a rebellion in Khurasan to resist the Ilkhan Arghun's attempts to centralize power and loosen the Mongol aristocracy's grip on provincial government. The rebellion of Nawrūz was significantly different from any Mongol uprising that had occurred in the Ilkhanate to that date: it was distinguished by the successful fusion of Chinggisid and Islamic traditions of political and spiritual authority to support Nawrūz's challenge against the Hülegüid monarchy. This new hybrid political philosophy allowed Nawrūz to mobilize both the sedentary and nomadic populations of Khurasan to overhaul the power structure of the Ilkhanate. The present study of the early career and rebellion of Amīr Nawrūz will reveal how his movement forced the Turco-Mongolian leadership to reconfigure its political, social and religious relationships, among themselves and with the sedentary Muslim population they ruled.

One of the most important factors which distinguish the VaibhĀsikaṣika Abhidharma from the TheravĀda Abhidharma is a category called the viprayukta-saṃskĀras. The disputes on the reality of the dharmas included under this category dominate some of the major works on Abhidharma, especially the Abhidharma-kośa-bhĀṣsya of Vasubandhu and the ShpuṭĀarthĀ of Yaśomitra. An analysis of these dharmas is found in a few pioneering works like those of McGovern, Stcherbatsky, and others, but very little is kown about their origin.

One of the chief fascinations exercised by words—especially by loan-words—derives from their dual function as markers of both linguistic and cultural change. For those interested in words from this historical view-point perhaps nothing is more tantalizing than the difficulty of reproducing, in the study of words as cultural markers, those types of clear and comprehensive classification which have been so successfully developed for the analysis of words in their formal aspects.

The “North-Western Prakrit” as Konow has called it is represented by the following documents.

(1) The two versions of Aśoka's edicts preserved at Mansehra’ and Shahbazgarhi. At this stage many of the characteristic features of the language have not yet developed, e.g. śr > ṣ, śv > śp.

(2) The later Kharoṣṭhi inscriptions, mostly short, collected by Konow in the second volume of the Corp. Inscr. Ind.

(3) The Kharoṣṭhi manuscript of the Dhammapada discovered near Khotan (Manuscript Dutreuil du Rhins).

(4) The Kharoṣṭhi documents from Niya, representing the administrative language of the Shan-Shan kingdom in the third century A.D. In the Journ. As., 1912, pp. 337 ff., J. Bloch examined the dialectical peculiarities of the Manuscript Dutreuil du Rhins and showed that they appeared in modern times in the languages of the North-West.