In the famous ‘Moabite stone’ incription, Mesha king of Moab records how, after a long series of defeats inflicted on Moab by Israel, the tide turned and Israel was (according to Mesha's over-optimistic estimate) ‘utterly destroyed’, ʼbd ʼbd ʿ lm. The passage concerning the town of Ataroth runs,

10 … w'š gd yšb b'rṣ ʿ ṭrt mʿ lm wybn Ih mlk y11 šr'l 't ʿ ṭrt w'ltḥm bqr w'ḥzh w'hrg kl hʿm[.]12 hqr ryt Ikmš wlm'b w'šb mšm ʼt ʼrʼl dwdh wʼ[.]13 ḥbh Ipny kmš bqryt wʼšb bh ʼt ʼš šrn wʼt ʼ[š]

“Now the folk of Gad had dwelt in the territory of Ataroth from of old, and the king of Israel had built for himself Ataroth; and I made war on the town and captured it and slew all the people of the town, a ryt for Chemosh and for Moab, and I brought thence 'r'l dwdh and dragged it/him before the face of Chemosh in Qryt; and I caused the men of ŠRN to dwell therein, and the men (etc)”.

When Professor Mahmud al-Ghul died on 10 December 1983, he had in his possession four fragments of Sayhadic inscriptions. A year later, at the time of the symposium held at Yarmouk University (Irbid, Jordan) in his memory, they were still with his wife Mrs Rita Ghul, who has kindly placed at my disposal photographs of them, made by Mr Michael Macdonald. The ultimate depository will probably be Yarmouk University, and it is desirable that they should be placed on record and assigned convenient sigla, although three of them contain no more that a couple of letters each.

In choosing a title for this paper I have incorporated the name of a book which contains an anti-Semitic essay written by Richard Burton in 1872, shortly after his return from Damascus. The essay was destined to remain unpublished until long after its author's death, and although when it finally appeared in 1898 as part of The Jew, The Gipsy and El-Islam it omitted the most offensively anti-Jewish portions, it has nevertheless “always been an embarrassment to Burton biographers, who usually skirt the issue of his anti-Semitism”.

In the course of research into one of the earliest known versions of the Central Asian dastan or ornate oral history, Alpamysh, this writer paid a visit in July 1984 to the Kirghiz of the Pamirs. This group, now settled in the eastern part of Asia Minor under the auspices of the Turkish government, fled from their home before the Soviet occupying forces in 1979. Since then, a number of papers on the Kirghiz have appeared, most of which have expressed concern over whether the members of this particular tribe would be able to retain their customs, traditions and ceremonies. Although the primary purpose of the trip was to compile a glossary of Kirghiz terms not found in any available dictionary, it became clear that it would also provide an unusual opportunity to observe other aspects of Kirghiz culture.

This stone inscription, which has provided very welcome information on the history of the Śāhi dynasty of Udbhāṇḍapura, commonly called the Hindu Śāhis of Kabul and Panjab, was brought to light in the course of the comprehensive search for Śāhi records carried out by Mr Abdur Rehman, who published the text together with an English translation and copious notes in JRAS, 1978, pp. 31–37. Rehman has made an important contribution to the history of the Śāhi dynasty by suggesting that the dates in the inscriptions of the Sahis should be referred to an era founded by Kallar, the founder of the dynasty, in A.D. 850. Rehman has rightly called this era the Śāhi Era. Some of the verses and expressions in this inscription of Jayapala have not been correctly interpreted, however, and in one case by his rendering of verse 8, the editor has been led to draw wrong historical conclusions. The need for a re-appraisal is apparent.

What are the primary sources for the early history of the Tranquebar mission? One depends on Danish, German and English sources, in that order of priority, because the mission was initiated by the King of Denmark, executed by German missionaries and financially supported by the English. The history of Christianity in India, however, is not equivalent to the history of mission boards and missionaries, though these are necessary components of a true understanding of the history of the Church. To be fair, equal importance should be given to the Tamil sources which have been underestimated by historians. The first step must be to collect them, for there is evidence that they were neglected from the very beginning of the mission in Tamilnadu