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Fictitiousness and falsehood, authenticity and truth in the history of religions Some religious narratives relate events which the historian recognizes as being fictitious in nature. How can he distinguish between falsehood and truth ? Based on a study of examples taken from Herodotus, the Life of Apollonius of Туana and Apocryphal Scriptures, the author reaches the following conclusions. The narrative of an event implies how it was interpreted by contemporary eye-witnesses and, subsequently, by those who transmitted it down through the ages. The transformations the original event underwent over time signify the ever evolving meaning ascribed to the event itself. When a fact was changed or new ones invented, it often arose from a genuine desire to give the teaching encapsulated in the event greater depth.

Reality or metaphor. About the understanding of some written or figurative documents of the Hittites In some recently issued articles, the hittitologist Mr. Ahmet Unal tries to explain the symbolism of a few bas-reliefs of the temple-palace at Alaca Höyük, referring to hittite texts connected with house building. In spite of that argument, even justified for the method, being unable to differentiate sacred and profane, Mr. Ünal gets some conclusions which are questionable. An examination of the same facts in the context we believe to be true, using other written or figurative documents, enables us to recognize a group of religious beliefs and practices of Indo-European type, inherited by the Hittites.

History of Sikhism and Panjabi literature : « Rānā Sūrat Singh » by Bhal Vir Singh This article deals with "Rānā Sūrat Singh" (1905), a long narrative poem of mystical quest written by Bhāl Vir Singh (1872-1957). The latter was the most famous and prolific writer of the Singh Sabhā, a Sikh reformist movement born in the religious controversies which agitated the Panjab at the end of the XIXth century. After an introduction, the work is summarized and its literary novelty characterized. Then, one studies its contribution to the definition of a new Sikh identity, with a particular attention to the problem of conversions.

A study of the religious anthropology of the Romanian peasant at the turn of the century, exemplified in Brancusi's work, reveals a religious syncretism, in fact a "popular Orthodoxy", which comes from dogmatic Orthodoxy and popular religious ritualism. An analysis of Brancusi's memorial for the World War I dead from Tirgu-Jiu, Romania, would exhibit two kinds of religious messages, which can be used also for a biographical deciphering of Brancusi : in dogmatic Orthodoxy and in popular Orthodoxy. The latter is structured on an erotico-thanatic model, identifiable here under the form of two major rituals : the "wedding of the dead" and "life-time alms".