This article presents a publication and translation (with linguistic and philological commentaries) of a recently discovered piece of Old Amharic poetry, possibly dating to the first half/middle of the seventeenth century. The published text bears the title Märgämä kəbr (“Condemnation of glory”), but its content differs from that of several other Old Amharic poems (not entirely independent from each other) known under the same title. It is only the general idea and the main topics that are shared by all Märgämä kəbr poems: transience of the earthly world, the inevitability of death and of God's judgement, and the necessity of leading a virtuous life. One can thus speak of Märgämä kəbr as a special genre of early Amharic literature, probably originally belonging to the domain of oral literature and used to address the Christian community with the aim of religious education and admonition of laymen.

Conventionally, the history of early and medieval India is viewed against a framework of a large number of dynasties, some local, others ‘imperial’, some ephemeral, others extending over several centuries.3 In this paper I argue that such a conceptualization is to some extent illusory, at least if a dynasty is defined as a series of genetically related rulers succeeding to a given office over time. The purpose of the paper is not to deny that many of these dynasties could have existed, or even that they did exist, but only to argue that the nature and extent of our evidence is not sufficient to permit many of the hypothesized reconstructions of them. In other words, the impression of a dynastic Indian past often has resulted from a maximum of inference based on a minimum of satisfactory data.

It is customary to describe the Ṛavedic dialogue of Purūravas and Urvaśī (ṚV 10.95, referred to hereafter as D) either as the source ‘from which all the different versions have originated … an exaltation of a popular fairy-tale’ (H. D. Velankar, The Vikramorvaśīya, New Delhi, 1961, xxxxiii) or as ‘ein einheitliches festgefügtes Kunstwerk’ based on the fairy-tale narrated ‘im alten schlichten Märchenstil’ in Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, 11.5.1 (K. F. Geldner).

Though the linguistic interest for Indo-Iranian predominates in the study of the texts from Gostana-dea (Khotan), the contents offer also considerable materials for closer understanding of pre-Muslim Chinese Turkistan in Central Asia.

In drawing attention to some of the archaic features of Khowar (Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan, p.71), Dr. Morgenstierne says: “The preservation of t as r … is a very archaic feature, with parallels only, to some extent, in Shina, some Kohistani dialects and Romany.”

The sculptured frieze that forms the subject of this paper is carved on the main shrine of the Śiva temple at Tārācuram, 5 km. south of Kumpakonam, a provincial town in Thanjavur District, Tamilnadu. Narrative friezes of the great Indian epics are a quite usual feature of Hindu architectural ornament both in India and beyond. It is also the case that individual Tamil Śaiva saints, to whom the collective name in Tamil, Nāyaṉmār, sing. nāyaṉār, is applied, appear commonly in iconography in temples of the Tamil-speaking area. But the frieze at Tārācuram is exceptional in being a portrayal of the complete set of the 63 Nāyaṉmār as they figure in that closely-related group of Tamil medieval texts of which the most important is Cekkiḻār's Pěriya purāṇam. Indeed, as will be shown, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Tārācuram frieze is virtually a set of illustrations to that work, and that the one would tend to confirm the date assumed for the other. Moreover, the various anomalies in Pěriya purānam, such as the total omission of Māṇikkavācakar and the reversing of the logical order of events in the case of Nāyaṉār 51 (N51), Kaḻaṟciṅka nāyaṉār and N54, Pukaḻttuṇai nāyaṉār, are precisely mirrored in the Tārācuram frieze.

At the beginning of September 1854, almost six months after Commodore Perry had concluded his convention with Japan, Sir James Stirling, Commander-in-Chief of the British East Indies fleet, took his squadron into Nagasaki harbour to negotiate with the Japanese officials there. Unlike Perry, his primary object was not to obtain a treaty of commerce and friendship. War between Britain and Russia had broken out in March, and it was his duty to hunt down, if possible to destroy, Admiral Poutiatin's squadron then in Pacific waters. This task, he realized, would be made much easier if he could use Japanese ports for obtaining stores and refitting on the terms usually allowed a belligerent by a neutral state, and if this meant that Russia could use those ports on similar terms, he was confident that he could deny her access to them by his own greater strength at sea. In fact, whatever secret hopes he may have had as to the ultimate effect of his discussions on Anglo-Japanese relations, Stirling went to Nagasaki principally to settle a point of practical importance to his conduct of naval operations. He wished to know in what light the Japanese government would view the use'of its ports by the belligerents, and was ready to suggest, perhaps insist on, a policy favourable to Great Britain.

Despite this limited objective, there followed an exchange of letters, some weeks of waiting, and a number of discussions with the Nagasaki Bugyoo (the Governor of Nagasaki), as a result of which Stirling obtained a convention similar in many respects to that of Perry, though somewhat more restricted in its provisions.

The beginnings of the novel as a literary art in Egypt are so recent that the student of contemporary Arabic literature might well be excused for seeking to trace some genetic connection between its development and the earlier productions of the Syrian school of writers. But except for the possibility that the success of the Syrian novelists (whose works have been admirably described by Professor Kratchkowsky in the study frequently quoted in the previous articles of this series, and now available in a German translation) may have encouraged the Egyptian writers to produce a class of works which would appeal to the same public, the literary movement which forms the subject of the present article has remained in general entirely independent of the Syrian historical novel. Western influences, which are very marked in the later stages, have been exercised directly, but Egyptian recreational literature continued for a long time to lean rather on classical and conventional models. It is only very slowly and hesitatingly that it has emancipated itself, and its progress in this direction has been sporadic and individual rather than the result of a steady evolution.

Apart of the island of the central Solomon Islands which was called Santa Ysabel by the Spanish discoverers is known as “Sambana” to the natives of Narovo (Eddystone) and Mandegusu islands, who used to raid it. The north end of the island is called Kia, and the southern end is known as Bugotu. There is no one native name for the whole of the island.

The elders of North-East Africa have long been renowned for their powers of memory on which their compatriots relied for genealogical lineages, rights of ownership, Procedures of law, marrige customs and the like. Literate of otherwise, they all for the most part imparted their accumulated knowledge by word of mouth. Unlike the griots of West Africa, however, quite a few made use of written documents, at least in the form of notes. These documents are different from and independent of the royal and ecclesiastical records which are well known to scholars. These are private papers intended for personal use and as such contain valuable, Uncensored, historical information. I realized how ubiquitous the practice was during my research travels in the various regions of the Ethiopian Empire during the years 1965–75. Whenever such an informant failed to recall a particular name, date of fact during an interview, of doubted the accuracy of the sequence of his narrative, he would quickly pull out his mnemonic aid from a box under his bed or would call for a family member to hand him the desired item. The mnemonic aid often consisted of scribbled scraps of paper, letters, Photographs, invitation cards to weddings of com memorative feasts. Some possessed thin school notebooks comprising sketches in Amareña, Tegreña of Arabic, sufficient to prompt the memory to produce a fluent narrative. The contents of such a notebook, and indeed a typical one of its kind, consitute the boby of the present article.

When Soslan went to the land of the giant Uomar, son of Tara, he pretended to be his own hireling: Tari furt Uomari zænxæmæ ranæxstæræy ye'xuærsti ræuoni, Pam. ii 60. The Dictionary translates Dig. ræuonæ as ‘cause, pretext, appearance’, and quotes our passage to illustrate the third meaning: ‘in the appearance of his hireling.’ There is, however, another passage, in which ræuonæ clearly means ‘disguise’. Uaskergi had placed watchmen at the gorge of Zadælesk, to prevent Cænxigol, the spirit of salt, from leaving the heights. The villain Sirdon advises Cænxigol: mæn gadcay ræuændtæy leu næ rayervæzay uædta, dæ ramardzænæncæ ‘if you do not escape by means of my bitch's ræuændtæ (plur. of ræuonæ) they will kill you’; thereupon Cænxigol Sirdoni gadcay cari bacudæy ma uotemæy qalaurtæbæl rayevhudæy, “Sirdoni gadca æy!” zæhgæy ‘Cænxigol entered the hide of Sirdon's bitch and thus passed by the watchmen, who said: “it is Sirdon's bitch”’ (Miller, Ocemuhckue Эmю∂ы i 102). Miller translated mæn gadcay ræuændtæy as ‘by the ruse of my bitch’; evidently the meaning is ‘by disguising yourself as my bitch’. The plural ræuændtæ is also used, according to B., my Digor friend, when the word means ‘pretext’.

1. From the period of the rule of the Kuṣāṇa family of the Saka kings cor three inscriptions from Mathurā. Of the first two neither is completely preserved, but in both a word bakanapati is unmistakably present. The first inscription is of the time of the mahārāja rājātirāja devaputra Huviṣka. The second inscription written on a pedestal seems to contain the name Vima, and this by both K. P. Jayaswal and Mme van Lohuizen de Leeuw is considered to mean Vima Kadphises, though Sten Konow expressed his doubts.

IN the second half of the nineteenth century, the general upsurge of nationalism in Europe exerted an influence on the Jewish population as well. This influence was particularly strong in Eastern Europe, where there occurred a formidable Jewish nationalistic renaissance, some features of which were: the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language; the widespread use of Jewish folk-lore in the works of Jewish writers, painters, and musicians; and the rebuilding and resettling of Palestine by small groups of Jewish pioneers. The new settlers in Palestine soon adapted Hebrew (which had indeed remained very much alive through the centuries as a literary tongue) to the requirements of daily existence, and it became the language of instruction in most of their schools. At present, practically the entire Israeli population (about two million) speaks Hebrew.

The manuscript numbered S. 788 in the Stein Collection at the British Museum is a fragment, only about a foot square, containing on one side of the paper part of two ballads descriptive of fighting in the frontier regions, the second of which is entitled “the Ballad of Yen,”. Both the writing and the paper point to a date in the late ninth or beginning of the tenth century.

The inlaid bronze basin in the Musée du Louvre known as the “ Baptistère de St. Louis ” is generally recognized as a masterpiece of Islamic metalwork. So far, published photographs and drawings have failed to do it justice. Almost the whole surface of the vessel, both outside and inside, is engraved with court-scenes, battles and hunting expeditions set out in harmoniously composed panels and medallions, framed by narrower friezes of beasts of the chase, and enriched with delicately chased silver inlay and gold leaf, in such manner as to allow the bronze to appear only in narrow contours, brought into relief by the use of a black bituminous inlay (Pl. 5).

The basin is signed in several places, and one signature, in calligraphic Mamlī, reads “ Work of the Master (al-mu'allim) Muhammad ibn al-Zain ”, but nowhere is the name of the owner of this magnificent vessel to be discovered. Nor is the owner's name given on the only other signed work of the same artist which has come down to us. Neither of these pieces bears the laudatory or benedictory inscriptions so common on Islamic metalwork.

Arab biographers rarely regarded outstanding artists, other than calligraphers, as worthy of inclusion in their biographical dictionaries. Their works yield no information about Muhammad ibn al-Zain and therefore none which might lead us to identify his patron. We must adopt a different method if we wish to discover for whom this princely vessel was originally made.

The earliest European reference to this basin appears to be an entry in Piganiol de la Force's Description de Paris, published in 1742.

The Musabba'āt played an important part in the history of the Kordofan/Dār Fūr region in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This article attempts to define who they were and to examine the careers of three generations of Musabba'āt sultans, in particular that of the grandson, their most famous sultan, Hashim b. ‘Isāwī al-Musabba'āwī.