No one can fully appreciate the great value of this work to all students of ethnology until they realize the historical importance of an accurate classification of the characteristic differences which divide the social strata known as the castes living in a country occupying the geographical position of Bengal. Bengal is practically the country of the Deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, and of the Western rivers, which rise in the Vindhyan range, called by Hindu geographers the Sukti mountains, and flow down thence to the Ganges and the Bay of Bengal. It has always been one of the great highways by which Southern tribes moved northward and Northern tribes southward, and was, owing to its geographical advantages and its fertile soil, civilized and settled before the advent of the Aryan conquerors to North-western India. It is for this reason that we find in Bengal the undisturbed remains and the still living and almost unchanged representatives of some of the principal races who are described by the poets of the Rigveda under the general name of Dasyus, a name which, as Zimmer shows, merely means the people of the country or “desh.” It was from the union of the people of Bengal called the Maghadas or Mughs with the Northern Kushikas or sons of Kush the tortoise that the first great Indian Empire arose, which was formed by the two races ruled by the king called in the Mahābhārata Jarasandha.

The Persian literati have always delighted in poetic symbols and metaphors, and subtle plays on words. Therefore we should not be surprised to find that, during a brief period in the first part of the Ṣafavid dynasty when it was possible to use pictures in patterns and designs, these pictures often held symbolic connotations, conveyed through visual puns. Moreover, it seems that the second meaning carried in these puns usually involved a religious message, relating to the spiritual tradition of those Muslim mystics known as Ṣūfīs, who had great influence at court during that same short period. This clever use of pictures to convey ideas was apparently soon forgotten, after the practice was abandoned. But it comes to light again when we undertake to analyse certain early Ṣafavid designs – especially the patterns on various carpets from that period, known to have been woven between approximately 1520 and 1620 of our era.

Literary sources of the classical era (first-fifth centuries), both Greco-Roman and Jewish, indicate that snakes were used for different purposes, such as for medicine, as raw materials for manufacturing objects, and as pets. This article discusses the use of snakes to deal with pests in the ancient homes as reflected in the Talmudic sources as well as in classical literature. The Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi) brings a story of how a house snake helped a family locate a wild snake that entered the house and left its venom in the food. The impression is that the origin of the story is from a non-Jewish environment, and not necessarily from Eretz Israel. It is not impossible that the story is one version of stories about Aesculapian snakes that helped exterminate and drive away pests, as related by Pliny. This narrative variation was absorbed by the sages from their own non-Jewish environment, who adapted the story to the religious-educational messages that they sought to convey. It seems that the practice of using snakes to exterminate domestic pests was relatively limited and less common than that of small predators, such as cats, mongooses or weasels.

This article brings together various textual materials relating to the worship of Prajñāpāramitā in mediaeval Monsoon Asia. In particular, it covers sources from South Asia, mainland Southeast Asia (Angkor), maritime Southeast Asia (Java and Bali), and Southern China (Yunnan). The aims of this critical survey are twofold. On the one hand, the article argues for the importance of ritual language within wider discussions on cultural and linguistic cosmopolitanism within and beyond the so-called ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’. These discussions have too often focused on royal epigraphic eulogies, neglecting religious literature. On the other hand, it highlights the key role of Prajñāpāramitā as a protective deity, and the transregional heritage of her invocatory texts. These texts strike one for their traditional choice of imagery and associations, thus reminding of the importance of exoteric traditions within the history of Southeast Asian Buddhism.

After Aden came under British rule (1839) its Jewish community was reinforced by Jewish immigrants from inland Yemen and also from other Middle Eastern countries. Some of the Adeni Jews, most of them British subjects, entered the Indian-British commercial network and expanded it to East Africa, mainly to Ethiopia, founding commercial strongholds there. From the late nineteenth century, Jews coming from Yemen joined the existing Adeni settlements.

This paper compares the reasons for the emigration to Ethiopia of Adeni Jews and Yemeni Jews, and their economic and social status under Italian colonial regime (established in Eritrea in the 1880s). It discusses relations between these Jews, which it argues, were determined by the position of each group in the colonial hierarchy, and by the necessity of sustaining religious-communal life. Thus, in spite of their shared Yemeni origin and attendance at the same communal institutions, ethnicity and religion proved weaker than social and economic considerations, and the two groups cultivated a separate identity.

A preceding essay on Indian philosophy contained a succinct account of the Carma-mímánsá. The present one will be devoted to the Brahma-mímánsá; which, as the complement of the former, is termed uttara, later, contrasted with púrva, prior, being the investigation of proof deducible from the védas in regard to theology, as the other is in regard to works and their merit. The two together, then, comprise the complete system of interpretation of the precepts and doctrine of the védas, both practical and theological. They are parts of one whole. The later mímánsá is supplementary to the prior, and is expressly affirmed to be so: but, differing on many important points, though agreeing on others, they are essentially distinct in a religious as in a philosophical view.

In the preceding essay, the Sánc'hya, theistical as well as atheistical, was examined. The. subject of the present essay, will be the dialectic philosophy of Gótama, and atomical of Canáde, respectively called Nyáya “ reasoning, ” and Vaiśéshica “particular.” The first, as its- title implies, is chiefly occupied with the metaphysics of logic; the second with physics: that is, with “particulars” or sensible objects: and hence its name. They may be taken generally, as parts of one system: supplying each other's deficiencies: commonly agreeing upon such points as are treated by both: yet on some differing; and therefore giving origin to two schools, the Naiyáyica, and Vaiśéshica.

Encouraged by the reception of my former paper on Bihārī Folk-Songs, I now lay before the Society a further set of similar ones, in the same dialect of the Bihārī language,— the Bhoj'pūrī.

In the January number of this Journal there appeared a most interesting article by Mr. M. Longworth Dames on “The Portuguese and Turks in the Indian Ocean in the Sixteenth Century”. The article furnishes an admirable introduction to this engrossing, if little known, subject; and it is only by way of supplement that I am writing the following notes.

Considerable obscurity surrounds the introduction into Islamic thought of the orthodox doctrine that it is God who “creates” the acts of man, whereas man merely “acquires” them (kasaba, iktasaba). The doctrine is sometimes attributed to al-Ash'arī, but in his Maqālāt al-Islamīyīn he himself frequently uses the term in his accounts of the views of other writers. This paper examines the various uses of kasaba and iktasaba in that work to see what light is thrown on the origin and development of the conception.

One of the major advantages of the study of synonyms is that it provides a link between descriptive and historical linguistics. In Professor Ullmann's words: “Synonymic structure implies the formation of associative groups between senses on the ‘langue’ level. The firmness and constancy of such associations can best be gauged from the diachronistic developments which they may initiate.” Among the first words to be studied from this point of view were the Middle English adverbs which meant “swiftly” and later “immediately”. Words of this meaning are of interest also in Middle Indo-Aryan where they form a closely-knit group. This is proved by their formal as well as their semantic development.

I offer some reflections here on the set of articles gathered in this special issue on divine sovereignty and further develop some thoughts first adumbrated in a piece published in JRAS 25/3 (2015).

This essay argues that the rise and circulation of large numbers of Sanskrit literary anthologies as well as story traditions about poets in the second millennium together index important changes in the ‘author-function’ within the Sanskrit literary tradition. While modern ‘empirical authorship’ and external referentiality in Sanskrit has long been deemed ‘elusive'by Western scholarship, the new forms of literary production in the second millennium suggest a distinct new interest in authorship among wider literary communities. This new ‘author-function’ indexed a shift in the perceptions of literary production and the literary tradition itself. Focusing on the famous sixteenth-century work known as the Bhojaprabandha as both an anthology as well as a storybook about poets, this essay further argues that the paradigmatic courts of kings like Vikramāditya and Bhoja (but particularly the latter), placed not in historical time but in an archaic temporality, became the mise en scène for the figure of the poet in the second-millennium literary imagination. They were courts where the finest poets of the tradition appeared and where their virtuosity could be savored and reflected upon by generations of readers.

The Fárs-Námeh-i-Náṣirí (lith. Tihrán 1313/1895–6) contains much valuable information regarding the various nomad tribes of the province.

Turkic Runic inscriptions, discovered in Mongolia during the second half of the 20th century and especially in the last decade, are remarkable. The Bombogor, consisting of five-lines, is one of them. This article is an attempt to re-read the mentioned inscription which was first published by Ts. Battulga. According to my proposed reading, the text was written on a tombstone which was erected in honour of a Turkish qunčuy (“princess”) who might have been married into the Karluk tribe.