The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is a familiar one in Zoroastrianism from the Avesta and kindred sources. It has long been a puzzle to me, however, to understand why the Pahlavi Books assign the exact number “fifty-seven years” at the end of the last millennium to the events connected with the resurrection of the dead (Phl. rīstāxēz) and the renovation of the world (Phl. frašōkarṯ, Av. frašōkәrәti) by the Saviour or Benefactor (Phl. Sōšyans or Sōšāns, Av. Saošyany) and his assistants, fifteen males and fifteen females. It has therefore seemed worth while to bring together the Pahlavi passages alluding to the fifty-seven years and see if anything can be deduced from them.

The Nyāyapraveśa with the commentary of Haribhadra has been published in the Gaekwad's Oriental Series, together with a careful comparative study of the two Tibetan translations by my friend Vidhuśekhara Shāstrī. Both translations presuppose the same original, but the first (T) (Cordier, Catal., vol. iii, p. 435, n. 7) has been translated from the Sanskrit, while the second (T) is a translation from the Chinese of Yuan Chwang (Tib.: T'aṅ Sam Tsaṅ). The title of the work in the Sanskrit text is Nyāyapraveśasūtra: in this the word sūtra seems to be out of place, and it would be better to substitute the Chinese lun, śāstra, which is much more correct, and which is to be found also in the index of the bsTan-ạGyur: Bstan.bcos.rigs.pa.la.ạjug.pa: nyāyapraveśa-śāstra. (Cf. Haribhadra's Vṛtti, p. 9: nyāyapraveśakākhyaśāstram.) According to the Tibetan colophon of T1 the title of the book is given as pramāṇanyāyapraveśaprakaraṇa; but as it often happens in the Tibetan titles, this is probably a later restoration based on the Tibetan itself. If we have recourse to the commentary by Kwei-chi () we should be inclined to interpret the ts'ad ma of the Tibetan not as pramāṇa, but as ts'ad. mai. rig. pa: pramāṇavidyā, hetuvidyā: in fact the Chinese commentator gives us in transcription the Sanskrit title of the book in this way: ; in Sanskrit, hei tu—fei t'o—na ye—po lo fei she—she sa tan lo.

1. The use of images in Hindu temples and in Hindu homes is, perhaps, not absolutely universal to-day, as we shall see; but the non-conforming minority, if it still exists, is exceedingly minute. In every part of India temples and images may be seen; and the religious life of all classes of the people depends very largely on their use.

Among the folk instruments of music in North Africa the primitive lute, guitar, or pandore known as the gunbrī or gunībrī stands facile princeps. Look where you will from Egypt to Morocco, from the Mediterranean to the southern confines of the Sūdān, and you will find this instrument in some form or other, although its name may have slight variation.2 It is essentially an instrument of the people, and is but rarely found in the hands of the professional musician of the town orchestra (ribā'a al-āla), who usually confines his attention to the more refined 'ūd (lute), kūītra (mandoline), or ṭtunbūr (pandore) among the stringed instruments whose strings are plucked. All and sundry among the people at large who are impelled to try their hand at music, take up the igunbrī or gurībrī——the noisy youth, the whining beggar, the strolling minstrel, the industrious workman, the respectable merchant, and the faqīr of the religious fraternity (zāwiya)——each thinking himself an adept as a performer.

When publishing recently the painted pottery found at al 'Ubaid I had necessarily to refer to that found by the French excavators at Susa and other mounds in that part of Persia. I pointed out that while at al 'Ubaid there were two types of painted pottery, the thick and the thin wares, which were contemporary and were associated with various types of plain and incised ware, and while there was a very definite difference between these wares and those of Susa and Musyan, yet certain analogies and parallels did exist both with the thin wares of Susa I and with the thick wares of Susa II, which have always been regarded as differing from each other very widely in date and in style, and the former of which was not associated with any other type of pottery.

Im Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Oktober, 1926, hat Hannes Skoeld eine Arbeit “Sur la lettre en langue Mitanni” veröffentlicht.

Ich bekenne, dass ich kein Bedürfnis fühle, darauf zu antworten, denn was Skoeld schrieb, kann nur sckreiben, wer der Frage der Entzifferung unbekannter Sprachen sehr ferne steht, d.h. also, wer über meine Mitani-Studien kein Urteil haben kann. Aber zu Nutze und Frommen der Anderen, gerade derer, die sich darüber kein Urteil anmassen, und die doch aus den Aeusserungen scheinbar oder wirklich Urteilsberechtigter sich allmählich selbst ein Urteil erfühlen wollen, halte ich es doch für meine Pflicht zu antworten. Es soll möglichste Klarheit gewonnen werden, damit die Sache gefördert werde.

17. Ch. 0021 (670, vol. xxxi, foil. 115; verso of fol. 2 of a text in dbu-can script; 11. 8 of clear dbu-med).

British Museum MS. Or. 8193 was presented to the Museum on the 18th July, 1918, by one of our members, Mr. R. S. Greenshields (I.C.S., retd.). It had been purchased by him at a sale held on behalf of the British Red Cross Society in London on 22nd April, 1918. I understand that the MS. was presented to the British Red Cross Society by Sir Douglas Seton Steuart, in whose family it had been for many years. It was no doubt brought from India by one of the donors' ancestors, whose name, “The Honble. A. Seton, Esq.,” is written on the fly-leaf in a hand which recalls the late eighteenth century. A note in the same hand on the first folio of the MS. states that it is in the “ancient pehlawee character” (a statement apparently founded on a similar note in Persian on the margin of the recto of the second folio) and that “according to another information … a certain religious person, Mohummud Moostukeem of Nornawl, intimated that this book had been presented to him by one of his pupils in the reign of Mohummud Shah (i.e. between a.d. 1719 and 1748), but no one can read it. Also in the time of the Nawab Feiz Gullub Khan it had been presented to the inspection of a learned Molawee of Delhie, who could not read it, but judged the writing to be in the ancient Cuffic character.” The only other evidence of the history of the MS. which appears to survive is a note in Persian written in the field of the miniature on folio 87v, as follows:—