The extraordinary ascendancy of the Saffarid dynasty began with the meteoric career of its founder, Yaʿqūb b. al-Layth al-Saffār. Yaʿqūb appeared on the historical scene in 238/852 as the member of an Eastern Iranian military band, and ended his days as the ruler over a vast swathe of territory stretching from today's ʿIraq to the borders of today's India; while at least theoretical acknowledgement of his overlordship was found both in Central Asia and the holy cities of Arabia.

This paper presents a unique bronze weight manufactured by the order of a little-known son of [ain]Abd al-Malik, who was governor of Jund Filastîn for a short period. The weight, of the Byzantine disc type, but bearing Arabic inscriptions, was found in the excavations carried out by the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1990. It is discussed here in the context of other metal weights of the period which bear Arabic inscriptions but are of Byzantine form, and which sometimes also bear Byzantine symbols and Greek inscriptions.

In February 1937, a peace between the Hadramawt sultanates, the Qu[ain]aytī and Kathīrī and their tribes, totally unprecedented in the history of that region, was brought about essentially by the efforts of two men: Sayyid Sir Abū Bakr al-Kāf and Harold Ingrams, the first political officer in Hadramawt. This peace was known universally thereafter as “Ingrams Peace”, although the word “truce” is much in evidence in the contemporary documents studied below.

The prime object of this article is to examine in some detail some of the contemporary British documents directly or indirectly relevant to the phenomenon (for such it undoubtedly was!) of the late 1930s–early 1940s called “Ingrams Peace”. It is quite unashamedly a view of events through British eyes, through the eyes of the key players in the drama. They are allowed as far as is possible to speak for themselves. Let us first introduce the characters involved and set the scene.

Demand for scents, spices and comparable products from India and further east was a major incentive for the naval expeditions which led, after 1497 AD, to the creation of European empires in the Orient. There was the same demand in the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East, to which these goods travelled through the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf. People in Egypt and Babylonia in the classical period were both middlemen and consumers, and this paper draws attention to the existence of a few alabaster jars that reflect the trade. They are mainly in the Department of the Ancient Near East at the British Museum (previously called the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities), and are inscribed in Babylonian or Greek with the names of scents or spices. While these inscriptions are unusual, perhaps many more jars were once inscribed in ink which is no longer visible.

James Legge (1815–1897) is primarily remembered today as the heroic translator of the Chinese Classics (1861–1872, 1893–1895). Allowing for changes in stylistic taste, these massive translations are still considered the “standard” versions of works that “classically” and “scripturally” defined a so-called Confucian “great tradition” in China. Unfortunately a fixation on this singular scholarly accomplishment has tended to brand Legge as merely a great, though plodding, translator – someone primarily remarkable for his indefatigable habits of working. Certainly it was often felt that his contributions to the emergent Sinological Orientalism of the nineteenth century in no way matched the achievements of the great Parisian academicians (Abel Rémusat and Stanislas Julien); nor was he seen as a particularly significant figure in any other aspect of British tradition in the nineteenth century. Even worse, and seeming to make him a fit candidate for Lytton Strachey's debunking criticism of all insufferably righteous Victorian paragons of virtue, was that his identity as a sinologist and scholar was forever tainted by his original vocation as a Congregationalist missionary agent for the London Missionary Society.

Historical analyses of slavery in India generally emphasize the escalation of this social institution during the era of Muslim domination in north India. The present study is not an exception to this rule. However, while historical records make it clear that the Delhi Sultans and Mughal emperors retained slavery in order to suit their political and economic needs, it should be emphasized that Muslim rulers did not introduce slavery to the subcontinent. Sources such as the Arthaśāstra, the Manu-smrti and the Mahābhārata demonstrate that institutionalized slavery was well established in India by the beginning of the common era. Earlier sources suggest that it was likely to have been equally widespread by the lifetime of the Buddha (sixth century BC), and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period. Furthermore, just as slavery was common in India long before the eighth-century Islamic conquests in Sind, recent work demonstrates that the institution continued, in various manifestations, well after the decentralization of the Mughal Empire in the early eighteenth century. Still, it is argued here that the expansion of slavery in Muslim India is an important component of the medieval and early modern history of the region and, at least in terms of its role in the commercial and cultural relations of India and Central Asia, it is a subject that would benefit from further historical analysis.

This article examines the interrelationship and interactions between the notions of Son of Heaven and Son of God with respect to sacral kingship in Inner and East Asia by first uncovering a previously unnoticed synthesis of the two in ancient Inner Asia. The author argues that the Chinese belief of “heaven” and related political and religious concepts may share a common origin with parallel notions in Altaic cultures, possibly intertwined with Indo-European elements. Nevertheless, by studying theophoric names, which existed in all major Old World civilizations except early China, he demonstrates the distinctness of Chinese civilization, as well as the extensive pre-Islamic Iranic influences in East Asia.

Wayang kulit (shadow puppet theatre; henceforth “wayang”) as practiced in Java (Indonesia) has been recognized by exegetes – European and Indonesian alike – for its centrality as both a performative vehicle for and a symbolic figuration of understandings of the human developmental cycle, the variety of character models available to individuals, the precarious balance of chaos and stability in society, and kinship dialectics of conflict and complementariness. It is Java's most complex art form, in terms of dramaturgy, music, and repertoire, and also one of its most highly mediated. The beginning of what I would like to discuss is located at the end of Ward Keeler's exemplary ethnography of Central Javanese wayang and the dialogical play of selves and others in relations of hierarchy. Keeler concludes his evocative account of Javanese selves and theatre (and here I paraphrase) with the statement that “the peculiar fascination” of the dhalang in Javanese culture stems from his ability to dissimulate his self in performance. The puppeteer's voice is splintered, his presence veiled by a screen and mediated by puppets and the constraints of tradition, and his authority derived from indirect relations to a ritual sponsor, the Javanese autarchy, the ancestors, and the unseen world. “He is at once a dissembled authority, one whose power is great, non-coercive, and unworldly, and a dissembled interpreter, one who mediates between an unreal but persuasive and distracting world, and our own”.

Providing convincing explanations for objects that are unique to Dvaravati is particularly challenging given that our knowledge of the polity is sketchy to say the least. One particularly fascinating group of such objects comprises a number of stelae depicting the Buddha apparently standing on the head of some beast or “monster”. The central Buddha figure is usually flanked by two gods, probably Indra and Brahma, or two bodhisattvas, or just two attendants. The “monster” has been interpreted as some combination of the vehicles of Visnu (Garuda), Siva (bull) and/or Brahma (hamsa or goose), or as Garuda, or Surya, the Sun God. There are no Indian prototypes for these objects, which are found only in the Dvaravati sculptural style.

The Jesuit Guy Tachard (1648–1712) first came to Siam with the Chaumont-Choisy embassy of 1685 as one of six Jesuits destined for missionary work in China. The group was headed by Fr de Fontaney (1643–1710). The decision of the Abbé de Choisy (1644–1724), who held the post of coadjutant ambassador, to withdraw from the diplomatic scene and effect a retreat prior to his ordination as a priest in Lopburi on 10 December 1685 enabled Tachard to replace him as interpreter of Phaulkon (c.1647–1688), the influential Levantine adventurer then holding the functions, though not the title, of minister of trade and foreign affairs (phra khlang) for King Narai (r.1656–1688). Tachard was then charged with secret negotiations with the court of Louis XIV, most particularly with Fr de La Chaize, the king's Jesuit confessor, and the Marquis de Seignelay, the secretary of state for the navy, to negotiate the lease of a port and the dispatch of persons of rank to occupy key posts in the Siamese kingdom. In Paris, he lost no time in publishing his account of the first French embassy to Siam, padding it with unacknowledged extracts from one of the other Jesuits in his party, Fr de Bouvet.

At the start of the millennium Council reviewed medals and prizes and decided to discontinue the Gold Medal (which had not in any case been awarded for some time) and establish in its place the Society's Award. This Award will be made every two or three years in recognition of outstanding scholarship in Asian studies. Having considered a number of tenders, Council commissioned Ms Danuta Solowiej-Wedderburn to design and cast a medal bearing versions of two of the original Daniell images: the elephant and howdah on one side and the banyan-tree on the other (see John Hansman, “The Emblems, Medals and Medallists of the Royal Asiatic Society”, JRAS [1984 Part 1], pp. 99–119. Council approved the nomination of Mr John M. Gullick, who was recommended by a search committee (chaired by the Director) to be the first recipient of the RAS Award. On 10 January 2002 the President presented the RAS Award for 2001 to Mr Gullick who replied with a lecture, “An Indian official in Singapore: Governor Cavanagh (1859–1867)”.

In the spring of 1934, a Chinese mission led by General Huang Musong, then Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Guomindang regime, was dispatched to Lhasa with the official purpose of offering condolences to the late 13th Dalai Lama who died in late 1933. Huang's visit to Tibet undoubtedly was the most politically symbolic event in Sino-Tibetan relations since the collapse of the Qing dynasty. He became the most high-profile of Chinese officials to have entered Lhasa since 1911, when the Chinese Republic was created. Before returning to Nanking, Huang left a representative office, along with a wireless set in Lhasa; these could be actions which the Chinese considered marked their authority in Tibet.

For about 150 years scholars of unusual temerity have asserted that themes found in Buddhist texts, many of them celebrated in surviving Buddhist sculpture, can be found in the New Testament in more or less recognizable forms. If this were true, as in the case of Japanese philosophy showing through the work of M. Heidegger, students of the New Testament, already overburdened with conspissated conjectures, would be obliged to enter into a field which is not only unfamiliar to them, but, as a rival, unsympathetic. Few would take on such an adventure gratis. It has been shown elsewhere that parallels can be sorted into those which could have arisen anywhere, being invented many times over (such as the Golden Rule); those which are unlikely to have been invented more than once, but which can be attributed to one culture or the other, without hope of our deciding which is earlier; and finally those which are completely at home in one culture (say the Jewish) and exotic in the other (say the Buddhist), so that the conjecture that the latter “borrowed” from the former is attractive.