Guanche is an extinct language or languages spoken by the indigenous people of the Canary Islands. Although it is widely assumed that their language belonged to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic languages, this has not been adequately tested. This paper analyses the lexical and morphological data available in preserved samples of Guanche, and concludes that features shared with Berber are better explained through borrowing resulting from cultural contact, rather than a close genetic relationship between Guanche and Berber.
This paper focuses on the case of a Bhutanese subject who was assaulted by a Chinese soldier in Tibet, within the premises of the Trade Mart of Gyantse, in 1912. When the British Trade Agent asked the Political Officer in Sikkim, Charles A. Bell, about possible action, the latter stated that he believed Bhutanese subjects should be considered British subjects. This idea was vehemently opposed by the Foreign Secretary of the Government of India, Henry McMahon, based on the interpretation of the Treaty made by the Viscount of Morley in April 1910. This article analyses the different positions in this case and aims to contribute to a better understanding of the status of the Kingdom of Bhutan following the Treaty of Punakha of 1910.
Rasmus Rask visited Iran en route to India in 1820. His letters, which are largely unknown to Iranologists, contain often vivid descriptions of his time there. While not as enchanted by the country as some of his contemporaries, Rask’s letters nevertheless present us with a forthright, unvarnished view of the country during the reign of Fath ‘Ali Shah. His progress from Tabriz to Bushehr via Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Persepolis, involved several memorable incidents as well as an encounter with a hitherto unrecognized, amateur excavator at Persepolis.
Review of Laura Culbertson & Gonzalo Rubio (eds): Society and the Individual in Ancient Mesopotamia. (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 33) . Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024. ISBN 978-15-01-52125-6. xii + 309 pp.
Empires and kingship are long-standing topics of research in ancient Near Eastern studies; the study of queenship has gradually received more attention over recent decades. However, discussions of the social implications of kingship and queenship, comparisons of the gender roles, and their study across several empires remain rare. The paper at hand takes the unprecedented step of such a comparative analysis by tracing a specific detail of royal ideology, namely the presentation of the king and queen to the public as builders, across seven major Near Eastern empires following and/or interacting with each other throughout the first millennium BCE: the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Teispid-Achaemenid, Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Parthian, and Roman empires. Drawing on the available textual, material, and visual sources from the ancient contemporary contexts of each empire and from Classical reception history, we showcase the potential of a longue-durée comparison for the social institutions of kingship and of queenship, giving full attention and space also to the lesser known empires and the queens’ roles. To achieve this, we present first a synopsis of the key findings per empire and role, followed by a diachronic study of three aspects of gender comparison: concerning the empire-internal portfolios of king and queen, the joint presentation as a couple, and the question of how far the roles of king and queen mirror or complement each other. We conclude with some pertinent (albeit tentative) results on the features shared by some or all of the empires as well as their outstanding idiosyncracies.
This paper investigates negation in Sakhalin Ainu by focusing on the morphosyntax, semantics, and historical development of the negative proclitic ham=, which is employed for standard negation (including copula negation) and non-standard negation (including constituent negation, prohibitions, apprehensives, and negation in a number of dependent clause types), and of the constructions that feature it. The author argues in favor of the diachronic development of the Sakhalin Ainu negative ham= from a negative existential verb into a proclitic, which later in the history of the language gained more prefix-like features and further proceeded in its evolution to become a pre-verbal negator through the grammaticalization of a negative copula construction. The functional development of ham= is shaped by the interaction of the Givón Negative Cycle and the Negative Existential Cycle. At the same time, the author discusses how ham= being used to mark focus negation led to 1) the development of an analytic negative construction, from an originally synthetic one, that has come to be used as the sole productive strategy for negation in the later stages of the language’s history, and 2) the development of prohibitive and apprehensive markers from negated non-content words following a typologically rare grammaticalization path. This paper adds to our understanding of negation in Ainuic, a grammar feature that more than others shows great variation within the family, and highlights the relevance of this topic for the investigation of areas of Ainu grammar which remain underdescribed to date, such as clause dependencies and modality.
Modern African literature is founded on the socio-political history of the continent, and as such it has passed through historical trajectories with prominent writers exploring the various situations of the region. The main objective of this study is to explore contemporary trends in West and East African literature, using textual analysis for a critical reading against the ideas of contemporary trends of African literature more broadly. The texts are purposefully selected based on their use of allegories and the degree of canonicity in capturing the national and cultural dimensions. Both of the authors examined here have exposed the political realities of Africa through their politically committed writing. Through his novel Starbook (2007), Ben Okri clearly reveals that the principle of pertinent and selfless devotion for the collective social will and social regeneration, as well as tranquillity and stillness, is vital for African society today. He suggests that courage, perseverance, and hard work are important to overcome the contemporary predicament of African nations. Similarly, Ngugi wa Thiong’o unveils the African nations’ socio-political crises in his novel Wizard of the Crow (2006) and advocates that unity of the people, selfless devotion of the younger generations, and negotiating with the African socio-cultural values are crucial for transformation of the continent.
This study publishes fifteen new early Islamic-era Arabic inscriptions. They stem from the Jordanian panhandle in the northeastern part of the country, near the modern town of al-Ruwayshid. The inscriptions were recorded during the Badia Epigraphic Survey 2018. Three of the inscriptions give explicit dates in the latter half of the second century AH/eighth century CE. On the basis of paleography, I suggest that the rest of the inscriptions come from that era as well. The contents also support this: nine inscriptions were written by members of the same extended family; one of them carries a date (158 AH/774–775 CE), so the rest of the family can also be roughly dated on the basis of this information. The set published here attests to some new epigraphic formulae and two cases of an interesting use of the Quranic text. One inscription, found on top of a hill, is a prayer for rain during a drought. I also discuss the social and religious relevance of these inscriptions. In this article, Safaitic inscriptions – lapidary texts written in antiquity in Old Arabic dialects with the Safaitic script – are used as an analogue, which might help explain some aspects of nomadic life, such as seasonal migration, in the region in Islamic times as well. I analyze the members and the movements of the family that left nine inscriptions in the region.
The use of the title of King of Assyria in Ezra 6:22 is related to the Persian satrapy of Abar-Nahara.
As its primary/explicit source, the Madhyamavyāyoga has the Hiḍiṃbavadhaparvan, where Bhīma kills Hiḍiṃba and marries his sister Hiḍiṃbā. As a possible secondary/implicit source, it also has the Bakavadhaparvan, where Bhīma kills Baka and ends up saving a Brahman and his family. This paper proposes a comparison between the two epic sources, on one hand, and the dramatic adaptation, on the other, to determine the key features of such supposed merging. To that end, it examines (1) psycho-affective components (sneha), (2) socio-cultural components (dharma), and (3) religio-philosophical components (toya/jala). The main conclusion is that, on these subjects, the resemblances of the play with the story of Baka are more significant than those with the story of Hiḍimba.
This article discusses African historiography with an emphasis on Nigeria. It posits that the themes in African historiography have continued to evolve, with historians of different eras paying attention to a broad spectrum of issues. The need at one point was to recall the glory of Africa’s past, and to debunk Eurocentric bias and prejudice by early European writers of African history was a central theme in historical research on the continent. Thus, it was employed to address pressing issues of nationalism and to combat Afro-pessimism. The article suggests that contemporary historians can use historical writing to understand, analyse, and make recommendations for policymakers in Africa in such areas as governance, trade, and bilateral relations. Looking at contemporary issues, it has become clear that today’s historians can do more to contribute to finding solutions to some of the current challenges in different African communities.
A passage on suffering (duḥkha) in the first section of the Suśrutasaṃhitā (SS), one of the foundational compendia of Āyurveda, elaborates on three kinds of suffering. The very same scheme also occurs in the commentarial literature of Sāṅkhya, one of the oldest and most important philosophical systems of South Asia. In the SS, however, this account leads a solitary life, never referred to in the whole work again, nor in other contemporary medical literature. This article will determine the actual position of this passage within the work and its relation to the Sāṅkhya parallels, and examine other approaches regarding the causation of suffering and disease in the SS. To this end, not only its representation in the vulgate edition of the SS, but also the version appearing in three early Nepalese manuscripts will be considered.
The paper focuses on three sets of events relating to Karṇa’s defeat in the Mahābhārata: the weapons exchange (MBh. 3.284–294), the chariot ride (MBh. 8.26–69), and the two curses (MBh. 12.2–5). From a narratological perspective, it analyzes them in terms of story-time (the narrative timing of the events in the story). With this literary approach to Karṇa’s character, its goal is to support the claims of consciously designed Mahābhārata, one of whose authorial techniques would precisely be time management.
This paper comprehensively summarizes, analyses, and reviews Iravatham Mahadevan’s attempts to decipher the Indus script. Spanning a period of over thirty five years, Iravatham Mahadevan made continuous attempts to interpret and decipher the Indus script. Mahadevan claimed to have adapted the method of parallels between the symbolic representation and the text, between the written object and its designation, between the written symbol itself and its meaning, and the similarity throughout the ancient East of certain portions of the inscriptions, with the assumption that the underlying language of the script is Dravidian. Mahadevan was very flexible in changing his views and finding new interpretations, and gradually he shifted his interpretation of Indus signs from being phonetic/logographic/word to ideographic, leaving unshaken his core personal hypothesis and belief in the Veḷier clan and Tamil cultural settings. While Mahadevan did not succeed in making a self-consistent system of readings applicable to a large number of discovered pieces of writings, he did make a determined, persistent effort to develop a Dravidian framework for deciphering of the Indus script. This study seeks to find weaknesses in the methodology and assumptions of Mahadevan and searches for possible alternatives within that framework.
