If I were to offer one specific reason for our meeting today, beyond a general and justifiable intention to commemorate the contribution made to early Ottoman historical studies by the late Professor Paul Wittek, it would not be that the year 1987 marks any of the usual anniversaries in the life of our subject. Wittek, a Fellow of this Society, was the first occupant of the Chair of Turkish in the University of London, from 1948 to 1961. It is still seven years short of one hundred since he was born, on 11 January 1894, in Baden, to the south of Vienna, the son of a Gymnasium headmaster; and it is less than a decade since The Times recorded the death, at the age of eighty-four, in an outer suburb of London, of this quintessentially Austrian scholar.

At a distance of about two miles along the coast to the east of Ṣalālah, chief town of Dhofar in Oman, lie the remains of a medieval maritime settlement called by present day Omanis al-Balīd. This is undoubtedly that named by the medieval historians and geographers Ẓafār. The site is an imposing one and has been described fairly recently by Costa. The area of the site measures approximately 1600 m by 400 m.

Sandwich glass is the product of a technique practised from antiquity. Essentially, decoration is achieved by laying gold to a glass surface, patterning this gold in various ways, and then adding a second layer of glass to encapsulate the gold pattern. The technique seems to have been employed only rarely by craftsmen in Islamic areas; certainly surviving examples are rare.

Among the popular misconceptions which still linger in the minds of many people who are interested in the study of different religious systems, who are personally involved in one of the growing Hindu- or Buddhist-based modern religious movements, or who even do academic research in the field of the history of religions, is the rather simplistic view that Hinduism teaches the existence of a transmigrating individual soul, but that Buddhism denies it. At the same time it is well known that Buddhism, like Hinduism, teaches the rebirth of the individual in successive lives, in combination with the doctrine of moral retribution for his deeds in this or the next life or in subsequent lives according to the laws of karma, whose operation can be summed up rather well by the use of the biblical saying: “as you have sown so you will reap”.

The value of wood as a medium for making implements for secular and religious purposes has been known to mankind since the dawn of civilization. Some examples have survived till contemporary times. The fact that wood is available in abundant quantity, easily procurable and also eminently easy to fashion into the required shape must have been responsible for maximum use being made of it. The sruk and sruva, wooden spoons used by Vedic ritualists, continue to be of the same material and shape today. So also scholars are of the opinion that the earliest iconic presentations and temple edifices were made of wood. In view of the indispensable nature of wood as a medium of art, śilpaśāstras and āgamas embody elaborate information concerning the types of wood fit for art production and the methods for procuring them. It is well-known that art in wood is a legacy of very ancient traditions. The present paper makes an attempt to trace succinctly the art heritage of Tamilnadu in wood with special reference to temple cars, tēr in Tamil and ratha in Sanskrit, and to evaluate the scope for research in iconography.

The title of this brief essay is an echo of the title of a book once famous, nowadays almost forgotten: M. S. Purnalingam Pillai, Ravana the Great: King of Lanka (Munnirpallam, 1928). The same author, in his better-known Tamil Literature (1929) wrote: “The ten-faced and twenty-armed Ravana was apparently a very intelligent and valiant hero, a cultured and highly civilized ruler, knew the Vedas and was an expert musician. He took away Sita according to the Tamilian mode of warface, had her in the Asoka woods companioned by his own niece, and would not touch her unless she consented.” With this re-evaluation of the character of Rāvaṇa goes hand in hand a milder yet decisive re-evaluation of Rāma, of Rāma's warriors, of Vibhīṣaṇa, and other dramatis personae of the great story. Vibhīṣaṇa is portrayed as “the treacherous brother or deserter of Ravana, who desired to be King by hook or by crook”, the Aryans are described as haughty, cowardly, of low morality; Rāma “has his specks”, he lacks courage and falters in crises. In contrast, Rāvaṇa is not only “a physical and an intellectual giant” but also “great administrator and leader of men, … a man of his word”.

In the study of Chinese ceramics, the XVIIth century is a period of particular interest, when many changes took place which affected porcelain production in Jingdezhen, the porcelain centre in China. These were fluctuations in economic activity, social upheaval, political turmoil and foreign penetration in trade. However, very few records, dated material or archaeological finds of this period exist which can provide us with a better understanding. This problem is particularly acute from the late Wanli period (1573–1620) to the reinstatement of imperial supervision in Jingdezhen around 1683, the so-called Transitional Period. For this reason, there is still controversy about dating the porcelain of this period, one which has been overlooked, except for a couple of sentences in books on Chinese ceramic history. This attitude, popular in China, arises partly from the traditional neglect of folk wares, and also from the lack of material evidence available for study. Fortunately, Chinese porcelain of this period has been highly regarded by westerners from the day it reached their countries, and this long-lasting enthusiasm has resulted in several studies which have increased our knowledge of it.

On 28 April 1987 an exhibition opened in Munich under the title “Jemen: 3000 Jahre Kunst und Kultur des Glucklichen Arabiens”. In connection with this, Werner Daum brought together a team of writers to supply background essays on all aspects of Yemeni culture covered by the exhibition; these were published in a sumptuously produced 492 page volume (with splendid illustrations), by Pinguin Verlag of Innsbruck under the simple title Jemen. There are in all 45 contributions, but the following remarks refer only to the 14 concerned with pre-Islamic Yemen.