In colloquial Tamil the form-class of expressives includes some items which have in each member of a reduplicated pair an initial voiced stop, alongside many with initial voiceless stops. This is unlike the form-classes of nouns and verbs which have in initial position only voiceless stops, except for some borrowings from Sanskrit or other sources. The writing system has no provisions for such initial voiced stops, except for a very few items with the ‘northern letter’ j-. The etymological dictionary shows that in general, when in colloquial Tamil these voiced stops appear in expressives, etyma that appear in the other Dravidian languages also have voiced stops; they are then to be reconstructed for South Dravidian or in some cases even for Proto-Dravidian, and it is to be assumed that they were found in all periods of Tamil even though they were not written as such.

This article takes as its point of departure the conclusions drawn in Professor Arberry's paper “Orient Pearls at Random Strung”. It is hopefully intended both to add to those conclusions in their own sphere of poetical criticism and to suggest something of the relevance of the problem as a whole in the broad structure of Persian thought. (It seems scarcely necessary to add that the extent to which that will imply Islamic thought and Eastern thought generally is, in every sense of the word, incalculable.)

The contents of the document which forms the main subject of the present article are somewhat slender and cannot be appreciated outside the context of the struggles between the Ottomans and the Safavids for the incorporation of the Turkman tribes settled in the territories separating their states. Many points of the situation await further investigation and our summary will be as brief as the complicated subject admits.

The home of the Ottoman dynasty was in the north-western corner of Anatolia, but, by the middle of the fourteenth century, the Turks had crossed over to the northern side of the Straits and the Balkan territories became the nursery of the Ottoman empire.

Of all the diseases which afflicted mankind in the nineteenth century cholera has a good claim to the unenviable title of being the most dreaded. It was certainly the one which prompted the first sustained efforts to devise and implement international sanitary conventions. The reasons why cholera was so feared are many. Until the second decade of the century it was confined to the Indian subcontinent—where it had probably existed since ancient times—and medical knowledge of it elsewhere was practically nil. In 1817, however, maritime trade carried the infection to other lands and thus began the first period of diffusion which lasted for some six years. By the early years of the twentieth century a further five massive epidemics had occurred, almost every country in the world had been affected and the cumulative death toll was measured in millions. Persia, being so close to the original source of infection, suffered in every one of those epidemics and also from several other more limited and localized outbreaks.

LAMALANGA is situated on the north-west coast of the island called Raga, or Araga (Pentecost Island), in the central New Hebrides, Melanesia.

The head station of the Melanesian Mission on Raga is at Lamalanga which itself is on the coast; but the people who speak the language represented in this grammar live on the hills just above the Mission Station. Dr. R. H. Codrington published a grammar of the language spoken at Vun Marama on the same coast, a few miles north of Lamalanga.

A new edition of the astronomical compilation MUL.APIN follows closely upon the recent publication of two sections of the large compendium of Babylonian astronomical omens known as Enūma Anu Enlil. The text of MUL.APIN likewise includes a section of astronomical omens, as well as a catalogue of stars, including the ‘fixed’ (ziqpu) stars, and information regarding the planets, heliacal risings, the path of the moon, calendrical intercalations, and a shadow table and water clock. This modern edition is clearly presented nd well-translated, and includes notes on both the philology and astronomy of the text.

D. H. Müller says of the Śheri poems which he published in 1907 that they are ‘in einem älteren Mehri-Dialekt abgefasst, der dem Überlieferer nicht ganz verstandlich war’. He goes on to say that despite his best efforts he has not been able to make complete sense of all of the poems he wrote down.

Kemant is spoken in the districts of Kärkär and Čəlga, to the north and west of the town of Gondar in north-west Ethiopia. The type of Kemant described in this paper is that of Kärkär only, collected in Gondar itself and in and around Təkəl Dangay, a little to the north of Gondar. Kemant belongs to the Agaw group of Cushitic languages.2 The material for this paper was collected in the field during the winter of 1973–4. Several informants were used, but principally Taddäsä Zäwdu of Təkəl Dəngay and Gäbrä ∃gziabəher Alämu of Gondar. It is not possible here to give any accurate figure for the number of Kemant speakers. However, Kemant does appear to be under heavy pressure from Amharic, and all my informants were bilingual in both Amharic and Kemant.

Ever since the Ta hsüeh was extracted from the Li chi to form part of the ‘Four books’, the term ke wu which appears in the sentence in the opening passage: ‘The furtherance of knowledge lies in ke wu’, has exercised the ingenuity of commentators. I do not propose here to review the vast literature on the subject, but before going on to deal with the meaning of the term a brief look at the two best-known commentaries may prove instructive. Cheng Hsiian £ comments as follows

THE paradigms that may be set up for the nominals in Tigrinya1 in terms of the category of number (established on syntactical and further morphological grounds) consist of two members, conveniently termed ‘singular’ and ‘plural’. The morphological analysis for the forms placed in this grammatical relationship may, for some of them, be given in terms of ‘external flection’ or ‘sumxation’, but for many forms, including those in commonest use, the differences of syllabic pattern, and other differences throughout the entire forms, justify the use of the traditional term ‘broken plural’. It is the purpose of this paper to make a phonological analysis to handle the morphological relation between the broken plurals and the singular forms with which they are grammatically paired.

It was Harold Fleming who first drew the attention of linguists to the Bayso language. Reports concerning the existence of such a people on Gidicho Island in Lake Abaya go back to the beginning of the century and descriptions of various cultural and economic aspects of the life of the Bayso and other inhabitants of Gidicho appeared subsequently; but concerning the language nothing was available until the publication of Fleming's germinal article in 1964. The latter followed a brief period of work on the island with a Bayso speaker. The 216-item vocabulary list and brief indications of the grammar have nevertheless proved tantalizingly suggestive to everyone working on questions of genetic relationships within Cushitic. Alongside the Bayso material the article also presented the first data on the Rendille language of north-east Kenya. Fleming's conclusions that Bayso, Rendille, Boni, and Somali constitute a Macro-Somali group were seen as linguistic support for H. S. Lewis's hypothesis of a south Ethiopian (rather than a northern Horn of Africa) origin for the Somali. Since the initial presentation of these proposals, linguistic research into the Dasenech (Galab), Elmolo, and to a limited extent Arbore, languages has led German linguists to propose an extension of Fleming's Macro-Somali to include these languages. Until very recently the limited nature of the data available on many of the relevant languages had tended to detract from the strength of arguments about their internal relationships. Heine's reports of his recent researches on Rendille, Elmolo, and Boni, as well as his work on the diachrony of the ‘Sam languages’ have done much to advance our knowledge. To date, however, the material available on Bayso has remained restricted to what was presented by Fleming in 1964. The primary purpose of the present paper is to set out the results of research conducted for a period of 17 days during September 1976.

The Islamic institution of the ribāṭ appears to have made its initial appearance along the North African coast, in what is today Tunisia, during the second/eighth century. In the first phase of its development, the ribāṭ was essentially a fortress located at a sensitive point along the Islamic frontier, garrisoned by pious individuals who envisaged their vocation as participation in the jihād, the defence of the lands of Islam against external foes.

The turn of events in Tehran completely frustrated whatever chance there might have been for a loan from Britain in 1898. On 21 July Durand reported that Muzaffar al-Dīn had complained that the loan was not big enough. Hewanted §2,000,000 and he would not increase the security. The Amīn al-Sultān was ‘practically in power’ (he was reinstated on 12 August 1898 as Sadr-iA'zam), and was working vīgorously against the loan. This is partly explainedby his being himself a farmer of customs from whīch he drew an estimated§ 70,000 annually and so was against any foreign control. The sum which the Shah named could not be raised in London on the security offered. Besides,after the return to power of the Amīn al-Sultān the loan discussions betweenthe British and the Persians took on an air of unreality.

The word eduka first occurs in Sanskrit in the Mahābhārata. It is accepted by the Poona edition but there are several variants. The passage is of interest because of the light it throws upon the meaning: viparītaś ca loko'yam bhaviṣyaty adharottaraḥ eḍūkān pūjayiṣyanti varjayiṣyanti devatāḥ śūdrāḥ paricariṣyanti na dvijān yuga-saṃkṣaye (64) āśrameṣu maharṣīnāṃ brāhmaṇāvasaiheṣu ca deva-sthāneṣu caityeṣu nāgāndm ālayeṣu ca (65) eḍuka-cihnā pṛthivī na deva-gṛha-bhūṣitā1

In al-Wāqidī's Kitdb al-maghāzī and in that part of Ibn Ishāq's Sīra which deals with Muhammad's life in Medina and is contained in Ibn Hishrm's version of al-Bakkā'Ī's recension, there are similar and sometimes identical passages. Since Ibn Ishāq is the earlier of the two authorities, it has been assumed on a plausibly a priori basis that al-Wāqidī modelled himself on his predecessor in the arrangement of his material, and drew from him much of the basic warp of his narrative to which he then added his own weft.

The advancement of learning is learning is chiefly made in these three ways—by pure research, by applied research, and by interesting the general public in the results achieved. The last item is not the least important, although scientists, especially those engaged in pure research, are apt to discount and even to ignore it. In any event it is essential to publish the fruits of research among fellow-scientists for criticism, appraisement, and development. The spark of learning, which passes from master to pupil, is so feeble that unless fanned to a vigorous flame by some external agency it is apt to flicker out. It was only by a stroke of good fortune that the works of Mendel were brought to light after a long lapse of years.

Since 1896, when I-ching's famous book on Buddhism in India and South East Asia was made available in an English translation by J. Takakusu, Western Sanskritists have looked with special interest at chapter xxxiv, on the Sanskrit grammarians. The general reaction has been one of disappointment; and for many years most Indologists would have agreed with many of A. Barth's criticisms: ‘Il demeure done bien acquis que, parmi des renseignements du plus grand prix, comme les dates de la Kāçikā Vṛitti et du grammairien Bhartṛihari, I-tsing nous a servi quelques bourdes énormes; par exemple, quand il fait du Mahābhāshya un commentaire sur la Kāçikā Vṛitti; quand il distingue entre le Vākyapadīya de Bhartṛihari et son commentaire sur le Mahābhāshya’; and more besides. Ironically, it is now known that the date given for Bhartṛhari is wrong, and that the latter did write both the Vākyapadīya and a commentary on the Mahābhāṣya. Nevertheless, other errors continue to be quoted.

In this article I provide a complete translation and analysis of the recently unearthed bamboo manuscript, Rong Cheng shi, from the Shanghai Museum collection. This manuscript presents a previously unknown version of China's early history from the time of legendary rulers Yao, Shun, Yu and their predecessors to the establishment of the Zhou dynasty. The narrative is critical of both the dynastic principle of rule and “righteous rebellion”, and advocates instead the ruler's abdication in favour of a worthier candidate as the best mode of rule; in addition, it hints at the unusually active role of “the people” in establishing the supreme ruler. Moreover, despite being associated with the southern state of Chu, the Rong Cheng shi presents a unitary view of the past, which rejects the multi-state world and promulgates the notion of the unified “All-under-Heaven” as singularly legitimate. The text has far-reaching significance in terms of both history of Chinese political thought and of early Chinese historiography.