Select Contents of Oriental Journals
By Unexhibited
Summary
This section is a miscellany summarising recent articles appearing in various oriental journals. It provides readers of the Indian Historical Quarterly with brief notices of research across linguistics, literature, history and anthropology. The first entry summarises a paper by George I. Autyala in Brahmavidyā: The Adyar Library Bulletin that compiles a checklist of South Indian manuscripts of the Pañcatantra. The list enumerates 89 Sanskrit manuscripts of the southern recension attributed to Viṣṇuśarman and 17 manuscripts of the Hitopadeśa of Nārāyaṇa, followed by descriptions of Kannada manuscripts of Durgasimha’s version of the Pañcatantra. Autyala notes that the Kannada version’s framework closely parallels the original version while its story content resembles the Tantropākhyāna. The next summary refers to a paper in which G. G. Harshe proposes a new etymology for the Sanskrit word apsaras. Drawing on prehistoric Egyptian pottery motifs, Harshe argues that the word derives from the combination of Egyptian ‘to dance’ (8) and Ske ‘to move’ (sy), meaning “to move in a dancing manner.” He suggests that apsarases were originally dancing girls imported from Egypt into the Aryan settlements of the Middle East. Another notice highlights Chintaharan Chakravarti’s survey of Kali worship in Bengal, which identifies six forms of the goddess and notes that the worship of a fierce Kali is mentioned in an inscription dated 999 CE. Additional entries summarise works on Vedic linguistics, syntactic theory, portfolio files from the archives of Jodhpur, the Sarva‑Deva‑Vilisá, and various epigraphic and textual studies from journals such as The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay, Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, and Indian Philosophy and Culture. Topics range from Marathi inscriptions and the patterns of the Tṛṣṭubh metre to studies of Mahāyāna doctrines and land tenure systems in South India. In each case, the section provides a succinct overview of the main argument or finding of the original article, along with the author’s name and the journal details. Such notices help readers keep abreast of developments across a wide field of oriental studies.
Conclusion
By compiling summaries of diverse articles, this miscellany serves as a bibliographic aid for scholars. It highlights research on manuscript cataloguing, etymological speculation, regional religious practices, linguistic theory, epigraphy and historical studies. Although brief, these notices alert readers to new findings and debates across the spectrum of oriental scholarship and encourage cross‑disciplinary engagement.