Using university archives and library catalogues as well as letters and diaries belonging to the Schultens, a Dutch family that produced three generations of outstanding Arabists in the 18th Century, this article looks at the circumstances surrounding the purchase of some annotated dictionaries and manuscripts by Leiden University Library.

The Mughal Empire is paradigmatic in many of its formulations, and it is epitomised in the persons of its first six padshahs or emperors. The Great Mughals, Grao Mogor, Grand Mogul, Großmogul or Groote Mogul, as the padshahs were known in Europe, have been considered as paragons of rulership. In critical appraisals, which were the prevailing view in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were the quintessential Oriental despots, held up as a warning to those rulers in Europe with similar aspirations. One thinks here especially of Francois Bernier's letters of the Mughal court to his French contacts which included Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715). In more sympathetic (and more recent) eyes, such as those of the world-traveller, philosopher and enthusiastic inter-culturalist Count Hermann Keyserling, who was in India in 1911, they were “the grandest rulers brought forth by mankind”. Keyserling came to this conclusion because the Mughals “combined in their personalities so many divers talents: they were men of action, refined diplomats, experienced judges of the human psyche, and at the same time aesthetes and dreamers”. He felt that such a “superior human synthesis” (grossartige Menscheitsynthese) had not shown itself in any European king. Here I discuss to what extent the emperor Jahangir fulfilled Francis Bacon's ideal of the perfect ruler.

This essay examines the growing crisis of authority in the Muslim world of the past two hundred years. It is a crisis set in motion by the challenges of Western domination, intensified by those of globalisation, and exacerbated by Muslim attempts to resist them. It is a crisis which has pervaded all aspects of Muslim life, but one which has been felt particularly in the religious arena. Focussing initially on how authoritative religious knowledge was established and sustained down to c. 1800, the essay goes on to examine how this system broke down. It demonstrates the fragmentation of authority as new methods of interpretation emerge, as lay interpreters come forward to challenge the ʿulama, and as the individual human conscience comes to be given an increasingly important role. Consideration is also given to the growth of primary and higher education, the emergence of new electronic media, and the transnational movements of Muslims. The outcome has been the growth of a ‘spectacularly wild growth of interpretation’. It remains an open question as to whether this development is a cause for despair or a source of hope.

This article discusses the Mongol approach to warfare, then goes on to consider the Mongols' conversion to the notion that they would have to develop a siege train, since walled cities cannot easily be taken by a cavalry charge. The contribution of Chinese siege engineers is discussed, and there is a survey of Chinese siege techniques as they evolved before the Mongol period. The author considers the evidence for the use of inflammable materials, and then moves to the question of gunpowder. The widespread (not quite universal) consensus that the Chinese used gunpowder is discussed, and then attention moves to Hulegu's expedition to western Asia in the 1250s. It is pointed out that none of the major sources seems to imply the use of anything that might be construed as gunpowder technology during those campaigns. Lastly, the author considers, in some detail, sieges conducted by the Ilkhanid Mongols against Mamluk border strongholds during the succeeding decades, drawing attention to and explaining those sieges' increasing lack of success.

This article first briefly examines the textual structure of the Brāhmaṇa Saṃyutta of the Pāli Saṃyutta-nikāya in conjunction with two other versions preserved in Chinese translation in Taishō vol. 2, nos 99 and 100. Then it compares the main teachings contained in the three versions. These three versions of this collection on the subject of the Brāhmaṇas represent three different early Buddhist schools within the Sthavira branch. This comparative study of these three different versions focuses on three major topics: the outcaste, the dharmas that are good for a layperson, and alms. It reveals similarities and significant differences in structure and doctrinal content, thus advancing the historical/critical study of early Buddhist doctrine in this area.

Arambam Saroj Nalini was born in Imphal, in the then princely state of Manipur, on June 2nd 1933. Her father was a well-known and respected educationalist and government officer. During the war years he was posted to Jiribam, where she received her first education, and later transferred to a convent school in Haflong. She proceeded to Calcutta University, where she became the first Meetei woman to obtain BA and MA degrees, majoring in Philosophy. While in Calcutta she enjoyed close friendship with Christian Naga students, and converted to Christianity. She was baptised at the Lower Circular Road Baptist church, whose minister, Walter Corlett had himself served in Imphal during the war years. The Christian faith was to become a dominant influence on her future life. She came to Britain in the late 1950s to study theology, and obtained a Bachelor of Divinity degree from London University in 1961. Shortly after she married John Parratt. When their desire to work in India was frustrated they decided to work elsewhere in the developing world, initially in Nigeria, where Saroj became a tutor in philosophy at the University of Ile-Ife. When her husband was offered a research fellowship by the Australian National University she enrolled for a PhD in the Department of Asian Studies there, under the supervision of the eminent indologist A.L.Basham. Despite the frequent absences of her husband on field work in Papua-New Guinea and having to care for three young children, the bulk of the thesis was completed before she returned to Manipur for further extended field work in 1972. The doctorate was awarded three years later, one of her examiners being Professor Suniti Kumar Chatterji, who (unusually for the time) himself had a deep interest in India's north-eastern region. Her thesis was published in 1980 (Firma KLM, Calcutta) as The Religion of Manipur. It marked the beginning of a new phase in writing on Manipur by its rigorous application of critical methodology both in the collection and in the analysis of field data, and had considerable influence on younger Meetei scholars.