The standard criteria for using apocalypses ashistorical sources were established by the lateByzantinist, Paul J. Alexander. Examining theprocess of literary embellishment and adjustment ofa few Syriac and Greek apocalypses, he arrived atthe conclusion that historical apocalypses are infact “prophecies ex-eventu”, i.e.having actually already materialised around the timeof their circulation. The amount of such material,he argued, may serve as a kind of barometer formeasuring the eschatological pressure at a giventime in history since apocalypses are written toprovide comfort in times of tribulation,particularly during grave military crises.

The reign of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Khān (1880–1901) isconsidered by most historians to have been thefoundation stone of modern Afghanistan andconsequently much has been written about thisformative period of Afghanistan's history. However,despite the extensive literature available on hisreign, several important features about the AfghanAmīr appear to have been eitheroverlooked or ignored.

In our article on the Aśokan inscriptions, Dr RaymondAllchin and I pointed out the need for a new editionof Hultzsch's Inscriptions ofAsoka, bringing it up to date by includingthe Aśokan inscriptions in Prakrit found in India,and those in Greek and Aramaic found in Afghanistan,since the publication of Hultzsch's work in 1925.Our statement was particularly applicable to theMREs, since only ten versions of MRE I were known toHultzsch, of which three had the extra portion atthe end usually designated as MRE II. To some extentthe need for a replacement of Hultzsch's work hadbeen filled by D. C. Sircar's AśokanStudies which included reprints of allSircar's articles dealing with new Aśokaninscriptions. Sircar had published a synopticversion of the 17 versions of MRE I and the sevenversions of MRE II which are known to date, and acorrected version of this appeared in hisAśokan Studies, but even thecorrected version was not entirely satisfactory, inas much as it did not give new editions of theversions already known to Hultzsch.

Among the many manuscripts relating to Ch’an Buddhismincluded in the Tun-huang finds of the early yearsof this century, the Leng-chia shih-tzuchi has always been regarded by scholarsas a discovery of unusual importance, since itpresents an unrivalled picture of the earlydevelopment of this type of Buddhism from thelong-obscured viewpoint of the so-called Northernschool of Ch’an. The text has been rendered intoEnglish lately by J. C. Cleary, but only in atranslation intended for a non-scholarly audience.Fortunately, however, the new French-languagetranslation and study by Bernard Faure is everythinga scholar could wish for, a worthy product of manyyears of research, including several spent at thefeet of Yanagida Seizan, Japan's outstandingauthority on the early historiography of Ch’an.Faure's work, not surprisingly, shows a completegrasp of the complex issues of intellectual historyraised by his text, and also provides copiouscommentary on its author, Ching-chüeh (683–c. 750),and his background.