In four Chinese texts almost certainly written before the middle of the sixth century a.d., of which two have been attributed to the Tsin period (265–420), there were references to two ‘Po-Ssῠ pine resins ’ to a ‘Po-Ssῠ resin’ subsequently likened to ‘pine resin’, and to a resin subsequently attributed to the ‘Po-Ssῠ’ and also likened to ‘pine resin’. They were ‘ju t'ou perfume ’, the ‘mo drug ’, ‘An-hsi perfume ’, and lung nao or ‘P'o-lü perfume ’. An-hsi perfume became the name for benjamin gum (Styrax benzoin Dryander) which, with lung nao or tree camphor (Dryobalanops aromatica Gaertn. f ), were in later times famous trade-products of northern Sumatra. To-day ju, the abbreviated form of ju t'ou, is identified with species of Pistacia (a mastic) or with frankincense (Boswellia spp.) and mo with myrrh (Commiphora spp.). These are products of Somaliland, the Middle East, and India. In the sixteenth century, however, and long before then, Chinese herbalists believed that ju and mo also came from South East Asia. The text which first mentioned ju in fact ascribed it to the ‘Southern Ocean Po-Ssῠ’, a definition indicating a South East Asian origin.

The K. al-farq bayn wilāyāt ahi al-islām wa bayn wilāyāt ahi al-kufr is one of the minor works attributed to the Shehu ‘Umān dan Fodio. The work is not among those mentioned by Sultan Bello in the Infāq al-maysūr, nor is it listed by Whitting or Vajda. It is listed by Kensdale, and Smith notes a MS among the De Gironcourt papers which bears an almost identical title. The writer has been assured by Malam Junaidu, Wazirin Sokoto that the work is well known to be by the Shehu ‘Umān. Malam Abubakar Gumi of the School for Arabic Studies, Kano, and a Sokoto scholar deeply versed in the Fulani Arabic literature, also confirms that the work has been known to him from his youth as that of the Shehu. Finally the author identifies himself in the preamble as ‘Umān b. Fūdī.

Since the publication in 1954 of M. Cœdes' sixth and last volume of edited and translated Cambodian inscriptions, almost every legible text of Old Khmer which has so far come to light has been readily available in transcribed form to the student of the Khmer language. It is a humble and restricted literature which has come down to us, as the praises of gods and kings and most of the important edicts were written in Sanskrit while the native tongue was found useful chiefly for recording (and ensuring that everyone understood) such matters as the duties of temple slaves, the revenues due to the foundations, and the pious deeds of the local gentry. The language lacks uniformity because the field covered by the inscriptions is both geographically and temporally extensive, spreading over the whole area of Cambodia and spanning the seventh to the fourteenth centuries.

It may be possible to study special cases of the general philosophical problem, how language and thought are correlated, by considering definite thought structures and definite languages. The difficulty, that thought seems to be accessible only or at least primarily through language, can be partly avoided by concentrating upon formal expressions of thought structures which are considerably different from ordinary language. In the following an attempt will be made to show, with the help of symbolic logic, how certain general structures are expressed in classical Sanskrit and, subsequently, how certain logical structures are expressed in the technical Sanskrit of Indian logic. The results do not prove that some logical principles depend on linguistic structures; for, evidently, the linguistic structures themselves may reflect a deeper-lying structure of thinking or ‘being’. On the other hand, if it were possible to show that some expressions could occur only in languages with a special structure—e.g. some Indo-European languages—this kind of research might throw some light on the problem of the universality of logical principles.

I. Rarotongan is a Polynesian language spoken on the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. A phonemic analysis yields a nine-term consonant system comprising four voiceless plosives (bilabial, dental, velar, glottal), three nasals (bilabial, alveolar, velar), a bilabial voiced fricative, and an alveolar flapped ‘r’. There is the usual Polynesian five-term vowel system (close front, close back, mid front, mid back, open central). All vowels may be either short (one mora) or long (two morae). Long vowels and short-vowel diphthongs behave phono-logically as dissyllables and are so treated in this paper. Syllable structures are limited to V and CV.

Faced with the fact that in many varieties of Arabic, including Bedouin dialects of the kind to which Sibawayhi was wont to turn, polysyllabic words and certain other unitary complexes are characterized in pronunciation by the prominence which makes one syllable stand out to the ear above the others, the linguist is understandably puzzled by the failure of the Arab grammarians to mention the subject of accentuation. Bewilderment increases with the realization not only that rules of prominence are statable for a given colloquial but also that correspondence between colloquials or between a colloquial and a given ‘Classical’ pronunciation is equally regular. Confusion is complete when the ‘rules’ given in all reference grammars of Classical Arabic are found to take no cognizance of regional differences of pronunciation and, what is worse, to bear little or no resemblance to the facts in any one region.

1. MS Or. 7698, entitled Ādāb al-murīdīn, was attributed by A. G. Ellis and E. Edwards to ‘Ubaidullāh b. Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-'Azīz al-Samarqandā. The text begins on fol. 13a and is preceded in the MS by the ‘Ajā'ib al-qulūb of al-Samarqandī. A rather late note on the front page, by a hand different from that of the scribe of the two treatises, gives the contents of the MS as ‘Risāla fī ‘ajā'ib al-qulūb li-'Ubaidillāh b. Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-'Azīz al-Samarqandī quddisa sirruhu: Kitīb Ādāb al-murīdīn’. Ellis and Edwards erroneously assumed that like the ‘Ajā'ib al-qulūb the Ādāb al-murīdīn was also by al-Samarqandī.