The following poem was written by a native of Bengal, named Pûrnânanda Chakravartin. Nothing is known as to his date; if the work were identical with the poem of the same name mentioned in the account of the Râmânuja system in Mâdhava's Sarvadarśanasamgraha, it would be, of course, older than the fourteenth century, but this is very uncertain; I should be inclined to assign it to a later date. The chief interest of the poem consists in its being a vigorous attack on the Vedânta system by a follower of the Pûrnaprajña school, which was founded by Madhva (or Ânandatîrtha) in the thirteenth century in the South of India. Some account of his system (which in many respects agrees with that of Râmânuja) is given in Wilson's “Hindu Sects;” but the fullest account is to be found in the fifth chapter of the Sarvadarśanasamgraha. Both the Râmânujas and the Pûrnaprajňas hold in opposition to the Vedânta that individual souls are distinct from Brahman; but they differ as to the sense in which they are thus distinct. The former maintain that “unity” and “plurality” are equally true from different points of View; the latter hold that the relation between the individual soul and Brahman is that of a master and a servant, and consequently that they are absolutely separate. It need not surprise us, therefore, to see that, although Râmânuja is praised in the fifty-third sloka of this poem as “the foremost of the learned,” some of his tenets are attacked in the eightieth.

Professor Wilson left Calcutta in 1832, having been appointed to the Boden Professorship of Sanskrit at Oxford. He had been one of the leaders of the Orientalist party in the General Committee of Public Instruction, as opposed to the pure “Anglicists”; and since each party held extreme views as to the respective value of Eastern and Western learning, his departure was naturally regarded as an evil omen to the cause of Sanskrit by the students and teachers of the Calcutta Sanskrit College. My old Pandit, Rámanáráyana Vidyáratna, was a pupil in the College at that time; and he has often described to me the scene when the pandits met to bid Wilson farewell, and one of them addressed him in a Sanskrit śloka, which is still well remembered by every native scholar in Calcutta. The college tradition is that Wilson's stern face was softened to tears, as he heard its pathetic appeal.

Place-names, it is now acknowledged, form one of the most reliable sources of information as to ancient and prehistoric times, and are among the most enduring and unaltering records of the past. In all the older countries of the world the names of the mountains and rivers, of the fields and the valleys, of the farms and villages and towns, as well as of all other geographical features, reveal the existence and successive occupation of the soil from remote epochs by many different races of mankind. And in the newer countries the names given to places tell in the plainest terms of their discoverers, and often fix the date of their becoming known to the civilized world.

In 1875, the Secretariat Press of British Burma printed a collection of six Páli texts with a vernacular commentary and exposition. The fifth and most difficult, but, at the same time, the most interesting of all, is the one I am attempting to translate. The lack of critical editing and the general corruption of the text is sufficiently shown in the title Namakára, which may stand either for Namakáya ‘a collection of panegyrics,’ or Namakkára (Sansk. ) ‘Reverence, worship.’ The first stanza is a curious example of archaie punning. This “ekatthá,” or tautological repetition, as it is called by the learned author of the “Subodhálaṅkara,” is only permissible when it is desired to express fear, anger, or laudation. It is employed again in the 8th, 9th, and 22nd stanzas.

When I promised to write a paper for the Royal Asiatic Society on Chinese Laws and Customs compared with the primitive Laws and Customs of the Latin, Teutonic, and Indo-Germanic Eaces, I was not aware that my friend Mr. E. H. Parker had already written on the same subject (China Review, vol. viii. p. 67). I have now read Mr. Parker's paper with great care and attention. Though he only deals with Comparative Family Law, yet this is so large a portion of my subject, and Mr. Parker's views are so in accordance with my own, that I doubt whether he has left me enough to say so as to form the subject of a full paper. I therefore propose, on this occasion, only to make a few observations.

The possibility of understanding certain parts of the Yh-King, such as the ethnological chapters and the legendary ballads, led early to the conclusion, that the whole of these documents could be currently read and interpreted. It is quite possible that the hexagrams were attached to them merely as a system of numerical classification to keep them in proper order; but it is more likely that the antiquity of these obscure documents, and the tradition that they contained a treasure of ancient wisdom, first led to their use as fateful and prophetic sentences, in which some glimmer of meaning was detected or surmised, and that the hexagrams were then applied to them for the purposes of divination.

The name of the author of the preceding poem was Abubakr (Ibn Abdurrahman Ibn Almiswar Ibn Makhramat) of Medina, a poet of the family of the Kūraish. He had married Saliha, the daughter of Abu Ubaidah, to whom he was tenderly attached. On one occasion, when on his way to Syria, he was so overcome by his affection for his wife, and by his longings to rejoin her, that he struck his camels on the head, turned them round, and went back to Medina. On this occasion he composed the preceding verses. When his wife heard his verses, and saw that for her sake he had returned to Medina, she was naturally much gratified. She said that of all the objects of her regard he was most dear to her, and that in future she should withhold nothing from him. She also made over to him her private property, with which she had not previously allowed him to interfere.