In Part I of this paper, the status of case in proto-Arabic was examined in the light of comparative Afroasiatic, comparative Semitic and the treatment of case among the earliest Arabic grammarians. The thesis was developed that a caseless variety of Arabic is prior to a case-based one. It was argued that there is comparatively little support for deriving a proto-Arabic case system from a pan-phylic or even a pan-family case system. Furthermore, various interpretive problems relating to case among the earliest grammarians were alluded to. These included the possibility that the earliest Arabic grammatical terminology for inflectional endings may imply the existence of caseless varieties of Arabic, and the difficulty of deriving the caseless forms such as are found in modern dialects from pausal forms of the classical language.

In my earlier examination of the phenomenon of taḍmīn in Arabic poetry, I attempted to show how it evolved from the status of a defect into a poetic device. But I could not at that time offer any explanation that would reasonably account for this development. Moreover, I have come to realize that my treatment of the term as referring to those instances where the full meaning of an idea started in one line emerges only in the succeeding line(s), viz. enjamb-ment, did not adequately account for its subtleties; and, more importantly, it ignored other phenomena which are also subsumed under the term, though they have no obvious connection with enjambment. It is precisely these lacunae that I intend to fill in the present study. For purposes of analysis I will designate the over-running of lines as ‘grammatical taḍmīn’ since the relationship in such cases is either syntactic or semantic, although still other, subtler relationships within this broad classification are demonstrable. The term is also used for cases where a poet deliberately quotes, with or without indication, from poems or statements by others: this will be discussed under ‘rhetorical taḍmīn’. Yet another use of the term arose from the introduction of philosophical thought into theoretical speculation, specifically in the area of scriptural interpretation: this I will designate as ‘hermeneutical taḍmīn’.

Studies on Ottoman society and law through the so-called court sijills have lately proliferated, surpassing in volume all previous studies based on other archival sources, including tax and land registers. The comparatively massive size of these sijills, and the fact that their majority did survive, even in a good state, have led some scholars to the conclusion that only the Ottoman qāḍīs kept records of their court proceedings in a systematic fashion, and that they were the first to establish the sijill as a formal institution. Even those who do not share this view of a uniquely Ottoman achievement seem in no sense clear as to the pre-Ottoman history of this important institution. My purpose in this article, therefore, is to attempt to unravel some important aspects of the sijill's history, including the less consequential issue of the terminological confusion which has engulfed it in modern scholarly discourse.

Following the political upheavals of 1978, the history and development of Shiite religious thought in modern-day Persia has been the subject of detailed scholarly studies, but the modern development of Sufism—the mystical tradition that lies at the heart of traditional Persian culture, literature and philosophy, which is, from the cultural and literary point of view at least, the most fascinating aspect of the Perso-Islamic religious tradition—remains almost completely uncharted. In contrast to the classical and medieval periods of Persian Sufism which have undergone much scholarly investigation in recent years, the study of the modern period of Iranian tasawwuf, though far better known and documented, has been seriously neglected by scholars.

Tamīm al-Dārī was one of the Prophet Muḥammad's companions and an early convert to Islam from Christianity. His name is most closely associated with the eschatological traditions concerning the Dajjāl (the Muslim Antichrist), and various early ascetic ideas. The best known story involving him is in fact his meeting with the Dajjāl, after he and others of his tribe are shipwrecked on a mysterious island. He is taken by a creature called al-jassāsa to meet a chained man in a monastery, who asks the tribesmen a number of questions about the state of the outside world, most of which are related to the area of the Rift Valley in Syria. After they answer him, he proclaims himself to be the Dajjāl and announces that he is about to be let loose on the world. Somehow Tamīm and his companions manage to leave the island and come to visit the Prophet, who hears their story and relates it to the populace of Medina. However, in spite of this story, historical material about him, as is common with the Prophet's companions in general, is hard to come by. In this article I will explore some of the historical traditions connected with this figure and try to establish which material is reliable and which is not.

This paper is a meditation from a religious studies perspective on the twelfth-century Vīraśaiva saint, Basava (c. 1105–68); that is, its primary focus is religious experience rather than literary evaluation or the historicity of the past. By exploring a variety of sources—ancient and modern, fact and fiction—and by making connections with urgent twentieth-century concerns, it seeks to bring into focus the religious aspirations and social implications of Basava's world. Part 1 is derived from history and hagiography. It provides an outline of Vīraśaiva belief and practice, and then proceeds to discuss the religious context of twelfth-century Karnataka, the debate regarding the origins of this ‘new’ religion, and a key inscription in the debate. It ends with a summary of the tradition's account of Basava's life. Part 2 focuses on a play written in Kannada (Taledaṇḍa, ‘Death by beheading’, 1990) and then rewritten in English for a pan-Indian and international audience (Talé-Daṇḍa: a play, 1993), in both cases by Girish Karnad. Karnad is not the first playwright to focus on Basava, and he will not be the last. In the preface to the Kannada version, he explains that ‘it becomes inevitable for every Kannadiga to return, like a tongue that returns again and again to a painful tooth, to the victories and agonies of that period.’ Karnad's dramatization of Basava's catastrophic final year is discussed in the context of the historical and hagiographical material considered in Part 1.

The Islamic institution of the ribāṭ appears to have made its initial appearance along the North African coast, in what is today Tunisia, during the second/eighth century. In the first phase of its development, the ribāṭ was essentially a fortress located at a sensitive point along the Islamic frontier, garrisoned by pious individuals who envisaged their vocation as participation in the jihād, the defence of the lands of Islam against external foes.

Section 274 of the Secret History of the Mongols (Yuanchao bishi) tells us that Khagan Ögödei placed governors over the conquered peoples whose cities were ‘Asud, Sesüd, Bolar and Mankerman-Kiwa’. I present the entire passage, first, in the transliterated edition published in 1972 by Igor de Rachewiltz, then in two English translations, the first by Francis Woodman Cleaves, the second by Rachewiltz:

batu büri güyük möngge teri'üten olon kö'üt qanglin kibca'ud-i bajigid-i oro'ulju ejiljayaq meget balaqasu ebdeljü orusud-i kiduju ülüttele talaba asut sestüt bolar man-kerman kiwa teri'üten balaqad-un irgen-i dawuliju else'üljü daruqacin tammacin-i talbiju qariba.

The Secret History of the Mongols (Yuanchao bishi) tells us that, after the invasion and conquest of Qipchaq and Rus'lands in 1237–40, Qagan Ögödei placed ‘daruγačin and tammačin’ over peoples whose main cities were Ornas, Saḳsīn, Bulgar and Kiev.

It is a fundamental point of comparative and historical linguistics that genealogical affiliation can only be established on the basis of concrete linguistic features, the more central the feature the more important for classificatory purposes. While there is no absolute consensus about how a central linguistic feature be identified, it can be taken as axiomatic that long-term reconstruction and classification rests most fundamentally on phonological and morphological criteria. Of these two, Hetzron (1976b) has argued that it is the morphological which is the most important because morphology represents the level of grammar that is both more complex and more arbitrary in the sense that the sound-meaning dyad has no natural basis. Precisely this arbitrariness ensures that morphological correspondences are relatively unlikely to be due to chance.

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 Xinjiang People's Publishing House recently produced a series of booklets on the historical characters of Xinjiang. Included among the accounts of the region's heroes and heroines are the stories of some five hakim-begs, the local chief administrators during the Qing. They have all won inclusion in this series for demonstrations of loyalty to their Manchu conquerors and assistance rendered in the suppression of revolt against the Chinese empire. Heavily edited as these accounts may be, historical evidence of the hakims' co-operation with their conquerors is irrefutable.

When the Aceh War finally broke out in 1873 it did not come as a surprise to most contemporaries. In colonial historiography Aceh, a ‘nest of pirates’, according to the Dutch, had obviously precipitated the war by its ‘treason’ in turning to Turkey, America and other foreign powers for support against the Dutch. The discussions with the American consul in Singapore early in 1873 on a possible Acehnese-American treaty constituted a casus belli in the eyes of the Dutch.

Okina , a ritual play without plot, a collection of old songs and dialogues interspersed with dances, can be seen in many parts of Japan, performed in various versions. In village festivals, it may be put on by local people using libretti derived from oral traditions, and in larger shrines professional players might be employed to perform it at the New Year. Puppets enact Okina dances at the start of Bunraku performances and Kabuki actors use them to open their season. Such Okina performances derive from Nō traditions, and as might be expected, the Nō schools have their own Okina, based on texts deriving from the Edo period, which they perform at the start of celebratory programmes. These ‘official’ versions feature, among other roles, two old men: Okina and Sanbasō (). Before the fifteenth century, when Nō traditions were being established, it was common for a third old man known as Chichi no jō () to appear as well (I shall refer to this ‘complete’ form as Shikisanban, three ritual pieces, a term used by Muromachi performers). These old men are marked out from all other Nō roles by their use of a unique type of mask, having a separated lower jaw connected by a cord (the so-called kiriago).Erika de Poorter, in her introduction to Okina, suggests that actors dropped the third section because its Buddhist content conflicted with a trend away from Buddhism towards Shinto (a trend she refers to as ‘the spirit of the times’). She supports her theory by adducing a similar ideological shift in contemporaneous interpretations of Okina and legends about the origins of Nō. De Poorter tells us little about these interpretations, as is perhaps appropriate for an introductory essay. This study, however, aims to give a full account of them, starting with a Buddhist reading, recorded near the beginning of the Muromachi period, proceeding to interpretations current among performers in the fifteenth century, and concluding with the purely Shinto explanation taught by the Yoshida lineage in the mid-sixteenth century.

The last recorded case of sati in India, the murder (for such it undoubtedly was) of Roop Kanwar, which took place in the large Rajasthani village of Deorala in 1987, has had many reverberations. In particular, it has served as a focus for international and Indian women activists' opposition to continuing gender violence and to male domination in general. Not surprisingly, the responses have been wide-ranging, from individual and collective acts of feminist solidarity to various attempts at local level, mainly by men and political agencies, to discredit this particular women's movement.

The year 1998 marks the seven-hundredth anniversary of the initial composition of the book associated with Marco Polo, Le devisament dou monde. As the first European to claim that he had been to China and back (not to mention that he had travelled extensively elsewhere in Asia), Polo has become a household name. He has been credited with the introduction of noodles into Italy and of spaghetti into China. With perhaps greater warrant, he has been cited as an authority onȔinter aliaȔthe capital of the Mongol Great Khan Qubilai, on the Mongol postal relay system, on the trade in horses across the Arabian Sea, and on political conditions on the north-west frontier of India in the mid thirteenth century. The Marco Polo bibliography published in 1986 contained over 2,300 items in European languages alone.

Prostration (sujūd) is a fundamental part of the ritual prayer (ṣalāt). It is the highest form of religious devotion and is often mentioned in the Quran as well as in many traditions from all genres of Muslim literature. Prostration is also mentioned in some traditions in relation to what Muslim sources define as sujūd al-shukr, i.e., literally, ‘the thanksgiving prostration’. This is a voluntary act of devotion consisting of a prostration performed by the believer when he wants to thank God for some blessing. There is an abundance of evidence concerning this kind of prostration and it will be discussed here.

That Sanskrit satyá (Avestan haiθiia) derives from sánt is by no means so certain as Georges-Jean Pinault has recently claimed, and as the standard etymological dictionary (both KEWA, III, and EWA, I) maintains. The picture has altered since (as noted already in KEWA) Elmar Seebold finally disposed of the existence of a Germanic *sun∂jaz, which had seemed to correspond in form as well as meaning with Sanskrit satyá ‘true’. Gothic sunja ‘truth’ (>*sun∂ī: Seebold, art. cit., 25, 36) offers no support for the notion of a -ya derivative from the participle. At the same time, Karl Hoffmann had sought to withdraw the support of Agni's epithet santya, by explaining it as ‘being together: (etwa) Mitbewohner‘ from a *sóm-tiyo which otherwise, as in Germanic (English soft), develops a sense ‘appropriate, agreeable: angenehm’. To this may now be added the consideration that Paul Thieme has thought (oral communication) to explain satyá, with IE *sem- ‘one, together‘ in mind, as ‘einig, übereinstimmend‘ from a *sm-tyó. The latter would show more primitive Ablaut and more literal meaning than *sóm-tiyo, but both words would thus be close relatives of samydk ‘together, properly’.

According to the Nihongi, a chronicle of Japan written in A.D. 720, the first Chinese calendar was brought to Japan in the year A.D. 554. It is now generally agreed that before this time there was no native calendrical system and that earlier dates given in the Nihongi were calculated retrospectively, and in some cases inaccurately, using Chinese systems (Nakayama, 1969: 7–8). The Chinese calendar was not only a method for keeping track of the days but also a complete astronomical system for calculating the movements of the heavenly bodies.

Up to this point I have attempted to show how Shen Nung was portrayed in late Warring States and early Han texts. I have also reviewed what we know about Nung (or Chu) and Lieh Shan shih, Keng-fu (Plough Father), and T'ien-tsu (Field Ancestor), since it may be one or all four of these figures that comes to be known as Shen Nung.

We can argue nothing for certain on this, and certainly T'ien-tsu in the Shih, was, we assume, a god of the Chou. But that point aside, there seems to be good reason to think that Shen Nung was originally a farming god of the Shang people. He is the hero who invented the plough, and the god to whom they turned when they needed rain. Ultimately, this may have been Hsieh, the first-born of the Shang people, known to us in our texts as Shu-chün or Yi-chün. That Shen Nung would become prominent only in texts that date from the late Chou should be no surprise; we should expect him to be overshadowed in early Chou times by their hero Hou Chi.

It is important to keep in mind as we proceed that in the materials we have examined so far, we have seen repeated references to ‘fire’ and ‘rain’ and ‘drought’. Ritual ways of producing rainfall and combating the drought could involve fire (yen-huo, in Shih, 211); they might also involve ‘invocations’, charging the drought demon to ‘Go to the north!’ (Shan-hai ching).