One of the results of the sometime colonization of Africa was the concentration by linguists of various European countries on the languages of those African territories held under their suzerainty, and the neglect of languages spoken in areas ‘belonging to’ other European countries. Fang, spoken in parts of what are now Gabon and Cameroon, has not enjoyed a great deal of attention from English-speaking linguists and/or Africanists, though it holds considerable interest for both in the idiosyncrasies of the phonetic display relating to its phonological categories and configurations.

The story of Yạhyā b. Zayd (in full, Yahyā b. Zayd b. 'Alī b. al-Husayn b. 'Alī b. Abī Ṭalīb) forms a well-known episode in the history of the closing years of the Umayyad Caliphate. The insurrection of Yaḥyā was in many respects a forerunner of the final rising under the 'Abbāsid emissary Abū Muslim, by which Umayyad government in Khurāsān was overthrown. The fullest early description of this episode is that given by the historian al-Ṭabarī in his account of the events of the year 125/742-3. After the rebellion and death of his father Zayd at Kūfa in 122/739–40, the young Yaḥyā had fled from Iraq with a few companions to Khurāsān. At Balkh he lived concealed under the protection of a man named al-ḥuraysh b. 'Amr. Eventually 'Uqayl b. Ma'qil, the prefect of the town for the Umayyad government, received instructions to track down the fugitive.

Inscription on a limestone slab, 27 ½ in. 7 ½in.; obtained from a man who has done extensive digging in Haid Ibn ‘Aqil, the necropolis of Timna’, and now in Major, M. D. Van Lessen's possession. Plate I.

Tanzanian novelist and philosopher Euphrase Kezilahabi strives to “dismantle the resemblance of language to the world” (1985: 216) through challenging the fundamental philosophical dichotomy of subject and object. The result of this dismantling will be a new “language whose foundation is Being” (Kezilahabi 1991: 69; lugha ambayo msingi wake ni kuwako). This is an expression of a new relationship between humanity and Being built on a holistic epistemology of experience and embodiment. Through “kuwako”, Kezilahabi expresses in Swahili the Heideggerian concept of Sein (Being). His adherence to Heidegger, however, puts him at risk of compromising the very foundation of his own philosophy: his continued critique of essentialism. This article argues that Kezilahabi salvages his concept of “kuwako” from these essentialist pitfalls precisely through his declared “destructive rather than deconstructive stand vis-à-vis the Western philosophy of value and representation” (Kezilahabi 1985: 4). The destruction is implemented on the thematic level: a phase of “vurumai” (chaos) which destroys previous traditions of philosophy is staged in Nagona. However, translation is an even more powerful device to carry out this destruction: “kuwako” is not an innocent reiteration but a radical reformulation of Heidegger's central philosophical concept, decisively informed by Kezilahabi's lifelong propensity for existentialism.

The only notable works on poetics and prosody that survive in Pali are the Subodhālankāra (comprising, in effect, Kārikā and Vrtti) and Vuttodaya. They have been ascribed to the twelfth-century Sinhalese monk Sangharakkhita and described, almost from the outset, as ‘dependent upon Sanskrit models’ and ‘based entirely upon Sanskrit prosody’ respectively. Indeed the Vrtti names a ‘Dandi’ as its basic source. The Pali Text Society's 2000 edition of the Subodhālankāra, complete with two versions of the Vrtti, compiled by P. S. Jaini, has registered many, but by no means all of the parallel passages in Dandin's Kāvyādarśa, the seminal manual of Sanskrit poetic theory. The present article seeks to show that the Pali texts depend rather on earlier Middle Indian traditions of rhetoric and poetics, coupled with theories adumbrated in Nātyaśāstra. It is reasonably certain that the basic Pali material, especially as presented in the version with ‘Abhinavatīkā’, has been drawn upon by the author of the Sanskrit Kāvyādarśa; and there is evidence that the ‘Porānatīkā’ has been superficially influenced by the Sanskrit text. The material goes far to explain classical Sanskrit notions of Alamkāra, Rasa and Dhvani. The Pali prosody Vuttodaya seems to have been equally baselessly maligned, and should take its place along with surviving vestiges of Prakrit prosody as the fundamental link between Vedic and classical theory.

It has seemed desirable to make known at once certain information of interest to Central Asian studies contained in Khotan texts of the British Museum and India Office. This information may here be conveniently grouped under the heads (1) the animal cycle of twelve years, (2) the names of the months and seasons in Khotan, (3) dates androyal names.

In The Ramtek Inscriptions [I] (hereafter RI) mention was made of a Vākāṭaka inscription in the Kevala-Narasiṁha temple on Ramtek Hill, the discovery of which was reported in IAR, 1982–83, 137. The credit for first discussing, as well as editing the text goes to the Director of the Archaeological Survey and Museums of Maharashtra, Dr. A. P. Jamkhedkar. In an article which appeared in 1986 in R. Parimoo (ed.), Vaiṣṇavism in Indian arts and culture (pp. 335–41), Jamkhedkar attributed the inscription to Prabhāvatī Guptā (op. cit., 340), an attribution for which he adduced arguments in a subsequent article that was published in M. S. Nagaraja Rao (ed.), Kusumāñjali, vol. i in 1987 (pp. 217–23).

Soon after the rise of the T'ang dynasty, the Parinirvāna Sūtra seems to have lost its popularity, and in the second half of the seventh century its place is definitely taken by the Lotus Sūtra. Out of a total of fifty-six dated texts, no fewer than twenty-nine are sections of this work.

Cairo is probably one of the noisiest towns in the world but it is amusing, if not interesting, to endeavour to sort out some ofthe sounds so familiar in Cairo's streets. The main thoroughfaresare crowded with hawkers of every description; as one sits in acafe, one is offered articles of the most extraordinary variety by them, hair-pins and oranges, daffodils and bananas, sand-paper and flywhisks, sausages and sadlery, the latest editions of French and Arabic novels, copies of works on Quranic Exegesis and the Traditions, motor car tyres and flea-powder.

Part I concluded with the suggestion that certain general-phonetic features, those of rounding and spreading, and those of vowel closure, might profitably be given a prosodic statement for the word as a whole, as:—

I. a 3-term system: y/w/ә

II. a 2-term system: o/c

A given word might thus be assigned to a prosodic category, to the ‘ y ’, the ‘ w ’, or the ‘ ә ’ term, and treated as a ‘ y word ’, ‘ w word ’, or ‘ neutral word ’ (yW, wW, әW). Similarly a given word might be assigned to either term of the closure system, and treated as a ‘ close word ’ or as an ‘ open word ’ (cW, oW). Theoretically it is a matter of indifference which of the two systems should be stated first. Since, however, they cannot be stated simultaneously in practice, the method of statement adopted here gives priority to the w/y/ә system; the exponents of ‘ w ’, ‘ y ’, and ‘ ә ’ are stated in turn. The o/c system is considered within the framework of these three categories, the exponents of o/c being given for wW, yW, and әW in turn, immediately after the exponents of ‘ w ’, ‘ y ’, and ‘ ә ’ respectively.

The treatment of Proto-Iranian *θw (PIE *t) is one of the isoglosses distinguishing Middle Persian from Parthian and thus important for Western Iranian dialectology. The re-discussion of the Parthian development of this consonant cluster by Nicholas Sims-Williams presents a welcome opportunity for some notes on the matter. I will argue that there is some additional evidence in favour of his suggestion that the Parthian result is not -f- as previously assumed, but a consonant cluster. I will also suggest a modification of the steps that the development takes. The Middle Persian development of *θw as well as some related issues of historical phonology and Pth. orthography and Western Ir. are likewise discussed.

Once upon a time, scholars believed that tracing the history and diffusion of folktales led to knowledge of a shared human culture. The enlightenment of the twentieth century, however, rooted out this superstition, with its evolutionary and devolutionary premises, and replaced it with a rigorous identification of tales, descriptions of their contents, and, more recently, analyses of the circumstances of their telling. The textual precision and ethnographic depth of these studies, not to mention the increasing number of folktale indexes, have taken us far beyond the naiveté of those nineteenth-century claims for a Buddhist or mytho-poetic origin to virtually all folk narrative. Deriving, for example, an English proverb (‘Don't count your chickens before they hatch’) from a Sanskrit story about a man whose dreams destroy him is almost as entertaining as it is untenable. One wonders, however, if, in reaction to such excesses, research did not retreat into a safer but more limited sphere by studying the stories of a single society. Without wishing to return to the hyperbole of those early folktale scholars, this essay acknowledges their comparative vision, bold hypotheses, and dedication to the international study of the folktale.

The Kwara ‘Ae language is spoken by a hill people who live in the neighbourhood of the mountain called Ala Saa, North-West Alite Mountain, on North Mala, Solomon Islands. The present grammar has been compiled from a translation of the Gospel according to St. Matthew (1930), the translator being Mr. N. C. Deck, of the South Sea Evangelical Mission on North Mala, and the publishers the British and Foreign Bible Society. Use has been made also of a booklet of 32 pp. entitled “Kwara ‘Ae Questions”, and notes kindly supplied by Mr. Deck have been used in the compilation of this grammar.

The apocalypse proceeds to describe three episodes of rulers who are to appear respectively in .XVarāsān, NēmrōČ, and PatašXvārgar and to be followed by the coming of Pišyōθn, son of Vištāsp. The language touches that of the Bahman Yašt at many points. Religious views are closely interwoven. The “Xvarr of PatašXvārgar” is of interest, as are also the revelation of many mysteries by Mihr Yazd,and Mihr's conflict with Ēšm. The druž Vat-yavakān seems not to be known elsewhere.

A study of the dialects of Fula (the language of the Fulɓe or Fulani) can be of interest both to the linguist and to the sociolinguist: partly because of the sheer scale of the undertaking, with what is essentially the same language being spoken by Fulani from Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea on the Atlantic coast to Nigeria and Cameroon on the east; and partly because of the complexity of the movements that have taken place over the centuries, and of the resulting varied pattern of social, cultural, and economic relationships between different Fulani groups and between Fulani and other peoples. It could also be of interest, not simply as a dialect study as such, but also for the light it might throw on comparable phenomena in multilingual situations.

On 6 December 1966, with Muhammad al-'Ubaydī, son of the naqīb of Shākir, as Leader of my escort, I went to Sūdah in Arhab, a Black lava Mountain, the place belonging to 'Iyāl al-Sihaym. We had passed by Jabal al-Riyām and Sirwā. The tomb of Sālih was on the north side, a domed building This tomb had, or used to have, 'ushūr, tithes paid to it. In the houses which were on the south side there was only one man, the rest ofthe villagers being women. The men were away at the war or perhaps employed in San‘ā’. Water was short here and I believe (though this is not in my notes) brought from quite some distance. Sūdah had the Look of a hungry place. Yet in the area there was much driwing on the rocks, some quite recent, including a Hebrew graffito which too had the appearance of being recently made, and it seems that Jews used at one time to Live here.

The pepole distinguished by the name of Kade, because they speak a language differing form those of their neighbours, live mostly in the Katha district of Upper Burma, and inhabit a tract of country lying roughly between 95° E., and 24° and 24° 30′N.