Among a bewildering mass of archaeological reports and learned papers the small book of the late Dr. Ernest Mackay, The Indus Civilization, published in 1935, has provided an excellent concise outline of the subject. It has now been reissued under a significantly amended title, with revisions and additions by the author's widow. New maps and illustrations have also been added.

Since 1935 further researches have considerably modified our earlier view of the Indus culture. The excavations at Chanhu-daro, conducted by Dr. Mackay for the American School of Indie and Iranian Studies have shown that the culture of which the Harappā remains are the type was superseded, in this part of Sind at any rate, by later intrusive cultures, those of Jhukar and Jhangar (p. 3). Advances in Mesopotamian chronology have permitted a closer estimate of the date of the abandonment of the Indus cities. This, it appears, took place at about the same time as the end of the first Babylonian dynasty, which, on the most recent evidence, must be placed as late as the sixteenth century b.c. (p. 157). It has been conclusively shown that we may no longer retain the rather Utopian picture suggested by reports of earlier excavations, which seemed to reveal an affluent commercial people, living in comfort and security in unfortified cities, and free from the oppressions of a theocratic government such as ruled in contemporary Sumer and Egypt.

Dr. Mackay and all serious archæologists doubted the accuracy of this picture. In the first edition of The Indies Civilization it was pointed out that the control of such well-planned cities as Mohenjo-daro and Harappā demanded a highly organized government, that the excavations had not been completed, and that further work on the sites might reveal fortresses and royal palaces.

[Abbreviations of titles of books and works in this article are the same as those employed in The New Burmese-English Dictionary, pt. I, compiled by Stewart and Dunn. The transliteration of words taken from the Inscriptions of Burma (Old Burmese) follows the system devised by C. O. Blagden and Chas. Duroiselle (see Epigraphia Birmanica, vol. i, pt. i, pp. 6–12): that of words from other Burmese works is similar, with the addition of the tone-mark () and the symbol (^) representing the Burmese + .]

There are few such words in the Burmese language as the composite word A Mô Kwan:. It has excited the curiosity and attention of Burmese scholars, and will always conjure up interesting reminiscences in the mind of Burmese historians. The word is about 700 years old and has undergone remarkable changes of form and meaning.

(Amu Kwan, Amū Kwan)

It has been established by Professor G. H. Luce that the origin of Mô Kwan: is Amu Kwan, which occurs in a Burmese inscription of the 13th century. During the reign of Narathihapati (1254–87), the last king of the Pagan Dynasty, “Saka era 628 (A.D. 1266), in the Pisyak (Vaisakhā) year, on Thursday”, the daughter of minister Singasū dedicated lands to a monastery and “informed the great and noble king (of her act of merit). The king thereupon poured out pure water and had the record of the deed placed in the archives (Amu Kwan tan e).” Again, “Saka era 633 (A.D. 1271) in the Āsin (Asvin) year, on Friday, the 10th of the waxing moon of the month of Tan Khū (April), when the honourable Lady (Queen) Phwa Jaw went to the Ornamented Abode (Kwan Prok), she showed the list of her dedications to the great king; and the king had it placed in the archives (Amū Kwan tan e’).”

For the remaining eight sections of this stotra the Tibetan text has not been published. The version here reproduced is that of the Snar than edition of the Bstan hgyur (Bstod pa, folios 100–110), for the loan of which I am indebted to the Librarian of the Commonwealth Relations Office. It contains a thirteenth chapter of thirty-two slokas for which the Sanskrit MSS. have no equivalent (cf. JRAS., 1948, p. 57), and which is therefore omitted here.

Perhaps the most interesting of these sections is the seventh, with its elaborate (and to European taste frigid) parallels between Brahmanical and Buddhist vocabulary. In establishing Mātṛceṭa's identity and date, Sect. VIII, v. 23, which proves him to have been a Mahāyānist, is of capital importance. I should add that my own conclusions, summarized on p. 672, n. 2, of the last issue of this journal, were reached independently of this (corroborative) piece of evidence.

Any work of Mr. Chao, “the father of Chinese phonetics,” must command respect. It is not, therefore, without a sense of the boldness of my under-taking that I venture in the following pages to suggest ways in which it is possible to improve upon the system of transcription he has laid down for Cantonese.

The introduction is worth careful study by the student of any foreign language. In it Mr. Chao says, with great justice: “The problem which an Occidental student of Chinese has to face first is to learn what the language and writing are and not what they might better be… the most practical point of view is the scientific, empirical one of learning about what is.” There-fore a book about Cantonese intended for the student of Cantonese should describe Cantonese as it is: there should be no attempt to normalize the irregular, to simplify the difficult, to rationalize the irrational; it is as dangerous to strain the links between Cantonese and National Chinese by over-emphasizing analogies as it is to deny the existence of the links and analogies altogether. Many foreign works on Cantonese reflect the antipathy towards the NgoaykoangIhoo which the authors have absorbed from long residence in Kwangtung: so that any turn of phrase which betrays Kwoakyux influence, any modification of pronunciation which tends to obscure any of the divergencies between the tongue of Canton and that of Peiping, are regarded as deviations and not simply condemned but, what is worse, ignored.

At the beginning of September 1854, almost six months after Commodore Perry had concluded his convention with Japan, Sir James Stirling, Commander-in-Chief of the British East Indies fleet, took his squadron into Nagasaki harbour to negotiate with the Japanese officials there. Unlike Perry, his primary object was not to obtain a treaty of commerce and friendship. War between Britain and Russia had broken out in March, and it was his duty to hunt down, if possible to destroy, Admiral Poutiatin's squadron then in Pacific waters. This task, he realized, would be made much easier if he could use Japanese ports for obtaining stores and refitting on the terms usually allowed a belligerent by a neutral state, and if this meant that Russia could use those ports on similar terms, he was confident that he could deny her access to them by his own greater strength at sea. In fact, whatever secret hopes he may have had as to the ultimate effect of his discussions on Anglo-Japanese relations, Stirling went to Nagasaki principally to settle a point of practical importance to his conduct of naval operations. He wished to know in what light the Japanese government would view the use'of its ports by the belligerents, and was ready to suggest, perhaps insist on, a policy favourable to Great Britain.

Despite this limited objective, there followed an exchange of letters, some weeks of waiting, and a number of discussions with the Nagasaki Bugyoo (the Governor of Nagasaki), as a result of which Stirling obtained a convention similar in many respects to that of Perry, though somewhat more restricted in its provisions.

Having regard to its importance in human affairs, one might expect a reasonable degree of unanimity among mankind on the nature of the institution of marriage, and the circumstances in which it can be dissolved, but, comparing the views on these matters found in different systems of law, one cannot but recall the words of G. B. Shaw in the Preface to Androcles:—

“ We pass our lives among people who … have robust consciences, and hunger and thirst, not for righteousness but … for love and money. To these people one morality is as good as another, provided they are used to it and can put up with its restrictions without unhappiness; and in the maintenance of this morality they will fight and punish and coerce without scruple. They may not be the salt of the earth … but they are the substance of civilization.”

Initially, a people or its lawgiver has to decide whether marriage is to be regarded, as in the Canon Law and Hindu Law, as a sacrament, or, as in Mahommedan Law and Burmese Buddhist Law (to give the official name of what might more aptly be described as Burmese Common Law), as a contract.

In the former case it follows that a valid marriage is indissoluble, but when there is an impediment, or a fraud has been committed upon the sacrament, it is possible to dissolve a union on the ground that there has been no valid marriage. A Hindu marriage can be annulled, if at all, only because it has been effected by force or fraud, but, as the wife has not the liberty allowed the husband of taking subsequent spouses, she is in a less happy position than that allowed her by the Canon Law, which treats both spouses alike and will permit a declaration of nullity when there is a legal bar to the marriage, or when the petitioning spouse did not freely consent to the marriage.

Section 1. General

Until the publication in the Gaekwar's Oriental Series XXXVII of the Apabhramśakvyatrayi (AKT) (edited with Sanskrit Introduction, Notes, and Appendices by the Jain pandit Lalchandra B. Gandhi) in 1927, the existence of prose Apabhramśa was unknown. This work, however, able though it is, is not much utilized or even consulted, and the extracts from the Kuvalayamālā Kahā, which he uses as illustrations, have never been discussed from a linguistic point of view. The whole of the Kuvalayamālā (as it is also called) has never been published, and it is an original work of linguistic importance.

III. Apokopa or Poinai Them

The first and westernmost of the seven Indian “mountains” mentioned by Ptolemy (vii, 1, 19) bears the curious name τὰ ’άπίκιπακαλεîται Ποιναὶ Θευ. Its extremities are stated to be situated at 116° E. 23° N. and 121° (v.l. 124°) E. 20° 30′ (v.l. 26°) N. In Ptolemy's idea it was therefore a mountain-range of considerable length running either in a south-easterly or north-easterly direction.

Lassen points out that according to Ptolemy the Apokopa was situated to the west and south of the Vindhya. This, he argues, is impossible as the latter extends almost as far west as the coast so as to leave no room for another mountain range. He then proceeds to correct Ptolemy's error with the aid of Megasthenes and the Māhābharata. In a fragment of the Greek ambassador's work on India, preserved by Pliny, mention is made of a high mountain named Capitalia. This name Lassen renders by ” Capital Punishment ” (“ Todes-strafe ”) and assumes it to be the equivalent of Ptolemy's Poinai Theon, i.e. ” Punishments of the gods ” (“ Strafen der Götter ”). He believes it to originate from a legend relating how the gods punished a crime committed on this spot and furthermore detects a reference to such a legend in the name Apokopa to which he assigns the meaning of ” hewing down, chopping off ” (“ das Abhauen ”). An allusion to the supposed legend Lassen discovers in the Māhābharata (Bombay ed., iii, 82,55–6). Here in the course of an enumeration of firthas a visit to the mountain Arbuda is recommended and it is briefly stated that here a cleft (chidra) of the earth is found and the hermitage of Vasistha celebrated in the three worlds.

In certain types of Old Bodish transitive verbs (Types 2, 7, 8), the initial of the imperative is regularly aspirated and would correspond to what Li believed to be the primitive form of the verb except for morphophonic change.

But aspiration of these stems does not occur in the imperative in West Bodish, as it does in Old and Central Bodish. Citable examples from Sbalti and Burig are almost wanting. For Burig, Francke gives the imperative tog, corresponding to O.B. t'ogs “fasten!”, and Bailey has tsăt-“awake”, im. tsot. The last might have been aspirated if aspiration were characteristic of the West Bodish imperative; however, the only related form in Old Bodish is sod-pa, sad-pa. But it is significant that neither Read, pp. 46–7, nor Bailey, p. 17, in their discussion of the changes occurring in the West Bodish imperative, mention any alteration of the initial. Nor does Jäschke in his Tibetan Grammar. On the contrary, Jaschke does provide some positive proof that aspiration does not occur hi the West Bodish imperative in the few West Bodish (Ladwags or Lahul dialect) imperative forms in his grammar (99–101), and still more in his dictionary:—

Among the ancient towns of the Swahili coast Siu is reputed to be one of the oldest. Stigand wrote: “The people of Siu claim that their town is older than that of Pate.” The poem that follows was written by Sayyid ‘Umar bin Amin bin ‘Umar bin Amin bin Nadhir al-Ahdal, who lived at Siu as Kadhi during the time of Mohammad bin Mataka and when Sayyid Majid, the Sultan of Zanzibar, attacked Siu in A.h. 1273 (A.d. 1856). The composer left a number of other poems, including some written in praise of the Prophet which are still recited in East African mosques on the Birth Day of the Prophet.

The present work is of the type formerly known as Waji-waji, an archaic Swahili word for a didactic poem. It is written in the well-known Arabic method of five lines to a verse. Generally this method was employed in composite work, one man composing two or three lines of each verse and another adding the rest but following the style and the meaning. In Sayyid Amin's poem the first three lines in a verse are complete in themselves, while the last two lines are added only to expand the meaning or to give a taste to the verse. Even so, a special feature of this poem indicates that it is the work of one man. Each fourth line begins with a letter of the Swahili-Arabic alphabet. He excludes the letters pei and vei, which are not used with much frequency by most Swahili scribes, the letters bei and fei being preferred.

In 1912 H. Maspero endeavoured to bring some order into the apparently capricious repartition of the old ju-shêng tones among the remaining four tones of Pekingese, and noted that words in plosive initials (including aspirated plosives), and in nasal or liquid initials, tend to be found in the departing tone (tone IV), and to a less extent in the upper even (tone I); while those with otḥer initials gravitate towards the old lower even (tone II).

In 1915 Karlgren considered Maspero's treatment of the problem, and while in general agreeing with his conclusions, pointed out that his law covered the facts only very approximately in regard, e.g., to words in unaspirated plosive initials. Nevertheless he quotes with approval Maspero's explanation (applied also to the twofold development of the lower rising tone in the modern Northern Chinese dialects), viz., that the initials 1-, m-, n-, n-, and vocalic initials involved a pronunciation of the syllable somewhat different from that of words having affricate, occlusive, or fricative initials; and he proceeds to suggest that the difference lay in a somewhat higher pitch in the case of the former type of word. This explanation is, however, difficult to follow; if, e.g., ACh dz‘ua, became \tso (tone IV) rather than (tone III) because the fourth tone is more compatible with the deeper pitch proper to affricate initials, it is by no means clear why ACh dz‘ak, having the same initial, should become ‘tso (tone II) rather than enter tone IV with so many other words from the lower ju-shêng.

Although Geiger's Grammar of the Sinhalese Language (1938) has cleared up admirably the main line in the historical development of this language, there still remains much to be done. Especially in the morphology of the verb there are many obscure points and in the following lines we shall try to unravel some of them.

1 The Sinhalese has three conjugations (paradigms:labanavā “to get”, badinavā “to fry”, tävenavā “to be heated”). Geiger explains the third conjugation from the MInd, passive: tävenavā < *tāvīya- < Skr. (causative passive) tāpyate (Geiger, § 140, 3), which coincides well with the fact that nearly all the verbs belonging to this conjugation are intransitive. As for the development ī > e compare elu: name of the old Sinhalese language < Sīhala, neranavā “to set aside, put out of the way ” < P. nīharati (Geiger, § 21, 3). So there can hardly be any doubt that this explanation is in the main correct. The -lya- is not always the passive-morpheme; thus Geiger mentions ālenavā “to adhere to” from Skr. āliyate; another case is pipenavā “to expand, open (of flowers)” from the denominative Skr. puspyati > *pupphīya- (other examples later in this article). Geiger derives vädenavā “to affect, concern, to be struck by an arrow” (Clough's dict.) from Skr. vrajati (Et. Gl.; Geiger gives the meaning “to strike against, to enter, intrude ”); I should, if the meaning given by Geiger is correct, prefer the derivation from āpadyate with loss of the initial vowel as in bisev “royal unction ” from abhiseka-, etc. (Grammar, § 30, 2); but it must be admitted that all the examples mentioned by Geiger contain short initial vowel.

1. GEIGER, in his SghG., § 21, remarks “Vowel-levelling rests on the same tendency of making the vowels of a word uniform as the vowel-assimilation. It is the equalization in two successive syllables of a —i (e) and i (e) —a to e —e, and of a — u (o) and u (o) — a to o — o.”

This term “Vowel-levelling ” is redundant, for if this term is to be used it should apply equally well to vowel-assimilation. It is clear that, for instance, a — e: e — e or a — o: o — oisas much vowel-assimilation as, for instance, i — u: u —u or u —i:i —i. It is also difficult to reconcile the fact that a — i, which was shown to become i — i [cf. § 14], or i —a, which was shown to become a —a [cf. § 18], should also become e — e, and again that a —u, which was shown to become u — u [cf. § 15], or u —a, which was shown to become a —a [cf. § 21], should also become o — o. This e —e and o —o are not direct developments in Sgh. but are the result of contaminations which are discussed under the various categories given below, and therefore Geiger's theory of “Vowel-levelling ” falls to the ground. These contaminations are due on the one hand to the influence of loan-words and on the other to the instability in the development of Sk. s and Sk. h in Sgh.

The work on which this article is based was done during my visit to the Northern Provinces of Nigeria, 1948–9. Selected material was studied, as spoken by Hausas, first in Zaria, then in Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, Daura, and Damagaram (Zinder). In Zaria I made certain statements from my observation of the utterances, which permitted me to classify the words according to the behaviour of their final syllables. Although there were dialectal differences, my observation of the utterances in other areas gave me no reason to alter my classification. The study of the final open syllable in Hausa has already interested others; in America, J. H. Greenberg and C. T. Hodge, and in this country, Dr. G. P. Bargery and Major R. C. Abraham. In this article I shall consider the final open syllable of the nominal only, by which I understand that class of word in Hausa which can be followed in close syntactical relationship by one of the enclitics, ne or ce.

Since the early ‘thirties we have found it necessary constantly and independently to review the sort of abstractions usually made in descriptive linguistics, and in making new ones to refer them to a schematic framework of levels, at each one of which some component of meaning could be handled by a system of constructs and stated.

Professor Panconcelli-Calzia seems only recently to have awakened to the idea that four-fifths of linguistics, including even experimental phonetics, is invention rather than discovery. The work of the English school of phonetics since the time of the Bells has been rich in invention, and earned the inadequate description of being “practical”. In the best sense of the word, descriptive linguistics must be practical, since its abstractions, fictions, inventions, call them what you will, are designed to handle instances of speech, spoken or written, and make statements of the meaning of what may be called typical speech events. All these fictions, whether made by machines or by direct verbal statement may perhaps be figuratively described as “asymptotic”.

If we are constantly mindful of the different levels of abstraction and the nature of the fictions set up, the inventions of kymography and palatography and the inventions of phonology or other branches of linguistics may be brought into relation and used to justify one another mutually.

The purpose of the present article is to give an illustration of the pressure of “invention” at the levels of phonology and even of general linguistic theory, which has led to ancillary “inventions” in the laboratory.

Western scholars have, on the whole, neglected the Tzyjyh Tongjiann Kaoyih. Its existence and its importance as a land-mark in Chinese historiography have been briefly mentioned by several, but none, so far as I am aware, has seriously used it. Chinese scholars have, as one would expect, used it a good deal. Nevertheless, they have generally confined themselves to drawing on it for the elucidation of particular points. While this was undoubtedly the purpose for which it was originally intended, it can have for the modern student another very valuable function. By a careful analysis and comparison of the different entries, it is possible to get a great deal of other-wise unobtainable information about the sources of the Tongjiann and their interrelation.

To undertake such an analysis for the whole of the Tongjiann or even for the whole of the Tarng dynasty would be a task far beyond the scope of the present article. I shall, in fact, confine myself largely to the period 730–763 though I may occasionally step beyond those limits. This period is chosen because it includes the careers of An Luhshan and Shyy Syming , which I am engaged in studying. This short period, however, comprises about one-seventh of the whole Kaoyih.

Forty-eight works are quoted in this part of the Kaoyih, twenty-two of which appear to be still extant. They range in size and importance from the Jiow Tarngshu to a poem by Lii Bor . I shall first list some of the more important of these, giving in each case notes, whether derived from the Kaoyih or from some other source, on the origin and nature of the work.

This most convincing identification by Dr. A. F. L. Beeston would gain in strength by a more plausible explanation of how the form has come about.

In an article on the Malay Founder of Malacca (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. xii, pts. 3 and 4, 1948) I used the Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires to advance the view that the Portuguese and Chinese were wrong in failing to identify the Parameswara with Megat Iskandar Shah, the Mukans-autirsha or, better, Mou-wa-kan-sa-yu-li-eul-cha of the Chinese.

I suggested that all the evidence went to show they were not father and son but the same ruler with the different titles he bore before and after conversion to Islam, and that this founder of Malacca died in 1424.

In a posthumous article in Toung Pao (vol. xxxviii) Paul Pelliot (p. 168) notes the further point (which is not apparent from Groeneveldt's Notes: Essays on Indochina, 2nd ser., vol. 1) that, according to the Ming-chan tsang and Ming Che, Megat Iskandar Shah visited China in 1414 to announce the death of his father and ask for investiture; but that according to the Chou-yu tcheoutseu lou (8,136) and Ming-chan tsang it was in 1419. This discrepancy confirms my doubt as to the accuracy of the Chinese chroniclers, who seem to have construed every Malay visit as an act of homage.

Paul Pelliot (p. 169) gives another case where the Chinese sources are obviously inaccurate. The Ming Che (325, 3a-4b) records events of 1474, then of 1481, and continues that “some time after” two envoys Lin Jong and Houang K'ien-heng were sent to invest “the son of the king, Ma-ha-mou-cha” (Groeneveldt's “Mahamusa”).

In Japan, since the eleventh or twelfth century, when teachers and students of the tanka (, a short poem) recognized the importance of the teniwoha for expressing thoughts or feelings, its study became a vital part of kagaku (, the study of verse-making). One of the earliest books on the matter, the “ Teniwoha Taigaisyô ” ( ), was said to have been written by Huziwara-Sadaie (, 1162–1241), a well-known poet of the thirteenth century. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the study of the teniwoha made further headway, the reason being that the gap between the written and spoken language which had been developing since the eleventh century had widened so much that people found it difficult to understand the tanka of earlier times. There were at this time two groups of people who studied the teniwoha for the art of verse-making; one group was concerned with the tanka, and the other with the renga (, a linked poem) which was then very popular. Although these studies of the teniwoha could be called the origin of the grammatical study of the Japanese language, they were very naive; all that the scholars did was to compile glossaries or reference book for verse-making.