In the number of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal last received, No. III., of 1858, is a short article by Bapu Deva Shastri, Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at the Government College of Benares, in which he has undertaken to show, that Bháskaráchárya, an astronomer who flourished at Ujjayin in the twelfth century, was fully acquainted with the principle of the Differential Calculus, one of the most important discoveries of the last century in Europe.

In tracing back the orign of nations beyond the period embraced by the special histories of Greece and Rome, we reach the interval in universal history, during which four great nations are known to have floursihed, and to have extended their relations, political, millitary, or commercial, over the various regions of the globe. These are the races of India, China, Phœnicia, and Egypt. The two latter have long ceased to exist as distinct nations; or rather have been absorbed in other nationalities; whilst the two former, beside constituting the most numerous portion of the human race, have continued their ethnical existence to the present time. That other races of men inhabited the countries which have since been occupied and peopled by these races anterior to them may be considered certain; but no data exist from which it can be inferred that any considerable monarchy, or empire, was ever founded in any of these countries, prior to the clear, national establishment of those races, respectively, in India, and Egypt. The three former are the nations of Asia, who, whether by the antiquity of the civilization attributed to them, or the permanent influence they have exerted in the history of mankind, must be regarded by modern writers as the earliest races that have established themselves as great nations, whose peculiar languages and institutions mark them as the most distinct divisions of the human species, from whose records all researches in general history and ethnology must commence. Of the Chinese and the Phoenicians I shall have as little to remark as of the Egyptians.

The name Ilqāy appears on small monetary weights for 1251 and 1252 in Cairo at the beginning of Mamlūk rule. This person was a high official in the treasury, responsible for regulating monetary transactions. However, the name is not Arabic but Mongolian—and at this point, the Mamlūks and Mongols were contesting the Middle East. This article traces the meaning of the unique name and its appearance in Mongol history. It then discusses the hypothetical way in which Ilqāy developed Mongol coinage in his early career. The violent purges of the Mongol civil war may have forced him to escape and enter Egypt's financial system. This biography is hypothetical since there is no literary evidence for mint activity and personnel at this time. Nevertheless, the unusual name and timing create a mystery that invites special consideration.

In 1789 James Augustus Grant wrote that he had resided for several years in Benares as a free merchant under the protection of the East India Company. He evidently specialized on trade with the Gorakhpur district of Oudh. “I have for some time past and by the force of unremitting exertion and a great expense been enabled to establish factories in Gorruckpoor, etc., in the [Nawab's] Dominions for the manufacture of cloths, sugar, opium, etc., and I effected these establishments without any interest or influence except that which became the result of my own industry.” He had incurred considerable initial losses and expenses, chiefly in propitiating various Indian functionaries and landholders and especially the Nawab's land-revenue officers (amils). The amils seem mostly to have farmed the privilege of collecting the land-revenue on short leases and to have been constantly changing, a fact which made all business concerns highly precarious.

[The text of the Śikshā-patrī of the modern Vaishṇava Sect, called Svāmi-Nārāyaṇa, was lithographed in Samvat 1928 (A.D. 1872) by order of the Heads of the Sect. It has a Gujarātī Commentary by Nityānanda-muni. So far as I know, this is the only version of the text that has yet appeared. It was given to me by the Wartāl Māharāja on the occasion of my first visit to Wartāl in 1875. It is full of mistakes, and in preparing the following edition of the text I have taken as my guide the far more accurate manuscript and Sanskṛit commentary written by Paṇḍit Śatānanda-muni, and given to me by the Mahārāja on the same occasion.]

An indescribable charm surrounds the early poetry of the Arabs. Dwelling in the wonderful creations of their genius with these ancient poets, you live, as it were, a new life. Cities, gardens, villages, the trace of even fields, left far out of sight, you get away into the free atmosphere of the desert; and, the trammels and conventionalities of settled society cast aside, you roam with the poet over the varied domain of Nature in all its freshness, artlessness, and freedom.

In the various discussions over the date of the Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra no notice appears to have been taken so far of the deductions that can be drawn from Buddhist sources. This is all the more remarkable in that the exact dating of the Chinese translations enables us to determine the lower limits for the dates of a number of Buddhist works, so that we thus have fixed points from which to start. Here I propose to consider the relationship in date of the Arthaśāstrato the works of Aśvaghoṭa, to Āryaśūra's Jātahamālā and to the Lanhdvatdrasutra.

This was given some years ago to the University Library at Cambridge by Sir Herbert Thompson, who bought it with other objects from a dealer in London. I have to thank the Librarian for his kind permission to publish it.

Placing Tipu Sultan of Mysore's personal dream register in its textual and historical contexts reveals an internal logic to its structure and content that scholars have not previously recognised. An analysis of the manuscript as a whole suggests that it was compiled no earlier than 1795, as part of a range of strategies adopted by Tipu to ameliorate the position in which he found himself in the late 1790s. Isolated by his regional contemporaries and under increasing pressure from the British, he drew on a range of divinatory practices in an attempt to understand, and perhaps even influence, the outcome of events.

Colonial and postcolonial historians writing in English relied upon an emancipated slave's eighteenth-century Persian text, Tahmās Nāma, to construct the history of the Punjab in the same period. In this process, they have mistranslated the text and the genre. Rather than reading Tahmās Nāma as factual history or as a moral text of refinement, this article argues that if we return to the original account, in Persian, we see that the text is primarily auto/biographical. While this auto/biography does provide some insight into eighteenth-century political history of the Punjab and Mughal Hindustan, it—more importantly—sheds light on the ethnic, religious, social, economic and gendered lives of the author, Miskin, and the people whom he includes in his narrative. These intersecting and overlapping identities have been erased, flattened or misrepresented in translations of the text. Based on a re-reading of the auto/biography in its original language, this article considers how identity and slavery—conceptual categories of the present that are elided in the mistranslations—function in the text, and how those categories were understood, negotiated and leveraged during the eighteenth century.

This article examines how the introduction of western European crusaders and settlers to northern Syria from 490/1097 onwards impacted upon two important mechanisms of regional diplomacy; the ransom of prominent political prisoners and tributary relationships. Discussion begins with a comparison of the capture and ransom of high-ranking captives in northern Syria between 442-522/1050-1128, where it is argued that the establishment of the crusader states led to an increase in both the rate at which prisoners of elite status were ransomed and the financial sums involved in these interactions. This is followed by a reassessment of the various peace treaties, tributary arrangements and condominia or munāṣafa agreements concluded between the rulers of Antioch and Aleppo during the late fifth/eleventh and early sixth/twelfth centuries. Ultimately, this article seeks to place key features of northern Syrian diplomacy from the early crusading period within the context of regional norms in the decades preceding the crusaders’ arrival.

At the start of the millennium Council reviewed medals and prizes and decided to discontinue the Gold Medal (which had not in any case been awarded for some time) and establish in its place the Society's Award. This Award will be made every two or three years in recognition of outstanding scholarship in Asian studies. Having considered a number of tenders, Council commissioned Ms Danuta Solowiej-Wedderburn to design and cast a medal bearing versions of two of the original Daniell images: the elephant and howdah on one side and the banyan-tree on the other (see John Hansman, “The Emblems, Medals and Medallists of the Royal Asiatic Society”, JRAS [1984 Part 1], pp. 99–119. Council approved the nomination of Mr John M. Gullick, who was recommended by a search committee (chaired by the Director) to be the first recipient of the RAS Award. On 10 January 2002 the President presented the RAS Award for 2001 to Mr Gullick who replied with a lecture, “An Indian official in Singapore: Governor Cavanagh (1859–1867)”.

Both interdenominational co-operation and denominational competition featured in the Protestant missionary literary enterprise in nineteenth-century China. The interdenominational Religious Tract Society in London became the most vital link between the missionary translators, printing presses and target audiences in the production, publication and distribution of Christian tracts. Ideally, interdenominational missions would pool resources and promote cooperation among missionaries with different denominational affiliations. Doctrinal disputes, however, seem to have been inevitable among them in the everyday operation of missions. The first tract committee established in China, the Shanghai Tract Committee in the 1840s is a case in point. Unequal denominational representation resulted in heated doctrinal controversies and the resignation of a Committee member over the publication of a problematic tract in Chinese.

This is the story of how G. A. Naqvi (Indian Police, 1926) of the United Province (UP) was affected by the events of 1947–1948 in British and independent India and Pakistan and had to become what he did not wish to be: a private citizen in Pakistan. It shows how he, like so many others, had to become reconciled to the idea of British India breaking-up into independent India and Pakistan. This process changed forever the relationship between institutions of the Indian State and individual lives of Indian Muslims; the ‘long’ Partition of British India prompted new questions of legitimacy, citizenship and sovereignty, while producing “displacement, disruption and disappointment”. This was especially so in the so-called ‘Muslim-minority provinces’, among which the UP held the pre-eminent position and to which Naqvi belonged. After 21 ½ years of service, Naqvi found himself unwanted in both India and Pakistan, in a time of deepening communal divide, suspicion and hostility. A much sought-after officer during the Second World War, how was he to know that over 1947–1948, not one of the four governments to which he was and/or could be affiliated with would want to have anything to do with him.