Khargi is spoken on the island of Kharg in the Persian Gulf. A member of the Southwest branch of the Iranian languages, Khargi is related to the languages spoken in the province of Fārs and along the coastal line down to the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting extensive maritime contact, yet does not lend itself to any of the known subgroups of the family. As Khargi remains largely obscure, this article offers a morphosyntax and lexical analysis based on published texts and those collected by the author. It investigates the linguistic position of Khargi based on comparative-historical phonology as well as areal features, with a look at cross-linguistic influence in the situation of language contact. By contrasting linguistic findings with details of history and economy, an attempt is made to date the original and later human settlements on the island.1

A preceding essay on Indian philosophy contained a succinct account of the Carma-mímánsá. The present one will be devoted to the Brahma-mímánsá; which, as the complement of the former, is termed uttara, later, contrasted with púrva, prior, being the investigation of proof deducible from the védas in regard to theology, as the other is in regard to works and their merit. The two together, then, comprise the complete system of interpretation of the precepts and doctrine of the védas, both practical and theological. They are parts of one whole. The later mímánsá is supplementary to the prior, and is expressly affirmed to be so: but, differing on many important points, though agreeing on others, they are essentially distinct in a religious as in a philosophical view.

In 1972 Fr Charles Coüasnon, O.P., gave the Schweich Lectures to the British Academy on this subject. As consultant architect to the restoration work he seemed well qualified to do so. But work continued until 1980, and it was not until 1982 that Fr Virgilio Corbo, O.F.M., published a definitive account of the work, Il Santo Sepolcro di Gerusalemme, in three handsome volumes. I did not succeed in obtaining a copy until 1984. Thus it was not surprising that Canon Ronald Brownrigg's Come, See the Place: the ideal companion for all travellers to the Holy Land, 1985, still treats Fr Couasnon as having had the last word, and prints plans some of which are erroneous. Only since then has an article in Le Monde de la Bible, Mars-Avril, Paris, 1984, no.33, in a number devoted entirely to the Holy Sepulchre, by Fr Florentino Dfez Fernandez, O.S.A.,3 reached me, describing in a summary form his excavations for the Greek Orthodox Community on the site of Golgotha, and for the Armenian Community behind the Crusader Chapel of St Helena. A definitive account of his work is eagerly awaited, for his work adds to our knowledge and corrects some previous misconceptions of the chronology of the site.

The parchment fragment reproduced on Plate I was acquired some twenty years since by the British Museum, where it is numbered Or. 6201 C (1). It lay among a large quantity of Coptic papyrus and parchment MSS., the dialect, scripts, and incidental names of which confirm the seller's statement that all were bought together at Ashmunain. The ages of these manuscripts vary greatly; some of the parchment uncials should belong to the 5th or 6th century, others and some of the papyri to the 9th or 10th. The large majority of the latter are, however, of the 7th or 8th century. Obviously, from such facts none but the vaguest conclusions can be drawn.

A Student of Indian History is often surprised to find that what he has been accustomed to look upon from boyhood as sheet anchors of Indian Chronology prove, on closer scrutiny, to be very far from being so. The year 322–321 B.C. for the accession of Candragupta Mauryya is one of such dates.

The first five objects described in this note are the property of Squadron-Leader M. Blaymires, R.A.F., and are at present on loan to the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery. I am much indebted to Squadron-Leader Blaymires for permission to publish them, and to Mr. Oswald, Keeper of Archaeology and Local History in the Museum, for the facilities which he has afforded me of examining them.

The religion of the Hindus of the Dekkan seems to me to consist of four constituent parts; 1st. Pure Brahmanism, as contained in the Vedas and Puranas; 2nd. An ante-Brahmanical worship, consisting in the adoration of painted stones, which are not acknowledged as objects of worship by the Brahmans, but considered as the representatives of demons; 3d. Buddhism, or that modification of it which subsists among the Jains; and under which heads falls the worship of the Pandharpur Vitthoba. 4. A local superstition based on Brahmanism, and consisting of the worship of remarkable persons who have arisen in the Maratha country in times comparatively modern. It is to these modern local deities that I now solicit attention.

The Mānāvuḷu - sandesaya, or in Pali Mahānāgakula - sandesa, which to-day first reaches the Western reader, is a little Pali poem of somewhat singular character. It is in the form of a poetical epistle, in the style of high kāvya. It is dated from Mahānāgakula (Mānāvuḷu), a city of Ceylon. After long and occasionally complicated panegyrics upon this city, a local Buddhist monastery, and the mahāthera Nāgasena residing in the latter, it proceeds to describe in similar strains the city of Arimaddanapura (Pugāma, the modern Pagan), the emperor Siri-Dhammarāja who bears rule therein, a monastery built by the latter near his capital, and a distinguished mahāthera named Kassapa - Saṅgha - rakkhita who dwells there. Then follows an address from Nāgasena to Kassapa, in which Nāgasena mentions that he has received a letter from Kassapa through a minister Ñāṇa, apparently containing a request. The poem here practically comes to an end. Five verses follow, containing greetings to a certain Sāriputta and an exhortation to reform the Church in Pagan as it had been reformed in Ceylon by Parākrama-bāhu; but as these verses are in part grossly corrupt, as they are singularly feeble and debased in style, and as they are ignored by the Sinhalese translator of the rest of the poem, we are justified in regarding them with suspicion. Either they are altogether spurious, or they are a rough draft which the poet never worked out. The poem is thus a mere fragment.

In a previous article in this journal the writer gave an account of the forming in the Library of the University College, Ibadan, of a collection of manuscripts representative of the indigenous Arabic literature of the Western Sudan, and from this collection and other sources compiled a list of the Arabic writings of Shehu Usumanu ḍan Fodio, the Reformer, founder of the Fulani empire. From the same sources it has been possible to list by title most of the Arabic writings of Usumanu's brother, Waziri Abdullahi ḍan Fodio.

The astronomical theory of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) had similar difficulties in winning recognition and acceptance by the contemporary astronomers in China as it had in Europe. The conflict of the traditional astronomies of both cultures, the contrast between the cosmologico-philosophical ideas established during many centuries and the new theory of the solar system, all that was a basis not only for scientific but also for religious disagreement. The conservative attitude of the Church, rigorously interpreted to the disadvantage of the Copernican theory, went with the Christian missionaries to China.

The Fárs-Námeh-i-Náṣirí (lith. Tihrán 1313/1895–6) contains much valuable information regarding the various nomad tribes of the province.

“The tendencies of Apabhraṃśa in phonetics and grammar help to bridge the gap between typical Prakrit and the modern languages.” A. Woolner expressed this view in 1928 when comparatively few Apabhraṃśa texts had been published and the remarkable continuity of the Indo-Aryan languages was accepted as a fact. Since then their general pattern of development, which appeared with simple clarity to Woolner, has often been obscured by the wealth of linguistic material of the Middle Indo-Aryan period that has come to light.