Studia Orientalia is an internationally recognized publication series of Asian and African studies. It is published by the Finnish Oriental Society. In addition to monographs and thematic collections of articles, some volumes have been regularly dedicated to high-quality articles on all fields of Asian and African studies. In fact, the first volume of Studia Orientalia in 1925 was such an article volume. From the beginning of 2013, these article volumes have appeared in this new publication series, Studia Orientalia Electronica and from 2026 in Studia Orientalia. StOr is a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal with continuous submission. With this new journal we hope to reach a wider audience and also speed up our publication process.
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Review of Laura Culbertson and Gonzalo Rubio (eds): Society and the Individual in Ancient Mesopotamia
Review of Laura Culbertson & Gonzalo Rubio (eds): Society and the Individual in Ancient Mesopotamia. (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 33) . Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024. ISBN 978-15-01-52125-6. xii + 309 pp.
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Kingship and Queenship in the Ancient Near Eastern Empires of the First Millennium BCE: Presentation to the Public as Builder
Empires and kingship are long-standing topics of research in ancient Near Eastern studies; the study of queenship has gradually received more attention over recent decades. However, discussions of the social implications of kingship and queenship, comparisons of the gender roles, and their study across several empires remain rare. The paper at hand takes the unprecedented step of such a comparative analysis by tracing a specific detail of royal ideology, namely the presentation of the king and queen to the public as builders, across seven major Near Eastern empires following and/or interacting with each other throughout the first millennium BCE: the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Teispid-Achaemenid, Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Parthian, and Roman empires. Drawing on the available textual, material, and visual sources from the ancient contemporary contexts of each empire and from Classical reception history, we showcase the potential of a longue-durée comparison for the social institutions of kingship and of queenship, giving full attention and space also to the lesser known empires and the queens’ roles. To achieve this, we present first a synopsis of the key findings per empire and role, followed by a diachronic study of three aspects of gender comparison: concerning the empire-internal portfolios of king and queen, the joint presentation as a couple, and the question of how far the roles of king and queen mirror or complement each other. We conclude with some pertinent (albeit tentative) results on the features shared by some or all of the empires as well as their outstanding idiosyncracies.
Exploring Contemporary Trends of African Literature: Selfless Devotion for Socio-Political Transformation in Ben Okri’s Starbook and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow
Modern African literature is founded on the socio-political history of the continent, and as such it has passed through historical trajectories with prominent writers exploring the various situations of the region. The main objective of this study is to explore contemporary trends in West and East African literature, using textual analysis for a critical reading against the ideas of contemporary trends of African literature more broadly. The texts are purposefully selected based on their use of allegories and the degree of canonicity in capturing the national and cultural dimensions. Both of the authors examined here have exposed the political realities of Africa through their politically committed writing. Through his novel Starbook (2007), Ben Okri clearly reveals that the principle of pertinent and selfless devotion for the collective social will and social regeneration, as well as tranquillity and stillness, is vital for African society today. He suggests that courage, perseverance, and hard work are important to overcome the contemporary predicament of African nations. Similarly, Ngugi wa Thiong’o unveils the African nations’ socio-political crises in his novel Wizard of the Crow (2006) and advocates that unity of the people, selfless devotion of the younger generations, and negotiating with the African socio-cultural values are crucial for transformation of the continent.
IsiNdebele is a Nguni Bantu language spoken in South Africa. While the tone systems of many other Nguni languages are well described and analysed, this paper presents the first description of the isiNdebele nominal tone system. The isiNdebele tone system is typical of Bantu languages in that Low tones are the default tones, added after phonological rules have been applied, and only High tones undergo any phonological rules. It is well known in the literature of Nguni languages that H tone spread/shift targets the antepenultimate and penultimate syllables, but isiNdebele differs from other Nguni languages in that the H tone spreading/shifting target is one syllable further, that is, the penultimate and the final syllable.
Click Variation and Reacquisitionin Two South African Ndebele Varieties
This article deals with click consonants in two Nguni varieties of South Africa, namely isiNdebele, or Southern Ndebele, as it is better known outside of South Africa; and Sindebele, or Northern Transvaal Ndebele. We review previous research on the topic, in which isiNdebele been described as having a somewhat reduced click inventory compared to better described Nguni languages, and Sindebele has been claimed to have lost clicks completely. We also review previous research on click loss, variation, and acquisition. We then describe the current situation of both language varieties regarding clicks. For Sindebele, we observe that while clicks indeed seem to have been almost completely replaced by other consonants, some speakers still do produce clicks in isolated words, possibly as a result of recent contact with isiZulu. In isiNdebele, we find that the lateral click has been lost almost completely, while the distinction between dental and postalveolar has been lost for some speakers (with most of them preferring the dental click), whereas some speakers still maintain the distinction. We propose a tentative correlation between increasing formal education in the isiNdebele language and the tendency to maintain the two clicks as distinct, but generally find the functional load of the distinction to be very low, at least on a lexical level.
Use of the Augment in Negatives and other Irrealis Contexts in isiNdebele
The paper examines the use of the augment in isiNdebele, a Nguni language spoken in South Africa. Inspired by typological work on the effects of negation on the marking of noun phrases, special attention is paid to the use of the augment under negation and in other irrealis contexts. It is hypothesized that the augment is connected with the marking of referentiality and might therefore be more readily omitted in negatives and other irrealis contexts. The paper is based on data collected in the field with a questionnaire designed for this study. The results show that the augment is dropped only in negated existential and possessive predications expressed with the associative copula. Thus, the absence of the augment is much more restricted in isiNdebele than it is in other Nguni languages.
Towards a Fieldwork Methodology for Eliciting Distinctionsin Lexical Aspect in Bantu
While analyses of lexical aspect have traditionally relied on Vendler’s (1957) typology and expansions thereof, more recent work has shown Vendler’s classes to be insufficient for characterising event types in many languages. This is particularly true for Bantu languages, which typically have large classes of “change-of-state” (COS) verbs (or verbal predicates), and which are underrepresented in cross-linguistic studies of lexical aspect. Understanding the nuances of lexical aspect in isiNdebele requires a toolkit that goes beyond the traditional Vendlerian tests, many of which produce misleading results in isiNdebele. During our 2016 fieldwork, we developed and refined a battery of tests aimed at teasing apart key distinctions within COS and other lexical aspect classes in isiNdebele. We then adapted the tests to Northern Transvaal Ndebele (Sindebele), which allowed us to make a direct cross-linguistic comparison of the construal of various events, and to see potential effects of language contact on event construal. However, even a detailed and robust series of tests can easily miss crucial phenomena related to event construal (often available to native-speaker linguists through introspection, but less easily accessed by linguists working on languages other than their own). To mitigate this issue, much of our research involved long, ethnographic-style discussions with Ndebele speakers of the potential meaning(s) and use(s) of verbs in various linguistic frames. Although this style of research is less amenable to producing neat categorisations of verbs that can be directly compared between languages, we argue that it both reduces artificially straightforward analyses, and allows us to discover which distinctions are actually worth comparing. In this paper, we describe our research strategies, and suggest how they might be adapted for use with other languages and in cross-linguistic comparison.
Spatial Forms and Functions in isiNdebele: A 3D-Stimulus Field Study
In this article, we give an overview of the spoken practices of spatial grammar in the South African Bantu language isiNdebele. Based on field data obtained through elicitation using three-dimensional stimuli, we demonstrate how verbal and adnominal spatial marking are used in isiNdebele to encode basic, semantically determined spatial functions, both static and dynamic. We show that spoken isiNdebele features strategies of both typological types of satellite-framed and verb-framed languages, with the clear division of reserving prepositional marking to encode types of positions (localisations), and verbal semantics to encode boundaries in the trajectories of movement (local roles). We also note that inherent verb semantics and complex syntactic clause-linking strategies compensate for the lack of semantic information expressed by the primary Locative case marker e-…-ini in the expression of motion events, making isiNdebele typologically a representative of so-called role-indifferent languages. Finally, the data gives new evidence on how the secondary Locative case nga- expresses the function of non-contact, but the notable variation in the use of the prefix leaves room for further study about its degree of grammaticalisation. In broader terms, our study seeks to fulfil three goals: describing a significant semantic and grammatical domain of the heretofore understudied language isiNdebele; bringing the resulting typological case study into dialogue with wider typological and variationist discussions related to spatiality; and highlighting the significance of developing innovative and practical methodologies for the empirical study of spatial conceptualisation and expression.
Language Dynamics among Speakers of Sindebele
Sindebele in the Limpopo province of South Africa is based on in-depth interviews and informal conversations with dozens of speakers, cultural experts, and activists in rural areas of Mokopane and Polokwane in May 2016. It is not a full-fledged survey of the sociolinguistic situation of Sindebele, but nevertheless clearly documents the threatened status of the language. Two main insights stand out. Firstly, parents use Sindebele to some extent with their children, but often shift to Northern Sotho in their homes when children enter pre-school. Because of this early rupture, natural language transmission is insufficient. Secondly, two contrary dynamics are at work. Native speakers adopt Northern Sotho properties into Sindebele. At the same time, individual Northern Sotho-speaking women are compelled to learn Sindebele in marriage, and then they transmit it to their children. This intricate interplay between massive borrowing and substrate effects has occurred over a long time. Against such a backdrop, the chances of long-term survival of Sindebele are difficult to assess. Local actors play a significant role, such as the activists of the Mandebele National Organization, who strive to preserve their cultural and linguistic heritage. In addition to drawing attention to the case of Sindebele as an interesting linguistic case of a Nguni Bantu language heavily influenced by contact, the article also intends to lend support to the concerns of the community through scientific evidence.
Introduction: Venturing into Ndebele Language Research
Language Sociological Trends in South African Ndebele Communities: A Pilot Survey
This article presents the results of a 2016 language sociological survey focusing on the language choices and practices of two different Ndebele-speaking communities in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, the two north-eastern provinces of South Africa. The survey shows the prevailing dynamics in these multilingual environments, in both the private and public spheres. One of the main differences between the investigated groups is that in Mpumalanga, Ndebele is the dominating language in its surroundings, whereas in Limpopo, the local Ndebele variety is in the position of a minority language. From the perspective of daily practices and attitudes, Northern Sotho often dominates in this particular case. The different perceptions of the implementation of language policies, and the attitudes of individual speakers with respect to private and public use of the two Ndebele variants, suggest that further research is needed in order to shed more light on the language sociological status of Limpopo Ndebele in particular. The survey consisted of a pilot sample of three different groups: 1) speakers of the Mpumalanga Ndebele variety, which corresponds to isiNdebele and has official status in South Africa; 2) the significantly divergent Limpopo Ndebele, which does not have any official status; and 3) a control group sample from Mokopane town.
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Philosophical Aspects of wabi in chadô: Great tea masters Jô-ô and Rikyû
Differences between Jô-ô and Rikyû in Taste and Ideas of wabichadô Reflected through the Poems "miwataseba…" and "hana wo nomi…"
Different Forms of wabi as an Aesthetic Concept
A Bhutanese in Gyantse: The Treaty of Punakha and the Protection of Bhutanese Subjects
This paper focuses on the case of a Bhutanese subject who was assaulted by a Chinese soldier in Tibet, within the premises of the Trade Mart of Gyantse, in 1912. When the British Trade Agent asked the Political Officer in Sikkim, Charles A. Bell, about possible action, the latter stated that he believed Bhutanese subjects should be considered British subjects. This idea was vehemently opposed by the Foreign Secretary of the Government of India, Henry McMahon, based on the interpretation of the Treaty made by the Viscount of Morley in April 1910. This article analyses the different positions in this case and aims to contribute to a better understanding of the status of the Kingdom of Bhutan following the Treaty of Punakha of 1910.
Negation in Sakhalin Ainu: History and Typology
This paper investigates negation in Sakhalin Ainu by focusing on the morphosyntax, semantics, and historical development of the negative proclitic ham=, which is employed for standard negation (including copula negation) and non-standard negation (including constituent negation, prohibitions, apprehensives, and negation in a number of dependent clause types), and of the constructions that feature it. The author argues in favor of the diachronic development of the Sakhalin Ainu negative ham= from a negative existential verb into a proclitic, which later in the history of the language gained more prefix-like features and further proceeded in its evolution to become a pre-verbal negator through the grammaticalization of a negative copula construction. The functional development of ham= is shaped by the interaction of the Givón Negative Cycle and the Negative Existential Cycle. At the same time, the author discusses how ham= being used to mark focus negation led to 1) the development of an analytic negative construction, from an originally synthetic one, that has come to be used as the sole productive strategy for negation in the later stages of the language’s history, and 2) the development of prohibitive and apprehensive markers from negated non-content words following a typologically rare grammaticalization path. This paper adds to our understanding of negation in Ainuic, a grammar feature that more than others shows great variation within the family, and highlights the relevance of this topic for the investigation of areas of Ainu grammar which remain underdescribed to date, such as clause dependencies and modality.
Guanche is an extinct language or languages spoken by the indigenous people of the Canary Islands. Although it is widely assumed that their language belonged to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic languages, this has not been adequately tested. This paper analyses the lexical and morphological data available in preserved samples of Guanche, and concludes that features shared with Berber are better explained through borrowing resulting from cultural contact, rather than a close genetic relationship between Guanche and Berber.
Rasmus Rask visited Iran en route to India in 1820. His letters, which are largely unknown to Iranologists, contain often vivid descriptions of his time there. While not as enchanted by the country as some of his contemporaries, Rask’s letters nevertheless present us with a forthright, unvarnished view of the country during the reign of Fath ‘Ali Shah. His progress from Tabriz to Bushehr via Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Persepolis, involved several memorable incidents as well as an encounter with a hitherto unrecognized, amateur excavator at Persepolis.
Early Islamic Inscriptions from Northeast Jordan
This study publishes fifteen new early Islamic-era Arabic inscriptions. They stem from the Jordanian panhandle in the northeastern part of the country, near the modern town of al-Ruwayshid. The inscriptions were recorded during the Badia Epigraphic Survey 2018. Three of the inscriptions give explicit dates in the latter half of the second century AH/eighth century CE. On the basis of paleography, I suggest that the rest of the inscriptions come from that era as well. The contents also support this: nine inscriptions were written by members of the same extended family; one of them carries a date (158 AH/774–775 CE), so the rest of the family can also be roughly dated on the basis of this information. The set published here attests to some new epigraphic formulae and two cases of an interesting use of the Quranic text. One inscription, found on top of a hill, is a prayer for rain during a drought. I also discuss the social and religious relevance of these inscriptions. In this article, Safaitic inscriptions – lapidary texts written in antiquity in Old Arabic dialects with the Safaitic script – are used as an analogue, which might help explain some aspects of nomadic life, such as seasonal migration, in the region in Islamic times as well. I analyze the members and the movements of the family that left nine inscriptions in the region.