The Journal of the American Oriental Society articles from July 1993

The Journal of the American Oriental Society archives from July 1993

The origins and objectives of Islamic revivalist thought, 1750-1850.
July 1, 1993... STUDIES OF MODERN ISLAMIC THOUGHT often assert that the roots of the modern Islamic revival originate in the eighteenth century. An intellectual link is postulated between Wahhabi puritanical ideas and later Islamic thought; Wahhabism, it is...

Medieval Arab navigation on the Indian Ocean: latitude determinations.
July 1, 1993... INTRODUCTION(1) THE PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER is to compare the empirical methods of medieval Arab navigators on the Indian Ocean for determining latitudes with modern stellar methods using spherical trigonometry, the navigational triangle and...

Transsexualism, gender, and anxiety in traditional India.
July 1, 1993... In Memory of Bimal Krishna Matilal (1935 - 1991) "There is a vast difference between this world and the next." Every one knows that. This world and the next are really one and the same. But that is something you should not tell to anyone.(1)...

The Manchu exegesis of the 'Lunyu.'
July 1, 1993... GIVEN THE PROMINENT PLACE of Confucius in Chinese culture and society, one would expect that the text most directly associated with him, i.e., the Lunyu or Analects, would have been the first of the Confucian classics to have been translated by...

The significance of a dog's tail: comments on the 'Xu Xiyou ji.'
July 1, 1993... THE XU XIYOU JI IS ONE OF FOUR traditional Chinese vernacular novels associated with the legendary journey to India by Xuanzang and his disciples in the seventh century.(1) The four novels are: the Xiyou ji (Record of the Westward Journey),...

Administrative titles in Nubia in the Middle Kingdom.
July 1, 1993... THIS BOOK IS A FINAL PUBLICATION of the Epigraphic Expedition to Sudanese Nubia conducted by the German Academy of Sciences, Berlin, under the directorship of Professor F. Hintze. The work began in 1961 with a survey season, followed by three...

On profit-seeking, market orientations, and mentality in the "Ancient Near East."
July 1, 1993... IN THIS ERA OF PARTICULARISM and extreme specialization in scholarship, one encounters all too rarely the scholar with the intellectual fortitude and breadth of interest to venture beyond the haven of his own narrowly defined expertise. To his...

A brush with the spur: Robert Joe Cutter on the Chinese cockfight.
July 1, 1993... Genuine, pure play is one of the main bases of civilization. Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens WHAT DOES ONE DO with a book on the history of cockfighting in China? On the face of it, the subject would seem, at best, of marginal interest,...

Ostracon Clermont-Ganneau 125(?): a case of ritual purity. ('Un ostracon arameen d'Elephantine,' text discovered by Charles Clermont-Ganneau)
July 1, 1993... Helene Lozachmeur has just published "Un ostracon arameen d'Elephantine," discovered by Charles Clermont-Ganneau at Elephantine, Egypt ("Collection Clermont-Ganneau n 125?"), sometime back in 1907 and deposited in the Academie des Inscriptions et...

Us and them. (Paul W. Kroll speech) (Transcript)
July 1, 1993... With the topic at hand, one can begin almost anywhere and still be in bounds. Let me begin about nine centuries ago, on the evening of the 12th of August 1082 (to be precise), one night after the full moon, when the great poet Su Shih went...

The History of al-Tabari, vol 1, General Introduction and From the Creation to the Flood.
July 1, 1993... Abu Ja far Muhammad Ibn Jarir al-Tabari (839-923 A.D.) was one of the most prolific and accomplished thinkers and scholars of Baghdad, the center of learning in his age, renowned for its intellectual and scholastic accomplishments. Linguist and...

The History of al-Tabari, vol. 2, Prophets and Patriarchs.
July 1, 1993... Abu Jafar Muhammad Ibn Jarir al-Tabari (839-923 A.D.) was one of the most prolific and accomplished thinkers and scholars of Baghdad, the center of learning in his age, renowned for its intellectual and scholastic accomplishments. Linguist and...

The History of al-Tabari, vol. 3, The Children of Israel.
July 1, 1993... The significance of al-Tabari's history is well known to all scholars in the field and the appearance of the full translation will only increase the attention paid to the work as well as stimulate further reflection upon the text itself. Of...

The History of al-Tabari, vol. 4, The Ancient Kingdoms.
July 1, 1993... The significance of al-Tabari's history is well known to all scholars in the field and the appearance of the full translation will only increase the attention paid to the work as well as stimulate further reflection upon the text itself. Of...

The History of al-Tabari, vol. 7, The Foundation of the Community: Muhammad at Al-Madina, A.D. 62 2-626/Hijrah-4 A.H.
July 1, 1993... The ongoing project of the translation of al-Tabari's Ta rikh is here evidenced by three volumes (from a total of four when the series is completed) dealing with the life of Muhammad. Volume 6 of this translation covers pp. 1073 to 1256 of the...

The History of al-Tabari, vol. 9, The Last Years of the Prophet. The Formation of the State, A.D. 630-632/A.H. 8-11.
July 1, 1993... translation of al-Tabari's Tarikh is here evidenced by three volumes (from a total of four when the series is completed) dealing with the life of Muhammad. Volume 6 of this translation covers pp. 1073 to 1256 of the de Goeje edition of...

The Sources for Early Babi Doctrine and History: A Survey.
July 1, 1993... In recent years a considerable volume of serious scholarship on the Babi and Baha i religions has appeared, including two major studies of the Babi religion: Abbas Amanat's Resurrection and Renewal and Denis MacEoin's present work. MacEoin's is...

The Baha i Faith and Islam: Proceedings of a Symposium, McGill University, March 23-25, 1984.
July 1, 1993... In recent years a considerable volume of serious scholarship on the Babi and Baha i religions has appeared, including two major studies of the Babi religion: Abbas Amanat's Resurrection and Renewal and Denis MacEoin's present work. MacEoin's is...

Spoken Uyghur.
July 1, 1993... The author and his Uyghur informant collaborated to prepare an excellent, substantial descriptive grammar and 15 dialogue units for the modern Uyghur language as indigenous speakers use it mainly in eastern Turkistan (Xinjiang), China. The...

Shastric Traditions in Indian Arts, vols. 1-2.
July 1, 1993... This handsome set brings together a total of forty-one papers presented originally at an international seminar held at the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg sometime during the middle 1980s. (Perhaps an even more thorough...

The Rhetoric of English India.
July 1, 1993... One of the more interesting developments in South Asian studies is the rise of literary critics in English departments and comparative literature programs who provide intellectual leadership for other area-related disciplines. Actually, this...

Bu ston's History of Buddhism in Tibet.
July 1, 1993... This work of Dr. Janos Szerb was prepared, compared, and completed by Dr. Helmut Krasser after the former's death in 1988. Szerb had a vision of "critical editions of a number of Tibetan historical sources that are relevant to our understanding...

The Philosophy of Sadhana with Special Reference to the Trika Philosophy of Kashmir.
July 1, 1993... The contribution this book makes to sound scholarship starts with the title itself. It specifies that the book deals with sadhana as understood in the Trika philosophy of Kashmir, rather than some vague entity such as Kashmir Shaivism, although...

History and Historiography of the Age of Harsha.
July 1, 1993... As Shankar Goyal notes, the reign of King Harsa of Kanauj (r. ca. 606-47) is better documented than that of any king of ancient India. The most important sources are Harsa's own inscriptions, a "biographical" courtly romance by Banabhatta, and a...

Dravidian Linguistics: An Introduction.
July 1, 1993... The Dravidian family is made up of some two dozen languages (the exact number is still unknown) spoken by probably about 150 millions of people (or is it nearly 200 millions?--the Census figures are very unsatisfactory), about one-fifth of...

The Epic of Pabuji: A Study, Transcription and Translation.
July 1, 1993... In spite of being one of the oldest and perhaps even the oldest attested New Indo-Aryan language--with a remarkable and distinctive ancient literature, including folk-epics and chronicles--the Rajasthani language has received scant attention from...

The Dhvanyaloka of Anandavardhana with the Locana of Abhinavagupta.
July 1, 1993... This richly rewarding publication contains, among other things, the first reliable translation of Anandavardhana's seminal work into English,(1) the first translation of Abhinavagupta's Locana thereon into any Western language,(2) and a thorough...

The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period.
July 1, 1993... When reading the book under review, every experienced student of modern Chinese literature will realize that its author had before him three outstanding works of his American colleagues from the 1970s and 1980s: Leo Ou-fan Lee's Romantic...

Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, vol. 1, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece: 1785-1985.
July 1, 1993... This is the first of a three-volume opus on the origins of Classical Greek civilization and on how the "Ancient Model" (= the view of the ancient Greek authors) gave way to the "Aryan Model" (= the prevailing view of modern academia). The ancient...

Cylinder Seals from the Collections of the Aleppo Museum, Syrian Arab Republic, vol. 1, Seals of Unknown Provenience.
July 1, 1993... This, the first of two projected catalogues on the cylinder seal collection of the Aleppo Museum in Syria, concentrates on seals of unknown provenance acquired through purchase, confiscation, and gift. It appeared only two years after the...

Bronze and Iron: Ancient Near Eastern Artifacts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
July 1, 1993... This exemplary catalogue of metal objects in the collection of the Metropolitan should provide a model for such publications for many years to come. It can be read on several levels at once, following the Hebrew proverb, "He who understands will...

The Architecture of Ancient Israel from the Prehistoric to the Persian Periods.
July 1, 1993... This volume, in memory of the late Israeli archaeological architect Immanuel ("Munya") Dunayevsky, is a revised and expanded version of the Hebrew edition of 1987, inaccessible to most scholars. The book starts with four general chapters on...

Nag Hammadi Codices III.3 and V.1 with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, 3 and Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1081: Eugnostos and the Sophia of Jesus Christ.
July 1, 1993... This critical edition supersedes all previous editions. It presents for the first time the text of the Codex V version of Eugnostos for English speaking readers. In the Nag Hammadi Library in English, the Codex V version of Eugnostos was only...

Hebraische harndschriften der Stadt- und Universitatsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main.
July 1, 1993... This second volume of the Frankfurt Hebrew manuscript collection contains a rich variety of manuscripts. It is richest first in talmudic and mystical material and then in liturgical and homiletic subject matter. Of the 125 volumes (most...

Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah: Selected Texts from Taylor-Schechter Box K1.
July 1, 1993... In addition to its many riches, the Cairo Geniza contains a lot of what were initially deemed by most scholars as trivial and ephemeral stuff: private papers, including letters, commercial lists of goods or of debtors, jottings of various kinds,...

Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature.
July 1, 1993... This book represents the adroit and well-conceived combination, reworking, and expansion of a Harvard doctoral dissertation and several articles. The resulting study is a handbook for both the novice and the specialist on the forms which...

Towards a Grammar of Biblical Poetics: Tales of the Prophets.
July 1, 1993... H. C. Brichto is a product of mid-twentieth-century biblical scholarship, having studied under E. A. Speiser and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. He was thus trained in a philological-historical-comparative approach, with plenty...

Damaszener Mitteilungen, Band 3.
July 1, 1993... These handsomely produced, hard-bound volumes offer twenty-eight articles whose subjects range from the Early Bronze Age down to recent Islamic times. The photographs and drawings are excellent and this reviewer could find very few proofreading...

Damaszener Mitteilunger, Band 4.
July 1, 1993... These handsomely produced, hard-bound volumes offer twenty-eight articles whose subjects range from the Early Bronze Age down to recent Islamic times. The photographs and drawings are excellent and this reviewer could find very few proofreading...

A Bibliography of the Amarna and its Aftermath: The Reigns of Akhenaten, Smenkhare, Tutankhamun and Ay (c. 1350-1321 BC).
July 1, 1993... Geoffrey Martin has once again, as so often in the past, placed us all in his debt by producing one of those tools we wonder how we did without. Bibliographies of the Amarna Period are not new--one may cite the useful work of Ed Werner, which...

Der neuaramaische Dialekt von Hertevin (Provinz Siirt).
July 1, 1993... Among today's Semitists who specialize in living Semitic languages, Otto Jastrow has no doubt done most to record and preserve our knowledge of the vanishing dialects of Arabic and Aramaic in the eastern Anatolian and northern Mesopotamian border...

The Damascus Document Reconsidered.
July 1, 1993... This important publication contains three articles: "The Text of CDC," by Elisha Qimron; "The Laws of the Damascus Document in Current Research," by Joseph M. Baumgarten; and "Damascus Document: A Bibliography of Studies 1970-1989," by F. Garcia...

Revelation and Mystery in Ancient Judaism and Pauline Christianity.
July 1, 1993... This book develops a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Cambridge: "A Theological Study of Ancient Jewish and Pauline Views of the Revelation of Heavenly Mysteries." It investigates "revelation," i.e., divine disclosures...

The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane.
July 1, 1993... For a number of years, the story of Timur and of Timurid culture was largely the province of historians of art. The excellent work of Jean Aubin stood as an exception to this generalization, but in terms of quantity and apparent interest other...

The Ottoman Empire: 1300-1481.
July 1, 1993... The purpose of this book is to provide a trustworthy chronology of Ottoman history from the earliest reasonably fixed dates until the death of Sultan Mehmed II. Professor Imber has succeeded, and his book should become a valuable reference for...

The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium.
July 1, 1993... This is a major publication project organized by Dumbarton Oaks, with 127 contributors from 17 countries. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and several private foundations, the project was begun in 1983. It was planned as a...

The Christ and the Bodhisattva.
July 1, 1993... This volume contains papers from a conference held at Middlebury College in 1984. The core consists of six studies: three by Christian scholars on their understanding of "the Christ" in Christianity (Langdon Gilkey, Brother David Steindl-Rast,...

Women in World Religions.
July 1, 1993... This volume is a collection of papers on the subject of women in the major world religious traditions--Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--with some attention also to tribal religion, specifically that of...

The Buddhist Forum, vol. 1, Semnar Papers 1987-1988.
July 1, 1993... The essays collected in this volume are based on papers given during the 1987-1988 academic year in a seminar series at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. The series, entitled "The Buddhist Forum," was not...