The tenth chapter in the Lalita-vistara, entitled Lipiśālāsaṃdarśanaparivarta, is well known for the list of 64 different forms of writing which were mastered by the Bodhisattva in his schooling. The text continues by describing how his 10,000 fellow-pupils, by reason of his supernatural power (adhiṣṭhānena), when they pronounced the individual syllables (mātṛkā), produced for each sound a symbolic or esoteric phrase beginning with the syllable in question. Thus, yadā akāraṃ parikīrtayanti sma, todā anityaḥ saroasaṃskāraśabdo niścarati sma ‘When they recited the syllable a, then there arose the sound (phrase) “Non-eternal are all the saṃskāras”’. (I refrain from attempting to improve the dubious grammar of the edition; but the sense is not in doubt.) The remainder of the Sanskrit syllabary is dealt with in a comparable manner, in the normal order, a, ā, i, ī, … ka, kha, ga, gha, ṅa … ha.

Among the many attractive rugs illustrated and described in H. A. Lorentz's book on Chinese rugs are two pillar rugs, one of which bears a dedicatory inscription in Chinese, the other a dedicatory inscription in Mongol. The rugs apparently form a pair. They are of the same size, the design of each, an encircling dragon, is a mirror image of that of the other, the borders are identical, and the positions of the inscriptions correspond. The shades of colour, too, are the same, indicating contemporaneous manufacture. Yet, on the face of it, the two inscriptions refer to two distinct donations, and they have been so interpreted by the author. The date in the Chinese inscription is the first month of summer in the year i-yu in the reign of Ch'ien Lung, that is 1765, while the date in the Mongol inscription is the first month of summer in the female-blue hen year in the reign of Badarayultu Törö (Kuang Hsü), that is 1885. Mr. Lorentz quotes expert opinion to the eifect that, the dates apart, the two rugs look as if they must have been woven at the same time as each other and be of late date. The inference is, he says, that both were made in 1885. Yet, he says, after describing the Chinese inscription: ‘The puzzle is that the Mongol inscription in the other rug declares that this rug was presented by a different person one hundred and twenty years later!’. He offers an ingenious explanation for this dilemma, suggesting that the second donor, for he is of the opinion that two donations did indeed take place, at an interval of 120 years, caused an earlier rug to be copied, in order that he could present a pair, rather than a single item. The donor's idea would have been, to quote Mr. Lorentz: ‘I herewith submit the copy of a famous rug dedicated in 1765, to which I add another such rug with my own dedication, presenting thus a pair’.

L'écriture actuelle à Madagascar ne date que du siècle dernier. En mars 1823, le roi Radama I a adopté les caractères latins et l'orthographe détaillée proposée par les missionnaires de son entourage à Tananarive, la capitale.

Il existait pourtant même avant cette date une tradition écrite en caractères arabico-malgaches, héritage laissé par les premières families arabes venues à la Grande Île au 11–13 siècle. Cette orthographe, appellée sorabe (écriture majuscule), a été gardée et cachée par la tribu Antaimoro de la côte est de Madagascar. Une vingtaine de personnes par génération apprend à lire et à écrire et transmet ces anciens manuscrits d'un caractère religieux ou historique aux futures générations.

Cette description se fonde sur des observations faites en plusieurs points du Territoire français des Afars et des Issas (Goda, Mabla, ‘Àlta, Gamàrri notamment), de 1973 à 1975, et sur le témoignage d'informateurs originaires, pour certains, de l'Àwsa. Ceux-ci nous ont permis d'acquérir la certitude qu'un même dialecte était parlé dans la zone comprise entre le delta lacustre de l'Awash (Kalo) et le golfe de Tadjoura. Il semble aussi que l'afar méridional s'étende en amont même de Ba'àdu et jusqu'au piémont éthiopien, (Dòk'a, Dawwe et Awra); d'autre part, il est attesté au nord, à Baylūl, mouillage au delà duquel commence l'afar septentrional. Si nous n'avons pu encore enquêter personnellement dans ces régions, la classification proposée par Mahafly nous paraît toutefois approximative. Il est hasardeux d'isoler l'Awsa des régions côtières. De nombreux faits historiques (comme en témoignent les traditions orales) et sociologiques fournissent la preuve du contraire. Les tribus ‘asayammàra établies au nord et à l'ouest du Territoire français atteignent le Kalo au cours de leurs migrations saisonnières. Les Debne de la plaine du Gōba'ad, en transhumant par Anḍaḍkàlu au sud du lac Abḥe, touchent le pays gal'êla qui, au début de ce siècle, s'étendait à la majeure partie du Gōba'ad. De plus, les famines, les affaires de sang ont souvent été jusqu'à un passé récent à l'origine de l'exode de tout ou partie d'un groupe tribal. Les guerres pour la conquête de la vallée de l'Awash ont également opéré des bouleversements démographiques importants. Le déplacement vers l'ouest des Mōdayto ou des Badoyta-m mēla en est une illustration. On pourrait aussi mentionner les relations commerciales, occasions d'une dissémination de plusieurs tribus spécialisées dans les opérations de transit, tels les Ḥasōba que l'on retrouve tout au long d'une piste caravanière allant de Bāte à Ambabbo, près de Tadjoura.

A written law and a separate if not independent judiciary were among the most distinctive innovations brought by Islam to the Sudanic region. The history of the reception of the sharī'a and the institutions associated with it, of its modifications of the local customary law and of the changes wrought upon it by the same customary law may help to provide a framework for more general discussions of the process of islamization within Africa. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the history of the office of qāḍī, or judicial official, in the Dār Fūr sultanate, which occupied what is now the westernmost province of the Democratic Republic of the Sudan between the mid-seventeenth century and 1916. Thus I am not so much concerned with the content of the law, whether customary or Islamic, administered within the sultanate as with who administered it.

In a recent issue of the Bulletin, Mr. Sims-Williams argued that in the Sogdian ‘Ancient letters’ the ideogram usually read 'R, found in the address formula, is to be read 'D. Mr. Sims-Williams's arguments were based on palaeographic and on inner Sogdian linguistic considerations. At first glance the Aramaist might be reluctant to accept this reading for the ideogram since in the address formula of letters in the Arsham correspondence, both the material published by G. R. Driver and that found earlier at Elephantine, and in later texts such as the Bar Kokhba letters, the standard form before the addressee is 'L ‘to’. The purpose of this note is to show that there is ample evidence for the interchange of 'D and 'L in both Aramaic and Hebrew to make the use of 'D for the more usual 'L in a branch of the Achaemenian chancery plausible and the use of 'D in the ‘Ancient letters’ probable.

The fragments of the Sīra of Wahb b. Munabbih carefully edited by R. G. Khoury contain some misreadings or misinterpretations, several of which were elucidated in BSOAS, XXXVII, 3, 1974, 545–56. Additional corrections are suggested in the following lines.

In Old Burmese I find nothing comparable to pai (Karlgren, Gram. Ser. 781—pk), which is found first, it seems, on two Yin bones. But I find something possibly as old, and certainly more widespread in the Sinitic family. OB ryā (I add the level tone numbering) is certainly the same as Tibetan brgya ‘hundred’. The letter r is absent from Chinese, except in Karlgren's plausible reconstructions of rhyme-finals in his classes VI and XI (Gram. Ser., pp. 20, 25). After study of the many initial rs in OB, I think ryā might well go back to something like *di-g in OC. Another ryā in OB means ‘ploughed field’; and I connect this, without hesitation, to ch'ou (d'ôg, GS 1090 1) which means just this: the character is thought to be a drawing of a furrowed field. Cut out the ‘field’ and we have left shou ('ôg, GS 1090 g) ‘longevity’, i.e. 100 [years]. Are these lines the furrows on the centenarian's face?

In BSOAS, XXXVIII, 1, 1975, at p. 92 I noted the anomaly in the Achinese and Mainland reflexes of the PAN base reconstructed by Dyen as *[tT]ahan: Ach. thön, töhön ‘to endure’, Cham tha:n ‘to draw back, restrain’, Röglai that ‘to set [trap]’, which imply rather *-q-. Dyen's *-h- rested on the comparison of Malay tahan ‘to restrain, to endure strain, to set [traps]’ with Tagalog tahán ‘cessation’, Samar-Leyte Bisayan táhan ‘to detain’, Bikol táhan ‘to endure more than another’. It required the assumption that Javanese tahan ‘to restrain, endure’, which also prima facie implies *-q-, was a loan ‘perhaps from Malay’.