When the Umayyad Caliphate in Spain succumbed to internal faction and weakness, the country was split up into independent kingdoms, ruled by the men who for one reason or another were able to take control. In the confused history of these “Party Kings” the Abbadids of Seville played a spectacular role. Their history is known from the admirable writings of Dozy, as is also the history of other families of this period. But the Banū dhī'n-Nūn or Dhunnunids are comparatively unknown. The article by Seybold in the Encyclopædia of Islam is very short, and the references are confined to Maqqarī. There is enough, however, in various writers to give here some account of the family through a dozen generations on the scale which their importance merits. More precise information is likely to be contained in unedited manuscripts, notably the Dhakhīrah of Ibn Bassām, and also in printed books which were not to hand. It is hoped that what may be found elsewhere will add to the present sketch, rather than correct it.

The publication by Benveniste of the facsimiles of all Sogdian manuscripts preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Monumenta Linguarum Asiae Maioris, vol. iii, Codices Sogdiani, Copenhagen, 1940) enables us to check the correctness of Gauthiot's reading of the Vessantara Jātaka (published in JA., 1912, 163–193, 430–510). Since most people interested in Sogdian are more likely at first to try to read the texts so far unpublished than to compare the original with texts already published, it seems convenient to give a list of the comparatively few misreadings or misprints that have been noticed in Gauthiot's edition. I have also thought it useful to confirm the reading of spellings which one would have suspected to be misprints. Thirdly, there will be found a few attempts at explaining unclear words or passages. Here and there I have made use of Dr. Henning's kind permission to quote from his photographs of unpublished texts.

It seems difficult and sometimes futile to try to pursue in this year 1942 the essentially peaceful studies in ancient Chinese writing that have appeared for many years in the JRAS.

The following study of some Hebrew words of magical import is a sequel to my Prophecy and Divination. Its purpose is to supply philological evidence for the existence of sorcery and magic in Israel.

The Director (Sir Kichard Winstedt) introduced this sculptor to a large audience of members of this Society and of the Royal Central Asian Society in the following words: “Those who have seen Dora Gordine's sculpture in London or Paris, at the Tate Gallery or at London University, in Achimoto or Singapore, will know that they are to listen to a real artist. She is not one of those acrobats of art, who tickle a public too amused by novelty to appraise the antics of artists as Dr. Johnson appraised the antics of a dog walking on his hind-legs: ‘it is not well done, but one is surprised to find it done at all.’ Eccentricities in modern art are the now belated relics of revolt from realistic representation. Greek reason, fascinated at discovering itself, came to ignore other faculties of the human spirit, and left the world the doubtful legacy of a specious realism. It substituted for the emotional interpretation of the individual sculptor a cold art of formal rules and ideal types. To-day, too, in spite of the modern reaction against the tyranny of reason even the surrealist thinks too much and sees and feels too little. ‘You are an artist,’ Tchekov wrote to Gorki, ‘you can feel superbly. You are plastic, that is, when you describe a thing, you see and touch it with your hands. That is real art.’ Dora Gordine's mind, like that of every genuine artist, is, in Tchekov's phrase, plastic, so that she is acutely aware of the perfection of modulated planes in Maillol's best work, of the tense vitality beneath the apparent simplicity of an archaic Greek κρη, and of the vibrant rhythm of Hindu masterpieces. Feeling superbly, she can interpret sensations that admit of no equivocation.