Among the many controversies between the Sautrāntika and the Vaibhāsika recorded in the Abhidharma-koś-bhāsya of Vasubandhu, 1 a large number are devoted to discussions of the reality of a Vaibhāsika category called cittaviprayukta-samslāras (tr. ‘pure forces’ by Stcherbatsky).2 The Vaibhāsikas enumerate thirteen such samskāras 3 and declare them to be distinct from the traditional three categories of dhannas, viz. rūpa (matter), citta (mind), and caitasikas (mental concomitants). Whereas the first ten of these samskāras have a bearing on the Buddhist theories of causation, unconscious

The present article is based on photographs of nineteenth-century Arabic official letters, made by the author while carrying out conservation work on manuscript material for the Nigerian Department of Antiquities at the Northern Nigerian centres of Sokoto and Bauchi. Thanks to conscientious local custody, and the moisture-free atmosphere which these districts enjoy for most of the year, the greater number of these papers were still in remarkably good condition. At the same; time, progressive embrittlement of the fibres was making direct handling of the sheets undesirable, and some protection was felt necessary, The custodians of these collections had therefore been in touch with the Department of Antiquities, and it was decided as a first step to mount the most delicate and valuable specimens between sheets of glass, to be sealed at the edges with passe-partout and enclosed in light wooden frames.2 Since photo-graphy was likely to be more difficult after the completion of this work, the documents selected for treatment were first recorded upon 35 mm. film.

It is a surprising fact that the Chinesische Grammatik (1881) of G. v.d. Gabelentz remains the only grammar of Classical Chinese widely available in a Western language. Joseph L. M. Mullie's Grondbeginselen van de Chinese letterkundige taal is accessible only to those who read Flemish, and the Structural analysis of literary Chinese of H. E. Shadick and Hsin-min Wu has not yet appeared in printed form. The publication of this grammatical analysis of LAC (Late Archaic Chinese) by Professor Dobson, Head of the Department of East Asiatic Studies at Toronto, is therefore an event of great importance to sinologists and to linguists generally. Its object is to establish, on a purely formal basis, the grammar of the literary language of the fourth and third centuries B.C. For descriptive purposes this period is taken as a unity, ignoring the peculiarities of particular texts and the dialects which may underlie them. It excludes, not only the Early Archaic of the ‘Songs’ and ‘History’, but the Middle Archaic of the ‘Spring and autumn annals’ and the early ‘Analects’. Professor Dobson seeks to liberate the grammar of LAC from all the Western categories so far imposed on it (parts of speech, subject/predicate, subject/object, case, tense) and to establish, with the aid of a new and often alarming terminology, new categories distinguished by purely formal criteria.

The attributes of the Indian king have long been familiar, but taken together they have an inexplicable feature-their apparent incompatibility.An explanation for one, bhū-bhojana, is hinted at by J. J. Meyer&s Trilogie altindischer Māchte und Feste der Vegetation (Zürich and Leipzig, 1937), and the setting in which the subject is to be reviewed has been entirely recast by the lengthy and exhaustive article by J. Gonda, entitled ‘Ancient Indian kingship from the religious point of view’(Numen, III-IV, 1956–7). It is much to be hoped that these works will not escape the notice of historians of India, and it is assumed in this paper that Professor Gonda&s article is accessible to the reader.

In his article ‘Caucasica’ Professor H. W. Bailey drew attention to an interesting article by A. Shanidze, ‘The newly-discovered alphabet of the Caucasian Albanians and its significance for science’, in a sadly inaccessible periodical. ‘The discovery of the lost alphabet was made by I. Abuladze in an Armenian manuscript of the fifteenth century containing a miscellany of alphabets, Greek, Syriac, Latin, Georgian, Coptic, Arabic, and Albanian.’

Under the title ‘Argenterie d'un seigneur sassanide’ Dr. Ghirshman describes, in Ars Orientalis, II, 1957, 77-82, a recent find, made in Mazendaran, of silver-ware, the most important constituent of which is a set of three richly ornamented bowls with Pahlavi inscriptions. Of these inscriptions, throughout in pointille, only feeble traces can be seen in the photographs that accompany the article; for the purpose of reading we depend wholly on a drawing (p. 81). Drawings are useful enough when they supplement photographs; but no student of epigraphy likes being compelled to rely on another man's eyes.

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.