The present study continues that published by the writer in JRAS., October, 1932. It comprises the transliteration, provisional translation, and commentary of the Second Tablet of the Ras-Shamra Epic as published by Virolleaud in Syria, October, 1932.

The Arabs believed in the existence of beings to which they gave commonly the generic name “djinn”. For convenience we may call them spirits. Muḥammad carried these ideas over into Islam where theologians developed and systematized them. These Muslim ideas are of no interest to the student of folk-lore unless it can be shown that they contain older material.

According to Sanskrit Lexicons the word hiraṇyagarbha has two principal meanings. First, it is a well-known epithet of Lord Brahman; secondly, it is the name of one of the ṣōḍaśa-mahādāna, i.e. the sixteen Great Gifts, which are enumerated and explained in books like the Matsya-Purāṇa, Hēmādri's Vratakhaṇḍa, and Vallālasēna's Dānasāgara. The sixteen mahādānas are dāna (offering) of the following things:—

Although Averroes is well known as a commentator on Aristotle—the scholastics called him The Commentator—very few scholars have so far taken any notice of his commentary on Plato's famous treatise. This paraphrase, however, deserves a thorough critical study, for a variety of reasons. First, it belongs to the Corpus of Averroes’ philosophical writings, even though—as Averroes states himself in his preface—it be only as a substitute for Aristotle's “Politics” which were not known to Averroes and which were not accessible to the scholastics until 1260. Secondly, it is an interesting example of the treatment of Platonism by Islamic scholars. Then: are the changes and deviations due to Islamictheory and thought, or to Averroes’ own way of adapting the “Politeia” to the Islamic “Empire” ? Was there any Platonic influence on Islam in its political theory and when, how, and where can we trace it ? Is it Plato himself or Plato in the light of Neo-Platonism that Averroes’ more or less inadequate paraphrase gives us ? These questions show that the linguistic task is only a preliminary towards the more importantand interesting question of the position and meaning of this treatise within the history of medieval political theory and of the interrelations between Eastern and Western conception of Man and State.

In view of the fact that the study of Si-Hia is now attracting fresh interest, and that the problems it presents are fraught with some difficulty, it seems not untimely to review certain aspects of the matter upon which the status of the language and its position within the Tibeto-Burman family ultimately depend, viz. the problems of prefixes and consonantal finals.

I Append some suggested explanations for some of the receipts in an Assyrian text, of which several recensions exist, which may be considered as a vade-mecum for chemists.

These recensions are:—

A. K. 274 + 5986 (CT.. xiv, 42, cols, iii–iv) + 4163 (ib., cols, i–ii–iii, a new join) + 8764 (col. iv, copied afresh, a new join); the lower part of this tablet is K. 4140, B (ib., 42–3, cols, i–ii) + 14077 (ib., 33, joining col. iii, a new join).