The term ‘derivation’ denotes a process of linguistic creativity. It does not involve creating something out of nothing, rather of availing oneself of material already existing in the language in order to create new lexemes (i.e. new ‘lexical words’). Clearly, the lexicon is not enriched through derivation only; generally speaking, derivation is not involved when a word is borrowed from outside, i.e. from another language. The borrowed word enters the Hebrew lexicon as a moneme, so there is no creativity (or very little of it) involved in the borrowing process.

The collection of legends about the prophets known as the Lives of the Prophets belongs amongst the Old Testament pseudepigrapha. It is a Jewish work in origin, perhaps dating from the first century A.D., and was composed in Greek or, less probably, Hebrew. It was subsequently taken over by the Church, and none of the extant witnesses to the text is entirely free of the signs of Christian editing. The wealth of textual evidence available is considerable. Thus the Greek version of the Lives, which is the most important, is found in numerous manuscripts belonging to several different recensions, but Syriac, Latin, Armenian and Arabic versions are also known. In addition an Ethiopic version is said to exist, but to my knowledge only the Life of Jeremiah has hitherto been published. Some years ago, however, I observed that the Lives of Ezekiel and Daniel are given in two Ethiopic manuscripts in the British Library—although they are not described as such in Wright's Catalogue. From the description in Dillmann's Catalogue it also seemed likely to me that the Life of Ezekiel was to be found in a Berlin manuscript, and I have now been able to confirm this. My purpose in this short study is to make available the text and a translation of these two Lives.

Our information to date about the possible existence of a work known as ṭomaräǝsbǝ't or ‘Epistle of Humanity’, by Emperor Zär'a Ya'ǝqob (1434–68) comes from the works of the Emperor himself. It is important that we study closely his description of this work in order to determine whether the contents of a given manuscript could be at least part of the so-called ṭomaräǝsbǝ't, or .

It has long been argued that the peculiar syntactic traits which typify the modern Semitic Ethiopian languages can be accounted for by the Cushitic substratum, notably the word order of the sentence and the system of qualification (the qualifier-qualified order of elements). It has been suggested that among these languages Tigre is ‘more Semitic’ since (a) it is much less rigid as regards word order, and (b) ‘it may optionally have either the Semitic pattern or the Cushitic one’. A parallel diachronic statement would be that as regards its syntax Tigre was more successful in resisting Cushitic influence or, for some reason, less exposed to it. Here, to avoid the problem of measuring the syntactic features of Tigre in general Semitic terms, Gə'əaz is usually taken as the mode for a Semitic language. In this respect it follows that descriptively Tigre is more Gə'əz-like than the other modern Semitic Ethiopian languages. In spite of the plausibility of such an explanation, it seems to be a matter of scholarly tradition rather than the result of thorough investigation, i.e. the belief that Tigre is the odd man out among its modern relations by virtue of its syntax is an impression rather than a proven observation.

In studies of Islamic architecture dealing with the earliest periods, a natural emphasis has fallen on the mosques of the Holy Cities of Arabia, the Ḥaramayn, whenever the architecture of the Arabian Peninsula has been discussed. In later periods, extensions and restorations in the Ḥaram in Mecca and the Mosque of the Prophet in al-Madīna have likewise been discussed, but until recent times, little has been said of any other Arabian mosques. As far as mosques beyond the Ḥaramayn are concerned, this neglect has been caused largely by their inaccessibility; but as a result of the imbalance, students of Islamic architecture have been left to judge Arabia by the Prophet's Mosque, which was only truly Arabian at its foundation, and the Ḥaram and the Ka'ba, which were always unique in Islam in terms both of religion and of architecture. As for later extensions and restorations of either mosque, these tell more of the development of Islamic architectural style and taste beyond the Peninsula than of any Arabian religious architectural tradition.

One unit of Firthian prosodic analysis is the anaptyctic vowel: ‘such common phenomena as elision, liaison, anaptyxis, the use of so-called cushion consonants or “sounds for euphony” are involved in this study of prosodies. These devices of explanation begin to make sense when prosodic structure is approached as a system of syntagmatic relation’ (Firth, 1948, 57 f.).

The nearly complete 432 lines of the Šābuhragān presented in the first part of article come from a series, almost certainly unbroken, of 9 folios = 18 pages, each with 24 lines. It is possible that a whole folio, i.e. two pages, is missing between D v and E r, or between F v and G r, but the content of those pages makes it seem most unlikely. A question not yet considered is how the folios A-J were folded into a quire. A, B, C and E are double sheets, i.e. have at least partially preserved counter-folios (which we may call A2, B2, C2 and E2) still attached to them, on the left side of the fold and of the binder's stitch-holes. This, however, does not tell us from how many double sheets the quire was made. To establish this we must know which of our folios, if any, were the first and last of the quire. The main parts of H and J, M 505 a and b, are separate folios, though of very similar shape, and described as ‘fragments from a double sheet, whose pages were consecutive’ (Henning, apud Boyce, Catalogue, M 505). Confirmation and proof of this statement, presumably based on the content of the folios, comes from one of the fragments which complement them, viz. M 542 b, identified as ‘das verbindende Stück’ by Dr. Sundermann. This is still hinged (Boyce, Catalogue, ‘from the centre of a double sheet’), its side I clearly belonging to H and II to J (see pl. VI). There can be no doubt, therefore, that H-J was the centre double sheet of the quire.

In JRAS, 1960, 95 f., while reviewing J. Gonda's Four studies in the language of the Veda (The Hague, 1959), I put forward the view that the Sanskrit root mā- ‘to make, produce, create’ should not be regarded as a special meaning development of the root mā- (<IB mē-) ‘to measure’, but that it should be taken as an independent root derived from IE mā- ‘to make’, etc., which is also to be seen in Lat. māteria, māteriēs ‘substance, material’ and in the IE word for ‘mother’ (Lat. māter, etc.). The matter was dealt with very briefly in that review, and a much fuller treatment is needed to establish the conclusions proposed there. It is the purpose of the present article to provide this.

In 1679 the Fifth Dalai Lama issued a decree appointing Sangs-rgyas rgya mtsho to conduct the administration of secular affairs on his behalf in the post usually known as that of regent. The decree, sealed with the imprint of the Dalai Lama's hands, is inscribed in the Potala on a wall opposite the steep triple stair leading down to the great eastern courtyard called Bde-yangs-shar. It is referred to in the third volume of the autobiography of the Dalai Lama (Du-ku-la III, fol. 128a) and in the Vaidurya ser-po composed by Sangs-rgyas rgya-mtsho in 1698 (VSP, p. 360); but the complete text does not appear to have been published in any Tibetan or western work. The copy transcribed below is derived mainly from a photograph kindly given me by Ernst Krause who accompanied Dr. Ernst Schaefer to Lhasa in 1939. As can be seen in the reproduction in plate I the last two lines are obscured by a wooden frame protecting the Dalai Lama's hand-prints and for that passage I am indebted to the Tibetan scholar and author, Tsipon W. D. Shakabpa.

The 'Afar translation team of the Ethiopian Bible Society began in September 1976 and in the following two years completed about two-thirds of the New Testament. The team consisted of Alo Aydaahis, main translator; Guto Wuddo, assistant translator and tester, and Loren Bliese co-ordinator and exegete. Since English was difficult for the two 'Afar members of the team, the language used to translate from was the popular Amharic version being prepared by the Bible Society of Ethiopia. The use of Amharic as the source language resulted in interference in the 'Afar draft, as subsequent testing revealed.