The imperative occupies A unique position in the conjugation system. In its real function it implies the presence of a speaker issuing a command to one or more listeners, or making an order referring to a third person or persons. This means that the conjugation tends to be defective. Because of its immediate association with the speaker the imperative is generally linked with the present tense, but through its meaning it is also associated with the future tense. The uncertainty of whether a command will be carried out links the imperative with the subjunctive, while the idea of volition brings it close to the optative. These special features and varying associations make the history of the imperative extremely complex in Middle Indo-Aryan as in other languages. An attempt is made here to study two aspects of this history: the use of the subject pronoun with the imperative, and the distribution of the forms of the second person singular of the imperative. Other features of the imperative, in particular its relation to the passive, will be discussed later.

Naghm (pi. Anghām) and Naghmah (pi. Naghamāt) mean “Vocal melody”, both being derived from the Arabic “To speak, hum, or sing in a low pleasant tone”. Such were the classical meanings of those terms, in distinction from LAḤN (pi. ALḤĀN), which stood for “melody” whether in the vocal or instrumental art. Thus, one of the earliest Arabic books on music—the Kitāb al-naghm (Book of vocal melody)—by Yūnus al-Kātib (d. c. 765), became the source book on this subject. Then came Isḥāq al-Mauṣilī (d. 791) who wrote the Kitāb al-naghm wa'l-īqā' (Book of melody and rhythm). Yet the famous Kitāb al-aghānī of Al-Iṣfahānī (d. 967) introduces each song under the title of saut, although that is only done so as to indicate the singing (taghannī) of a poem. Later, the term naghm came to be used in a modal sense, equating with the Sanscrit rāga and jātī, and the Persian āvāz. We know of the naghm in the modal sense as early as Al-Kindī (d. c. 874), one of them (called ṭarā'iq) being known as Iṣfahān. In the Mafātiḥ al-'ulūm of Abū 'Abdallāh al-Khwārizmī (d. c. 1000), these modes (dasātīn) were attributed to the famous Bārbad of the court of Khusrau Parviz the Sāsānī ruler. Al-Mas'ūdī (d. c. 957) names one of these modes as mihrbānī (cf. mihrgānī) among the ancient Persian modes, whilst Ibn Zaila (d. 1048) mentions a mode (ḍarb) called nāqūsi, which is the 26th of the Sī laḥn of Khusrau va Shīrīn of Nīzāmī of Ganja (1203).

The Cambridge University Library has in its collection a well preserved manuscript of the Buddhist Tantric text Kālacakratantra whose painted covers are of considerable significance to the history of Indian painting. According to the colophon the manuscript was written in Bihar in the 15th century, a period from which we have no documentary evidence of such painting in Eastern India.

Upon the sudden death of Meḥemmed II in May, 1481, his two surviving sons, each hastily summoned from his provincial governorate by his own partisans among the Ottoman statesmen, set out with all speed to Istanbul. The race was won by the elder, Bāyezīd; but the younger son Jem had so strong and numerous a following that it was not until July, 1482, that he was finally obliged to admit defeat and take refuge at Rhodes with the Knights of St. John. The Grand Master, Pierre d'Aubusson, with a lively appreciation of the value of his guest as a hostage to insure Christendom against aggression by the new sultan—it was only two years since the Knights had beaten off a determined Ottoman siege—lost no time in removing him to France, where he would be less exposed to the danger of assassination by one of Bayezld's agents. For six years, well-treated but strictly guarded, Jem was confined in various houses of the Order in Savoy and France, his last prison, from whence he was handed into the custody of the Pope at the end of 1488, being the castle of Bourganeuf, in the present department of La Creuse, some 40 km. west of the Grand Master's native Aubusson. Jem's subsequent detention in Rome was brought to an end when he fell as a prize of war to Charles VIII of France in 1495, only to die at Naples a few weeks later.