The general rules for the development of cerebral -ṣ- in Sanskrit account for its appearance after k, r, ṛ, i, and u, and in this case the statements of historical phonology correspond to the elementary rules of Sanskrit grammar. There exist, however, a certain number of words in which cerebral -ṣ- appears after an a-vowel (a or ā), which remain to be accounted for. A certain number of these are taken care of by Fortunatov's law (e.g. pāṣāṇa- “stone”: Germ. Fels) but they form a minority of the group. Certain other such words (e.g. jálāṣa- “refreshing”, mṣa- “bean”) I have dealt with in an article to be published elsewhere. The two words which appear in the title of this article differ from the other words in question inasmuch as the -ṣ- is the first member of a consonant group, and its explanation is dependent on this fact.

The new inscription of Aśoka from Kandahar, published by Émile Benveniste and André Dupont-Sommer, forms, together with the one stemming from Pul-i Darunteh (Lamghān) published by W. B. Henning, a special class of Aśoka inscriptions. Both these inscriptions are bilingual, but they do not belong to the common type of bilingual documents, in which the text of each language is separately inscribed on a different part of the stone's surface. Here the two languages are mixed, each short section in one language is followed by one in the other language. The two languages involved, both written in Aramaic characters, are Aramaic and Middle Indian (Prākrit).

Nationalism in South and South-East Asian countries has been a response to certain common stimuli. Broadly speaking, Western ideas, education, religious influences, the economic activities of the rulers, and their social policies have been of particular significance.

The First Great War was remarkable for the number of groups of people who started it fighting on one side and finished it fighting on the other. In the east the best known group was the Arabs, who started the war in the Turkish army and finished it taking part in the liberation of their countries from the Turks. A much less well-known group was the Turkish-speaking Moslems, mainly Tatars, who started the war in the Russian army and finished it in the Turkish army.

The decolonization of history in the Islamic world has for a number of years proved a fascinating and profitable pursuit. For that portion of North Africa occupied by the French this process has consisted for the most part of two more or less separate activities: studies in depth and detail for the period after 1830, and for the preceding centuries (700-1830) a number of very general and frequently superficial recommendations, reflecting a sincere but not always clearly planned intention to controvert the presuppositions seen to underly colonialist historiography.