Select Contents of Oriental Journals
Summary
This section summarises noteworthy articles from a range of Orientalist journals and provides readers with a guide to recent scholarship. It opens with a report on N. Venkata Ramanayya’s study of Muslim historians’ accounts of Sultan Muḥammad Shah I’s war with Vijayanagara, showing that although some chroniclers claim the Sultan won two battles, the evidence indicates there was only a single battle and that it ended unfavourably for the Sultan. P. K. Goor contributes a study of the history of henna (mehndi) in India from about 2000 B.C. to A.D. 1850. B. Huiman examines the phenomenon of kathenotheism in the Vedic hymns, noting that Vedic poets often praise a single deity as supreme at a given moment and arguing that this reflects a monotheistic intuition rather than flattery. P. S. Sastri analyses figures of speech in the Ṛg‑Veda, pointing out the prevalence of similes, metaphors and hyperboles. P. R. Chidambara Iyer uses the Kaṭapayādi numerical notation to calculate the year of the Bhārata war and proposes that Bhīṣma died 23,665 days after the beginning of the Kali Yuga (3038 B.C.). K. A. Nilakanta Sastri discusses the place of Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra in Indian political thought, highlighting its exaltation of royal power, complex bureaucracy and criminal courts and suggesting that these institutions were influenced by Hellenistic models. K. V. Abhyankar offers a historical perspective on the omission and repetition of lunar days (tithis) in the Vedic calendar. Dinesh Chandra Bhattacharyya examines four medical texts attributed to Vāgbhata and argues that they were all authored by the same ninth‑century scholar living near Haidarabad. Additional entries from the Bihar Research Society describe a bronze sculpture of Aparachana found in Nepal and discuss the currency situation in late eighteenth‑century Bengal. The section also lists contributions from the Ganganatha Jha Research Institute on Jain chronology and from the Royal Asiatic Society on topics such as Jainism, the history of Mathurā and the Central Asiatic expedition of Candra‑gupta Vikramāditya. Later summaries mention articles on cultural change in Greater India, analyses of Prājñā‑pāramitā texts, studies of Sudraka and other literary and philological investigations. Collectively, the “Select Contents” offer a panoramic view of contemporary research in Indology, history, philology and religion, drawing attention to both specialized studies and interdisciplinary explorations.
AI-assisted summary, not yet checked. Consult the original PDF before citing.
Conclusion
By surveying articles from numerous Orientalist journals, this section provides readers with an accessible digest of recent scholarship. The abstracts highlight diverse topics—from military history and plant ethnobotany to Vedic poetics, ancient chronology, political theory, medical history, art history and cultural exchange—demonstrating the breadth of current research on South and Central Asian cultures. Such summaries guide scholars toward important new studies and underscore the continuing vitality of interdisciplinary work in the humanities.