In an earlier article (Sprigg, 1963b) I drew on Burmese, with only a few examples from certain Tibetan dialects (Lhasa, Sherpa), to advocate applying prosodic analysis, the name commonly given to the polysystemic type of phonological analysis devised by J. R. Firth, to the languages of the TibetoBurman group for purposes of comparison and reconstruction; since then I have had an opportunity of studying two typologically different Tibetan dialects, the non-tonal Golok and the slightly tonal Balti, both of them remarkable for syllable-initial consonant clusters; and the relations of tone in the tonal Tibetan dialects to syllable-initial consonant clusters in the non-tonal dialects much strengthens the case, to my mind, for basing comparison of Tibetan dialects, and. through them, Proto-Tibetan reconstruction, on polysystemic analysis. The two main characteristics of such an analysis would be: (i) separate phonological systems for different types of syllable feature and syllable-initial feature; (ii) the emphasis on the syntagmatic association of successive phonetic features of the utterance rather than on purely paradigmatic contrast.

When revolution broke out in China in 1911 and rapidly led to the overthrow of the dynasty and the founding of a republic, opinion throughout the world was startled and deeply impressed. The European press expressed amazement that a quaint Oriental people such as the Chinese should take it into their heads to carry out an anti-monarchical revolution, and that hard-headed political realist Vladimir Ilich Lenin waxed positively lyrical about the Chinese revolution and its leader. ‘The East’, he wrote, ‘has committed itself to the Western path,…further hundreds and hundreds of millions of people will from now on join in the struggle for the ideals for which the West has striven’. In Sun Yat-sen, he saw ‘a revolutionary democrat, imbued with that nobility and heroism peculiar to a rising rather than a declining class’. Even when Sun had been supplanted as President by Yüan Shih-k'ai, Lenin still saw a ‘mighty democratic movement’ in progress throughout Asia, whereby hundreds of millions of people were ‘awakening into life, light, and freedom’. Succeeding generations of scholars and political observers, instructed by the spectacle of corruption, division, and military domination which unfolded itself in various guises throughout the era from 1911 to 1949, have gone almost completely to the opposite extreme. What happened in 1911 was not a revolution at all, or only in the most superficial sense; the monarchical system was indeed overthrown, but there was no real change in the locus of power in society.

The British Museum manuscript Or. 843 is the second part of Kitāb al-fisal fī 'l-milal by Ibn Hazm and includes several additions to the printed text. The longest has two sections and begins on folio 142 r., 1. 7. The first is quite new, is on medicine, and is purely theological, a defence of the healing art because the results are foreordained by God like all else. The second, beginning on folio 143 r., 1. 7, is longer than the print, adds kīmiyā to the title, and goes more into detail. The wording of the two texts differs widely. The world is a sphere (kura) of one substance which remains unchanged though its qualities change. Chickens eat dung, an unclean thing, but this feeds plants and trees, and the strictest Muslim has no scruple in eating corn, fowls, and fruit. To argue from analogy is wrong except within narrow limits. The sorcerer's claim to be able to turn a man into a donkey is absurd. Only angels and jinn can change their shapes.

The chronology of Darius' Behistun inscription (= DB) has been the subject of detailed examination especially since 1938 when A. Poebel established the order of the Old Persian months. One problem which has received particular attention is the apparent lack of agreement between the statement of Darius that he gained 19 victories in one year after he became king, and the fact that the time between the first and the last dated events mentioned by him exceeds one year. Furthermore, the recorded battles number 18 instead of 19. The purpose of this note is to study Darius' claim once more, to investigate the previous attempts at tackling the question, and to offer a new explanation for the discrepancies just noted. We start with the order in which the victories of Darius are recorded, for which the following list may be drawn up:

1. Pseudo-Smerdis put to death by Darius in VII, 10 (DB, I, 56).

2. Assina, king of Elam, captured and slain, date not given (DB, I, 81–3).

3. Nidintu-Bel defeated on the Tigris in IX, 26 (DB, I, 88–9).

4. Nidintu-Bel's second defeat in X, 2 (DB, I, 96).

5. Martiya rebelled in Elam, but the Elamites seized and slew him while Darius was in Babylonia (DB, II, 8–13).

6. Fravartiš's army suffered defeat in X, 27 (DB. II, 26).

7. First victory of Dādaršiš over the Armenians in II, 8 (DB, II, 36).

8. Second victory of Dādaršiš over the Armenians in II, 18 (DB, II, 41).

9. Third victory of Dādaršiš over the Armenians in III, 9 (DB, II, 47).

10. Vahumissa overcame the Armenians in X, 15 (DB, II, 56).

11. Second defeat of the Armenians by Vahumissa in II, 30 (DB, II, 61–2).

12. Darius won a decisive victory over Fravartis in I, 25 (DB, II, 69).

13. The Sagartian Čissantaxma captured and slain, date not recorded (DB, II, 78–91).

14. Hystaspes won a victory over the Parthians in XII, 18 (DB, II, 98).

15. Hystaspes routed the Parthians in Patigrabana in IV. 1 (DB, III, 8).

16. Dādaršiš, satrap of Bactria, quelled the revolt of the Margian Frada in IX, 23 (DB, III, 18).

17. Vahyazdata's first defeat in II, 12 (DB, III, 39).

18. Vahyazdata's second defeat in IV, 5 (DB, III, 46–7).

19. Vivana's first victory over the army of Vahyazdata in Arachosia in X, 13 (DB, III, 63).

20. Vivana routed the supporters of Vahyazdata in XII, 7 (DB, III, 68).

21. Araxa rebelled in Babylonia, but was captured and slain in VIII, 22 (DB, III, 88).

The preposition rm ‘with’ is common in Buddhist Sogdian texts, but has not been found in texts in Manichaean or Christian writing; nor is such a preposition known in any other Iranian language. Its peculiar distribution was noticed by Benveniste, who also remarked: ‘rm…se confond dans l'usage avcc δ'wn, δnn, et entraîne le cas oblique.… Il admet, comme δnn, la postposition pr'yw‘. These facts in themselves strongly suggest that rm is not merely a synonym, but a purely graphic variant, of δnn; and this is confirmed by the ease with which rm can be explained as an ideogram.

Source material for study of the evolution in practice of the forms of music in Indian classical tradition are meagre, although prescriptions for the various types of prabandha abound in the treatises on music. The reason is not far to seek. An essential feature of Indian art music has always been that it is acquired orally from a teacher and transmitted in turn in like manner. It is true that a non-diastematic notation, varying somewhat from one area of the country to another, has been observed, but its purpose traditionally was to present exercises and to facilitate the committing to memory of certain passages. To the present day, no musician would perform from a ‘score’ although, with the advent of radio and the concomitant interest in ‘orchestras’, it should be noted that the music performed is frequently written down beforehand and distributed to the performers.