Professor E. ULLENDORFF is entitled to the grateful appreciation of all students of Ethiopic letters for having published anew the Falasha story of the ‘Death of Moses’. The first edition published by the late Dr. Jacques Faitlovitch in 1906 has, indeed, become very rare. Moreover, his editio princeps was based on a single manuscript, while Ullendorff's recension is the result of a painstaking comparison of Faitlovitch's text with a manuscript extant inthe National Library of Addis Ababa. Some variants of this manuscript were already knownfrom the notes appended to Professor Wolf Leslau's translation of the ‘Death of Moses’ in his Falasha anthology, New Haven, 1951. Now we have them all before us in the apparatus criticus of Ullendorff's edition. The collation of the Addis Ababa manuscript has yielded an improved text. Itso happens, however, that this is not yet the last stage in the research on this interesting opuscle.

T he Mandaean, or Nasoraean religion is a system with no definite theology. It is, and apparently was from the first, an elaborate system of symbolical rites, meticulously preserved and performed by an hereditary priesthood. These priests, to judge by scrolls reserved for priests only, appear to have concealed gnosticconceptions in symbolical myths, personifying abstract conceptions and so veiling, even in priestly texts, high and metaphysical truths which only the especially endued could perceive if fitted to understand.

I N 1508 the Mediterranean port of Bādis, located on the coast of the Rīf on approximately the same meridian as Malaga, shared with Salé and Azemmour on the Atlantic the distinction of being the only Moroccan ports not occupied by either the Spanish or Portuguese. Subject to the Wattasids at Fās, at about the beginning of the sixteenth century Bādis had been granted by the reigning Wattāsidto a cousin, who for some years ruled almost independently there. Because of its geographical situation the port was of considerable interest to the Republic of Venice, two of whose merchant fleets had occasion to call there in the course of their voyages along the coasts of the Mediterranean.

Venetian interest in Bādis is illustrated by two Arabic documents: a treaty and its covering letter addressed by the Amīr of Bādis to the Doge of Venice, written in the year 1508 and concerning the establishment of commercial relations. The originals of these two documents are preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV) where also, in the Libri Commemoriali, transcripts of their contemporary Italian translations are to be found. These translations are reproduced here together with the Arabic texts.

In Ḥaḍramawt, it seems, there have been constantly reiterated attempts at creating effective sumptuary laws limiting expenditure at marriages and other social activities, especially in respect of the extravagant demands of women for dress and other forms of ostentation where their rivalry leads their male relatives into expenditure beyond their means. The sentiments of the Hadrami man are admirably expressed in a qasīdah by the shaikh Aḥmad Barakā of which one line may be quoted here:

The collapse of the authority of the Saddozai rulers of Afghanistan in the early years of the nineteenth century left their empire divided into a number of separate states. By 1838 the only states still under Afghan rule were those of Herat, Qandahar, and Kabul. At that time fear that Russia had gained a preponderant influence in Persia which would be extended to Afghanistan caused the British authorities in India and England to decide to remove Dost Muḥammad Khān, the ruler of Kabul, and his brothers, who ruled in Qandahar, and to restore Shāh Shujā' al-Mulk, the deposed Saddozai monarch, to the government of those territories.

Ever since the publication of the text, scholars have disagreed on the date of the composition of the Śukraniti. Oppertx placed it very early, in the period of the Smrtis and the early epic literature. V. S. Agrawala and Syamlal Pandya regard it as a work of the Gupta period. But generally the text is utilized as a source for the early medieval period, especially the eleventh or the twelfth century. Rajendra Lai Mitra held that the work could not be older than the sixteenth century. Sanskritists, following the lead of Keith and Kane, dismiss the text as of quite a late date and hence not applicable to the Hindu period.

On 11 March 1925 the dying Dr. Sun Yat-sen signed his will which was witnessed by T. V. Soong, Sun Fo, Chang Chi, Shao Yüan-ch'ung, Tai En-sai, Wu Ching-hêng, Ho Hsiang-ning, Tai Chi-t'ao, and Tsou Lu. Wang Ching-wei, who, according to the text of the will, had taken it down from Dr. Sun's dictation, signed his name immediately after Dr. Sun.

Among the many unpublished works of the Shehu ‘Uthmān dan Fodio three have come to my notice which are of interest in that they illustrate the development of a tradition of reform which, having remote origins in the Almoravid movement of the eleventh century A.D. achieved literary expression in the Muslim empire of Songhay, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and which was continued in the Habe kingdoms almost three centuries later. They also illustrate the continuity of social custom in the Sudan over this period. The works are:

This word is not very frequent in its occurrence, and its usage is restricted to the Vedic literature. It is obviously derived from pājas- which occurs more often and in usage is restricted to the ijgveda. The meaning assigned to the former is ‘belly’, and the latter has been variously interpreted as ‘brightness’, ‘form or appearance’, ‘shining form’.