The purpose of this paper is to draw the attention of scholars to the existence of a hitherto unknown Arabic poem concerned with the subject of Joseph and his brethren, which was discovered in 1972 in an uncatalogued manuscript in the possession of the Department of Semitic Studies of the University of Leeds.

The second season of excavations at Shahr-i Qūmis began in August, and continued until early October, 1971. Work was resumed at mounds IV and VII, cleared in part in 1967, and new excavations were begun at two further sites, V and XIII. The directors are again most grateful for the close co-operation extended to the project by H.E. Mr. Mehrdad Pahlbod, Minister of Culture; by Mr. A. Pourmand, Director General of the Iranian Archaeological Service; and by Dr. T. Naimi, Director of the Service. Mr. B. Babek represented the Service on the excavations. In addition to the directors, those who participated in the excavations were Dr. A. D. H. Bivar, Miss E. Alexander, Mr. R. Biscione, Miss C. Marten, Mr. G. Payne, Mr. M. Roaf, Mrs. M. Sturz, and Mr. and Mrs. S. Swiny. Major support for the project was given by the National Geographic Society and the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum.

A. K. Majumdar says: “It is not possible to establish on historical evidence any link between the Āḻvārs and Caitanya. … It is, however, quite possible that his parama-guru (preceptor's preceptor) Mādhavêndra Purī was influenced by the Āḻvārs.” Other authors have put forward similar suggestions, but are equally unable to substantiate their assumptions. A. Gail states categorically: “Bhakti in the form of emotional-suggestively created identification with figures from the Kṛṣṇa legend was systematically developed in the rasa theory of Bengal Vaiṣṇavism, after preparation by the Āḻvārs.” But he has to concede that no proof for this statement is available: “Nothing seems to be known of any connexion between Bengal Vaiṣṇavas and Āḻvārs.” S. Das Gupta had earlier drawn certain parallels between Caitanya's school and the Āḻvārs.

In 1970 I was privileged to hear in the rooms of the Linnaean Society the Burkill Memorial Lecture delivered by J. R. Marr. His discursive but interesting paper “An examination of some plant-names and identities in India” has now appeared in JRAS, 1972, 40–56. On the last page of that paper the Sanskrit word mālākanda is discussed, and its properties are described in a Sanskrit verse quoted from a “Malayāḷam ‘herbal’”, which apparently was published in Trivandrum in 1950. Marr provides a translation of the verse. I was, on reading it, immediately struck by the odd property attributed to mālākanda of “destroying perfumed garlands”, not at all the sort of property one normally finds in Indian medical sources.

During the course of my anthropological fieldwork among the Lahu people in the hills of north Thailand, I devoted much time to the recording and translation of ritual prayers and chants. Analysis of these texts was of fundamental importance in my studies of Lahu religious ideas, for often the ritual word made clear what remained nebulous in the ritual act or in everyday language. But apart from their usefulness in explanation, the ritual texts are intrinsically valuable as a contemporary expression of the cultural heritage of this preliterate mountain folk. It is for this reason that I record here, both in translation and in the original language, the texts of marriage prayers given to me by three elders of my study village. A brief description of the ceremony suggests the setting for these recitations. The Lahu text is given for language scholars and for future generations of Lahu, who for the most part are still unable to record their own cultural heritage. I hope my translations will give some idea of the beauty of Lahu oral poetry.