Select Contents of Oriental Journals

Summary

In this miscellany the editors of the quarterly abstract noteworthy articles from a range of oriental journals, offering readers a concise digest of current scholarship. The selections cover philology, history, religion, philosophy and art. Among the historical pieces are N. N. Ghosh’s study of the development of the caste system in India, which surveys Brahmanical and Jaina sources, and Pradyumna Kumar Mokherjee’s analysis of the social and economic data contained in Aśokan edicts. B. A. Saletore revisits the authorship of the Śākata­yāna grammar, distinguishing an early Vedic grammarian from a later Jain scholar, while J. B. Chaudhuri examines a newly discovered manuscript of Śrīvara’s Subhāṣitāvalī to correct its textual tradition. Notes on early Bengali grammar, on Kalinga Rājarāja and his consort Rājasundarī, and on Buddhist canonical literature supply valuable regional detail. Entries on Indian philosophy include Dorothy Stede’s discussion of the “jar and cloth” example used to illustrate different theories of perception, and K. C. Varadachari’s meditation on verses of the Īśāvāsyopaniṣad. Other notices summarise essays on Indian martial traditions, perfumery in the Viṣṇudharmottara and Gandhayukti, the history of the Cātur­bhāṇa plays, yogic symbolism, and the relation of the Bhagavad‑Gītā to the Ṛg‑Veda. Later selections draw from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and the Journal of the Bombay University to highlight work on Prakrit inscriptions, early histories of gotras, Chinese Turkestan documents and the temple of Jātāśaṃkara at Nandurbar. Each entry notes the author, title and main argument of the original article, enabling busy readers to identify studies relevant to their interests without consulting numerous periodicals directly.