It is well known that most of the tales which make up the Divyāvadāna collection are to be found here and there in the Tibetan and Chinese translations of the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya. Cowell and Neil noted in the introduction to their editio princeps of 1886 that “although these (Tibetan) versions are often faulty and corrupt, yet without continual reference to them it would be impossible to give a satisfactory English translation of the Divyāvadāna”. Students of the Vinaya will probably agree that these editors, whose acquaintance with the Ḥdul ba seems to have been based upon English renderings of selected passages supplied by Léon Feer, here did less than justice to the skill and fidelity of the Tibetan translators and to the reliability of the Sanskrit manuscripts from which they worked. The extensive fragments of the Sanskrit text of the Vinaya published in the Gilgit Manuscript Series show on the whole a very close correspondence with their Tibetan counterparts, and a detailed comparison of about 200 pages of Cowell and Neil's text with the corresponding portions of the Ḥdul ba has satisfied me that where they diverge significantly the fault generally lies with the former.

According to the Deb-ther Sṅon-po of ẖgos Lo-tsa-ba the lha-hhaṅ of Rgyal Lug-lhas in Hphan-po was founded by Sna-nam Rdo-rjedbaṅ-phyug in a.d. 1012 during the early years of the restoration of Buddhism after its suppression by Glaṅ-dar-ma. The outline of that revival, known in Tibetan as- Bstan-pa phyi-dar—the Later Spreading of the Doctrine—is vague and the details scanty and uncertain. From the Deb-sṅon (Deb-ther Sṅon-po) it can be gathered that, although in Central Tibet the religion could be practised only in secret, in parts of the kingdom remote from the capital—such as Mṅa-ris in the west and Khams in the east—there remained communities of Buddhist teachers untouched by the persecution.

In 1848 Juynboll published the Arabic text with a Latin translation and elaborate introduction of a Samaritan work, which he called the Samaritan Chronicle. He printed it from a MS. in the Leyden library deposited there by Scaliger; this MS. belonged to the fourteenth century. It was written by two hands, the second part being of a somewhat later date. Juynboll was quite justified in callingit a chronicle, although the largest part of the MS. consists of the book of Joshua. It is a paraphrase of the book of Joshua of the Jewish Bible, containing chiefly the first chapters to which various legendary stories had been added. But the MS. contains much more. It starts with the appointment of Joshua as successor to Moses, in the latter's lifetime, then the history of Bileam, slightly differing from the record in the Bible, then also two different recensions of the death of Moses are given, after which, with a special heading, the book of Joshua begins. At the end of it the history is continued; it is very fragmentary. Within a very brief space the story of the Exile, under Bokht Nasar—the Arabic form for Nebuchadnezzer—is told, and then it is continued in the same brief form down to the time of Baba Rabba—second or third century—the great hero of Samaritan history. The Samaritans considered him as the one who had been able to throw off the yoke of the foreign rulers and to obtain for them a certain amount of political liberty.

In the name of God the compassionate, the merciful; and may God look favourably upon our prince and prophet Mohammed the elect, the prince of those who preceded as of those who come after him, the messenger sent in victory and conquest, with glad tidings and warnings, to all the spheres of creation; may God look favourably upon him and upon his family, the just, the good, the pure, as also upon his companions, his household, his posterity, and the universality of the church who have responded to his call.

It is one of the curses of Central Asiatic linguistic research that no language of this meeting-place of nations can be studied without reference tothe history of its neighbours and predecessors, which often belong to entirely different linguistic families. It is therefore only persons of singular erudition, or, like ourselves, of that hardihood which is bred of ignorance, who venture to dogmatize on any really difficult question of Central Asiaticphonetics or lexicography.

The history of which this MS. is all that is known to exist, covered in its entirety the period between A.H. 360 and 447. This fragment—which forms the larger portion of its eighth part—commences towards the close of the year 389, and concludes early in the year 393. It is interesting, not merely as the oldest Arabic authority for the period, but more especially as affording a specimen of Oriental history written at first-hand, the facts being either within the writer's own knowledge or told him by contemporaries. A history compiled by these means is almost certain to present a picture of a period truer and more vivid than one derived from abridgments, such as the Kāmil of Ibn al-Aīr, where, all that seemed capable of omission having been discarded, little beyond the dry bones of history remains. But of histories of this type few have survived.

The Karma-pa sect, an important offshoot of the bKa'-rgyud-pa, derives from dPal Chos-gyi-grags-pa, generally known as Dus-gsummkhyen-pa, who was born in A.D. 1110 at Dre-śod in East Tibet. He was, by some accounts, the first Lama to originate a continuous line of reincarnations lasting to the present day—a claim which is contested by the Lamas of 'Bri-khuṅ. At the age of 30 Dus-gsum-mkhyen-pa became the principal disciple of sGam-po-pa, himself the chief disciple of rJe-btsun Mid-la (Mi-la-ras-pa), and so entered the direct doctrinal succession from Mar-pa, the founder of the bKa'-rgyud-pa sect. A pious explanation of the name Karma-pa is that an assembly of gods (lha) and Dakini bestowed on Dus-gsummkhyen-pa, in his sixteenth year, knowledge of the past, present, and future—together with a magical black mitre woven from the hair of a million mKha'-'gro-ma (angels or fairies). That story is found in vol Pa of the Chos-'byuṅ of dPa'-bo gTsug-lag; but however early the name Karma-pa came into existence its perpetuation was probably due to the association of Dus-gsum-mkhyen-pa with the monastery of Karma gDan-sa, or Lho Karma'i sGar, which he founded in 1147 to the east of the Nom-chu, somewhere between Ri-bo-che and sDe-dge. A few years before his death in 1193 he returned to Central Tibet and in 1189 he founded mTshur-phu in the sTod-lun valley some 50 miles west of Lhasa.

The mountainous region between the Assam Valley and Tibet, from Bhutan in the west to the Brahmaputra in the east, is inhabited by a series of tribes which are all of Tibeto-Burman stock.

When publishing recently the painted pottery found at al 'Ubaid I had necessarily to refer to that found by the French excavators at Susa and other mounds in that part of Persia. I pointed out that while at al 'Ubaid there were two types of painted pottery, the thick and the thin wares, which were contemporary and were associated with various types of plain and incised ware, and while there was a very definite difference between these wares and those of Susa and Musyan, yet certain analogies and parallels did exist both with the thin wares of Susa I and with the thick wares of Susa II, which have always been regarded as differing from each other very widely in date and in style, and the former of which was not associated with any other type of pottery.

Dynastic changes are not an uncommon feature in history. In the history of Sri Lanka they have been especially common and have sometimes taken place in such a rapid succession that one might form the impression of their being a recurrent feature. One observes the succession of the Moriyas by the Lambakaṇṇas, followed by the Pāṇḍyas and the Kāliṅgas. Usually such changes have been the result of the weakness of the central political authority, internal discord, factional disputes, and other such decisive forces which provided excellent conditions and ideal opportunities for ambitious kings, particularly from the sub-continent, to invade the island. Sometimes they have been caused by less hostile circumstances, at least in their initial stages, such as appeals for intervention by rulers to outside powers. There seem to have been certain special forces and features that marked the changes that occurred in the late medieval period. We shall be concerned here with a discussion of those forces with a view to understanding the special features of the process of change, the manner in which a comparatively insignificant clan of foreign descent acquired power and rose to the highest ranks of the governing élite, and also the forces that brought about its downfall. The question, “Why were the new élite unable to gain sovereign power when it was just within their grasp?” will engage our special attention.

The subject of Oriental Music is one which offers a large field for research, in which very little work has, as yet, been done.

Comparative writing about the history of science and technology in different cultures tends to assume that differences in the ways in which these cultures write their histories are not important. But this is unlikely to be the case. The comparative lack of historical writing about printing in China by European standards should not in itself lead us to conclude that print only played a minor role there, any more than the tendency to downplay the importance of paper among historians of the European book means that its use in Europe was less significant than in other cultures. That in China the relative balance of the historical record is the opposite of the one that we tend to assume on the basis of the European experience is demonstrated here by contrasting the dearth of information about early printing with the commemoration even of relatively marginal cultural figures through the traditional Chinese historiography of paper making. But only tentative suggestions can be made as to why these differences in historical writing may have occurred.

The Qara Khitai or Western Liao dynasty (1124–1218) is one of the most fascinating polities in medieval Eurasia, but also one of the least documented in terms of both literary sources and material culture. Founded by Khitan refugees who escaped from North China when the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) vanquished the Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125), the Qara Khitai soon established a multicultural empire in Central Asia, combining Khitan, Chinese, and Muslim elements. The Buddhist Qara Khitai ruled over their mostly Muslim population in rare harmony until the rise of Chinggis Khan (r. 1206–1227). Hitherto only a few objects—and not a single structure—have been associated with this powerful empire. We argue that the Kök-Tash mausoleum, excavated in 2017–2018 and originally interpreted as a unique subterranean Muslim mausoleum, is actually the first-ever identified Qara Khitai elite tomb.

This unique tomb, located in the Kochkor valley of north-eastern Kyrgyzstan, about a day's ride from the Qara Khitai capital of Balāsāghūn, shares many similarities with the Liao tombs in North China, notably the typical Khitan mesh-wire burial suit. Yet it also uses local Central Asian materials and techniques, thereby manifesting how the Qara Khitai managed to retain their cultural identity in their new Central Asian and mostly Muslim environment. Moreover, identifying the Kök Tash mausoleum as a Qara Khitai tomb allows us to reassess several other unusual tombs excavated in the region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to suggest attributing them, too, to the Qara Khitai.

The British territories of greater Southeast Asia were administratively connected to London and Calcutta, and while local censuses show that these centres could exert some influence at the furthest peripheries of the Empire, a close analysis of the ways in which race and religion were approached in the classification of colonial subjects in Southeast Asia shows peculiarities specific to the region.

In this article I argue that the demographic and socio-political contexts of British Burma and Malaya (with references to Hong Kong) led to a framing of ‘race’ that challenged European ‘scientific’ definitions and embraced instead the interweaving of multiple aspects of an individual's identity, most prominently religion. This shift, potentially empowering as reflective of local understandings of belonging, and an improvement from the period's anthropometric framework, was to backfire, however. With the emergence of nationalism, majoritarian identities came to be homogenised in these ethno-religious intersectional communities, marginalising and excluding those who did not fit.

The University of London was the first institution in the United Kingdom to establish a professorship in Chinese. Within a decade of the first half of the nineteenth century, two professorships in Chinese were created at its two colleges: the first at University College in 1837 and the second at King's College in 1847. Previous studies of British sinology have devoted sufficient attention to the establishment of the programme and the first Chinese professorship. However, despite the latter professorship being established by the same patron (Sir George Thomas Staunton; 1781–1859) during the same era as the former, the institutionalisation of the Chinese programme at King's College London seems to have been completely overlooked. If we consider British colonial policy and the mission of the Empire in the early nineteenth century, we are able to understand the strategic purpose served by the Chinese studies programme at King's and the special reason for its establishment at a crucial moment in the history of Sino-British relations. Examining it from this perspective, we reveal unresolved doubts concerning the selection and appointment of King's first Chinese professor. Unlike other inaugural Chinese professors appointed during the nineteenth century at other universities in the United Kingdom, the first Chinese professor at King’s, Samuel Turner Fearon (1819–1854), was not a sinophile. He did not translate any Chinese classics or other works. His inaugural lecture has not even survived. This is why sinologists have failed to conduct an in-depth study on Fearon and the genealogy of the Chinese programme at King’s. Nevertheless, Samuel Fearon did indeed play a very significant role in Sino-British relations due to his ability as an interpreter and his knowledge of China. He was not only an interpreter in the first Opium War (1839–1842) but was also a colonial civil servant and senior government official in British Hong Kong when the colonial government started to take shape after the war. This paper both re-examines his contribution during this “period of conflict and difficulty” in Sino-British relations and demonstrates the very nature of British sinology.

This article examines the way in which Iran's eighteenth-century ruler Nader Shah was portrayed in contemporary Europe as well as in Iran, and how the resulting image—half national hero, half ruthless warlord—has resonated until today. In an age short on ‘great’ leaders, Nader spoke to the imagination like no other contemporary ruler, Western or Asian. Nader's subsequent record can be read as a palimpsest, a layered series of images of multiple world conquerors, from Alexander to Napoleon. The latter, who shared Nader's humble background and evoked a similar ambivalence, represented the closest analogue, turning him into the European Nader Shah. In the modern West, Nader no longer speaks to the imagination. Modern Iranians, by contrast, have come to see him as the Iranian Napoleon. While still ambivalent about him, they admire him as the ruler who regenerated the nation and ended foreign occupation, yet his undeniable cruelty and imperialism make him an awkward national hero.

British social surveys and census statistics defined ‘Sayyid’ as a caste identity, while often casting a sceptical eye on the authenticity of genealogical claims associated with the concept. The article examines how Muslims, especially Sayyid Ahmad Khan, participated in the formulation of the concept of Sayyid identity and status. Islamic ideology and practice have long wrestled with conflicting claims of religious equality and hierarchical status, often based on concepts of sacred lineage. From his earliest writings Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–98) emphasised his descent from the Prophet Muhammad on his father's side alongside his somewhat less exalted relationship with his Kashmiri grandfather. In later years he tried to balance universalistic ideals with claims to status based on supposedly ‘foreign’ ancestry, which he cited as parallel to the supposed Aryan ancestry of high-status Hindus. His British allies used his Sayyid ancestry as reinforcement of his leadership of an India-wide Muslim ‘community’ and evidence that India was not prepared to develop into a national polity based on representative government. But the Aligarh movement's claim to represent the wider Muslim population and in particular its educational project at Aligarh struggled with a more egalitarian ethos, defining students and the members of voluntary associations as ‘brothers’, and quite prepared to cross ascriptive boundaries both in public life and personal relationships.

On a former occasion I had the honour of laying before this learned Society a collection of Molluscs and Zoophytes, from the northern part of the Bay of Bengal; I shall to-day take the liberty of calling their attention to some sketches of fishes from the same locality, and the estuaries of the Ganges, which I had an opportunity of making during my sojourn there, while discharging the medical duties on the Honourable Company's surveying vessels. By reference to the ichthyological works, from different Indian localities, of Dr. Russell, Dr. Hamilton, Baron Cuvier, and Mr. Bennet, it would appear that at least one-third, perhaps one-half, out of upwards of a hundred species, which I examined between Calcutta and the twenty-first degree of north latitude, are not noticed by the above authors. Dr. Hamilton, indeed, in the introduction to his work upon the Gangetic fishes, is of opinion, that while in the rivers above, where the tide reaches, not more than one kind in five has escaped his notice, of those found in the estuaries he has not probably described above a half, a great number of which have been noticed by Dr. Russell. The fact is, I have observed many species, which, inhabiting a more southern latitude, are brought up towards the mouths of the Ganges, by the strong flood-tide prevailing during full moon, while others only temporarily enter the rivers during the spawning season. Thus many fishes, found in abundance by Russell on the Coromandel coast, are very scarce, or not met with towards the northern part of the Bay of Bengal, and of those species from Ceylon, figured and described by Mr. Bennett, I have observed none.

Sir John Marshall'S excavations have again brought important results. A new Kharoṣṭhī inscription has been found, which throws new light on the difficult question of the eras used in a series of Indian Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions belonging to the Pahlava and Kuṣāṇa periods. In May last Sir John was good enough to let me have excellent photographs of the new epigraph, for the purpose of editing it in the Epigraphia Indica. In consideration of its great importance, he has, moreover, kindly allowed me to publish a preliminary account in this Journal.