In the last century the Vedic pantheon served as the best illustration of the theory that the gods of primitive and archaic religions were personifications of natural phenomena. The gods of the Vedas were seen as more recognisably such than, for example, the Greek gods, who had acquired more elaborate anthropomorphic features through Homer's poetic skill, so that their supposed natuie-substratum was hardly or not at all detectable. In India the matter seemed clear. Thus Oldenberg believed that the Vedic gods were predominantly deified Naturwesen, agents behind the great happenings and processes of nature. Moreover, he maintained that different gods in the Vedas had reached different stages of anthropomorphism and independence from their nature basis and he made much of the job of determining this degree in individual cases.

This contribution proposes an interpretation of a newly attested divine title of the ancient Arabian deity Ruḍaw, mkśd ‘(the one) from Chaldea’. It explores what sense this title could have had and its implications on our understanding of Ruḍaw's position in the ancient Arabian pantheon, especially in relation to Allāt. It also examines mentions of Ruḍaw in Islamic-period narrative sources and concludes that his cult likely disappeared by Islamic times; tales of the destruction of his cult site reflect the use of the ‘smashing idols’ topos to narrativize the passage from pre-Islam to Islam.

Sandwich glass is the product of a technique practised from antiquity. Essentially, decoration is achieved by laying gold to a glass surface, patterning this gold in various ways, and then adding a second layer of glass to encapsulate the gold pattern. The technique seems to have been employed only rarely by craftsmen in Islamic areas; certainly surviving examples are rare.

“In the beginning was the Word” is a truth the sublimity of which grows upon us the more we ponder it. And, indeed, the common consciousness of mankind has ascribed to the Logos the supreme act of Creation. Alike in India, China, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, the world is said to exist as the audible thought of the Deity. Moreover, the creative power of the divine Voice is intimately associated with the possession of the sacred Name.

These inscriptions were found among the rubbish surrounding the Great Temple at Buddha-Gayâ; this rubbish had accumulated during the progress of the alterations and improvements carried out by the Burmese deputation who visited the Temple in 1877. Quoting from p. 65 of Dr. Rajendralála Mitra's work on Buddha Gayâ. we learn “that certain Burmese gentlemen, deputed by his Majesty the King of Burmah, arrived at Buddha Gayâ, at the beginning of 1877, and with the sanction of the Mahant, who is the present owner of the Great Temple and the surrounding ground, carried on demolitions and excavations round the temple, which in a manner swept away most of the old land-marks. The remains of the vaulted gateway in front of the temple had been completely demolished and the place cleared out and levelled. The stone pavilion over the Buddhapad had been dismantled and its materials cast aside on a rubbish mound at a distance. The granite plinth beside it had been removed. The sites of the chambers brought to light by Major Mead had been cleared out. The drain-pipe and gargoyle which marked the level of the granite pavement had been destroyed. The foundations of the old buildings noticed by Hiouen Thsang around the Great Temple had been excavated for bricks and filled up with rubbish. The revetment wall round the sacred Bodhi tree had been rebuilt on a different foundation on the West.

The extract from the Narrative of his Travels by Ebu ‘Abdu-’llāh Muhammed of Tangier, commonly called Ibnu Baṭūṭa, an English translation of which appears below, relates to his experiences in the province of Sindh, and touches on matters of local history and geography which may interest some readers, and be thought deserving of such elucidation as may be possible. These matters are noticed in the remarks subjoined to the extract, a form of comment which I have thought preferable to the alternative of interrupting the narrative by frequent and copious footnotes.

Among the ancient monuments of India, few are of more interest than the tōps or stūpas at Sāñchi - Kānākheḍā, about 5½ miles south-west from Bhelsā or Bhilsā, in the Gwāliar territory, and some 20 miles north-east of the capital of the Bhopāl State. There is now a railway station close to the spot, and most of the trains stop there. The various notices of the remains here are scattered in numerous publications, and some notice of them may perhaps be usefully combined with the history of the stūpas since their discovery.

Under the above Arabic title there has just appeared in St. Petersburg a Festschrift to Baron Victor Rosen, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his professional activity. It contains articles extending over a wide range of subjects by eleven of his former pupils, who are most of them at present professors or lecturers at the University of St. Petersburg.

The nature of Akbar's arrangements for the assessment of the land revenue in the newly acquired province of Bengal is a matter of some historical importance. It concerns the eighteenth century as well as the sixteenth, for the controversies which marked the early years of British rule found common ground in the revenue roll attributed to the year 1582; and, now that the famous Fifth Report of the Select Committee of 1812 is being studied so widely in India, it is desirable to know just what Todar Mal did, and just where Grant and Shore took erroneous views regarding the nature of his action.

The interest which attaches to Kanishka is manifold. Primarily it is Buddhist. Kanishka convoked the fourth great Buddhist Council, the Council held in Kashmir, which gave consistency and official sanction to the doctrines of Northern Buddhism and led to its adoption by the Yue-che, who in their turn became ardent propagators of the faith, diffusing its light among the nomads of Central Asia and introducing it to the knowledge of the cultured Chinese. The Buddhists in the north-western corner of the Panjāb preserved the memory of their royal patron; they adorned his memory with miracle and legend; they placed him by the side of Aśoka, the first great foster-father of their religion; and vague reminiscences of Kanishka lingered in this region to the time of the learned Alberūnī and of Kalhaṇa, author of the metrical Chronicles of Kashmir.

Muḥammad I, the founder of the Naṣrid Sultanate in 629/1232, originated the first dynasty, al–dawla al–ghālibiyya al-nasriyya, as it has been called in modern times from his laqab, al-ghālib bi-llāh (= “the victor through Allāh”). He was succeeded by his son Muḥammad II al-Faqīh and grandsons Muḥammad III al-Makhlū‘ (= “the Dethroned”) and Abū I-Juyūsh Naṣr, with whom the direct masculine line of the al-Aḥmares (= “the Reds”) ended. Naṣr was dethroned by his nephew Ismā‘īl I, the son of their paternal sister Fāṭima and her husband the ra‘īs of Málaga, Abū Sa‘īd Faraj, who was also a member of the royal family.

I shall deal here with the sultans of the second dynasty up to the death of Muḥammad V, and will concentrate on its three main figures: Ismā‘īl I, his second son YūsufI and grandson Muḥammad V, and deal only briefly with Muḥammad IV - the firstborn son of Ismā‘īl I – and Muḥammad VI el Bermejo (the Redhead), a relative and brother-in-law of Ismā‘īl II. However, we should first establish the identity and origins of Ismā‘īl I‘s father, to understand why he did not become the first sultan of the new dynasty.