The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan has, in recent years, attracted an ever-growing volume of research. In part, this may be attributed to the easier access to archival sources, both in England and—to a lesser extent—in the Nile Valley. In addition, there has evolved an increasing interest in bilateral relations between Egypt and the Sudan, prompted in part by the political outlook of Presidents Sadat and Numayri, and even more important, by the apparent decline in the Nile waters, especially in the 1980s. The Integration Charter {takamut), first announced by Presidents. Sadat and Numayri in 1974 and signed by Egypt and the Sudan in 1981, sought to establish co-operation, in a wide variety of spheres, which would—so it was hoped—ultimately lead to unity. These anticipations failed to materialize following the chatige of regime in the Sudan in 1985, and seem even less realistic under the present Sudanese fundamentalist dictatorship.

The aim of this article is to present a new edition, translation and commentary of the treaty concluded in 1387 between the Ottoman ruler Murād I (1362–1389) and the Comune of Genoa. As the only known extant fourteenth-century treaty between the Ottomans and a western city state, the treaty is of considerable importance for early Ottoman history, a period for which contemporary Turkish sources are scant.

Āyatullāh Ruhullāh Khumainī's first major political work, Kashf al-asrār (The revealing of secrets), was published in about 1943, its purpose being according to the author, to repudiate attacks upon the ‘ulamā’ by writers in the press and printed leaflets during the Riḍā Shāh period, and to rectify the misconceptions that had arisen among the public as a result of the dissemination of these views. It would seem that the book, however, was primarily a refutation of one work, Asrār-i hizār sāla by ‘Alț Akbār Ḥakamțzāda, also published in 1943. Ḥakamțzāda accused the ‘ulamā’ of encouraging superstitious practice amongst their following in order to perpetuate their own power, and cited as examples belief in the intercession of the Prophet and his descendants, designated as shirk, and non-recognition of the legitimacy of the temporal power.

In The Ramtek Inscriptions [I] (hereafter RI) mention was made of a Vākāṭaka inscription in the Kevala-Narasiṁha temple on Ramtek Hill, the discovery of which was reported in IAR, 1982–83, 137. The credit for first discussing, as well as editing the text goes to the Director of the Archaeological Survey and Museums of Maharashtra, Dr. A. P. Jamkhedkar. In an article which appeared in 1986 in R. Parimoo (ed.), Vaiṣṇavism in Indian arts and culture (pp. 335–41), Jamkhedkar attributed the inscription to Prabhāvatī Guptā (op. cit., 340), an attribution for which he adduced arguments in a subsequent article that was published in M. S. Nagaraja Rao (ed.), Kusumāñjali, vol. i in 1987 (pp. 217–23).

In colloquial Tamil the form-class of expressives includes some items which have in each member of a reduplicated pair an initial voiced stop, alongside many with initial voiceless stops. This is unlike the form-classes of nouns and verbs which have in initial position only voiceless stops, except for some borrowings from Sanskrit or other sources. The writing system has no provisions for such initial voiced stops, except for a very few items with the ‘northern letter’ j-. The etymological dictionary shows that in general, when in colloquial Tamil these voiced stops appear in expressives, etyma that appear in the other Dravidian languages also have voiced stops; they are then to be reconstructed for South Dravidian or in some cases even for Proto-Dravidian, and it is to be assumed that they were found in all periods of Tamil even though they were not written as such.

The three publishing houses of Wen-wu in Peking, Shanghai shu-tien, and Ku-chi in Tientsin joined forces to produce a new edition of the Taoist Canon. The Tao-tsang they published in 1988 is meant to be an improvement on the so-called Cheng-t'ung Tao-tsang printed in 1921–23 by the Han-fen lou branch of Shanghai Commercial Press. The latter takes as its foundation the copy of the Ming Canon from the archives of the Pai-yün Kuan (White Cloud Abbey) in Peking. The woodcut edition of the Ming Canon contains two components. The core collection appeared under the title Ta Ming Tao-tsang ching in the years 1444–45 of the Cheng-t'ung reign period. A small supplement entitled Hsü Tao-tsang ching was issued in 1607.

Because of the growing interest in Buddhist hermeneutics in recent years, the subject of p'an-chiao (classification of teachings) has lately attracted increasing attention in the West. P'an-chiao is essentially an attempt to distinguish and to integrate various trends of Buddhist thought, various systems of Buddhist praxis and various kinds of Buddhist texts, with a view to highlighting their individual characteristics and to reconciling their apparent disparities. Different Chinese Buddhist schools, each with its own particular idea of the essence of the Buddha Dharma, naturally consider the significance of the heterogeneous elements of their spiritual heritage differently. Hence, examining and comparing their p'an-chiao theories is a convenient and reliable way to assess their doctrinal positions and to determine the respective places of their teachings in the bewildering labyrinth of Buddhist dogmatics. This article is an attempt to bring out the basic orientation and special concerns of Chi-tsang's (549–623) thought as reflected in his opinions about a number of central Buddhist sūtras and their interrelation. Chi-tsang, as is well-known, was the pivotal figure in the revival of Chinese Madhyamaka in the late sixth century, and it was the common consensus that his teaching represented the apex of the development of Madhyamaka thought in China.

Among the Taylor-Schechter Collection in the University Library Cambridge there are still Christian-Palestinian-Aramaic (CPA) fragments which have yet to be identified. One such fragment, T-S 12.742, was published for the first time in 1900 by A. Lewis and M. Gibson, though scarcely any of the text had been read.2 Like all the other CPA fragments of earlier date, T-S 12.742 is a vellum palimpsest, and has a small part of another page attached to it (see plates). The CPA script underneath the Hebrew square letters is very faint and consists of two unheaded columns of 24 lines each on both sides of the fragment. It is one of the most difficult CPA palimpsests to decipher.