Islām, notwithstanding its immediate and overwhelming triumph, was unable to eradicate the paganism which had preceded it. In pagan Arabia the jinn and spirit world could be conjured by music, and even in ʻAbbāsid times such famous musicians as Ibrāhīm al-Mauṣilī of Baghdad and Ziryāb of Cordova claimed to derive some of their music from the jinn and even shaiṭān himself. This conceit is understandable. The voice of the jinn was termed ʻazf, and when we know this, we can appreciate the occult significance of the word ʻazīf or miʻzaf for a harp-like instrument. We read in the ʻIqd al-Farīd (tenth century) that David the Prophet played a miʻzaf when he wanted to gather the jinn unto himself. Even to-day the Arabic name for an instrumentalist is ʻazzāf.

Yi, a term denoting one of the primary concepts of Confucian ethics, has proven to be one of the most difficult terms to interpret and translate. It has been rendered as ‘righteousness’, ‘rightness’, ‘right conduct’, ‘propriety’, ‘justice’, ‘morality’, ‘duty’, ‘sense of duty’, ‘obligation’, and so forth. The aim of this article is to open new avenues to discuss the original and extended meanings of yi by the means of paleographic, archaeological, and socio-cultural studies.

The recent recovery of the Revelation of St. Peter has again attracted attention to this branch of apocalyptic literature. Speculation has been rife as to the sources of that Revelation.

I intend publishing now, for the first time in English garb, the oldest extant Revelations which must have served as source to that of Peter, then to that of Paul, Ezra, Abraham, Isaiah, Virgin Mary, St. Macarius, and the host of others down to Dante and St. Patrick.

Dear Mr. Palmer,—The manuscripts, of which you have been good enough to draw up the list, which I trust the Asiatic Society will print, came to us at the end of last century. The donor, Edward Ephraim Pote, was a son of Mr. Pote, of Eton, and was elected a scholar of this College in 1768. He took his degree in 1773, and seems to have entered the Civil Service of the East India Company very soon after that.

The association of Alexander the Great with the Mongols begins with the identification of the latter with the peoples of Gog and Magog. The evolution of this legend, which has its origin in the Book of Genesis, is curious in the extreme. In Genesis Magog is mentioned as one of the sons of Japhet, his name occurring between those of Gomer and Madai. Since Madai is clearly intended as the eponym of the Medes and Gomer has been located in Cappadocia and Phrygia it has been plausibly suggested that Magog at this stage corresponded to the territory in between, i.e. the region immediately south of the Caucasus in Eastern and Northern Armenia. In Ezekiel we hear for the first time of Gog “of the land of Magog”, who will come from his place out of the uttermost parts of the north, he and many peoples with him, “all of them riding on horses, a great company and a mighty army.” It will be seen that the “land of Magog” can no longer be located south of the Caucasus, and indeed Ezekiel's prophecy of the invasion of Gog has been interpreted as an echo of the invasions of the Cimmerians, who came southwards from the steppes through the Darial pass towards the end of the eighth century B.C.; or more probably of the invasion of the Scythians which took place in the following century by way of Darband. Finally we are told in Revelation that “when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall come forth to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea”.

Nāropā, with Padmasambhava, Mi, la ras pa, and Tsoṅ k'a pa, is one of the most famous Buddhist teachers in Tibet. He may certainly be considered as one of the most conspicuous factors of Tibetan Buddhism, since he was the spiritual father of Marpa, who is acknowledged as the guru of Milaraspa and the founder of the bKa’ rgyud pa sect. This school later split up into several sub-sects, widely spread even now in Tibet, and through Karma Bakshi allied itself with the rÑiṅ ma pas; but its first teacher or ādiguru is said to have been rDo rje ạc'aṅ, or Vajradhara, whose doctrines were secreṭly transmitted to Tilopā, and by this siddha to Nāropā, who was to exercise through his pupil a great spiritual influence all over Tibet.

Despite the existence of some general overviews, the institution of the Mongol tribunals has not been studied in a satisfactory way. A great deal of details are unclear and the functioning of the whole legal procedure is shrouded in obscurity. The present paper makes an attempt to elucidate an aspect of the historical development of this Turco-Mongolian institution in Ilkhanid Iran, one of the Chingisid uluses, namely what were the preconditions and prescriptions of being appointed to the rank of a Mongol judge? The focal point will be the three charters of appointment (or yarlik samples) presented by Muḥammad ibn Hindūshāh Nakhchivānī (ca. 679/1280 – after 768/1366), in his Dastūr al-kātib fī tacyīn al-marātib (“Guidelines of the Secretary for Defining the Echelons”), a manual of Ilkhanid and Jalayirid administration, accomplished in the 1360s.

These drawings were first brought to notice by the late Mr. Archibald Carlleyle and myself, and were discovered by us independently of each other in 1880, he working in Rewah and Mirzāpur and I in Banda. I took up the subject from the anthropological and zoological side entirely, Mr. Carlleyle from the antiquarian or philological side. He evidently had made some important discoveries of ancient records, but, as he desired to work them himself, he imparted no information on either the nature or the localities of his discoveries, and his knowledge has died with him. The first scientific paper on the drawings was by myself published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1883, and was entitled “On the recent existence of Rhinoceros Indicus in the North-West Provinces, and a description of an archaic rock painting from Mirzapur, representing the hunting of this animal” (Journ., lii, part 2, 1883, pp. 56 to 64, with two plates). This article excited much interest in Europe, and great things were expected from the discovery. I regret that I have no copy of the paper. A short paragraph is also devoted to the subject in the Gazetteer of Mirzāpur. There is a further paper in the Proc. Asiatic Society, Bengal, for 1884, on the durability of haematite drawings on sandstone rocks, by myself also. Shortly afterwards Mr. A. M. Markham, C.S., noticed a few words written in this pigment in ancient characters at Chachaie Koond, or the Falls of the Tons in Rewah.

From the inception of its military campaign into Central Asia via the Gansu corridor, the Tang dynasty had to ensure the shipment of extensive military supplies to support the activities of its occupying armies north and south of the Tianshan Mountains. Since the government paid soldiers’ salaries and bought supplies using silk, the timely delivery of silk from central China was critical. Most of the silk was collected in the central provinces under the zuyongdiao 租庸調 tax system, whether as stipulated payments of tax textiles or cloth-paid-in-place-of-annual-corvée tax. All this silk had to be shipped to the Western Regions. This article examines where this silk was made, how it was shipped to the north-west and how the system changed over time.

This article establishes that the tümens which took part in Jebe and Sübedei's Raid to Europe were not merely conducting a reconnaissance mission, as it is usually described. The campaign was part of Chinggis Khan's conquering strategy aimed at the complete subjugation of the Kipchak and the conquest of the steppe territories not only in Asia but also in Europe. The task of implementing this strategic plan was given to Prince Jochi as the ruler of the western ulus of the Mongol Empire. Jochi was to bring his main military force to Europe while Sübedei, together with Jebe, advanced with their corps to defeat the Kipchak. The Grand Prince of Kiev and other princes of Southern Rus’, being allies and relatives of the Kipchak rulers, gave them military support. Therefore, the Mongols retaliated against the Rus’. After defeating the allied Rus’ and Kipchak forces at the Kalka River, the Mongols succeeded in crossing the Dnieper and went as far as Kiev. However, the refusal of Jochi to bring his main forces to assist the Mongol vanguard forces nullified the achievements and victories of Jebe and Sübedei. Jochi's reluctance to participate in the Western Campaign of 1221–23 was related to his conflicts with his younger brothers and Chinggis Khan himself, which, in its turn, brought about Jochi's loss of his former status in the empire, a severe illness and untimely death. As a result, Chinggis Khan had to reconsider his general conquest strategy; the conquest of Kipchak and Rus’ was postponed for one and a half decades.

This article studies the political and symbolic importance of elephants for medieval Muslim kingship in South Asia. Specifically, the incorporation of the elephant by the Ghaznavid dynasty led to a crisis of sovereignty for early Muslim kings of South Asia. This was because while the elephant stood for divinity and sovereignty among Hindus, it represented satanic pride among Muslims. The famous Koranic chapter of “the elephant”, tells the story of a king Abraha who had tried to destroy the House of God in Arabia (the Ka‘ba) with elephants, but it was said that God pelted his army to death by small pebbles thrown by birds. This meant that any Indo-Muslim ruler that posed as an elephant-master could appear as the destroyer of the house of God in the eyes of his Muslim subjects. In order to compensate for this crisis, early Indo-Muslim rulers employed a number of tactics, which included trying to present themselves as the opposite, i.e. destroyer of pagan temples for which they are infamous today. But perhaps more significantly, the continued symbolic (and not just practical) use of the elephant, in spite of its problematic association, shows that what is often today understood as an alien institution imposed upon a majority non-Muslim population, was actually the opposite: that is, it was mainly a project equally pitched to non-Muslim South Asians with a compensatory nudge toward Muslims.

Yāska's Nirukta (ca. fifth-third century bce), the seminal text of the Sanskritic discipline of nirvacana or ‘etymology’, is one of the most important yet least studied late Vedic texts. Particularly little attention has been paid to Nirukta Chapter 7. This chapter outlines Yāska's views on Vedic deities and articulates the hermeneutic principles whereby they are classified and defined. It plays a crucial, yet underappreciated, role in the history of ancient India's theological and hermeneutical speculations. The absence of an accessible English translation, which tackles the text's many conceptual and linguistic complexities, is the main reason why Nirukta Chapter 7 has not received the attention it deserves. We offer the first complete annotated English translation in a century. A comprehensive introduction clarifies the structure and rationale of Chapter 7 and elucidates the salient features of Yāska's theology.

The Anthology is a manuscript furnished by Dr. Sa'iīd, of Sina, to the British Museum, numbered Or. 6444; the writer is working from a photographic reproduction made for him in 1908 by order of Mr. A. G. Ellis.

The distance from the Oriental Department of the British Museum and absence of sufficient books of reference—this article is being written in Sulaimania, South Kurdistan—is a handicap on adequate comparison of words.

Recognising the parallelism between the conjugation of a verb such as √lug ‘pour’ (pres. ldug, past blugs, fut. blug, imp. lhugs ‘pour’ and a verb such as √kru ‘wash’ (ḥkhrud, bkrus, bkru, khrus), Li Fang-Kuei suggests deriving the present stem ldug from a reconstruction *ḥlug (1933: 149). In this sub-case of Conrady's law, the change of *ḥl to ld- may be analyzed into the following changes: *ḥl > *ḥdl > *ḥld > ld (cf. Conrady 1896: 59, Li 1933: 149, Hill 2011: 446–447, Hill 2013: 193–195). This sound change obscures the synchronic relationship between verb forms beginning with ld- and other present formations, and the resultant synchronic opacity gives rise to analogical forms (e.g. the alternate present blug). Consequently, the dictionaries present a certain level of confusion about the paradigms of lateral initial verbs.

After the Fourth Mysore War, when the British were dismantling Tipu Sultan's establishment, the East India Company unexpectedly took charge of 601 women who resided permanently inside Srirangapatnam Palace. Along with Tipu's sons, they were moved 200 miles east, to Vellore Fort, in the Company-controlled territory of Madras Presidency. Documentation about these court women held in colonial archives describes moments when they behaved in unexpectedly difficult ways. Because historians have traditionally cast the women of Tipu Sultan's court as voiceless victims, their actions, as described in these colonial sources, have been overlooked. When examined, the descriptions show that they were using the domestic powers granted to them under Tipu Sultan's establishment to influence their treatment by the East India Company. By placing these accounts alongside the broader context of the Company's military history, it becomes apparent that the women of Tipu Sultan's female entourage fomented the events that led to the Vellore Mutiny of 1806.

This article investigates the history of the Mongol period as seen from the provinces, looking not only through the historian's lens of written documents but also through the art historian's gaze on art and architecture. It focuses on the town of Warāmīn and its multiple shrines and shows how buildings and their furnishings, notable the extensive revetment in signed and dated lustre tiles, can be rich sources for writing history.

The Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC), which was mainly controlled by British residents in the treaty port of Shanghai, and protected by the British Foreign Office, came under serious challenge from the Guomindang (GMD) (the rising Nationalist Party of China) from 1927 onwards. The Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP)—an imperial police force with powers to arrest, prosecute and detain—was forced to collaborate with the GMD, and practice unlawful arrest, extradition and re-indoctrination of Communist suspects and convicts. This resulted in the erosion of state powers and the management of prisons. This article argues that the dismantling of British colonialism began to take place in Shanghai during the inter-war period at the expense of some English legal conventions, as demonstrated by SMP violations of existing legal practices and humanitarian commitments. Second, it also suggests that English judicial conventions had an unintended impact on some Chinese civilians, who were keen to safeguard their rights during their detention and trial in and beyond the Shanghai Legation. This article, therefore, offers a new periodisation of British decolonisation and a re-examination of colonial legacy in East Asia.

This article discusses a number of nineteenth century playing boards for the Sufi form of the traditional Indian board game of gyān caupar̩ (the Chaupar of Gnosis), from which modern Snakes and Ladders derives. Usually comprising 100 squares inscribed in Persian, the playing area conducts the players hazardously upward from lower spiritual states to the final goal of heaven, according to the throw of dice and sudden demotions or promotions through snakes or ladders. Most surviving examples are held in British collections, including that of the Royal Asiatic Society. Detailed attention is given to a unique, expanded version of the standard Sufi board which came to light a few years ago. Innovative and elaborate in its structure, method of play and nomenclature, it seems however to have been a late and short-lived experiment.

The interpretation of history is often a complex task. All too often, sources are misinterpreted because of historians’ preconceptions. This article takes issue with one such misinterpretation, the anachronistic view that the Strait of Melaka has been the principal sea route connecting the Indian Ocean with the South China Sea throughout most of recorded history. Beginning at a period when an overland journey across the Malay Peninsula was an essential link in the routes connecting South, Southeast and East Asia, it is suggested that the first entirely maritime itinerary to be used regularly passed through the Sunda Strait. Changes in itineraries affected the fortunes of the states of Southeast Asia, particularly of Funan and Srivijaya.