The famous Kūfic inscription in the mosaics of the Dome of the Rock, which provides the building with a direct dating and an explicit message and which has been discussed for more than a century, once more claims our attention: a recent review of the mosaic decoration maintains that it has lost its original character during the latest restoration; that it has been “entirely redone” and has suffered corrections such as “adding alifs and diacritical points and signs wherever they appear to be missing”. No evidence is given for this disquieting news beyond the statement of a certain (or, as it seems, a rather uncertain) person; this inevitably provokes demand for further information, the more so as it is included in a book renowned for its reliable documentation.

Sanskrit śauṭīra-, given the meaning “haughty, arrogant, proud”, occurs mainly, according to the Petersburg dictionary, in the language of the epic poems. From it is derived a neuter abstract noun śauṭīrya- “manliness, pride” current in the same texts. Beside śauṭīra- there also occurs an alternative form of the word, śauṇḍīra- (whence also śauṇḍīrya- nt.), and the relation between these two forms in the epic poems is that they regularly occur as variant readings in the same passages. Apart from the epic poems, and the Harivaṃśa, which counts as a supplement to the Mahābhārata, the dictionary only cites śauṇḍīrya- (in this form) once from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and three times from the drama Mṛcchakaṭika. In the latter text the form śauṇḍīrya-, as opposed to śauṭīrya-, seems well established, since in only one passage (Ed. Stenzler, 120, 21) is śauṭīrya- quoted as a variant reading.

In 1947 partition left India without a single site attributable to the Indus civilization. During the past two decades there has been a considerable extension of our knowledge, due mainly to the explorations and excavations of the Archaeological Survey of India. It now appears as though the Harappan culture spread into India in two principal directions: north-eastwards into the eastern Panjāb and across the Indo-Gangetic divide into the plains that lie between the Ganges and Jamunā rivers; and south-eastwards into Kacch and Kāṭhiāwār, and thence perhaps inland towards southern Rājāsthān and into the coastal region of Gujarāt. In the north the principal sites are at Rūpar in the Panjāb, Alamgīrpur in U.P., and Kālibangan in north Rājāsthān. In the south the principal excavated site is at Lothal on the Gulf of Cambay. In particular the extensive excavations at Kālibangan and Lothal have provided a mass of solid data relating to the Harappan settlements and series of well stratified radio-carbon dates. In 1957 S. R. Rao explored southern Gujarāt and in the light of his discoveries at a number of sites there he proposed a sequence of three stages of “Harappan” and “late Harappan” cultures. These he showed might be related to the sequence revealed by his excavations at Lothal and Rangpur in Saurāṣṭra. Rao's exploration suggested a number of interesting questions.

A glance at any map of excavated sites in Iran will show clearly the relative rarity of controlled excavations north and east of the Tehran region. A cluster of sites in the vicinity of Behshahr, four in the neighbourhood of the Gorgan plain, two from the flat terrain immediately south of the eastern Elburz, and only one near Meshed represent the sum total of those north-eastern settlements that have attracted archaeological expeditions between the years 1930 and 1964. As a consequence, our excavated evidence from this extensive area is astonishingly slight, particularly following the fall of the rich Bronze Age “Gorgan Culture” in the middle of the second millennium b.c.

The ostracon from the Qūmis excavation (Pl. I) bears inked characters in the Parthian script, and is palaeographically comparable with the numerous ostraca from the excavations at Nisā in Soviet Turkmenistan. Many of these bear dates reckoned according to the Arsacid Era of 247 b.c., typical figures being a.e. 194 (52 b.c.), a.e. 216 (30 b.c.), and so on. The Qūmis ostracon is thus likely also to belong to the 1st century b.c. The transliteration table for this script has been prepared by Diakonov and Starkova. Entirely diagnostic of Parthian, as against other derivatives of the Aramaic script, is the sloping left and bowed right leg of the letter pē, seen twice in the fourth line of the fragment.

If everyone—so to speak—is now reading and quoting Chorasmian, the credit most fully belongs to J. Benzing. He has with this volume made available in a readily usable form the greater part of the linguistic material known to exist for Chorasmian, a very important but hitherto largely neglected Middle Iranian language.