In an article published some 12 years ago, the present writer proposed a location in Iran for the lost Parthian capital named by the Greeks Hecatompylos. This site, called in later days Shahr-i Qūmis, had been located with the help of references given by Apollodorus of Artemita (apud Strabo XI, 9, 1). These describe the Caspian Gates as located 500 stades from the city of Rhagae (modern Ray), and Hecatompylos as a further 1,260 stades beyond the Gates. Since the sites of the first two locations are known, the actual distance of 82 km.

One of the larger, and probably the least well-known collections of oriental manuscripts, printed books and other two-dimensional material in the United Kingdom (and possibly in Europe) is to be found in the library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. The collection includes over 10,000 manuscripts, some 900 written on palm leaves, and others on paper, metal, leather and ivory. There are about 3,000 books printed in oriental scripts, prints, drawings, paintings, and items of photographic material. Over 30 languages are represented in the collection.

The year A.D. 1230 is one of the most decisive dates in the religious and political history of Eastern India. King Anaṅgabhīma of the Imperial Gaṅgas ritually dedicated his kingdom to the god Puruṣottamma-Jagannātha of Puri and acknowledged the divinity of Puri both as the sole state deity of Orissa and as his divine overlord. Henceforward Anaṅgabhīma and his successors claimed to rule under divine order (ādeśa) and as son (putra) and vassal (rāuta) of the Lord of Puri. It was most probably during the same year that Anaṅgabhīma introduced the deity Balabhadra into the present Jagannātha trinity of Puri. Thus the year 1230 marks both the establishment of the ideology of the Gajapati kingship of Orissa, and the final formation of the Jagannatha cult of Puri.

In January 1835, the General Committee of Public Instruction, the semiofficial body responsible for administering the Government of India's education funds, reported deep internal division over matters of principle. One group within the Committee, the orientalists, wanted to continue the existing policy of supporting traditional Indian learning, with the prospect of gradually engrafting European subject-matter upon it. Their opponents, the Anglicists, urged the substitution of Western for Eastern studies (with some safeguards for the latter) and the use of English as the principal language of instruction. Because the dispute was hampering all but the most routine activity, the Committee requested the government to settle the question.

Islam is often seen as playing only a minor role in pre-colonial Malay political life. J. M. Gullick, for instance, in his seminal work Indigenous political systems of Western Malaya concludes that Islam “was not to any significant extent a ‘state religion’”. The “chaplains of the more devout Sultans and chiefs”, he explains, “never attained any collective importance in the political system owing to the lack of organization”; there were “no Kathis (Muslim judges and registrars) until the era of British protection”; and no evidence exists that “Islamic legal doctrine” was “effective law”?