Professor Guillaume's new translation of the Sīrah of Ibn Isḥāq (in the recension of Ibn Hishām) will stand as an enduring monument to his tenure of the Chair of Arabic at the University of London. The Arabic has been rendered into elegant classical English, very readable in style, with none of that awkwardness of English idiom which often besets translations attempting to present an Arabian setting and outlook so utterly different from those of the Occident as that portrayed in the Sīrah.

Within four months of the battle of Uhud, two missions sent by the Prophet, the first to certain sections of al-Haun b. Khuzaima, the second to Banū ‘Āmir, were set upon and treacherously killed or captured.1 In the first case the emissaries were six in number. Four were killed, and two surrendered to the attackers, who belonged to the tribe of Hudhail, or properly to Liḥyān, a branch of the same, and were sold to the Maccans. One was killed in revenge for Umayya b. Khalaf and the other, Khubaib b. ‘Adiyy, was killed and crucified in revenge for al-Ḥārith b. ‘Amir, who, like Umayya, was also killed at Badr.2

Under the patronage of the enlightened Fatimid caliphs (A.D. 969–1171) there flourished in Egypt a vigorous and refined art. The sumptuous palaces with which they had adorned their capital Cairo have vanished without trace, but the remains of their religious architecture, the magnificent gateways of Cairo's Fatimid wall (which have escaped destruction), together with the enthusiastic descriptions of contemporary travellers enable us to imagine the splendour of their court.

In an earlier article I gathered up certain Indo-Iranian words to form a group connected with ‘seed’, ‘sowing’ and ‘planting’.

In Iranian these words were Avestan mīz- (Yasna 44.20), taken to mean ‘to sow (seeds)’, with the -ti- derivative mišti- in two passages of the later Avesta Yašt 5.120 and Yašt 7.4. Here in Yašt 7.4 mišti urvaranąm ‘with the sowing of seeds of plants’ was a striking phrase.

Since the publication of Professor J. Takakusu's ‘Life of Vasubandhu by Paramārtha’ in the year 1904, several scholars have made attempts to determine the date and works of Vasubandhu. The problem is beset with several difficulties. Tradition gives three dates (A.N. 900, 1000, and 1100) based on different reckonings of the Nirvana era. Vasubandhu, himself a Sautrāntika, is the author of the celebrated Vaibhāsika work, viz., the Abhidharma-kox015B;a (and its Bhāṣya), and is at the same time credited with the authorship of several major works of the Vijñānavāda school. The problem is rendered more complex by the mention in Yaśoṁitra's Sphuṭārthā Abhidharma- kośa-vyākhyā of an elder (Vṛdāhacārya) Vasubandhu, leading to a recent theory of two Vasubandhus advocated by Professor E. Frauwallner.

Many of the concepts of Indian music commonly prevalent in Bharata's time, and expressed quite succinctly in his Nāṭyaśāstra, have subsequently been confused by later writers. Even now, several modern writers are still in some doubt as to the nature of the ancient parent scales, the sa-grāma and the sa-grāma. The fundamental difficulty hinges around the location of the svara (note) in relation to its śrutis (component intervals). Contrary to Western practice, the interval is considered to precede the note, so that the four śrutis of sa are located between sa and the ni below it.

One of the most important problems faced by the administration in the early days of British rule in India was how to ascertain and distinguish the different types of land-tenure prevalent there. It was obvious that a great variety of rights existed by custom in respect of land, and when the government proposed to collect revenue it was essential to know from which party or parties it could be expected and in what manner and proportions it should be levied. The task was completed by elaborate local inquiries, but very little help was anticipated or received from legal textbooks in Sanskrit, which might have been expected to provide information upon so obviously fundamental a subject. But here and there details which throw light upon medieval practices are to be found in the books, and these seem to connect tolerably well with the results of the inquiries made during the nineteenth century. An instance of this seems worthy of quoting, not merely for its comparative rarity and for the juristic skill exhibited by the author, but chiefly because of the intrinsic interest of one of the tenures in question, which has a high curiosity-value and is probably of a species confined to India.

Just before the intellectual impact of Britain on Indian Islam a religious reform movement had swept over Muslim India. Although this movement itself does not come into the scope of the present essay, we note it at the outset because: (a) Intellectually it sought to regenerate Islam by going back to the pure and simple Islam of the early period and tried to weaken the hold of medieval authorities on the Muslim mind. Consequently, although reactionary in itself, its ‘purification’ impetus prepared, in some measure, the way for subsequent intellectual developments.

‘Kusemai’ was the name given to a particular type of musical entertain- ment which flourished in Japan, mainly around Kyōto and Nara, in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.1 The name implies dances (mai) which were peculiar and unconventional (huse), but the peculiarity of the performances lay not so much in the dance as in the music. The musical style of Kusemai put overwhelming emphasis on the beat at the expense of melody, and the novel effect to which this gave rise was sufficient, it seems, to warrant the rather disparaging name. The dance itself was of very minor importance and probably consisted of little more than the performer turning and stamping in time to the music. In Kusemai the song was more important than the dance, and the music of the song more important than the words.

R. C. Abraham's The principles of Tiv, though a teaching grammar which designedly avoids technical terms, contains the most careful and systematic treatment of the Tiv verbal system that has been published, and this and his other books are the only works on Tiv giving tonal details. But his classification of verbs, though based appropriately on their structure and tonal behaviour, is not entirely consistent, nor the most convenient basis for a clear and concise description of the whole verbal system. The present study is based on an analysis of the material provided in Abraham's books—particularly his excellent dictionary—checked and supplemented by several years' practical experience of the language in the field, and more recent detailed research with various informants in London.

At the moment, both in the British Protectorate and in Somalia, the adoption of a standard orthography for the Somali language is fiercely debated. In discussion of the merits of the various scripts proposed, technical problems of orthography have to some extent been lost sight of. Nationalistic arguments have favoured ‘Somali writing’ (‘Ismaaniya) while religious or Pan-Islamic arguments have supported an Arabic script. This article discusses an orthography invented some 20 years ago by a well-known Gadabuursi sheikh, Sheikh ‘Abduramaan Sh. Nuur, the present Government Qā1E0D;ī of Borama District in the west of the British Protectorate. The script has not, as far as I am aware, been previously described in the literature on Somaliland. I publish it here with no intention of attempting to contribute to the already abundant confusion in the choice of a standard orthography for Somali.

In a previous article I quoted two or three sayings of the ỌkọŊkọ society of the Igbo people of south-eastern Nigeria and very briefly outlined some of the main features of the cultural setting of Igbo unwritten literature. I also suggested that we needed not so much odd specimens of this literature as considerable collections of the various genres in their social environment.