In the spring of 1980, the author was asked to prepare a catalogue of the Persian manuscripts preserved in the library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. During preliminary stages of this work a remarkable manuscript came to light which is the subject of the present article. This is the personal horoscope of Iskandar Sultan, the grandson of Tīmūr (d. 807/1405). Iskandar ruled in Fars, South West Iran, for five years from 1409 to 1414. He is best known for his interest in the arts and sciences and for his patronage of manuscript production.

The rare Vedic word urvárī is in the dictionary of Böhtlingk and Roth (BR) given the meaning ‘Werg’, i.e. ‘tow, oakum’. This meaning is repeated in a number of subsequent dictionaries, e.g. in the first edition of Monier-Williams' Sanskrit dictionary (1872: ‘tow, fibres drawn out of the distaff’), in the Sanskrit- English dictionary of C. Cappeller (London, 1891), in V. S. Apte's Practical Sanskrit Dictionary (2nd edition, Bombay, 1912), and more recently in the Sanskrit-German dictionary of K. Mylius (Leipzig, 1975). It also appears in other works of reference, such as Whitney's Sanskrit Grammar (1171c) and Altindische Grammatik of Wackernagel-Debrunner (Vol. II, 2, p. 909). On the other hand in the Vachaspatya, A Comprehensive Sanskrit Dictionary by Taranatha Tarkavachaspati (Vol.1, Calcutta, 1873) the meaning given, with reference to AV 10, 4, 21, is completely different: ādhikyaprāptā strī.

The aim of this study is to show how Zoroastrian elements have survived into the 19th and 20th centuries around the higher reaches of the Amu Darya (ancient Oxus), a river now forming the boundary between Afghanistan and the U.S.S.R, whose basin is mostly inhabited by East Iranian Tajiks and related Pamiri groups – that is, approximately Bactria of old. Although Islam reached Balkh as early as the 7th century, such Zoroastrian survivals should not perhaps be too surprising, since Bactria was one of the ancient homelands of Zoroastrianism, and was among those regions which laid legendary claim to Zoroaster's own ministry. Unfortunately although the history of Zoroastrianism in Western Iran during Achaemenid, Parthian and Sasanian times is fairly well known, its fortunes in the earlier East Iranian centres like Bactria are much less clear. A few literary sources like Strabo can be supplemented by gradually emerging archaeological evidence. Nevertheless Zoroastrian remains in Bactria are meagre when compared with Buddhist ones from there, or with Zoroastrian cultic materials found further afield in Central Asia/East Iran, i.e. from ancient Sogdia, Chorasmia and Margiana.

The following glossary contains all words which appeared in ‘The Wanetsi Connexion, Part I’ (JRAS I, 1984, 54–76), as well as many words from LZ, LZM, and M, where something new can be said. No locus is given for a very few very common loanwords (mainly from NP). The alphabetical order disregards vowels, as usual. Pashto cognates are given mainly to facilitate reference to EVP, and to underline the differences between Pashto and Wanetsi. Note that h is very unstable in all positions in Wan, and that Pš words ending in (for standard -áy) are Kākaṛī forms.

Was there a Xia Dynasty? By the mid-nineteen thirties, the works of Henri Maspero and other scholars in the West and of Gu Jiegang and his compatriots in China had clearly established the originally mythological character of the founder of the Xia Dynasty (traditionally ca. 2200–1760 B.C.) and of the rulers who preceded him in traditional Chinese historiography. The excavations near Anyang of late Shang palaces, tombs and inscribed oracle bones had also established the authenticity of the Shang Dynasty which followed the Xia, or at least of the latter part of it. In 1936, Chen Mengjia published an article in which he related the Xia king list to the Shang and argued that the two periods were the same. For the next forty years, the question of the authenticity of the Xia was left largely in abeyance although most scholars did continue to assume that the Xia Dynasty, which was hereditary like the Shang, would some day be authenticated by archaeological excavation.