The article discusses two key terms in the Quran in connection with the corresponding (cognate or semantically related) terms in the writings of other religious communities in the Near East (Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Mandaeism, Manichaeism). The investigation leads to a discussion of the religious environment of early Islam and in particular its relationship with Jewish Christianity.

This article argues that the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti constituted the kernel of a ritual text recited during the Yasna ceremony. Zaraθušhtra's Gathas were arranged around it, and so were the holy prayers and later additions in Younger Avestan. The arrangement of the extant Older Avesta is probably the original one, and may go back to the composer himself. Its compositional principle is that of parallelism and ring composition, a pattern which can be found both in individual Gathic hymns, two of which (Y 28 and 43) are analysed, and in the structure of the entire Yasna.

Coomaraswamy and other art interpreters have read into Indian images metaphysical meanings extrapolated from scriptural sources. In this article it is argued that such meanings, with which image-making was doubtless invested, were intended for purposes of meditation and cannot be admitted as part of the objective representation of the images, except where they figure as iconographical features. The images were also not conceived as yantras, but as full-bodied representations conforming to objective norms. The metaphysical excursions are largely extraneous to the aesthetic assumptions of Indian art and detract from its rich mythical content.

In recent years, the field of Buddhist studies has witnessed renewed interest in the study of the Parthian An Shigao (active since 148 A.D., during the Later Han Dynasty), the earliest translator of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.

The early imperial period was a time of rapid change in medical ideas and practices in China. Manuscripts and artifacts excavated from tombs of the second century B.C. along the Yangtze river valley bring fresh insights into some of the processes involved in medical innovation in the early centuries of the empire. Through examining exorcistic practices and petty surgery to the refinement of a body sustained and nourished by physiological essences, this paper describes recurring patterns found in the changing medical techniques associated with stone, be that lancets, hot pressing stones or mineral prescription. After the transition to a culture of applying fine metal acupuncture needles vestiges of these treatments found in early Chinese stone culture remain enshrined in both the theory and practice of canonical medicine.

Early in the twentieth century a hidden cache of manuscripts was discovered in the monastic cave complex of Dunhuang in Central Asia. The majority of the manuscripts, dating from the first millennium C.E., are in Chinese and Tibetan. The largest collections of Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang are in France and England. However, the fact that there are collections of almost equal size within China is hardly known outside of that country. In this article I report on the nature and size of these Chinese collections, and the results of my own examination of the collections in Dunhuang. This information largely completes the puzzle which was left to us after the dispersal of the manuscripts to various institutions, and allows us to attempt a reconstruction of the contents of the original ‘library’ of Tibetan manuscripts in the cave in Dunhuang.