This article is an attempt to add a mathnawī of the sixteenth century Mughal India composed by a Mughal poet and noble, Mīrzā Khanjar Beg, for his contemporary ruler, Akbar, to the vast treasure of what is known as the advice literature or Mirror for Princes. The article deals with the content, structure, and style of the mathanwī, and contextualises it in contemporary partisan politics along with an emphasis on its features as an advice book for rulers.

A part from a few brief notes of a general nature, the Marsden manuscripts were first described in any detail as a collective whole, by Father H. Hosten, S.J., in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, August, 1910 (New Series, vol. vi, No. 8, pp. 437–461) from material supplied to him by Messrs. Philipps and Beveridge. With the transfer of the most valuable portion of William Marsden's magnificent Library from King's College to the School of Oriental Studies in 1918, the Marsden MSS., both those in the British Museum and those now in the School, formed the topic of two articles in the Bulletin of the S.O.S.—the first by Sir Denison Ross in vol. ii, pp. 513–538 (1923), and the second by Father Hosten, S.J., in vol. iii, pp. 129–150 (1925). A few years later Sir Edward Maclagan, who had already published some documents in extract in the JASB. for 1896, catalogued those dealing with Northern India and Bengal amongst the Letters and Reports which he listed on pp. 369–388 of his standard work, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul (London, 1932).

Abān is one of the least known poets of the second century a.h. References to him and his poetry are in the Kitāb al-Aghānī and a few allusions to him in the Fihrist, the History of Baghdad, by al-Khaṭīb, the Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, and the Kitāb al-Bayān of al-Jāḥiẓ. But these are so inadequate and sporadic that it is impossible to form a coherent picture either of his personality or his work.

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.

During the 1850's a prolonged encounter took place in the city of Agra between a Muslim ‘ālim, Maulānā Raḥmat Alläh Kairānawī, and a German evangelical missionary, the Reverend K. G. Pfander. The early Mughal emperors had developed Agra as the capital of their expanding empire, and even after the transfer of the court in 1648 to nearby Delhi, the city had retained some importance as a centre of Muslim culture and learning. But the period of the decline of the Mughal fortunes in the 18th century culminated in the capture of Agra in 1803 by the forces of the East India Company, and the next half-century saw the transformation of the city into a key administrative centre in the expansion of British control over north India. In 1836 Agra was made the headquarters of a new unit of administration—the North-Western Provinces. Hence the phase of active religious encounter which began shortly after that date should be examined in terms of the impact which British rule, Western culture, and the Christian religion had effected on the people of the province since its annexation. Indeed in the eyes of missionary as well as ‘ālim, the generating force behind the new confrontation was a fear that the beginning of Christian preaching activity in Agra was a threat to the hold of Islam on the uneducated Muslims of the city and the surrounding region.

This question appears to have been first seriously agitated in 1826, in consequence of a reference from the Acting Political Agent in Meywar, Capt. Sutherland, to Sir C. Metcalfe, regarding certain Grasya chiefs of the Hill principalities, nominally independent, but from whom allegiance was claimed by the Oodeypore Government.

This paper investigates the nature of the British and Foreign Bible Society's (BFBS) patronage of the translation of the Chinese Union Versions (CUVs), the largest Chinese Protestant Bible translation project initiated by the western Protestant churches in the nineteenth century. Drawing on André Lefevere's concept of patronage, it delves into how the BFBS served as a controlling factor of the translation of the CUV by examining the BFBS's financial support to the translation project, conferment of honorary titles to the translators and ideological influence on the translators’ choice of Greek text as the basis for the CUVs New Testament translation.

Some twenty years ago, Professor J. N. Banerjea identified a statue on the north gopura of the Naṭarāja temple at Cidambaram (Fig. I), hitherto considered to represent Agni, as Yajñapuruṣa, a minor manifestation of Viṣṇu. No other image of Yajñapuruṣa being known at the time, this was an important identification. It served, moreover, to call attention to the iconography of an extremely unusual figure as it possessed two heads (with their necks, rather than simply a pair of faces) and was directly derived, so Banerjea claimed, from a verse in the Ṛgveda.

Among the sharpest contrasts between East and West has been their different approach to the problems of physical science. The West, aiming low, concentrated on the Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Life, conceivably attainable ends, and arrived at modern science. The East aimed higher at the grand source of power, from which all the rest would follow, and it arrived practically nowhere. This power was sought in knowledge of the Seal of the Great Name, the seal containing the Ineffable Name of God, which was believed to have given Solomon his power over the Djinn, the birds and the winds.

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.

The dating of the so-called Oracle of Hystaspes or its Vorlage has for long been a major problem among scholars. This article attempts to articulate some issues present in the Oracle and similar or identical ones known to have been used in Mthridates’ VI Eupator propaganda. This can help not only dating the Oracle itself but also solve dating problems in Persian apocalyptic texts, whose dating may be pushed backwards.

In November of 1952 I received a note from a medical doctor who some two years earlier had returned to Britain from Ch'üanchou, in the province of Fukien. A Chinese acquaintance had given him photographs of carved stones, Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian, collected by him in recent years, with the hope that someone in the West might publish them. At first glance I recognized fifteen undoubtedly Christian crosses, five with figures of angels on either side, and seven with considerable inscriptions. With the photographs came a copy of a Chinese monograph published by the collector, Wu Wen-liang, An Introduction to the Ancient Stone Carving of Ch'uan-chou. I had enlargements of the Christian set of photographs made, as published in plates II to XVII, 2 sent a set to Professor A. C. Moule, and sought his help. That help has been generously given, in translating part of Wu's monograph, in corresponding with other scholars who might decipher the inscriptions, and in assessing the significance of these new finds. It seems more suitable to recognize general indebtedness here than to refer to him by footnote at the end of every paragraph.

By the Great Ming Emperor the Karma-pa GŽu'u la'i ta'i ba'u hva waṅ ta'i śiṅ rtsi tsa'i hu'o was invited and was made chief of all the ban-dhe (Buddhist monks) in the Empire. At Liṅ-gu svi-sde (temple) he performed a great service of prayers for the Great Imperial Father, Tha'i Ju, and the loving Queen-mother in order to deliver all creatures in the world from the round of transmigration and from hell. The service began on the fifth day of the second month of the fifth year of Yun Lo. On the first day there appeared an iridescent cloud of five colours, beautiful to see, expanding and contracting in various ways, in brilliance like the Wish-granting Gem. Also, above the mchod-rten (stupa) of Relics a ray of light, like the full moon, shone out unblemished and flickering a little. Also, two bands of golden rays rose above the dwelling place of the Precious Essence of all Bygone Buddhas, the Religious King, Powerful through Great Compassion, the Karma-pa gŽu'i la'i ta'i ba'u hva waṅ zi then ta'i śin tsi tsa'i hu'o, the place where he performed the ceremony after having made the dkyil-'khor (mandala).