The subject of this brief paper is one of the most widely known sung poems of the 'Afar people. Hitherto unwritten it is nevertheless revered, sung and recited throughout the 'Afar-speaking world. The present writers feel that its fame is not undeserved, a conclusion reached from a consideration of both its aesthetic appeal and the historical significance of its message.

The purpose of this paper is to show that one of the characteristics of the Chadic languages is the existence of two types of phonological rules affecting vowels. One type of rule operates on the vowels of the stem when a suffix is added and another type of rule operates on the vowel of the suffix itself. The latter type is triggered by the syllabic structure and/or the height of the vowels of the stem.

In 1933, in a brief remark on the expression hun-t'o‘leather bag’, Peter A. Boodberg identified it as a Kitan word and proposed to explain it through the Mongol °huquta, huyuta (modern Mongol uyula, pronounced ūta) ‘bag, sack’. Boodberg referred to Pelliot's article of 1925 on the Mongol °h- lost in the modern language; but Pelliot in his paper does not even mention hun-t'o. Professor Boodberg's note remained largely unnoticed, due no doubt to its brevity, comprising as it did not more than a few lines in a longer article which appeared in a publication distributed in rather restricted circles.

The publication of a new history of medieval Central Asia, over half of which is concerned with the empire of the Chingizid Mongols, provides an opportunity for a survey of a number of books on that subject that have appeared during the past decade. Professor Kwanten's book is, more or less avowedly, an attempt to replace Rene Grousset's L'empire des steppes as the standard introduction to Central Asian history. I begin, then, with the English translation of Grousset's celebrated book.

Dirayta (ɗiraytá) is an Eastern Cushitic language spoken by a people calling themselves Diraaŝ (ɗiráaŝ), who live in the immediate vicinity of Gidole. Within Ethiopia generally the language is known as Gidoliñña. Dirayta and Musiya (Bussa or Busiñña) constitute the northernmost dialects of the Konsoid dialect chain, a linguistic entity first clearly established by Paul Black (forthcoming).

The following two Mahānubhāva manuscripts in Marathi were recently presented to the author in Aurangabad and have been deposited in the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Since they are written mainly in sakaḷa script (see my ‘The Mahānubhāva sakaḷa lipī’, BSOAS, xxxiii, 2, 1970, 328–34) and between them contain several Mahānubhāva works, they are worth describing in some detail.