Different readings of the first and the last phrase of the short Middle Persian text Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr are suggested; these show that its beginning and end are not as strange or exceptional as is suggested in its latest edition. In particular, it is argued here that a Middle Persian translation of the title of the ‘Abbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr can be found in the text.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century evidence has become increasingly available to show that the use of Sanskritized prose in certain Hindi dialects long antedates the spread of Western influences in India. We owe this evidence above all to the efforts of the Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā of Banāras, which from the year 1900 has instituted an annual search for Hindi manuscripts, and has published reports of its investigations.

It is one of the most tantalizing features of the ancient history of southern Asia that there is no generally accepted solution to the dating problems of the Kushan dynasty. The wide divergences of opinion still current with regard to this question were well evidenced by the lively discussions which took place at the Conference on the Date of Kanishka, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies from 20 to 22 April I960. It was rightly appreciated that numerous questions of Oriental history and archaeology depend on the correct solution of this problem.

It would be all but impossible to compile a complete list of all the Arabic writers who used Ibn Isḥāq's Biography of the Prophet. In the Introduction to my translation of his work1 I endeavoured to collect and include anything of importance which other writers had quoted on the authority of Ibn Isḥāq. Among the writers whom I may have overlooked must now be mentioned Abū Nu‘aym Ahmad b. ‘Abdullah al-Ispahānī (d. 430)2 who wrote a book entitled Dalā’ilu'l-Nubၫwa.3

Since 1923 we have witnessed an attempt to reconstruct the Chinese of the Sui Dynasty, or more accurately to reconstruct the Chinese dialect spoken about A.D. 600 in the capital of that time, Ch'ang An (Hsi An), namely Professor Bernhard Karlgren's Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino- Japanese, which constitutes a brief summary of the results of the first three parts of his Études sur la phonologie chinoise (Archives ďÉtudes Orientales XV (1915–1919)) and their practical application to about 6,000 characters which can now be verified in their reconstructed form (v. Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1924, col. 1905, etc.).

Whereas during the earlier part of South Arabian history dating is effected only by reference to the year of office of an eponymous magistrate, from about the 1st century A.D. we begin to find texts dated by a fixed era. The earliest inscriptions so dated are R.3958 of ‘ the year 144 ’, and R.4197b of ‘ the year 172 ’. Although these two texts are in Sabæan dialect, both have associations with the Beiḥān area, and Albright is probably right in suggesting that they do not refer to a ‘ Sabæan ’ era. The majority of the dated texts which are unquestionably Sabæan belong to the 6th and 7th centuries of that era.

My This paper is a critical evaluation of B. Nothofer's definition of ‘Malayic’ (§1). It also discusses his classification of Iban (or ‘Sea Dayak’) as a separate primary branch in the Malayic language group, and his analysis of some aspects of Iban phonological history (§ 2).

The Malayic language group consists of (literary, standard) Malay and all dialects and languages that are sufficiently close to Malay in order to form an exclusive subgroup with it within the Austronesian language family. In 1985 I finished a PhD thesis which is a phonological, lexical and morphological reconstruction of Proto-Malayic, the hypothetical stock-language of the Malayic subgroup. The reconstruction is made on the basis of six members of the Malayic subgroup, viz. Malay, Minangkabau, Banjarese, Middle Malay (Seraway variant) Iban and Jakartanese. In August 1986 the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in Kuala Lumpur organized the International Workshop on the History of Malay, the contributions to which were published in 1988 (Mohd. Thani Ahmad and Zaini Mohamed Zain, 1988). Nothofer's paper treated the various views on the definition of the Malayic subgroup (Nothofer, 1988). Concerning my 1985 study, Nothofer made the following criticisms: definition of ‘Malayic’ is different from that of previous scholars and I do not explain in which way it differs. More particularly, my definition differs from that of Blust (1981), who also includes the Chamic languages of Vietnam and Rejang.

Ilya eu un verbe indo-iranien pour désigner le labour: RV. imp. ; il s'y rattache des substantifs désignant le sillon: av. karša-, karši- f.; RV. sans doute ŚBr.

Par contre les noms Sanskrits de la charrue n'ont pas de correspondants connus dans l'lran.

L'un de ces noms, qui vit encore aujourd'hui, skr. hala-, n'est pas attesté avant Pānini. Est-il cependant plus ancien que le Sanskrit? On en a proposé plusieurs étymologies indo-européennes, dont malheureusement aucune ne s'impose (v. Walde-Pokorny, Vergl. Wb. der. Indog. Spr., i, p. 629; Scheftelowitz, ZII., ii, p. 278). Le Rgveda offre deux autres noms encore:

There was a prevailing opinion in English linguistic literature that the modern prose Hindī, High Hindī, or Kharī bolī, was invented by the English.

This point of view was maintained some time ago by such a highly authoritative scholar as Sir G. A. Grierson. Thus, in the preface to his work on the history of Hindī literature he says : “ The first half of the nineteenth century … was the period of the birth of the Hindī language, invented by the English, and first used as a vehicle of literary prose composition in 1803 under Gilchrist‘s tuition, by Lallū Jī Lāl, the author of the Prem Sāgar.”

“… desde tempo remoto passa por verdade demonstrada ogrande absurdo de que a lingua desta terra (Goa), a lingua de meio milhão de homens, nem tem gramática nem é susceptível de ser escrita; julgamos que ao menos faremos algum serviço se dissiparmos tão perniciosa ilusão, mostrando que a lingua concani não só tem a sua gramática, como qualquer outra, mas que a mesma gramatica foiem tempo formulada em regras e até impressa.” J. H. da Cunha Rivara, Ensaio Histórico da Lingua Concani, 1857, pg. 1.

This article examines the mythical significance of the famous Afghan Kafir ‘Temple of Imra’ described in Robertson's Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush (1896: 389–92) within the cosmology of the Kalasha (‘Kalash Kafirs’) of Chitral in northern Pakistan. It is known as the ‘Temple of Mahandeu’ in Kalasha tradition, and stories about this sanctuary play an important role in the exegesis of all Kalasha rites. It is, indeed, a focal symbol of Kalasha cosmology: the site of an axis mundi linking heaven and earth with the underworld of the deceased, and the primordial domain of major deities. After examining narratives about this temple, I shall discuss several problems in the comparative religions of the Hindu Kush that such traditions help to elucidate. In recognition of the pioneering scholarship on this subject by Wolfgang Lentz (1974) and Lennart Edelberg (et al., 1959), I present here some Kalasha perspectives on an extraordinary Kafir sanctuary (cf. Jettmar, 1986: 50–51). But in discussing its significance in Kalasha cosmology, I also address broader questions about our present conception of religious knowledge in the Hindu Kush, particularly on the comparative ‘mythology’ of the Afghan Kafirs and of their Dardicspeaking neighbours in northern Pakistan