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.
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Conclusion
By collating abstracts from disparate journals, this section acts as an intellectual clearing‑house for orientalists. It alerts readers of the Quarterly to fresh discoveries in epigraphy, manuscript studies, religious history and linguistics, and fosters cross‑fertilisation among subfields. The variety of topics underscores the vitality of Asian studies in the 1940s and encourages scholars to engage with work beyond their immediate specialisms. Such digests remain invaluable in an era of proliferating publications.