In the famous ‘Moabite stone’ incription, Mesha king of Moab records how, after a long series of defeats inflicted on Moab by Israel, the tide turned and Israel was (according to Mesha's over-optimistic estimate) ‘utterly destroyed’, ʼbd ʼbd ʿ lm. The passage concerning the town of Ataroth runs,

10 … w'š gd yšb b'rṣ ʿ ṭrt mʿ lm wybn Ih mlk y11 šr'l 't ʿ ṭrt w'ltḥm bqr w'ḥzh w'hrg kl hʿm[.]12 hqr ryt Ikmš wlm'b w'šb mšm ʼt ʼrʼl dwdh wʼ[.]13 ḥbh Ipny kmš bqryt wʼšb bh ʼt ʼš šrn wʼt ʼ[š]

“Now the folk of Gad had dwelt in the territory of Ataroth from of old, and the king of Israel had built for himself Ataroth; and I made war on the town and captured it and slew all the people of the town, a ryt for Chemosh and for Moab, and I brought thence 'r'l dwdh and dragged it/him before the face of Chemosh in Qryt; and I caused the men of ŠRN to dwell therein, and the men (etc)”.

It has been recognized for a long time that the Iranian word āzāta- covers what would seem to us to be two distinct ideas: “free” (not a slave) and “noble” (not a commoner). Avestan has āzāta-, “noble” hvāzāta-, “very noble”; Old Persian *āzāta- is attested by the phrase ’zt šbqtky bmwty, “I free you (a slave girl) at my death”, in an Aramaic document from Elephantine dated in the 38th year of Artaxerxes (427 B.C.). Early Middle Iranian forms are reflected by Hesychius' glosses , i.e. *āzāt-īh, = “freedom”, and i.e. *āzāta- with the Greek plural suffix “the intimates of the (Persian) king”. That the Arsacid Parthians used one and the same word for “free” and “noble” is evident from two passages where Josephus refers to the Parthian élite troops as “free men”. In Middle Persian and Sasanian Parthian texts āzād is extensively attested in both senses, “free” and “noble”, as are numerous derivatives. From Parthian come Armenian azat, “free, noble” and Georgian azat'i, “free”. Sogdian ”z't means “noble”, “free”, and “clear”. Khotanese has āysāta-, “well born” and “free born”. In Neo-Persian, however, āzād has become restricted to “free”, while āzāda is used for “noble”; Persian āzād (ozod, etc.) has been borrowed into most other Neo-Iranian languages, but an independent form has survived in Kurdish aza, “brave”; Ossetic azat, “free”, is perhaps borrowed from Georgian.

Under the title “Le Livre du Coq («Matzḥafa Dorho»)”, M. Chaîne published a short extract from MS. B.N. d'Abbadie 11, a MS. of the Ethiopian Holy Week Lectionary Gabrä ḥamamat (henceforth GḤ). Some citations of Chaîne's article give the impression that (i) the extract is complete in itself, (ii) it is properly entitled Mäṣḥafä dorho, and (iii) catalogue descriptions of MSS of GḤ can simply be cross-referenced to it; Chaîne's introduction does not encourage these assumptions.

Chaîne's extract appears in the printed edition of GḤ2 as part of the first of nine ‘homilies’, each headed dәrsan wätәmhәrt zä'abäwinä ḥawaryat qәddusan zämäharunä …, “homily and teaching of our fathers the holy apostles, which they taught us …”; the first of these “homilies” is additionally headed Mäṣḥafä doroho (sic).

When Professor Mahmud al-Ghul died on 10 December 1983, he had in his possession four fragments of Sayhadic inscriptions. A year later, at the time of the symposium held at Yarmouk University (Irbid, Jordan) in his memory, they were still with his wife Mrs Rita Ghul, who has kindly placed at my disposal photographs of them, made by Mr Michael Macdonald. The ultimate depository will probably be Yarmouk University, and it is desirable that they should be placed on record and assigned convenient sigla, although three of them contain no more that a couple of letters each.

In a recent issue of J.R.A.S. (2, 1982, 205–207), Tadeusz Skorupski reviewed my Tamang Ritual Texts I, Preliminary Studies in the Folk-religion of an Ethnic Minority in Nepal (henceforth “TRT”). His criticism is based on some postulates that I question. And since ours is a controversy between two disciplines, namely philology and anthropology, I think it worthwhile to examine more closely some of the arguments put forward by Skorupski. The point at issue is our approach to texts of an oral tradition.

Though neither Tibetans proper nor “Bhotias”, the Tamangs speak a language of the Bodic Division (in R. Shafer's terminology), and one component of the religious tradition is Tibetan Buddhism, which in the past exercised some influence on components of the oral tradition, such as shamanism and exorcism. An adequate interpretation of oral tradition, particularly in the diachronic perspective, necessitates some sort of cooperation between the Tibetologist and the anthropologist. Thus, my reply to the Tibetologist Skorupski is a programmatic rather than a polemic attempt.

In choosing a title for this paper I have incorporated the name of a book which contains an anti-Semitic essay written by Richard Burton in 1872, shortly after his return from Damascus. The essay was destined to remain unpublished until long after its author's death, and although when it finally appeared in 1898 as part of The Jew, The Gipsy and El-Islam it omitted the most offensively anti-Jewish portions, it has nevertheless “always been an embarrassment to Burton biographers, who usually skirt the issue of his anti-Semitism”.

Karnataka has rich epigraphical sources. The entire edifice of Karnataka history from the 3rd century B.C. down to the end of Vijayanagara rests on epigraphical records. A volume of information concerning the political conditions, government and administration, political geography, the social structure and the life of the people, the religious faiths, economic conditions and many other topics, can be derived from a critical study of the inscriptions.

The inscription under discussion is a copper plate from the village of Pejavar, Mangalore Taluka, South Kanara District, Karnataka State. The copper plate is now in the possession of K. Venkatraya Achar, Suratkal. It belongs to the period of the Vijayanagara emperor Immadi Devarāya (1424–1446 A.D.). The copper plate is in the Kannada language and script. The script seems to belong to a later period. The epigraphic department of the Government of India noticed this inscription in its annual report in the year 1967–68. Sri Venkatraya Achar, the discoverer of the inscription, made a few observations in the year 1957. This paper seeks to provide fresh information on political, religious and land transaction procedures on the basis of the contents of the copper plate.

In the course of research into one of the earliest known versions of the Central Asian dastan or ornate oral history, Alpamysh, this writer paid a visit in July 1984 to the Kirghiz of the Pamirs. This group, now settled in the eastern part of Asia Minor under the auspices of the Turkish government, fled from their home before the Soviet occupying forces in 1979. Since then, a number of papers on the Kirghiz have appeared, most of which have expressed concern over whether the members of this particular tribe would be able to retain their customs, traditions and ceremonies. Although the primary purpose of the trip was to compile a glossary of Kirghiz terms not found in any available dictionary, it became clear that it would also provide an unusual opportunity to observe other aspects of Kirghiz culture.

“What then was to be looked for in a remote and extensive empire, administered in all its parts by men, who came out boys, without the plenitude of instruction of English youth in learning, morals, or religion; and who were let loose on their arrival amidst native licentiousness, and educated amidst conflicting superstitions?”

This complaint was made in 1805 by Claudius Buchanan, in the first influential evangelical tract on India. It was directed against the way of life of the servants of the East India Company in the second half of the 18th century. If certain assumptions are altered, Buchanan's complaint could be changed into praise: these men were not completely indoctrinated by narrow European, English and Christian values, but arrived with a remarkable openness towards what they found in the East, ready to accept different values and customs and to adopt a new style of life. What they were lacking was not so much education as indoctrination.

This stone inscription, which has provided very welcome information on the history of the Śāhi dynasty of Udbhāṇḍapura, commonly called the Hindu Śāhis of Kabul and Panjab, was brought to light in the course of the comprehensive search for Śāhi records carried out by Mr Abdur Rehman, who published the text together with an English translation and copious notes in JRAS, 1978, pp. 31–37. Rehman has made an important contribution to the history of the Śāhi dynasty by suggesting that the dates in the inscriptions of the Sahis should be referred to an era founded by Kallar, the founder of the dynasty, in A.D. 850. Rehman has rightly called this era the Śāhi Era. Some of the verses and expressions in this inscription of Jayapala have not been correctly interpreted, however, and in one case by his rendering of verse 8, the editor has been led to draw wrong historical conclusions. The need for a re-appraisal is apparent.

For more than three and a half centuries the Bodleian Library at Oxford has possessed three palm-leaf MSS originating from Java, probably the earliest of their kind to be included in a Western public collection. They bear the shelfmarks MS.Jav.b.l (R), MS.Jav.b.2 (R), and MS.Jav.b.3 (R), for which I shall use the numbers 1, 2, and 3 here for convenience sake.

In the relevant published literature, to be referred to below, there exists some uncertainty, not about the identity of the two persons who donated these MSS, but about the question of which of them gave which one. This is true explicitly for MS. no. 3, and by implication for the others. When first examining this MS, I was informed by the then Keeper of Oriental Books that it “was a 17th century gift, either by Andrew James in 1627, or by the Earl of Pembroke in 1629, more probably the latter”. This dual possibility was subsequently adopted in publications about this MS. Only a recent examination of the pertinent data, both published and unpublished, has shown that they do allow of a definite conclusion being reached, as will be demonstrated below.2

What are the primary sources for the early history of the Tranquebar mission? One depends on Danish, German and English sources, in that order of priority, because the mission was initiated by the King of Denmark, executed by German missionaries and financially supported by the English. The history of Christianity in India, however, is not equivalent to the history of mission boards and missionaries, though these are necessary components of a true understanding of the history of the Church. To be fair, equal importance should be given to the Tamil sources which have been underestimated by historians. The first step must be to collect them, for there is evidence that they were neglected from the very beginning of the mission in Tamilnadu