Considerable attention has been attracted of late years to the astronomical instruments of the people of Asia. Many of these instruments, though far from modern, are remarkable for accuracy and beauty of workmanship, and not a few present admirable specimens of delicate engraving, inlaying, and ornament. The Sedillots, father and son, and others, have done much to elucidate the subject; but it is still far from exhausted, and every addition to our present materials for its illustration cannot fail to be of interest.

[With a view to obtain correct and authentic information on the subject of Nepálese law, both in its theoretical principles and practical administration, Mr. Hodgson addressed a series of questions to several individuals who were judged most capable of replying to them in a full and satisfactory manner. Copies of these series of interrogatories, with their respective answers, have been communicated by him to the Royal Asiatic Society (together with a separate paper on crimes and punishments); and the following article has been drawn up from a careful comparison of the whole, excluding as much as possible the repetitions unavoidably occurring, in many instances, in the various answers to any particular question. A reference to the works of Kirkpatrick, Hamilton, and others, will shew how little has hitherto been contributed to the knowledge of Europeans respecting Oriental systems of jurisprudence, as far as regards the kingdom of Nepal; it is therefore particularly gratifying to be enabled to produce so complete a view of the subject as has been furnished by Mr. Hodgson, whose perseverance and energy in obtaining an acquaintance with these and other matters hitherto kept sacred from all strangers, are only equalled by the intelligent and liberal manner in which he communicates to the public the information he has acquired.—Ed.

In the Journal for October, 1917 (p. 815), I discussed some of the material available for the study of wages and prices in the latter part of Akbar's reign, and offered the tentative conclusions that, while a much wider basis is desirable for a final judgment, (1) we may take the rupee to have been worth at the Imperial capital about seven times as much grain as in the years 1910–12, (2) on the same basis we may regard urban wages as having been worth sotaewhere about the same amount of grain at the two periods. I have since been enabled to extend the inquiry to certain other commodities, which make, it possible to indicate provisionally and in general terms what money was actually worth to the population of the Imperial capital. The results apply directly only to this population, but they also have some bearing on the economic conditions prevailing over a wider area in Northern India.

The Gabrī dialect, as is well known, is spoken only by the Zoroastrians, or “Guebres,” of Persia (by whom it is called “Darī”), and is consequently almost confined to the towns of Yezd and Kirmān. It has been discussed, and specimens of it have been published, by Berésine, Rehatsek, Justi, Houtum-Schindler, and Huart (cf. J.R.A.S. for October, 1895, pp. 783–4), yet the total amount of material for its studyis so small that the short text which I now propose to publish will, I feel sure, be welcomed by Persian philologists. It was sent to me nearly a year ago, in response to a request more than once repeated, by my friend Ardashīr Mihrabān, whose hospitality I enjoyed during my three weeks' stay at Yezd in the early summer of 1888.

Since the discovery of the pillar at the Lumbinī Garden commemorating the birthplace of Gautama Buddha considerable curiosity has been aroused concerning the different mounds, or koṭs as they are locally called, which occur dotted over the tract extending from Kapilavastu on the north-west and the Lumbinī Garden on the north-east in Nepalese territory to a distance of several miles southwards inside the British frontier.

Letters and coinage are the natural fruits of commerce. Scholars agree that the Indian or Brahma alphabet had a Western origin, and owed its existence to commercial exigencies. But while Hofrath Dr. Bühler traces it to a Phoenician source, and ascribes its creation to the early part of the eight century b.c., M. Halévy derives it from an Aramaean script in the time of Alexander the Great No such definite theory has been put forward with regard to the silver coins called purānas, the most ancient coins of India; but it is generally believed that they were current before the Macedonian invasion, and, as silver has always been one of the most important of the imports from the West into India, we should naturally suppose that silver coinage came also from the West—unless, indeed, it were an indigenous invention. In the case, then, both of Indian letters and of Indian coinage, a direct and constant intercourse with Western Asia is the presupposition of every solution. Now, for a trade between Western Asia and India three routes are possible. The first climbs up the precipitous and zigzag passes of the Zagros range—which the Greeks called “ladders”—into the treeless regions of Persia. This route was barred for centuries by the inveterate hostility of the mountaineers, and it did not become practicable until the “Great King” reduced the Kurdish highlanders and the lowland Semites to an equal vassalage.

In his essay on the heretical schools of the Hindus, Mr. Colebrooke has given an account of the tenets of the Chāarvāakas, or Materialists (Misc. Essays, L, 402 ff). Professor Wilson also, in his “Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus” (As. Ees., Vol. XVI., pp. 5, 6), alludes to the attacks made by the founder of the atheistical, or materialistic school, Vrihaspati, on the Vedas and the Brahmans, and quotes some verses attributed to that author, in which he asserts that “the whole Hindu system is a contrivance of the priesthood to secure a means of livelihood for themselves.” I am not aware whether either the aphorisms of Vrihaspati (Vāarhaspatya Sŭutras), to which Mr. Colebrooke refers (Misc. Ess., L, 404) as having been quoted by one of the commentators on the Vedanta, or the work which contains the verses adduced by Professor Wilson, be still extant or not. As, however, the Sarva Darśsana Sangraha of Māadhava ÃAchāaryya (a work containing a concise account of the different philosophical schools of India, both orthodox and heretical), from which Professor Wilson derived the verses which he cites, contains a good many more of a similar tendency, which are both satirical and clever, I shall translate the whole, and compare them with passages of the same tenor which occur in the Vishnu Purāana and in the Rāamāayana.

In 1443 Zangi advanced with, his army to the neighbourhood of Edessa and besieged a fort to the east of the town which the Franks had surprised from an Arab, Mani' son of ‘utair. Zangi took the fort of Shann, marched close to Edessa, sent an ambassador to the townsmen, and said that he did not wish to fight the Franks but to be at peace with them. They sent him gifts and presents from the town, food and drink, and he passed on to Aleppo.

Amongst the crowned heads and princes of royal blood in Asia who have taken an interest in the welfare of the Royal Asiatic Society, we have to name the Sháh of Persia, and his second son, the Prince Royal, Abbas Mirza. The latter is lost to his country and to us; and the untimely termination of his career is both a matter of public concern, and has especial claims on the notice and sympathy of the Society, from the peculiar relation in which his Royal Highness stood with respect to it.

Unfortunately very little is known about the life and personality of the author of the Kitâb al-muḥabbar. Abû Ja‘far Muḥammad b. Ḥabîb, al-Hâshimî al-Baghdâdî as he is usually called, was a mawlâ of the family of Muḥammad b. 'Abbâs b. Muḥammad al-Hâshimi. Ḥabîb is stated to be the name of his mother, a freed woman of the Hâshimite family, his father's name being unknown. However, in the Fihrist and by Yâqût who quotes the Fihrist he is called Muḥammad b. Ḥabîb b. Umaiya b. 'Amr. The date and the place of his birth are equally unknown and the only date we know for certain is that of his death, which occurred in Sâmarrâa in the year a.h. 245 (a.d. 859/860) in the reign of al-Mutawakkil. All the sources agree about this date, some adding the month, Dhu'l-Ḥijja, and the day, namely the 23rd of this month.

By the beginning of the fourteenth century the court histories of the Īl-Khānate had begun to lament that ‘qarachu’ (non-royal) commanders dominated the realm. The same histories report that these qarachu were drawn from the families of the khans’ royal guardsmen (kešik). The fact that these kešik families had come to eclipse, and in some cases threaten, the power of their Chinggisid patrons suggests a much broader transformation of the Īl-Khān polity from the patrimonial government of the khan's household, which characterised the early Mongol Empire, to a quasi-feudal state, dominated by a powerful military aristocracy. The present study will elucidate how this new aristocracy supported their authority through the hereditary transmission of armies, property and, offices, which entrenched their position at the summit of Īl-Khān polity.

Western sinologists dealing with texts of any antiquity are usually as aware as their East Asian colleagues of the importance of textual scholarship as the foundation of their studies. Yet despite the considerable sophistication of the techniques developed in the West for editing the texts of our own classical heritage we have until now largely left the collation of Chinese texts to East Asian scholars working on the basis of their indigenous academic traditions, and have generally been content to accept their results even in cases where these are clearly somewhat unsatisfactory. Paul Thompson's magnificent study shows that there is no need to let this situation continue. Taking an ancient work which has been the subject of conspicuous foul play on the part of pre- modern Chinese scholarship, he has produced a book which is in every sense of the word an exemplary demonstration of how the most rigorous techniques of textual and bibliographic analysis should now be applied to problems which have been ignored for too long.

The Indian water-clock was an arrangement for measuring by means of water and a jar or bowl the duration of a nāḍī, nāḍikā, nālikā, or ghaṭī, ghaṭikā, the period of twenty-four minutes, one-sixtieth of a mean civil day of exactly twenty-four hours from mean sunrise to mean sunrise, 6.0 a.m. It has existed in two forms.

This paper discusses the theoretical basis of the Sufi term jadhb (the effortless attraction of man by God), and examines the different approaches towards the figure of majdhūb as developed and presented in Sufi compendia and both Sufi and non-Sufi biographies of the period between the fourth/tenth and the tenth/sixteenth centuries. It suggests that there are three major phases in the development of the theoretical basis of jadhb. The first stage covers the period between the fourth/tenth century and the first half of the sixth/twelfth century. Jadhb during this stage was not discussed as a separate technical term, and its early foundations were embedded particularly in the early discussions of tawba (repentance) beside other expressions such as ghayba and fanā’. The period that began with the late part of the sixth/twelfth century and reached the early part of the seventh/thirteenth century was distinguished by attempts of later Sufi authors to moderate the problematic aspects of jadhb and to integrate it with the detailed discussions of mashyakha (sheikh status). In light of the increasing antinomian appearances of the majdhūbs and the anarchistic qalandariyya in Muslim landscapes, the period following the early part of the seventh/thirteenth century up to the tenth/sixteenth century witnessed the popularity of majdhūb Sufis whose antinomian approach towards social codes and religious rituals came to be freely presented in the sources. Jadhb became separated from the institutionalised doctrinal system of mashyakha, although some attempts were made to integrate jadhb with sulūk and, thus, to maintain the majdhūb’s ability to act as a spiritual guide.

One of the longest Hismaic inscriptions yet discovered comes from the region of Madaba, Jordan. It was published first in an Arabic article by Khraysheh in 2000 and was re-edited by Graf and Zwettler four years later. Both editions remark on the striking similarity in language and style between this text and Classical Arabic. Indeed, this inscription and a closely related text from Uraynibah West, also published by Graf and Zwettler in the same article, are among the best witnesses to the Arabic of this region during the Nabataean period. This article will offer a few remarks on the language of the Hismaic inscriptions and then provide a new reading of line 4 of the Madaba inscription, which had previously evaded satisfactory interpretation.

Despite the Pakistan-Afghan border's importance as the epicentre of regional insurgency, the mechanisms by which Friday sermons may be stimulating Islamic ideology have been understudied. From an analysis of 250 hours of sermons in the local Pashto language, interviews with mullahs and survey work, Robinson argues that sermons are a powerful means by which sectarian tensions and traditional ideologies are propagated. Their influence is derived from an irresistible synergy of both ancient and modern. They gain traction from using a highly credible ancient sermon form - rich in poetics and sparkling oratory - which is multiplied by the use of modern media. The religious ideology they traffic continues to grip the imagination of Pashtuns in ways which shape their society and provides a bulwark against secular intruders.