Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1017/s0041977x23000010
John Tracy Thames
{"title":"Mary E. Buck: The Amorite Dynasty of Ugarit: Historical Implications of Linguistic and Archaeological Parallels. (Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant.) xiii, 376 pp. Leiden: Brill, 2020. ISBN 978 90 04 41510 2.","authors":"John Tracy Thames","doi":"10.1017/s0041977x23000010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0041977x23000010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46190,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43086792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X22000805
M. Peyrot, F. Dragoni, C. Bernard
Abstract Tocharian B eñcuwo “iron” and Tocharian A añcu* have been connected to the Iranian words for “iron”, notably Khwarezmian hnčw. On the basis of insights into the patterns of borrowings from Khotanese into Tocharian, it is argued that the Tocharian words must have been borrowed from a preform of Khotanese hīśśana- “iron”. Further, a new etymology is proposed for “iron” that accounts for the variation of this word in Iranian. The fact that Tocharian borrowed the word for “iron” from Khotanese, not from the archaic steppe dialect of Iranian that is the source of many other loanwords in Tocharian, suggests that the contacts between this latter dialect and Tocharian took place before iron became widespread in the region.
{"title":"The spread of iron in Central Asia: on the etymology of the word for “iron” in Iranian and Tocharian","authors":"M. Peyrot, F. Dragoni, C. Bernard","doi":"10.1017/S0041977X22000805","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X22000805","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Tocharian B eñcuwo “iron” and Tocharian A añcu* have been connected to the Iranian words for “iron”, notably Khwarezmian hnčw. On the basis of insights into the patterns of borrowings from Khotanese into Tocharian, it is argued that the Tocharian words must have been borrowed from a preform of Khotanese hīśśana- “iron”. Further, a new etymology is proposed for “iron” that accounts for the variation of this word in Iranian. The fact that Tocharian borrowed the word for “iron” from Khotanese, not from the archaic steppe dialect of Iranian that is the source of many other loanwords in Tocharian, suggests that the contacts between this latter dialect and Tocharian took place before iron became widespread in the region.","PeriodicalId":46190,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43365158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X23000113
Jue Chen
former depicts the emperor’s birth and accession to the throne (despite not being the king’s biological son) and his later power struggles with his half-brother and mother, while the latter spotlights Jing Ke’s failed attempt to assassinate the emperor. In translating Kingdoms in Peril, Milburn primarily eschews literal translation in favour of a free style that, besides keeping the text’s flow fluent and natural, works well for this novel: Feng’s novel is full of allusions and references to characters and plots in other (usually untranslated) chapters that, were the translation literal, would require footnotes. Because the original novel contains multiple narrative threads and the translated storylines are taken from multiple chapters, the translator sometimes summarizes the original text’s transitions between narratives, a method that echoes Feng’s own invention of characters and plots to fill gaps in his historical sources. The translation also offers glimpses of the novel’s original form by quoting poems, including Feng’s explanations of difficult terms, and using couplets for many of the chapter titles that are imitations, if not translations, of the original. Though the translation is generally of very high quality, it contains several small errors. For instance, in one poem (p. 72), fendai (粉黛) is translated as the colours of “the beacon fires”, though it should refer to Queen Bao, the femme fatale of the dynasty: literally face powder and eyebrow pigment, fendai is used as a metonymy for imperial consorts in many poems. Another example is the title guojiu (國舅, “brother-in-law” of a lord or a king), which is translated as “Leader of the Nation” (p. 137). Some romanization of names is also confusing – the table of contents lists “Ai Lao” (p. vii) despite his appearance as “Lao Ai” in the story (p. 303) – and there are several mistakes in the romanization of characters’ names, such as Zhao “Xi” rather than “Su” (p. 120). It is also regrettable that Milburn does not address how Feng reconciles inconsistencies among his sources or her reasons for selecting these nine stories from the text’s forty or fifty. None of this, however, keeps Kingdoms in Peril from being a fluent, pleasant translation equipped with a helpful introduction. For readers who enjoy fascinating historical novels and researchers interested in Feng Menglong or late imperial Chinese literature generally, Kingdoms in Peril is a must-have.
{"title":"Xiaoshan Yang: Wang Anshi and Song Poetic Culture. (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 129.) 360 pp. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2021. £56.95. ISBN 978 0 67426290 4.","authors":"Jue Chen","doi":"10.1017/S0041977X23000113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X23000113","url":null,"abstract":"former depicts the emperor’s birth and accession to the throne (despite not being the king’s biological son) and his later power struggles with his half-brother and mother, while the latter spotlights Jing Ke’s failed attempt to assassinate the emperor. In translating Kingdoms in Peril, Milburn primarily eschews literal translation in favour of a free style that, besides keeping the text’s flow fluent and natural, works well for this novel: Feng’s novel is full of allusions and references to characters and plots in other (usually untranslated) chapters that, were the translation literal, would require footnotes. Because the original novel contains multiple narrative threads and the translated storylines are taken from multiple chapters, the translator sometimes summarizes the original text’s transitions between narratives, a method that echoes Feng’s own invention of characters and plots to fill gaps in his historical sources. The translation also offers glimpses of the novel’s original form by quoting poems, including Feng’s explanations of difficult terms, and using couplets for many of the chapter titles that are imitations, if not translations, of the original. Though the translation is generally of very high quality, it contains several small errors. For instance, in one poem (p. 72), fendai (粉黛) is translated as the colours of “the beacon fires”, though it should refer to Queen Bao, the femme fatale of the dynasty: literally face powder and eyebrow pigment, fendai is used as a metonymy for imperial consorts in many poems. Another example is the title guojiu (國舅, “brother-in-law” of a lord or a king), which is translated as “Leader of the Nation” (p. 137). Some romanization of names is also confusing – the table of contents lists “Ai Lao” (p. vii) despite his appearance as “Lao Ai” in the story (p. 303) – and there are several mistakes in the romanization of characters’ names, such as Zhao “Xi” rather than “Su” (p. 120). It is also regrettable that Milburn does not address how Feng reconciles inconsistencies among his sources or her reasons for selecting these nine stories from the text’s forty or fifty. None of this, however, keeps Kingdoms in Peril from being a fluent, pleasant translation equipped with a helpful introduction. For readers who enjoy fascinating historical novels and researchers interested in Feng Menglong or late imperial Chinese literature generally, Kingdoms in Peril is a must-have.","PeriodicalId":46190,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41349616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1017/s0041977x22000726
Ahmed El Shamsy
{"title":"Mathieu Tillier: L'invention du cadi: La justice des musulmans, des juifs et des chrétiens aux premiers siècles de l'Islam. 704 pp. Paris: Editions de la Sorbonne, 2017. ISBN 979 1 03510000 1.","authors":"Ahmed El Shamsy","doi":"10.1017/s0041977x22000726","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0041977x22000726","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46190,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44189076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X23000137
D. Stewart
and messianism in the fifteenth-century “eastern” Islamic world, long believed to be closed off from isolated, Sunni, “Mamluk” Cairo (pp. 736, 785). The author could have devoted more time to strategically editing, both for brevity and to decrease the number of typos that arrived in the final manuscript (pp. 21, 27, 126, 133, 210, 240, 245, 321, 355, 357, 393, 457, 582, etc). The rather idiomatic choice to translate ʿulamāʾ al-qirsh as “crappy scholars” (457) or to refer to the majālis texts as a “best of” (573) also seem odd in an otherwise serious work of scholarship. Nevertheless, these are minor faults, and some verbiage notwithstanding, the work is expertly explained and well-written. Following the author’s arguments and instructive theorization, scholars can no longer use “court” as thoughtless shorthand; instead, future scholarship is behooved actively to ponder and digest Mauder’s important conceptualization as it applies to the eras before, during, and after the early sixteenth century.
{"title":"George Warner: The Words of the Imams: Al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq and the Development of Twelver Shīʿī Hadith Literature. 227 pp. London: I.B. Tauris, 2022. ISBN 978 1 8386 0560 5.","authors":"D. Stewart","doi":"10.1017/S0041977X23000137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X23000137","url":null,"abstract":"and messianism in the fifteenth-century “eastern” Islamic world, long believed to be closed off from isolated, Sunni, “Mamluk” Cairo (pp. 736, 785). The author could have devoted more time to strategically editing, both for brevity and to decrease the number of typos that arrived in the final manuscript (pp. 21, 27, 126, 133, 210, 240, 245, 321, 355, 357, 393, 457, 582, etc). The rather idiomatic choice to translate ʿulamāʾ al-qirsh as “crappy scholars” (457) or to refer to the majālis texts as a “best of” (573) also seem odd in an otherwise serious work of scholarship. Nevertheless, these are minor faults, and some verbiage notwithstanding, the work is expertly explained and well-written. Following the author’s arguments and instructive theorization, scholars can no longer use “court” as thoughtless shorthand; instead, future scholarship is behooved actively to ponder and digest Mauder’s important conceptualization as it applies to the eras before, during, and after the early sixteenth century.","PeriodicalId":46190,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42575631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1017/s0041977x2100063x
S. Yamada
{"title":"Chen Fei: Study on the Synchronistic King List from Ashur. (Cuneiform Monographs 51.) xviii, 249 pp. Leiden: Brill, 2020. €143. ISBN 978 90 04 43091 4.","authors":"S. Yamada","doi":"10.1017/s0041977x2100063x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0041977x2100063x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46190,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49076714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X22000398
Garth Fowden
Timurid Herat, in the Safavid realms of Shah Abbas as well as in Ottoman Istanbul, I found that not only was there production of new books, but that sultanic books that had, for whatever reason, become worn, had missing or incomplete illumination, illustration, or binding were restored and reworked (TS. H. 1654, TS. H. 1510, TS. H. 362; Add 25900, MET. 63.210.28, and others). Consequently, I think the time has come to write, and this is not restricted to the art of painting of fifteenthcentury Herat, the full range of the arts of the book, together with their codicologies, their biographies, the identities of their patrons, and the relationship between the patronage of the arts of the book and those of other arts in neighbouring cultures.
{"title":"Alain George: The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus: Art, Faith and Empire in Early Islam. 264 pp. London: Gingko, 2021. £60. ISBN 978 1 9099 4245 5.","authors":"Garth Fowden","doi":"10.1017/S0041977X22000398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X22000398","url":null,"abstract":"Timurid Herat, in the Safavid realms of Shah Abbas as well as in Ottoman Istanbul, I found that not only was there production of new books, but that sultanic books that had, for whatever reason, become worn, had missing or incomplete illumination, illustration, or binding were restored and reworked (TS. H. 1654, TS. H. 1510, TS. H. 362; Add 25900, MET. 63.210.28, and others). Consequently, I think the time has come to write, and this is not restricted to the art of painting of fifteenthcentury Herat, the full range of the arts of the book, together with their codicologies, their biographies, the identities of their patrons, and the relationship between the patronage of the arts of the book and those of other arts in neighbouring cultures.","PeriodicalId":46190,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43767923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-18DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X23000411
Ziche Chen
{"title":"Ethnolinguistic Prehistory of the Eastern Himalaya","authors":"Ziche Chen","doi":"10.1017/S0041977X23000411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X23000411","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46190,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44987875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1017/s0041977x22000684
Neguin Yavari
{"title":"Enrico Boccaccini: Reflecting Mirrors, East and West: Transcultural Comparisons of Advice Literature for Rulers (8th–13th Century). (Islamic History and Civilization.) xi, 314 pp. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022. ISBN 978 90 04 9874 7.","authors":"Neguin Yavari","doi":"10.1017/s0041977x22000684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0041977x22000684","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46190,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46642100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1017/s0041977x2200088x
{"title":"BSO volume 85 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0041977x2200088x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0041977x2200088x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46190,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43151160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}