The second volume of A. Sachs and H. Hunger, Astronomical diaries and related texts from Babylonia (Vienna, 1989) extends from the years 261–165 B.C., and includes further information on Babylonian astronomy, weather patterns, market prices, and historical events during these years, and as such are an invaluable source for Hellenistic history. Of particular historical interest is a group of tablets from Babylon and Sippar which are duplicate reports from 16/17 August–10/11 December, 169 B.C. In addition to the usual astronomical and meteorological data, this report includes brief accounts of contemporary events which potentially alter the historical picture of the reign of Antiochus IV. Although the passage has been known for a long time, and previously cited by Pinches, Eddy, and van der Spek, the new edition by Sachs and Hunger gives the opportunity to reopen the discussion.

In our very first grammar lesson at the primary school of al-Azhar we were introduced to al-mabādi’ al-‘ashara, ‘The Ten Introductory Aspects’ with which the textbook began. We learnt then that these ten aspects, as handed down by the ancient tradition, were points to be considered when embarking on each fann (branch of knowledge). ‘They said: it is incumbent upon him who sets out to expound a book to deal in the introduction with certain things before he begins with the intended subject matter’ Such was the importance of ‘The Ten ’ in traditional Islamic education that they were formulated in two lines of verse, in more than one version, to aid the memory of learners.

A number of recent studies have examined conditional clauses in Classical Arabic. However, to date I have not seen anything devoted to the study of these structures in a colloquial dialect, although most teaching manuals devote a section to this. The following is an attempt to describe conditional clauses and the related time-clause structures in certain Bedouin dialects. My interest in them originated in the difficulty I myself found in mastering this area of syntax, and from a perception of them as being more complex than such structures in English. A further point of interest which led me to investigate this area was the multiplicity of conditional and time particles including in, lo and āān signifying ‘if’, lamman and yōm signifying ‘when’ and ila signifying ‘if’ or ‘when’. I was interested to find out what factors, if any, conditioned the choice of these particles. The reason for broadening the study to take in time clauses also, is that in this dialect, in one area of conditional sentences, the two types: conditional and time clause, come very close together and are in some cases indistinguishable, or to put it another way, one would not know whether to translate the sentence into English with ‘if’ or ‘when’. The two types of sentence also share various characteristics which will be pointed out below, but in particular, many of them show a marker on both the main and subordinate clause.

In his catalogue of the Haram documents, D. P. Little has brought attention to a group of nine items, which he identifies with what the handbooks and other contemporary sources describe as murabba'āt One may accept the translation ‘square’ for convenience sake, but the surviving examples show that murabba'a should strictly be understood as ‘quadrangular’. Under question are documents written on a sheet of paper in ‘landscape’ mode, folded centrally to form four pages, and distinguished from documents written on a piece of paper in ‘portrait’ mode or a series of these stuck together to produce a scroll. While looking through the Cambridge University Library's varied collection of material, both paper and papyrus, that is known by the name of its immediate source, Michaelides, I came across one more example, at least, if one judges bythe shape and general lay-out. It seems to be of sufficient interest to merit a brief study, with some cross-reference to the Haram material.

Since Indra is, above all, the god of victory in battle for his believers in the Rgveda, it might not be expected that he would have relevance for women, since they do not take part in war. Moreover, the hymns of the Rgveda are composed by men; thus we can scarcely expect to learn what role Indra may have played in the religious belief of women, whether they addressed prayers to him at all, and if so, prayers of what content. We have, however (beside the hymn 8.91, ascribed to Apālā), some allusions in isolated verses of the RV (e.g. 10.85.25 and 45; 4.19.7), which may help us to identify certain ideas involved; these ideas I shall then trace also in other texts, particularly in the Pāli Jātaka stories.

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

This paper arises out of dissatisfaction with wholly instrumentalist explanations of Muslim separatism in India, views which have their critics but which generally prevail nowadays, reinforced by no less an influence than that of Michel Foucault. The problem is the fundamental one of what constitutes a group, and in particular of whether or not there can be objective harmonization, ‘orchestration sans chef d'orchestre qui confère regularité’, within any set of people. At an empirical level, in regard to Indian Muslims, the debate has three main elements: what was the nature of communalism, how far Muslim separatism was a process, and whether its development was a sufficient explanation for the partition of 1947. To the extent that Muslims became separatist, they obviously might have been diverted into other attitudes, and to that extent is it important to identify events which encouraged or errors which prevented that diversion.

On this occasion the discussion will begin as a review of A nationalist conscience, Mushirul Hasan's study of M. A. Ansari, and then move on to some of the issues suggested by Ansari's life and Hasan's treatment of it. The book provides an important corrective, in its emphasis and viewpoint, to the tendency to attribute the partition in India to a consistent and inevitable conflict between increasingly irreconcilable forces. The study extends and rounds out earlier work; it brings to life the alternative symbolized by Ansari, and thus casts into relief the occasions when Hindu–Muslim agreement and a common front against the British seemed possible, as in 1919–22 and 1935. The book exhibits the familiarity and maturity of understanding resulting from such an intense and long-term project of research. It is a timely contribution too, as intercommunal tensions once again mount in South Asia, and voices are heard suggesting that the secular constitution of India is inappropriate to the essential character of its people. The book's implicit thesis is that separatism did indeed evolve, with clear stages from the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth century; that its opponents were unable to arrest its advance; and that Ansari is significant for exemplifying these two points. Hasan thus illustrates an alternative to communalism offered during the struggles against British rule; it was an alternative which failed. The question is whether or not it could have succeeded.

The present paper describes a palatographic investigation of Javanese coronal stops. Javanese exhibits stop consonants at both dental and alveolar places of articulation. In the current roman orthography, the dentals are represented by the single letters t, d, while the alveolars are represented by the digraphs th, dh. Thus, for example, titik [titI?] ‘full stop’ contrasts with thithik [titI?] ‘a little’.