The Pariahs or Parayans (feminine in Tamil Parachi, in Malayalam Parayi) number 63,688, and are more numerous in the South of Travancore, though a few are found in almost every Talook (county). Of the whole, only 192 males, and no females, can read. Their general social condition is very similar to that of the other so-called “slave castes,” though, perhaps, not quite so low.

One may conclude from the lull in publications on the Gāthic Ahuna Vairiia that a satisfactory understanding of the stanza is at hand. This is, however, not the case. The last substantial treatment of the stanza is from Humbach (1991 II) in his 1991 two-volume edition of the Old Avestan texts. Somewhat less extensive is the discussion we find in Kellens’ and Pirart's monumental three-volume edition and study of the Old Avestan texts (1991). In 1975, Insler published a detailed article on the Ahuna Vairiia. The late 1950s saw the appearance of four studies of the stanza by distinguished Avesta scholars: Benveniste, Humbach, Duchesne-Guillemin and Hinz. As for the number of translations there are, it virtually equals the number of scholars in the field. The source of the difficulties is the syntax of the stanza. The disagreements are due for the most part to the scholar's analysis of syntactic units. Thus the variety of translations may be reduced to a few basic types.

When Chinggis Khan died in 1227, his sons inherited different parts of the empire that had been built by their father. Chinggis Khan's second son, Chaghatai (d. c. 1241), became the ruler of the lands of present-day Central Asia, conforming the origin of what became to be known as the Chaghataid Khanate. After the death of its founder, this political entity experienced a long succession crisis that lasted for a decade until a woman, Orghīna Khātūn, took control of the khanate in the name of her son. Although a ruling woman is not an exceptional case in the Mongol empire, she was the first and only woman that ruled over the Chaghataid Khanate, and that did so peacefully and without major upheavals for nine years. Additionally, she did not adopt a passive role but was involved in the running of the khanate, playing her cards in the always-unstable political arena of the Mongol empire. This article looks at the ascension to the throne, the reign and the legacy of this Mongol woman in Mongol Central Asia by contextualising her rule within the history of the region in general and in that of the Mongol empire in particular.

The great and increasing importance attaching to the question of Cotton supply renders any remarks which may throw light on the subject, of peculiar interest; the fact that the value of our cotton manufacture now exceeds sixty million pounds sterling annually— consuming therein upwards of four hundred thousand tons of the simple fibre—employing nearly one hundred million pounds sterling of capital—and giving employment directly and indirectly to about four millions of our countrymen, is alone so startling and withal so colossal as almost to defy comprehension. That a fibre so simple, and with us but a century since so little known and appreciated, should now give rise to such wealth and comfort, almost partakes of fiction; and one knows not how sufficiently to praise the ingenuity of Wyatt, Kay, Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton, who led the way to raise the manufacture in little more than a century to its present prodigious proportions. But the extension, not to say the sustenance, of this trade, is primarily dependent upon the supply of the raw material: upon this, the one hundred millions of our capital, and the livelihood of near four millions of our countrymen is dependent, a matter so serious and of such magnitude, as to make the question one of the State; the appalling result only contemplated of one year's stoppage of the supply, is sufficient to force a dread of the slender basis upon which the magnificent fabric depends. Our legislators are however now fully alive to its importance, and it is pleasing to mark the attention the matter receives amid the turmoil of our immense governmental affairs.

The book I have chosen for my present paper is a sort of Jātaka or Avadāna entitled the “ Hien-yü-Ching,” which Mr. Nanjio has restored into Sanskrit as “ Damamūkasūtra” , or “ Tales of the Wise Man and the Fool.” It will at once remind one of the Tibetan work “ mDsans-blun ” (generally called Dsan-lun), that is, “Der Weise und der Thor,” published by I. J. Schmidt, and afterwards by Schiefner, for this is a popular work and is read by almost every student of Tibetan. The Chinese version was by Hui-hsio , Wei-teh , and others, written during their stay in Karakhodjo, a.d. 445 . There are, however, two texts both assigned to the same translators, one coming down through the Korean Buddhists and the other through the Chinese. It is said in the earliest catalogue in existence (a.d. 520) that the original text was obtained by the translators in Khoten (Kustana, ) and translated by them in the Temple Tien-an-shi, Karakhodjo . As to the Tibetan text we were first informed of its existence by Csoma de Cörösi in the “ Asiatic Researches,” vol. xx, 1836, and seven years later we were furnished with the text by the Russian savants mentioned above.

In an article published in this Journal dated April, 1930, I discussed a tombstone which I considered as the most ancient Islamic monument. This was dated A.H. 31 (A.D. 652).

It is not unlikely that the earliest trace of the Kurds is to be found on a Sumerian clay-tablet, of the third millennium B.C., on which “ the land of Kar-da ” or “ Qar-da ” is mentioned. This “ land of Karda ” adjoined that of the people of Su, who dwelt on the south of Lake Wân, and seems in all probability to have been connected with the Qur-ṭi-e, who lived in the mountains to the west of the same lake, and with whom Tiglath-Pileser I fought; the philological identity of these two names is, however, uncertain, owing to the doubt about the precise value of the palatals and dentals in Sumerian.

The aim of this article is to describe and explain multiple processes of alphabet reform and romanisation with which Uzbekistan has experimented since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. These reforms, which were debated and implemented in different socio-political and cultural contexts, illustrate essentially different stages of political development and experiences. While in the past reformers tended toward more complicated and rapid reforms, today the scope of change is much more modest and we meet with changes which are simpler and extended over the long term.

On 20 February 1582 when Alessandro Valignano, Visitor to the Jesuit missions in the East Indies (the geographical area from Goa eastwards, to Japan, and southwards, to the Indonesian archipelago) left Japan, the country had been in a state of civil war, (the sengoku jidai) for more than a century. That was about to change. Oda Nobunaga had succeeded in uniting the central and western parts of Honshu under his rule and was intent on imposing his rule over the rest of the country. The Jesuits considered him if not quite a patron, then certainly someone sympathetic to Christianity and their mission in Japan. Yet on 22 June Nobunaga died, the victim of an attack by an ambitious rival, and ironically, considering the previous esteem in which he had been held, unlamented by the Jesuits who believed that during the final months of his life he had transformed himself into a megalomanic tyrant, a Nebuchadnezzar.

The ‘discovery’ of early Chinese, and its subsequent reconstruction, have allowed the modern linguist to reach a wide range of firm conclusions about the Chinese language and its position within the Tibeto-Burman family. Reverend Joseph Edkins (1823–1905) should be credited with initial work on early Chinese as the ancestor language of the various Sinitic languages, and with its first partial reconstruction. This article is an attempt to supply at least a first historical guide for those interested in obtaining a better understanding of the implicit discovery of Sinitic and the first reconstructions of early Chinese.

It is my intention to trace the history and evolution of the dome in Persia from the earliest times to the present day; and I hope to show at the same time the very important part played by Persia in the evolution of domed construction, which I believe has never been pointed out before. Before I can do this, however, I must first briefly review the dome in antiquity.

The following classified references may prove useful and suggestive to the student of the economic conditions of ancient India. The work accomplished by Professor Zimmer in his Altindisches Leben, which contains, among so much of varied interest, almost all that may be gleaned on the political economy of Vedic times, has not been carried on with respect to the advancing civilization of the succeeding centuries. Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt's important compilation, the Civilization of Ancient India, cannot, from the magnitude of its scope, treat adequately of what the literature of that era lets us see concerning rural economy, organization of industry, and methods of exchange. Dr. Fick's Sociale Gliederung im Nordöstlichen Indien is most valuable and suggestive as far as it goes. But it is compiled from a sociological and not from a specifically economic standpoint. Yet if we consider the ancient records now accessible, contemporary respectively with the age which preceded and with that which saw the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, and with the times of the earlier and succeeding ‘law-books’ —covering, from b.c. 800, let us say, a thousand years,— we may find materials sufficient to justify at all events some initial efforts to gain a coherent outline of economic institutions. I do not pretend that the passages noted are at all exhaustive; I am confident that much valuable material remains embedded both in edited and unedited texts.

The term ‘Tibeto-Burman’ has latterly crept into use as a convenient designation of a very large family of languages which appear more or less to approximate to each other. They are those which Max Müller classes as Gangetic and Lohitic, names which, with all due reference to the learned Professor, really have little relevant meaning in this case.

Under the title “Le Livre du Coq («Matzḥafa Dorho»)”, M. Chaîne published a short extract from MS. B.N. d'Abbadie 11, a MS. of the Ethiopian Holy Week Lectionary Gabrä ḥamamat (henceforth GḤ). Some citations of Chaîne's article give the impression that (i) the extract is complete in itself, (ii) it is properly entitled Mäṣḥafä dorho, and (iii) catalogue descriptions of MSS of GḤ can simply be cross-referenced to it; Chaîne's introduction does not encourage these assumptions.

Chaîne's extract appears in the printed edition of GḤ2 as part of the first of nine ‘homilies’, each headed dәrsan wätәmhәrt zä'abäwinä ḥawaryat qәddusan zämäharunä …, “homily and teaching of our fathers the holy apostles, which they taught us …”; the first of these “homilies” is additionally headed Mäṣḥafä doroho (sic).

The tomb-scenes of Egypt of all periods are particularly rich in pictures of various phases of agricultural life: so complete is our material that it is possible to reconstruct every episode of the farmer's year. The newly sown seed was turned into the ground by various methods, sometimes by means of the hoe and human labour, sometimes by means of the plough drawn by oxen, and sometimes, again, it was trodden in by animals. From Herodotus' statement, it might appear that the only method of treading-in corn was by means of swine, but actually this method is very rarely met with. So far as I know, there is no instance of this procedure earlier than the eighteenth dynasty. In two Theban tombs (Nos. 24 and 146), each of which belonged to a different person bearing the name Nebamun, amongst the agricultural scenes, pigs are seen following the sower to tread in the grain. Both these tombs date from the reign of Tuthmosis III.

Bien que l'emploi des bouches à feu soit attesté dans les pays de l'lnde antérieurement, la diffusion de l'artillerie, et de ce que l'on appelle du terme générique conventionnel d'arquebuse, a été, au début du XVIe siècle, le fait de transfuges recherchés pour leur habileté à fondre des canons et à manier l'arme à feu portative. Les plus fameux sont les deux Italiens qui, en 1503, passérent au service du Samorin de Calicut. On trouve ensuite parmi eux des “Turcs” ou “Roumes” – dont la plupart semblent, arrivés au Gujarat en 1507, avoir essaimé après le désastre de Diu de 1509, au service d'autres princes, jusqu'au Bengale et au Pégou – et des “Portugais”, ou réputé tels, dont la trace, une fois passés dans le monde d'en face, se perd le plus souvent. Si les activités de quelques-uns de ces aventuriers, revenant en terre chrétienne, étaient trop notoires pour qu'ils donnent le change, d'autres entouraient de fumée leur curriculum incontrôlable et rachetaient par une version édifiante un moment douteux de leur passé.

In a paper published in the Numismatic Chronicle (1873, Part I. page 60), I enumerated and described all the glass discs with Kufic inscriptions which had till then come under my notice; comprising those in my own cabinet, M. Sauvaire's collection, and others in the possession of the Rev. Greville Chester. I then advanced my reasons for believing that these discs were standard coin-weights. The theory that they were tokens, or equivalents of coins, had been supported by several learned writers; but all those students and collectors with whom I have since been in communication now recognize them as weights.

[It will be of use to the future historian of British India, to know the precise periods at which the British government granted to the natives of the Island of Ceylon, and of the different parts of India, those rights which are alike calculated to elevate both their moral and their political character; and, also, to be enabled to refer to the opinions which were entertained at the time upon the subject, by the people of the country. One of the most important of these rights was that of sitting upon juries, and of being tried by juries of their own countrymen. It is, therefore, thought advisable to record the period, and to give some account of the circumstances under which the British government granted this right to the natives of the Island of Ceylon, and to the natives of the different parts of India; and, also, to give a copy of a paper written to Mr. GræMe, the late Governor of Madras, by Rám Ráz, who was native Chief Judge of the Mysore country, and one of the most enlightened of the Hindú inhabitants of the peninsula of India.

It is a well-known fact that descendants of the Visigothic kings lived on in Spain under Muslim rule for several centuries. An important early historian of Muslim Spain, Ibn al-Qüṭīyah (died 367/977), owes his name—“son of the Gothic woman”—to descent from the princess Sara, granddaughter of King Witiza, and in his Iftitāḥ gives an account of the destinies of several members of the family. The following pages will, I hope, serve to throw light on one of these and at the same time to clear up a bibliographical problem which has never been properly solved.

The Thai kingdom of Ayudhyā endured several periods of crisis during its long history from 1350 to 1767, but the crisis which will concern us here happened in 1592. During that year the king, Nareśvara, was well aware that he lived in a hostile world of unusually wide dimensions. His behaviour will be discussed as a basis for a brief consideration of Ayudhyā's attitude towards the world, a subject of more than diplomatic interest.