A few years ago Professor Balog, in the introduction to his book Coinage of the Mamlūk sultans of Egypt and Syria, suggested, on the basis of the numismatic evidence, a number of modifications to the principles of Mamlūk heraldry proposed earlier by Mayer in his book Saracenic heraldry, particularly with regard to the use of composite blazons by the sultans, and their design. Balog's main conclusions may be briefly summarized as follows:

(a) The Mamlūk sultans engraved their coats-of-arms on many of their coins. (b) Besides simple charges true composite blazons occur on fulūs, showing that not only the nobility but the sultans also had composite blazons. (c) All simple charges occurring on issues of one and the same sultan are parts of his composite blazon. (d) Coins sometimes confirm the evidence for a sultan's blazon provided by other objects, and sometimes contradict it; in the latter case, the coin evidence should prevail, (e) Coins, in that they can be definitely attributed and the ownership of the blazons they carry can be proved without question, confirm Mayer's theory that the Mamlūk blazon was hereditary.

The famous Kūfic inscription in the mosaics of the Dome of the Rock, which provides the building with a direct dating and an explicit message and which has been discussed for more than a century, once more claims our attention: a recent review of the mosaic decoration maintains that it has lost its original character during the latest restoration; that it has been “entirely redone” and has suffered corrections such as “adding alifs and diacritical points and signs wherever they appear to be missing”. No evidence is given for this disquieting news beyond the statement of a certain (or, as it seems, a rather uncertain) person; this inevitably provokes demand for further information, the more so as it is included in a book renowned for its reliable documentation.

Among the many notable finds of the first season of the ill-starred collaboration of Cambridge and Peshawar Universities in excavations at Shaikhān Dherī, Chārsada, in the autumn of 1963, those in the house or shrine D were outstanding. Here in one of the symmetrical and well oriented insulae of the city was discovered a small building constructed of brick and diaper masonry, probably in early Kushān times, and destroyed around the time of Vāsudeva. The destruction was a result of fire and there was every sign that the building had been hastily stripped of its more valuable contents, if not actually looted, before the final collapse of the roof. In the main and largest room, of some 22 by 18 feet, beneath the fallen ceiling, were a remarkable collection of objects, scattered in disarray and including two seated Buddha figures, a standing Bodhisattva, a seated Hariiti, and a small figure of a four-armed city goddess, all being typical examples of the Gandhāran style and in Gandhāran schist; carved stone relic caskets and stūpas, one inscribed in Kharoṣṭhī; a remarkable relic casket of a fine schist, carved in the form of a cruciform building with four vaulted arms and a central circular opening rabbeted to take a now missing lid which was almost certainly in the form of a dome, the ends of the vaults being carved with miniature reliefs of scenes from the life of the Buddha; and a small broken sculpture in Mathurā sandstone of a seated Buddha in the style of the celebrated Mathurā Katrā Keśava Deva figure. It is a matter of great concern and regret that the proper publication of all this important material has been so long delayed, and that it has not been possible for this extremely productive and important excavation to proceed.

Sanskrit śauṭīra-, given the meaning “haughty, arrogant, proud”, occurs mainly, according to the Petersburg dictionary, in the language of the epic poems. From it is derived a neuter abstract noun śauṭīrya- “manliness, pride” current in the same texts. Beside śauṭīra- there also occurs an alternative form of the word, śauṇḍīra- (whence also śauṇḍīrya- nt.), and the relation between these two forms in the epic poems is that they regularly occur as variant readings in the same passages. Apart from the epic poems, and the Harivaṃśa, which counts as a supplement to the Mahābhārata, the dictionary only cites śauṇḍīrya- (in this form) once from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and three times from the drama Mṛcchakaṭika. In the latter text the form śauṇḍīrya-, as opposed to śauṭīrya-, seems well established, since in only one passage (Ed. Stenzler, 120, 21) is śauṭīrya- quoted as a variant reading.

In the Učenye Zapiski, XVI (1958), 280–308, the late V. S. Vorobiev-Desiatovsky published facsimiles of some Central Asian fragments preserved in Leningrad. One fragment contained a bilingual text, a traveller's guide, a type familiar elsewhere in Saka of Khotan, in Buddhist Sanskrit and Saka; and also in Chinese and Saka. The two languages in the new fragment were Buddhist Sanskrit and Kuchean, the language of ancient Kuci, modern Kucha, the so-called Tokharian B.

For the understanding of the period of history to which the name Indo-Greek (in perhaps more precise terminology Indo-Bactrian) is usually given, the reign of Menander has to be treated as central. For the Indo-Bactrian kingdom, this reign must have constituted the main period of stability and consolidation. Whatever we can hope to detect of Indo-Bactrian organizational structure must have assumed during those years its most coherent form. They had been preceded by several decades of expansion and improvization. The aftermath, as we shall attempt to show, was one of division, perhaps of dissension. At neither extreme could we expect a pattern of administrative continuity to stand out from so fragmentary an historical tradition. Since the evidence of texts and archaeology, despite noble efforts that have been devoted to them, is alike scanty for this episode of Macedonian government southward from the Hindu Kush to the eastern fringe of the Panjāb, it is from the copious coinage that inquiry must still be made. We may fittingly dedicate to Sir Mortimer Wheeler, excavator of Menander's capital at Chārsada, a new attempt to interpret the coinage of Menander. His own authority may be cited for the judgment that previous numismatic studies, notwithstanding great merits, have not yet revealed all that the archaeologist needs to know. In an age of technological progress, it may still be said that an excavator's finds of coins, once fully understood, could continue to provide his most accurate indication of dating. The present analysis derives from an inquiry conducted at Kabul during study leave from the School of Oriental and African Studies in the summer of 1969. The writer is indebted to H.E. Dr. Muhammad Anas, Minister of Culture and Information of the Royal Afghan Government, for permission to examine the copious material of the Mir Zakah hoard; to Dr. A. A. Motamedi, Director-General of the Kabul Museum, both for the initial invitation which made the visit possible, and for his generous allocation of the Museum's facilities while the work was in progress; and to Dr. Paul Bernard for his hospitable welcome at the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan.

In 1947 partition left India without a single site attributable to the Indus civilization. During the past two decades there has been a considerable extension of our knowledge, due mainly to the explorations and excavations of the Archaeological Survey of India. It now appears as though the Harappan culture spread into India in two principal directions: north-eastwards into the eastern Panjāb and across the Indo-Gangetic divide into the plains that lie between the Ganges and Jamunā rivers; and south-eastwards into Kacch and Kāṭhiāwār, and thence perhaps inland towards southern Rājāsthān and into the coastal region of Gujarāt. In the north the principal sites are at Rūpar in the Panjāb, Alamgīrpur in U.P., and Kālibangan in north Rājāsthān. In the south the principal excavated site is at Lothal on the Gulf of Cambay. In particular the extensive excavations at Kālibangan and Lothal have provided a mass of solid data relating to the Harappan settlements and series of well stratified radio-carbon dates. In 1957 S. R. Rao explored southern Gujarāt and in the light of his discoveries at a number of sites there he proposed a sequence of three stages of “Harappan” and “late Harappan” cultures. These he showed might be related to the sequence revealed by his excavations at Lothal and Rangpur in Saurāṣṭra. Rao's exploration suggested a number of interesting questions.

It has now generally been accepted that blue and white originated in the Near and Middle East, and that it was these Near Eastern wares that gave the impetus to the development of such wares in porcelain in China. Yet our knowledge of the underglaze-painted blue and white wares of the Near East that may have influenced the Chinese potters is almost non-existent. One could perhaps consider as prototypes the black, blue, and green underglaze-painted vessels of Kāshān and Sulṭānābād of the 13th and 14th centuries, which may have found their way to China after the Mongol invasion of Persia.

A glance at any map of excavated sites in Iran will show clearly the relative rarity of controlled excavations north and east of the Tehran region. A cluster of sites in the vicinity of Behshahr, four in the neighbourhood of the Gorgan plain, two from the flat terrain immediately south of the eastern Elburz, and only one near Meshed represent the sum total of those north-eastern settlements that have attracted archaeological expeditions between the years 1930 and 1964. As a consequence, our excavated evidence from this extensive area is astonishingly slight, particularly following the fall of the rich Bronze Age “Gorgan Culture” in the middle of the second millennium b.c.

The ostracon from the Qūmis excavation (Pl. I) bears inked characters in the Parthian script, and is palaeographically comparable with the numerous ostraca from the excavations at Nisā in Soviet Turkmenistan. Many of these bear dates reckoned according to the Arsacid Era of 247 b.c., typical figures being a.e. 194 (52 b.c.), a.e. 216 (30 b.c.), and so on. The Qūmis ostracon is thus likely also to belong to the 1st century b.c. The transliteration table for this script has been prepared by Diakonov and Starkova. Entirely diagnostic of Parthian, as against other derivatives of the Aramaic script, is the sloping left and bowed right leg of the letter pē, seen twice in the fourth line of the fragment.

In offering to Sir Mortimer Wheeler some of the firstfruits of our recent excavations at Shahr-i Qūmis, 32 kilometres west of Damghan, it may not be inappropriate if we enlarge on certain of the details that have been recovered from the only major building with both Parthian and Sasanian associations.

If everyone—so to speak—is now reading and quoting Chorasmian, the credit most fully belongs to J. Benzing. He has with this volume made available in a readily usable form the greater part of the linguistic material known to exist for Chorasmian, a very important but hitherto largely neglected Middle Iranian language.

The coin is a drachma of the Sasanian king Hormizd IV (a.d. 579–590), and is dated the tenth regnal year, equivalent to a.d. 587/8. Its formal description may be given as follows:

Obverse. Bust of Hormizd IV to right. To left, from 11 o'clock, Pahlavī inscription: ’pzwr “increase”. To right, from 1 o'clock (reading from the outside): ’wḥlmzdy “Hormizd”.

In the Archaeological Museum, Gwalior, stands a square stone pillar (No. 1/48; 1/21 ?) (Pl. I(a)) surmounted by the remains of the head and bust of a male figure supported by a throne-back. The stone is a light ochre sandstone, very worn and badly flaked; and the whole front portion of the pillar and bust has, in fact, split off and been replaced, with the exception of the bust and head portion which has been lost. The front and both sides of the pillar are divided into panels with bas-relief scenes while at the back there is an inscription. The museum label reads simply “Hasalpur Inscription of Nagvarman (c.a.d. 550) records the death of a warrior”. Hasalpur, in the district Sheopur (Shivapuri) is a village about 70 miles west of Gwalior. It is four miles from the Chambal River which forms the boundary with Rājasthān.

Many scholars in the last 150 years have applied themselves to problems posed in dating the rock reliefs of the Sasanian kings. Steady progress has been made and we have now reached a stage when most, but not all, sculptures can be assigned, with reasonable certainty, to the various kings. However, the closer dating and the identification of the context of the reliefs are still hotly disputed. This paper, written in honour of Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who has long been interested in Iranian studies, attempts to examine the stylistic development of the sculptures of Bahrām II (a.d. 276–93) in the hope that this will at least establish the order in which he commissioned the reliefs during his reign of seventeen years. It has been a surprising feature of earlier studies of the sculpture of specific Sasanian kings that little or no attempt has been made to ascertain developments in style during the course of a reign. The author has already attempted this for the sculpture of Ardashīr and Shāhpūr; the same methods are here applied to the reliefs of Bahrām II. Only after such an examination can there be any hope of solving the many outstanding problems of dating and identification.

The three minarets in the Kirmān region, those of the Masjid-i Malik in Kirmān, the Masjid-i Jāmi‘ in Zarand, and the Masjid-i Jāmi‘ in Nigār, have already been noted in a number of publications, but have so far not formed the subject of a separate article. Diez, referring to the period of Turkish dominance, says that in Kirmān, Yazd, and Shīrāz there are no lofty round towers, but, despite the lack of dating inscriptions on any of the minarets, it is nevertheless possible to date them to this period, two with reasonable accuracy and the third by association.