The story of Ráma is one that has fascinated all generations of Hindus, and is full of interest for us. Apart, however, from its charm as a story, it presents a picture of ancient India, which is in many respects unique, and suggests perplexing questions of history, mythology, social life, topography, etc. Many of those questions permit of endless debate and little solid result, for there is no firm ground to rest upon, but the geographical questions are in a better position. India has been surveyed most accurately and completely, and we know that what it is now, it was in ancient times, except that changes have occurred in the courses of some rivers in the plains of North India; and these changes may often be detected. There is plenty of the fabulous in Hindu geography, but it is confined, as a rule, to outside lands, and the allusions to purely Indian topography are generally sober. The main features of the country were adequately known in very early times. The Aryans were well acquainted with all North India as far as the confines of Bengal proper, and the chief mountains and rivers of South India were known. Wars and caravans (of which we have a graphic instance in the story of Nala), helped greatly in opening out new territories as in all lands and ages, but it was the religious ascetics who were the pioneers in discovery, and who appear to have contributed most to a knowledge of the country.

Mountbatten once said, “I sincerely hope that His Majesty's Government will support me should this eventuality arise. But I feel that if we can blot out 10,000 fanatics in the first round we may stop four hundred million people from being involved in war”.1 Despite his strong commitment and prompt responses to the communal riots, Mountbatten's inability to prevent the massacres, especially brutal and widespread in the Punjab, and in the rest of the country in general, invited criticism of his role as the last leader of British India. It is important, therefore, to analyze the dynamics of the communal violence in the Punjab and Mountbatten's response to it. This paper attempts to understand Mountbatten's reading of Punjab's communal problem and his efforts to deal with it. It also analyzes the measures he took to curb and eradicate violence which resulted from that. Hence, this study fills an important gap in our existing historical literature and helps in revising prevailing views about Mountbatten's real role in dealing with the communal riots in the Punjab.

The accompanying two plates of coins present a type which is quite new to the numismatic world, if we except two or three specimens published in the second part of Vol. I., of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, from the collection of my ingenious and indefatigable friend Colonel Tod, who has left no branch of Indian antiquities unexplored or unadorned. We are informed that he met with these coins in the whole of the district from Oujein to Cutch, as far as the Indus, and he ascribes them to the Balhara sovereigns, mentioned by the Arabian travellers of the ninth century, as translated by Renaudot, who conceives these princes to be the same as the Zamorin. In this attribution I must differ with Colonel Tod for several reasons, independent of one to which I shall now confine myself, and which is to be found in the text of the above work; viz., that the drachms coined by the Balhara princes are said to weigh one-half more than the Arab drachm, whereas the coins in question do not even reach the weight of this last.

The publication by Benveniste of the facsimiles of all Sogdian manuscripts preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Monumenta Linguarum Asiae Maioris, vol. iii, Codices Sogdiani, Copenhagen, 1940) enables us to check the correctness of Gauthiot's reading of the Vessantara Jātaka (published in JA., 1912, 163–193, 430–510). Since most people interested in Sogdian are more likely at first to try to read the texts so far unpublished than to compare the original with texts already published, it seems convenient to give a list of the comparatively few misreadings or misprints that have been noticed in Gauthiot's edition. I have also thought it useful to confirm the reading of spellings which one would have suspected to be misprints. Thirdly, there will be found a few attempts at explaining unclear words or passages. Here and there I have made use of Dr. Henning's kind permission to quote from his photographs of unpublished texts.

Every student of Vedic literature is confronted by vast details of an uncommonly complicated ritual. This ritual engrossed the major part of the religious life of a householder. Every small act promised him riches in cattle and progeny, long life and bliss in the next world. On the other hand, the slightest negligence had to be assiduously atoned for, otherwise it would lead him into misery. Thus it is that even the ropes, the brooms, and their numbers have been carefully recorded, the materials of which they were made, their size, and their functions prescribed with the same thoroughness as the crushing of the soma-juice or the coronation of the king.

In Ethiopia the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth were of crucial importance. This period witnessed the rise of King, after 1889 Emperor, Menilek, founder of the modern Ethiopian state. He it was who established the presentcapital, Addis Ababa, in 1886–7, defeated an Italian colonial army at the battle of Adwain 1896, and between 1905 and 1910 established a number of modern institutions, including the first modern bank, school, hospital, roads and railway. A notable innovator, he was well content to utilise the skills of Indians, as well as other foreigners, for themodernisation of his age-old empire.

By way of explanation, I may be permitted to say that having been for some time engaged on an inquiry into the history of the various kinds of Indian landlord tenure, not as a matter of theory, but on the basis of local facts, it became necessary to consider the origin and distribution of the tribes or clans to which the landlord classes most commonly belong. A number of notes were thus accumulated; and I thought it might be useful to put them together, much more in the hope of receiving correction, and of thus gaining information, than with the design of imparting it. It at once appears, as regards Northern India, that of the superior proprietor class when ‘Hindu,’ or at least originally Hindu, a large proportion belongs to the tribes known as ‘Rājput.’ Some of the higher families, however, now resent being so designated, and call themselves ‘Kshatriya.’ The latter name, again, is usually understood to have reference to the military and ruling caste of ancient times, and to have been comprised in two great groups known as ‘Solar’ and ‘Lunar’ respectively. It was almost inevitable to inquire whether anything could be ascertained about the (probable) real birthplace and connection of the so-called ‘Rājput’ races. So much is clear, that the names of the various clans and septs are not names which occur in any early literature; and they can but rarely be connected, even by any tradition that will stand the slightest analysis, with the Kshatriya races of the Mahābhārata and Purāṇas.

This article identifies three Khotanese fragments in the British Library – IOL Khot 25/4, IOL Khot 147/5 (H. 147 NS 106) and Khot missing frags. 3 – as Agrapradīpadhāraṇī, Mahāvaipulya-buddha-Avataṃsaka-sūtra-acintya-visaya-pradesa and Hastikakṣyā, since their parallels have been found in the Chinese canon. The first identification adds one more dhāraṇī text to the current Khotanese Buddhist corpus. The second identification provides a better understanding of the Buddhist connection between Khotan and Central China. The Chinese version was translated by a Khotanese monk named Devendraprajña. The second identification indicates that the text Hastikakṣyā has a Khotanese translation, in addition to a Sanskrit version and two Chinese translations. In sum, this article sheds new light on Buddhist literature in Khotanese and its connection with Buddhist literature in Chinese.

The dialogism of the Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), that is, the study of cultural interaction and the acknowledgment of the value or at least of the objective existence of other cultures, corresponds to one of the most significant aspects of Renaissance Humanism.1 In his turn, the Franco-Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov (born 1939) has stressed the Humanists’ quest for “cultural relativism”, as exemplified by Amerigo Vespucci, who sought to evaluate the arrival of Europeans from the standpoint of American Indians, in total contrast to the monological approach of Christopher Columbus.2 The emphasis was on a two-way process. Similar attitudes to those of Vespucci can be found in Thomas More's Utopia, in Michel de Montaigne's celebrated essay on the cannibals he encountered in Rouen, and in the Fides, religio moresque aethiopum of Damião de Góis (to mention but three prominent cases). Finally, it was the Palestinian-American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said (1935–2003) who throughout Orientalism (New York, 1978) propounded the widely accepted (though often hotly debated) theory that westerners’ analyses of eastern cultures were (and are) predominantly condescending, racist and imperialistic.

According to a tradition it was believed that a Greek, Christodulos by name, was the builder of the old Fatih mosque at Constantinople. Dr. Mehmet Aga-Oglu has explained in his two articles that the ancient belief was without foundation. In the first one he stated that a Turk, Sinan al-'Atīq by name, was the architect of the old mosque; in the second article, he said that the shape of the first, earliest construction of this mosque was in the purely Turkish style, like some of the old buildings of the Seljuq and Ottoman period in Asia Minor, and that it showed no Byzantine influence. The author's knowledge of the special literature on this subject is deep and complete. Nevertheless, our solution of the problem will be dissimilar to that of Dr. Aga-Oglu.

The political reforms made along the Gansu-Kökenuur border in the aftermath of the Lubsang-Danzin Rebellion (1723-4) represented the first significant change to that frontier to occur in centuries. Only recently have scholars begun to consider the repercussions of these changes for the powerful religious institutions of this region known as Amdo. This article utilises Chinese histories, Tibetan-language materials and Chinese-language land deeds from the eighteenth century to illustrate the drastic increase in imperial oversight and regulation of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and monastics in Amdo, especially those of the Xining River watershed. Significantly, the policies and practices directed toward these monasteries and monastics were those traditionally employed for Chinese Buddhists of the empire's interior. In addition, the reforms introduced in the Xining region helped to set the tone and precedents for how the Qing would later engage with monasteries and monastics elsewhere in Amdo.