This study concerns the hermeneutics of the occultation of the twelfth imam through the immense literature of the Shaykhiyya of Kirman (Iran). Generally speaking, the different masters of the Order used two main hermeneutical ‘axioms’: 1) all reality is composed, at least, of two levels: the manifest/exoteric and the hidden/esoteric; 2) the notion of the universe as macrocosm, man as microcosm and the correspondence between them. For this reason, the article is divided into two parts. First, the esoteric aspect of ‘the Occultation in the world’ is an analysis of the principle of the Fourth Pillar (rukn rābi) and its three fundamental components: the ‘invisible’ Friends of the hidden imam, Unicity of the Speaker and Alliance/Dissociation. The second part concerns the esoteric meaning of ‘the Occultation within man’ and examines symbolic and theological hermeneutics, respectively through the work of Sayyid Kāzim Rashtī, the second master of the Order (d. 1259/1843) and the commentaries on the famous hadith ‘Who knows himself, knows his Lord’.

This article explores some important parallels and differences between certain Eastern Christian and Islamic heterodox (Alevi/Kizilbash, Yezidi and Ahl-e Haqq) cosmogonies, which shared and developed old cosmogonic themes such as the ‘primal ocean’ and the ‘earth-diver’-demiurge, and co-existed during the Ottoman period. The investigation reveals that some of the Eastern Christian versions of these cosmogonies have retained their archaic forms, but in most of them the earth-diver is identified with the Devil, a movement towards cosmogonic and religious dualism that could have been effected by both heretical and popular Christian diabology. Conversely, despite the existing traits of dualist and earth-diver cosmogonies in Northern and Central Asian non-Islamic Turkic and related religious traditions, a comparative analysis as demonstrated in this article shows that the Alevi/Kizilbash, Ahl-e Haqq and Yezidi cosmogonies did not absorb or develop these dualist features but rather tried to neutralize them by reinterpreting them in a largely monotheistic framework.

This paper is concerned with the textual study of the Sikh scripture, the Adi Granth. Beginning with a survey of previous approaches to the text of the Adi Granth, it argues that the traditional framework that has previously governed such studies is unable to deal with the complexity of the extant manuscript traditions of the bānī (the corpus of compositions in the Granth). In the earliest period, a number of concurrent oral repertoires of the bānī were in existence; over time, the written Adi Granth evolved into a number of relatively standardized recensions. Future textual studies on the Adi Granth must also begin to take into account the ways in which the text was received and read in the pre-modern period. Finally, the field must take cognizance of the contexts within which texts were produced and read, particularly those arising from merchant literacy.

Most scholars in Japanese studies (history, linguistics, literature) tend to accept in one form or another the ancient legend that the phonetic writing system of ancient Japan, known as man'yōgana, came from Paekche. This legend about the ancient Korean kingdom—Paekche—appears in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, Japan's two oldest chronicles. To date there have been few attempts to use concrete data from the peninsula either to prove or reject this legend. This article supplies information from all epigraphic data on the Korean peninsula to show that Paekche spread the use of Chinese (sinographs) to be used phonogrammatically and that Koguryo educated the rest of the peninsula in the use of this script.

This article examines the competing theories dealing with the origin of the so-called plural suffix -men in Chinese. Their internal consistency is assessed both diachronically and—in a novel approach—on the conceptual level, that is, with reference to the fundamental value of -men today. As a result, the theses favouring an autochthonous development come out on top, to the detriment of those postulating an exogenous source. -Men is in all likelihood an outcome of the grammaticalization of the notion of ‘clan’, operating on a substratum of ancient Chinese collectives.

In Arabic documents issued by the dīwān of the Norman kings of Sicily during the twelfth century, brutuyūn and istiriyūn mean, respectively, ‘June’ and ‘July’. The geographer al-Idrīsī, who completed the Kitāb nuzhat al-mushtāq in Palermo in 1154, also uses istiriyūn for ‘July’. These month-names are derived from Greek *Πρωτοϊούνης, literally ‘first June’, i.e. June, and *Ύστεροϊούνης, literally ‘second June’, i.e. July. The linguistic circumstances in which the coining may have occurred are discussed.