If the traditional opinion were correct which ascribes the Tso-chuan to Tso Ch'iu-ming, a contemporary of Confucius, his work would be of the utmost importance as a source of historical information, though even in that case we might well doubt whether all the incidents which it relates are genuinely historical and might wonder how many of the speeches in which it abounds were the composition of Tso Ch'iu-ming himself. If, on the other hand, those scholars are right who assign it to the Han dynasty, while of less importance as a record of fact, the Tso-chuan is still one of the most valuable of the works which have come down to us from Chinese antiquity, part of its significance on that supposition being that it illustrates what were believed at the time of its composition early in the Christian era to have been the ethical ideals which were acknowledged in the period to which Confucius himself belonged.

According to a tradition it was believed that a Greek, Christodulos by name, was the builder of the old Fatih mosque at Constantinople. Dr. Mehmet Aga-Oglu has explained in his two articles that the ancient belief was without foundation. In the first one he stated that a Turk, Sinan al-'Atīq by name, was the architect of the old mosque; in the second article, he said that the shape of the first, earliest construction of this mosque was in the purely Turkish style, like some of the old buildings of the Seljuq and Ottoman period in Asia Minor, and that it showed no Byzantine influence. The author's knowledge of the special literature on this subject is deep and complete. Nevertheless, our solution of the problem will be dissimilar to that of Dr. Aga-Oglu.

Two years ago my translation of the second part of The History of Buddhism (Chos-ḥbyuṅ), the work of the celebrated Tibetan scholar Bu-ston Rin-chen-ḍub (grub), i.e. of the historical part proper, appeared in the press, published by the Heidelberg Society for the Investigation of Buddhist Lore. In the introduction to this translation I have indicated all the principal works of Buddhist scripture and exegesis (sūtra and śāstra) which have been referred to by Bu-ston and which represent the main sources from which he has compiled his work. I have, furthermore, drawn the attention of the reader to the fact that among the said sources an exclusive importance is given to the Mañjuśrī-mūla-tantra (or Kalpa; Tib. Ḥjam-dpal-rtsa-rgyud, Kangyur, RGYUD. xi, Narthaṅ edition, or xii, Derge edition). A great part of chapter 51 of this work, the “Prophecy concerning the Kings” (Rāja-vyākarana-parivarta), has been incorporated by Bu-ston in his work, mostly in the form of direct quotations, and partly condensed in prose. It is to be noted here that Bu-ston is not the only Tibetan author who has made copious references to the Mañjuśrī-mūla-tantra. The latter appears likewise as one of the principal sources in the well-known historical work of Tārānātha. The prophecies as such are not to be found here, but it is easy to trace considerable parts of Taranatha's text to the Mañjuśrī-mūla-tantra, the passages of which are stripped of their prophetical garb and appear in the form of ordinary historical data.

“Punch-marked coins are the earliest Indian archæo-logical ‘document’ that exists,” wrote Mr. E. H. C. Walsh in 1923 in a thorough study of these interesting remains of Indian proto-historic times. At the time when he wrote his article, very little, if anything, was known of the freshly discovered prehistoric civilization in the Indus Valley, at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Even in a more recent publication, in Professor Chakrabortty's numismatic handbook,2 no attempt is made to explain the symbols punched upon these primitive coins, and it still holds good what Mr. Walsh said in 1923: “Until our present sources of information are added to, the significance of the marks on punch-marked coins must remain the subject of speculation and surmise.” The late Mr. W. Theobald's study is an excellent collection of materials, but his explanations might fitly be called “archaic”. Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar has given some very ingenious interpretations of a number of these rūpas. But these interpretations concern only a very few of the large number of symbols.

Dozy's Dictionnaire des Noms des Vêtements long ago settled the meanings of the great majority of the terms used for clothes and clothing in Arabic. Texts not available at the time of its compilation have come to hand in the meanwhile, and, further, something still remains to be said on the social and historical aspects of the subject.

A frequently quoted authority on the musical instruments of the Arabs of Spain is a certain Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shalāḥī, to whom is ascribed a book entitled the Kitāb al-imtā' wa'l-intifā' fī mas'alat samā' al-samā' … (“The Book of Joy and Profit on the Question of Listening to Music…”), the unique copy of which is preserved in the Biblioteca National in Madrid. Unfortunately, so far as the present writer is aware, there does not appear to be a solitary instance of the original having been consulted by the several musicographers who have referred to this work. In almost every case the immediate or ultimate source of information has been Casiri's catalogue of the Escorial Library, which was once the home of this manuscript. A closer sanitation of this manuscript is long overdue and one day we hope to have a translation made for inclusion in our Collection of Oriental Writers on Music. Meanwhile, it appears urgent that a short notice of the work should be given for the following reasons: (1) Musicographers have erroneous impressions of the nature of this treatise; (2) the date and authorship require consideration; (3) the author's or copyist's name has appeared in so many different forms in European languages that this one individual is being registered under various names as different persons; (4) writers continue to depend on Casiri, whose list of musical instruments is somewhat faulty.