This fact that in the fourteenth century of our era the Pāṇḍya country with its capital Madura was ruled over by Musalmān princes, is known from the Travels of Ibn Batūta. The Madras Journal of Literature and Science for 1888–9 contained an article by Mrs. L. Fletcher on “Ibn Batūtah in Southern India”, to which Mr. L. White King and Captain R. H. C. Tufnell appended a “Note on the Coins of the Muhammadan Viceroys in Southern India” (p. 55 ff.).

The Topkapĭ Saray holds one of the world's largest collections of Chinese ceramics, but at the same time one of the least well known. It consists of over ten thousand pieces, of which roughly fifteen percent are on permanent display; only a few hundred items have ever been published, and not more than twenty-five objects have been on exhibition outside Turkey. To compare this collection with the even larger one in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is quite instructive: the pieces are completely different and have almost no item in common in spite of the fact that they cover largely the same period. What is housed in the National Palace Museum is a substantial part of the former Imperial collection or, at any rate, had once belonged to the holdings of the Imperial palace in Beijing (Peking). It had then been packed up in 1931 when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, and after a sixteen-year trip through China from one supposedly safe place to another, had finally been transported from the mainland to Taiwan when Chiang Kaishek established his government there. It represents a superb cross-section of those ceramics that were produced for the Chinese home market, in particular for the Imperial court and the scholar-official elite with its high standards of artistic perfection.

The Jámi‘u’t-Tawáríkh is unquestionably one of the most important historical works in the Persian language, not only by reason of the singularly full and authentic account of the history and antiquities of the Mongols for which it is chiefly celebrated, but also by virtue of the general history, especially the history of the independent or semi-independent post-Muhammadan dynasties which held sway in Persia immediately before the rise of the Mongol dominion (i.e. between the ninth or tenth and the thirteenth centuries of the Christian era), wherewith the author, Rashídu'd-Dín Faḍlu'lláh, or ‘Rashíd the physician’ as he sometimes calls himself, supplemented his original work.

The striking fact that the Buddha has been officially enrolled in the list of the saints of the Christian Church has very naturally attracted much attention to the book to which this strange result is due. This book, a romance in Greek, founded on some unknown Buddhist life of the Buddha, was ascribed in some of the later MSS. to St. John of Damascus, and this was the view held by scholars until the publication in 1886 of the masterly monograph by M. H. Zotenberg (Notices sur la livre de Barlaam et Joasaph). He there shows conclusively that the John who was the author of the romance was not John of Damascus, but a monk of the convent of St. Saba near Jerusalem, who wrote it in the commencement of the seventh century A.D. This romance, whose hero, though really the Buddha, appealed so strongly to the sympathies of the Christians, that they raised him to the rank of a saint, contains, besides the description of the life and character of the hero, a number of fables, some of which have been traced back to the Buddhist Jataka book, while the source of others is still unknown. This being so, it becomes of great importance to ascertain the earliest form of the story. Now it is admitted that the numerous versions of it in various European languages (of which a list is given in my ‘ Buddhist Birth Stories,’ vol. i. pp. xcv and foll.)

“Comment, transplantée au Cambodge, à Java, et dans les autres pays, l'esthétique indienne a-t-elle donné naissance à l'art khmèr, à l'art javanais et aux autres arts hindous d'Extrême Orient ? C'est là, un des problèmes les plus délicats qui s'offre aux archéologues.” In those challenging words, on the last page of his recent valuable work of synthesis, M. Coedès indicates with his usual acumen a main goal of future Greater Indian research. It presents a formidable task indeed, calling for inquiry into the whole problem of culture change in Greater India.

To the outside observer the history of Hindu sectarianism often appears as a disorganized tangle, lacking clarity and precision. The whole process is made if anything more complex by the ill-defined relationship of sect and non-sect. As Renou remarks: Though no statistics are available, even for the present day, we have grounds for supposing that the most active sects were themselves only isolated groups within the great body of believers. From another point of view, however, the history is more understandable. A considerable part of sectarian activity during the past 1,500 years has been concerned with the spread and regional development of a single great devotional movement. Seen from this position, the uniformity and theological coherence of the sects, whether they be called Vaiṣṇavite, Śaivite, or by some other name, is remarkable and often overrides the no less real disparities of doctrine or detail at another level. Again, in this process regional variations have arisen in no small measure as a result of the popular character of the writings of particular saints. Thus, for example, Basava or Purandara Dāsa hold pride of place in the Karnāṭka, the one Vīra Śaiva, the other Vaiṣṇava; in Mahārāṣṇra devotion has in no small part been moulded by the thought of Jāân Dev or Tukā Rām; in the Pañjāb by Nānak; and in the Hindī region by Kabīr Dās, Tulsī Dās, and Sūr Dās. Throughout north India the influences which lay behind the movement were largely, but by no means exclusively, Vaiṣṇavite; yet other streams contributed, Śaivite, Buddhist, Tāntrika, Yogī, etc.

The “Staël-Holstein Scroll” is a convenient name to give to the document on which are inscribed the texts recently published by Professor Thomas and Professor Sten Konow in “Two Mediaeval Documents from Tun Huang”, Oslo Etnografiske Museums Skrifter, Bind 3, Hefte 3 (Oslo, 1929). It bears on one side a Buddhist Sūtra in Chinese and on the other one document in Tibetan and one in the Śaka language (also sometimes called “Khotanese” and “Nord-Arisch”). These latter have no relation to the Chinese text and were written on it when it had become waste paper.

In JRAS, 1964, I edited an eighth-century inscription from 'Phyong rgyas known only through its survival in a collection which once belonged to Rig-'dzin Tshe-dbang Nor-bu of Ka-thog monastery, a famous lama of the 18th century (hereafter referred to as RT). The present article is concerned with his copy of another inscription described as “at Srong-brtsan Bang-so”. That is the popular name not only for the tumulus called Bang-so dMar-po and known as that of Srong-brtsan sGam-po but also of the whole burial area near 'Phyong rgyas. The inscription comes from a pillar near the tumulus attributed to Khri IDe Srong brTsan, who reigned from c. 804–815. Professor Giuseppe Tucci, the first Western visitor to examine the royal burial ground, has edited it in his Tombs of the Tibetan kings (TTK), Rome, 1950; and in CAJ, June 1963,1 have added some information about the pillar and the burial ground as a whole as the result of a visit in 1949, not long after Professor Tucci. Describing the pillar in TTK, p. 36, Professor Tucci writes “the surface of the stone is nowadays much damaged and a great part of the inscription is effaced. The lower portion is completely gone and a few lines are underground.”

Among all the inequalities of traditional Chinese society, education was one of the most obvious. In most cases, girls and women were not expected to receive education at the highest level and in late Qing China, most Chinese women did not have access to a university education. Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), an educator of the late Qing era and of Republican China, was renowned for his progressivism towards women. His broad-mindedness can be perceived in the way he advocated and implemented for girls and women educational opportunities on a par with those available to boys and men. Although many of his well-known contemporaries shared similarly progressive ideas on women, none of them are regarded as the initiator of the admittance of women to China's national universities. Actually during the May Fourth Period Cai was Chancellor of an important academic institution in China and thus strategically placed at a decisive moment in modern Chinese history.

Beginning in the seventh century, the expansion of Islam brought with it an outpouring of peoples from the Arabian Peninsula. While the composition of these Islamic armies became more diverse as the religion spread through the Near East and across North Africa to Western Europe, there were clearly elements of both the urban Arabian population, of which the Prophet was a member, and the rural Bedouins, whose migrations from their original homeland continued sporadically for several centuries. This slowed during the period of Turkish hegemony, but it left a scattering of enclaves identifying themselves as ethnic Arabs throughout the Islamic world.

With advancing knowledge of the Iranian language of the Sakas of Khotan, it has proved possible to establish the connections of several words hitherto misunderstood and to separate some words which have been confused.

Sa‘d b. Mansūr Ibn Kammūna, a Jewish polymath whose writings are now receiving a good deal of scholarly attention, worked in Baghdad under the aegis of the Mongol rulers and their courtiers. Born early in the thirteenth century, so it seems, he was forced to flee the capital after rioters protested against his book which compared the three revealed monotheistic faiths; he died in the 1280s. His oeuvre includes a treatise on ophthalmology, no longer extant; quotations from it are however available in the writing of another ophthalmologist, Sadaqa ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shādhilī. From these we learn that Ibn Kammūna practiced medicine in Aleppo (Halab).

Professor Athar Ali (born 18 January 1925) studied at Aligarh Muslim University 1948–53. His PhD studies were supervised by Professor Satish Chandra. In 1953 he was appointed research assistant at the university and became a Professor in 1978. He was Wilson Fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in 1986, Smuts Fellow, Cambridge, 1974–5 a nd President of the Indian History Congress in 1989. His major publications are The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (Aligarh, 1966) and The Apparatus of Empire (Delhi, 1985). Sadly he died not long after this article was accepted for publication and was therefore unable to see it in print.

The Periplus Marts Erythræ describes the seaports below Barygaza in the following way according to Schoff's translation: “The market-towns of this region are, in order, after Barygaza: Suppara, and the city of Calliena, which in the time of the elder Saraganus became a lawful market-town; but since it came into the possession of Sandares [an unjustified conjecture for the text's Sandanes] the port is much obstructed, and Greek ships landing there may chance to be taken to Barygaza under guard. Beyond Calliena there are other market-towns of this region; Semylla.…” Suppara is now Sopara on the coast above Bassein, Semylla is Cemūla of two inscriptions, now Chaul, and Calliena is Kalyāṇa. This last, situated at the foot of the two regular ascents of the Western Ghats leading towards Nasik and Poona respectively and with good access to the sea, was the natural outlet for the commerce of the Andhra dominions on the west coast, and the notice, just quoted, shows how its trade was stifled, as the Kṣaharātas extended their rule southwards from Broach. It is unnecessary here to consider who are the kings alluded to in this passage or in the earlier one mentioning Nambanus (a conjecture for the text's Mambarus), but clearly we are dealing with the rivalry of the Western Satraps and the Andhra kings. That the former were successful in their policy towards Kalyāṇa is shown by Ptolemy's omission of the town. The order he gives (taking Renou's text) is Souppara mouth of the River Goaris, Dounga, mouth of the River Bêndas, Semyla.

That Buddhism prevailed extensively in the Dekkan during the period of its ascendancy in India, is evident, from the imperishable monuments of that religion existing in the celebrated caves of Ellora (Verul), K´rli, Ajanta, and Salsette (Sáshte). It would give, however, but a very imperfect and limited idea of the influence and extensive ramifications of Buddhism, to suppose that its monuments are confined to places of such celebrity. To speak only of the neighbourhood of Bombay, small caves having inscriptions in the ancient cave character are to be found in the hills near Nasik and Junír. Even at the comparatively unimportant villages of Máhar on the Bánkot river, and Kher, twelve miles distant, there are excavations of a similar kind, which I myself have visited. Some of them still contain a dágoba, and others fragments of stone, belonging to a previously existing place of that kind; and I have no doubt that many similar caves exist throughout the country, though they never have been brought to public notice. When, then, stations of Buddhist priests existed in such places as these, to say the least, their influence in the country around must have been considerable. At the commencement of the controversy between the rival sects, the Buddhists seem to have had the decided superiority. Buddhism is eminently a religion of reason: it rejects all that reason does not comprehend; and makes its constant appeal to (Buddhi) the human intellect, as the supreme judge in religious things. Brahmanism, on the contrary, is a religion of tradition.

One of the chief difficulties which I have to encounter in the study of Old-Javanese manuscripts consists in the faulty spelling introduced by the Balinese transcribers. The Balinese language is not closely related to Javanese, the latter being a foreign language in. Bali. Only a few words are identical in both languages, while many others have in each case a more or less different form. Thus, the Old-Jav. nyû, cocoanut, is nyuh in Balinese; hence, the Balinese transcribers, finding the word nyû in a Kawi composition, change it into nyuh. Again, being unable in their own language to distinguish between u, wu and hu, all three being pronounced u, they write promiscuously uçinâra, huçinâra, wuçinâra, as well as hûçinâra or wûçinâra, so that it is difficult to say which is really the Kawi form of this name. The metre sometimes helps us in settling the spelling of a word, but this can only be in the poems called Kĕkawin (from Kawi, poet), the metre of which is essentially Indian and is regulated by long and short syllables; but, clearly, not in the poems called Kiḍung, wherein the metre is regulated by rhyme and the number of syllables. The Kiḍung are of far greater interest than the Kĕkawin, the latter being simply imitations from the Sanskrit, containing nothing about ancient Javanese life, whereas the Kiḍung, on the other hand, supply us with valuable particulars in this respect. It is, therefore, a matter of regret that the manuscripts are so faulty.

One of the major difficulties which face the English student when he comes to read Urdu poetry is that he cannot understand its metre. Even worse, he will find no short account of Urdu metre—either in English or in Urdu—which will help him very far. And finally, if he goes to Urdu speakers for assistance he will find that nearly all of them will frankly admit their ignorance of the subject and their inability to help him. Urdu poets of established reputation are, in general, no exception in this respect.

H. Ritter has referred again to the Arabian manuscript Tübingen Weisweiler, nr. 81, in Islam, 21 (1933), p. 91. It contains the only copy hitherto known of the oldest mystic book on the subject of love, the k. 'aṭf al-alif al-ma'lūf 'alā' l-lām al ma'ṭūf of Abū'l-Ḥasan 'Alī b. Muḥammad al-Dailamī. The year of al-Dailamī's death has hitherto not been established; he was a pupil and the rāwī of the well-known author on mysticism, Abū 'Abdallāh Muhammad b. Khafīf (died 371 h. = a.d. 981), therefore probably one of the older contemporaries of Ibn Sīnä (died 428 h. = a.d. 1037). A year ago, Dr. Arberry kindly drew my attention to the fact that this manuscript contained some quotations of ancient authors which could not be traced and which might be worth considering. The opinions of the astronomers, scientists, and on love are discussed in the first part of the book; the passage on the scientists (32b 7–33b 9) is specially interesting, as it offers two hitherto absolutely unknown fragments, one of the last century of the Alexandrian-Greek literature, the other very probably of a lost dialogue of Aristotle.