As in kannada, the earliest Tamil versions of the Mahābhārata were in the Sanskrit campū style of verse and prose. Tradition has it that one such work appeared in the early days of Tamil literature when the last of three academies or sangams flourished in the south under royal patronage at Madurai, the capital city of the Pāṇdiyan kingdom. Epigraphical support for this view is found, it is thought, in line 29 of the panegyric referred to below, where there is a reference to a translation of the Mahābhārata into Tamil and the founding of a sangam. The extract comes from the Ciṉṉamaṉūr copper plate grants, which Dr. S. Krishṇnasāmi Ayyangar thinks belong to the tenth century. Certain citations in the commentary of the learned Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar on sūtras 17 and 21 of Tolkāppiyam, iii, 2, may have come from this early Sangam Pāratam, as they have the true Sangam ring. So thinks M. Rāghava Ayyangar, who has done good work in dating Tamil literature. The verse of the Sangam Pāratam consisted, it is said, mainly of quatrains in veṇpā metre interspersed with passages of akaval, akaval being the declamatory form of verse and veṇpā the form nearer normal speech. Citations in both these forms are found in the commentary just referred to, the first said to be from “Peruntēvaṉār” (reputed author of the Sangam Pāratam) and the rest from “Pāratam”. Peruntēvanār was a name common among poets of Sangam times and the author of the Pāratam was consequently referred to as the one who composed the Pāratam to distinguish him from his namesakes. Two of his poems are included in two of the eight old anthologies of mostly fugitive verse and five of the invocatory poems are his, all eight poems being in akaval. The Sangam Pāratam is also referred to as Pāratavepāṇ, because most of its verse is said to have been in the veṇpā metre.

The first modern traveller to enter the oasis of Turfan was a German botanist in the service of Russia. Dr. A. Regel. His account of the ancient sites he had visited in 1879 appeared in Petermanns Mittheilungen, but, owing to the description of the obstacles encountered, the expedition failed to produce any practical results beyond furnishing the proof that substantial and most remarkable ruins and other remains were still existent in that distant land.

Durgā is a mighty Paurāṇic goddess; and of all the forms of Śiva's wife or Śakti she is the most popular and greatly honoured in the province of Bengal. It is in the province of Bengal only that her Pūjā (worship) is celebrated with great pomp and idol-exhibition. By ‘Pūjā’ the Anglo-Indian means now the Durgā-Pūjā festival of Bengal, during which all Government offices remain closed for one month. A new clay image of the goddess is made for the occasion, and it is enthroned on the sixth day of the light fortnight of the month Āśvina. She is worshipped during the three days next following, and is then immersed in water on the Daśamī day. These are all very widely known facts, but I mention them with a distinct purpose in view, as will be shown later on.

On a former occasion I described some of my experiences amongst the sect of the Bábís in Persia, and gave a short sketch of the history of their appearance and development. In the present paper I propose to speak of their literature and doctrine, so far as these are known to me.

This is a preliminary account of some finds of archæological interest which have recently come to my notice in the tracts comprised within the Gilgit Agency south of the Hindukush. Separated by high ranges from the northern extremity of the Indian North-West Frontier, these tracts are too remote for their population of Dardic speech to have directly shared in the development of Indo-Aryan civilization in the great plains along the Indus and Ganges. Nor have they been immediately exposed to the invasions and cultural influences from the west which have affected that civilization within historical times. Apart from reliable but very scant notices in the Chinese Annals, such written records of the past of these tracts as exist do not reach back much further than the advent of Islām. Hence any relics attesting the conditions prevailing there in earlier periods may claim special interest.

The purpose of this article is two-fold: firstly, to illustrate by means, particularly, of two examples how far Thomas More based the Second Book of his masterpiece, Utopia, upon Indian, or more strictly, indological sources; and secondly to reintroduce to historians of India Iosephus Indus, “Joseph the Indian.”

It has already been mentioned that, according to Ṣafadi, a correspondence on Vegetarianism between Abu’l - ‘Alā and a certain Hibat Allah Ibn Mūsā, due to a line in the former's Luzūmiyyāt, was excerpted by Yāḳūt. The first volume of Yāḳūt's precious Dictionary of Littérateurs is in the Bodleian Library, soon, I hope, to be published with such other volumes of it as can be found. Yāḳūt, whose acquaintance with literary history was unique, tells us that a passage in the Falak al-Ma‘ānī of Ibn al-Habbāriyyah had roused in him the desire to get at this correspondence, which he reproduces in an abridged form. Abu’l-‘Alā's correspondent was a man of some importance, whose grave was still shown in Maḳrizi's time in Cairo, where he held the post of Chief Missionary. The fact that Abu’l-‘Alā addresses him with the titles ra’īs and ajall shows that he held this or some similar post at the time of the correspondence.

The present study aims to contribute to the quest for the origins of belief in the eschatological figure of the Sufyānī, a matter of hot debate since the late nineteenth century. To this end, three different bodies of evidence are produced and analysed: reports indicating that the Sufyānī was, indeed, thought of as a redemptive personality in some Syrian quarters, traditions on him in the Muslim endtimes literature that contain an ex eventu pronouncement, and reports concerning the propaganda activities of the first Sufyānī claimant, Abū Muḥammad Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yazīd “al-Sufyānī”, in the historical record. Making use of hitherto unavailable sources and looking afresh at the previously studied sources, it is argued that the myth of the Sufyānī emerged during the counterrevolutionary revolt of Abū Muḥammad al-Sufyānī in 132 ah, with vague residues of it traceable to his earlier military activities, against the Umayyad caliph Yazīd III, in 126 ah.

As late as 1920 it was believed that civilization on the Indian subcontinent dated back only to the time of Alexander's invasion in the 4th century b.c. and that everything before that was “dark”. This assumption was made in spite of the fact that literary evidence pointed to the contrary. However, in 1921 the “belief” received its first blow when Daya Ram Sahni discovered the site of Harappa; the second one came just a year later when R. D. Banerji discovered Mohenjo-daro. Subsequent excavations at these two sites and at another site called Chanhu-daro, respectively by M. S. Vats, John Marshall, and E. J. H. Mackay, brought to light fuller details of the civilization which encompassed the Indus valley in the 3rd millennium b.c. The more recent work at Amri, Damb Sadaat, Gumla, Jalilpur, Kalibangan, Kot Diji, Lothal, Sarai Khola, and Surkotda has added new dimensions to our knowledge of this civilization.

It is characteristic of Iranian revolts and rebellions that they usually occur when the state is perceived to be weak and unable to enforce its authority. Naser al-Din Shah was an arbitrary ruler like all his predecessors. But, the consequences of arbitrary rulers were not all alike either for themselves or for the country. Much depended on their personalities as well as the circumstances in which they lived. For example, the fall of the Safavid state and its dreadful consequences for Iranian society and economy were largely due to the personality traits of Shah Sultan Hosain which combined extreme promiscuity and intemperance with common superstition, susceptibility to influence, and timidity and indecisiveness at moments of crisis. Otherwise, the state would not have fallen so swiftly and miserably in the face of rebellion by some of the poorest and most backward nomads of the far eastern provinces of the empire.

The subjoined catalogue describes a collection comprising 368 separate texts mainly in Sanskrit, which were collected by Dr. M. A. Stein and acquired at his expense chiefly at Śrīnagar during his visits to Kashmir between 1888 and 1905. Apart from texts needed by Dr. Stein for his labours, during 1888–99, on his critical edition and annotated translation of Kalhana's Rājataraṅgiṇī, numerous MSS. were purchased by him either to assist the work of fellow-scholars in Europe or on account of their philological or palæographical interest.

The enamelled Islamic dish which is in the Ferdinandeum at Innsbruck is well known to scholars of Islamic art. It is a unique and outstanding piece of work, yet, surprisingly, so far no monograph has been devoted to it. One of the earliest references to this object was made by Max van Berchem and J. Strzygowski. In 1910 it was on show at the famous Islamic exhibition in Munich. Then the dish was included in Alois Riegel's publication, which came out soon after World War I. The late L. A. Mayer mentioned it again briefly in connexion with a small glass bottle in the British Museum, which, like the dish, depicts dancing girls. Then an article by Hugo Buchtal referred to it once more. More recently the dish was described and illustrated by Sir Harry Garner.

The tribes of Upper Burma and Eastern Assam known as Kachins have, both before and after the annexation of Northern Burma, attracted a great deal of attention from ethnologists and philologists. A considerable literature has accumulated on the subject since the time Colonel Hannay, in 1846, and Dr. Anderson, in 1868, gave us the first reliable information regarding these savage and warlike hill tribes. At present they occupy a large and fertile territory extending almost from 29° North latitude to 20° 30′. They number probably about half a million, of which one hundred thousand occupy independent territory, the larger part being under British or Chinese rule.

The subject of the Sanskrit poem called the Mahábhárata is well known to be the struggle for supremacy between two kindred and rival families, those of Pándu and Kuru. The event is in all probability historically true, and the circumstances related in the poem, however blended with fiction and coloured by mythology, are in many instances likely to be substantially authentic. It is, however, Jn the episodical portions with which the poem abounds, that information of a curious and no doubt, in the main, correct description, relating to the social and political state of India, at periods considerably anterior to the Christian æra, is to be found. The information, it is true, is of a mixed character, as might be expected in a professedly poetical composition, and in a work which has very possibly been from time to time corrupted by comparatively modern interpolation. Still there is much that wears the semblance of accuracy and antiquity, as in the instances which I propose to bring to the observation of the Society.

In the July, 1895, number of this Journal I gave a description of the kingdom of Bengala (Bengal) from the pen of a Muhammadan Chinaman named Mahuan, who on account of his knowledge of Arabic was attached as Interpreter to the suite of Chêng Ho, when he made his voyages to India and other places in the Eastern seas at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Over forty years ago a number of bricks, inscribed with Buddhist sūtras, were discovered in an underground chamber at Gopālpur in the Gorakhpur district of the United Provinces by men ransacking the site for building materials. Four of these came into the possession of Dr. Hoey and Mr. Vincent Smith, who published an account of the find with a transcription of one of the bricks in Proc. ASB., 1896, July, pp. 99–103, but there is reason to believe that a number more remained in the hands of the villagers or were built into an indigo vat by the local zamindar. No further steps were taken for publication of the texts, though references to them have been made occasionally since; and the bricks themselves were lost sight of. On taking over recently at the Indian Institute in Oxford, I noticed in one of the cases of the small Museum attached to it several inscribed bricks, which on examination were found to be the missing ones, Mrs. Hoernle having presented them some fifteen years ago. They were still largely encrusted with mortar, which made the reading of many characters difficult, but Mr. Rickard of the Ashmolean Museum proved equal to removing these deposits and to rendering them as legible as on the day they were inscribed, except for certain fractures. As the contents are of considerable interest to Buddhist scholars, I publish a transcription of the unpublished portion here, and for the benefit of those interested in palæography I adjoin photographs of IIa, IIIb, and IVa; it is not necessary to reproduce them in their entirety, as the writing on all the bricks is of the same kind and the repetitions in the matter are such that the portions not illustrated contain hardly any characters of which typical specimens are not available on the plates.

The verbal form known as the active participle (= AP) is an integral part of the Mehri verbal system, functioning mainly – but not exclusively – as a future tense.1 Yet despite its frequency, recent synopses of the language have given this form very little attention. For example, in the very important sketch of the Modern South Arabian languages by Johnstone (1975), discussion of the AP is limited to less than one sentence (p. 119). In the very useful set of observations by Lonnet (1994a), the AP receives only a little more consideration, about ten lines. In the more recent outline by Simeone-Senelle (1997), the AP also gets about ten lines. All of this is in contrast to the grammar of Jahn (1905), in which the AP (or future, as Jahn calls it) is treated as a basic verbal tense and is included in all paradigm sets.2

Despite Jebe Noyan's importance to the expansion of Chinggis Khan's empire, the Mongol general remains a shadowy figure. In part this stems from the absence of any biography of Jebe in the Yuan Shi and much uncertainly surrounds when, and in what circumstances, he died. Here the argument is made that the Novgorod First Chronicle provides a description of Jebe's capture and death at the hands of the Kipchaks during the 1223 campaign which culminated with the decisive Battle of the Kalka River. The silence and ambiguity surrounding Jebe's fate in pro-Mongol sources of the thirteenth century can perhaps be explained by a taboo surrounding the disgraceful circumstances of his capture and execution.

The paper explores the implications which this identification holds for how we assess the westward campaign of Jebe and Sübe'etei (1220-1224), often perceived as a reconnaissance mission, and how the Mongol leadership viewed enemies west of the Volga in its aftermath. This, in turn, sheds light on the preparations the Mongols made for their return in force to the region in the 1230s. Finally a theory is offered for why Jebe's identification was not made previously which illustrates the challenges facing researchers of the Mongol Empire.

Seyf-el-Mulook answered him, May God (whose name be exalted!) make it [thy country] ever to be honoured by thy rule, O King! And the King Faghfoor Shah said, Nought hath brought thee hither save some affair that hath occurred to thee; and whatever thing thou desirest to obtain from my country, I will accomplish it for thee.

Most English readers may not remember the story these lines from Edward Lane's translation relate to, but the sub-Biblical language in which the exotically named characters converse should be enough to site the story of Sayf al-Mulūk in the magically Oriental world of the Thousand and One Nights as it was conceived in the Victorian imagination.