There is in the British Museum an Arabic MS (Or. 5670) of some 32 folios entitled Kitāb qarā'in al-qaṣr wa-maḥāsin al-'aṣr fī madḥ amīr al-muslimīn [sic] Abī 'Abd Allāh ibn Naṣr and ascribed to the adīb Ibrāhīm b. 'Abd Allāh b. al-Ḥājj. This ascription arouses no suspicion at first sight, for the kunya of the Nasrid sultan of Granada Muḥammad V was indeed Abū 'Abd Allāh, and there was at his court a poet and littérateur of repute named Ibrāhīm b. al-Ḥājj. The description of the MS in the catalogue takes this ascription at its face value. The purpose of this paper is to set forth as much as can be discovered about the poet Ibn al-Ḥājj and his works and to discuss the ascription of the extant fragments bearing his name.

For a long time now the Falashas have, with questionable justification, been dubbed the ‘Jews of Abyssinia’. A good deal of legendary information about the Falashas appears already in such medieval writings as Sefer Eldad and in an account given by Benjamin of Tudela who gathered some news on the Falashas while on his way from the Yemen to Egypt. The great seventeenth-century scholar Job Ludolf included some notes and questions in his monumental work on Ethiopian history—based, to a large extent, on information supplied by Abba Gregory who thought that the Falashas dialecto Talmudica corrupta inter se utuntur (no doubt a reference to their Agaw vernacular which Gregory did not understand). Thus misled, Ludolf is understandably curious to know quando vel qua occasione Judaei isti primum in Aethiopiam venerint? Karraeorumne vel aliorum Judaeorum sectae sint addicti? James Bruce of Kinnaird provides a fairly detailed, though not necessarily accurate, picture of Falasha life which became the stimulus of subsequent interest in this peculiar form of ‘Judaism’.

The use of seven names for Hell in the Qur'ān, though often noted as proper to Muhammad, has never been fully explained. Yet the notion they stand for is an important element in the preaching of the Prophet of Islam and runs through the whole context of his message. A solution of their problem therefore may provide increased understanding not only of their author's inner sentiments during the Meccan years of persecution but also of the external influences that moulded his thought and expression over the two decades in which the Qur'ān was announced as a divine revelation to the people of Arabia.

In a picturesque set of Avestan verses the converted Vštaspa now champion of the daēnā faith is described as a warrior making free way for the religion. This passage occurs twice: in the list of faithful early believers in Yašt 13.99 and with different introduction in Yašt 19.85.

It seems impossible at present to publish an investigation into a problem of the grammar of a language without becoming involved in the disputes which are being conducted between adherents of different methodological schools. In his review of my monograph Zur Funktion einiger Hilfsverben im modernen Hindi (Mainz, Akademie, 1958) in BSOAS, XXIII, 3, I960, 602–3, Mr. Burton-Page has made statements which indicate clearly enough that there is a difference of opinion between him and me on matters of principle. Moreover, he points to his article ‘Compound and conjunct verbs in Hindi’ (BSOAS, XIX, 3, 1957, 469–78), which seems to be typical of a kind of structuralist approach. This article, in connexion with the judgments and programmatic and methodological statements of the review, implies a particular challenge for discussion. I am grateful to Mr. Burton-Pago for this challenge.

In or about 1925 or 1926, three stones which were said to have been brought from Lo-yang, and which contain parts of a Kharoṣṭhī inscription, were shown to the Lazarist missionaries in Peking; and in 1926 a priest of the mission, Georges Prévost, who had come to the conclusion that the script was Palmyrene and the language Hebrew, produced an interpretation on this basis in a pamphlet of 31 pages. Such an explanation naturally involved its author in numerous difficulties both of language and palaeography; and since the pamphlet was printed only in a limited edition for private circulation, it might seem kinder to pass over in silence a mistake so unfortunate. Prévost was indeed aware of some of the difficulties, although he appears to have entertained no doubts at all about the identification of the script and language. But in spite of the restricted circulation of the original pamphlet, its existence has been recorded in several other publications; and the mention in print of these ‘Hebrew inscriptions’ from China, when the photograph is not easily accessible, is a potential nuisance to scholars. It is therefore desirable to prevent any future misunderstanding by making it clear that the inscription which is republished here is in fact the same as Prévost's ‘inscriptions sémitiques’.

The Yao dialects constitute a clearly differentiated branch of the Miao-Yao language family, both in vocabulary and phonology. Phonologically, they are characterized by a wide range of vowels and the presence of final consonants, whereas the Miao dialects have generally a very simple system of rhymes but great complexity in the initials. Their close connexion is very apparent, although the rules for sound-correspondences have not yet been worked out. No affiliation of the Miao-Yao languages with any of the neighbouring groups— Tibeto-Burman, Chinese, Thai-Sui, or Mon-Khmer—has yet been convincingly demonstrated.

The long struggle of the Thai against the Khmers, culminating in the attacks on and conquest of Angkor early in the fifteenth century A.D., brought the two peoples into intimate association. Thai literature was clearly a beneficiary of this close culture contact, and Cambodian influence upon it, dating back to this early period, is undoubted. Nevertheless, little detailed study of such influence has so far been attempted, partly because of a lack of suitable manuscript material, especially on the Cambodian side, and partly because serious comparative work of an historical nature on the two languages has hardly begun.

In the majority of cases, the religion of contemporary Burma is described as a compound of Theravāda Buddhism and the survivals of an indigenous ‘Animism’. As an anthropological field-worker I have recently found in Burma certain beliefs and rituals which did not appear to fit exactly into either of these two categories. I present here, in two parts, a study of an association which I have chosen to call Messianic Buddhist. In the first part I describe the building in which it is housed and the cults I witnessed, together with beliefs concerning these cults elicited in the course of several conversations with members of the association. In the second part I draw on comparative materials in printed sources in order to justify my choice of terms and to attempt to explain the origin and nature of the association.