Muslim historians have put on record such scanty and insufficient materials for the biographies of painters that any fresh information deserves attention, especially if it is provided by a contemporary of the painters in question. The following extracts from the Ta'rīkh-i- Rashīdī have hitherto escaped notice; the Persian text of this interesting work has not yet been printed, and these passages were not included in the abbreviated translation which Sir E. Denison Ross published in 1895. But he recently drew my attention to them, and kindly placed at my disposal two MSS. of the text in his private possession, and, further, revised and amended my translation; to his erudition are due whatever merits it may possess.

Persia has on many occasions produced remarkable heresiarchs, several of whom have exercised an influence extending far beyond the boundaries of that country. One of the most notable of these heresiarchs is Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbāḥ, the Isma'īlī propagandist and founder and first Grand Master of the Assassins.

Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbāḥ was born at Ray, in Northern Persia; the exact date of his birth is unknown, but, as far as can be gathered, it was in A.D. 1052 or A.D. 1053. Though claiming Ḥimyaritic ancestry, Ḥasan was both by birth and upbringing a Persian, and belonged, during his earlier years, to the Shī'a Sect of the Twelve.

The little farce entitled Matta-vilāsa derives a peculiar interest from the personality of its author. For Mahendravikrama-varman (or Mahendra-varman, as he is sometimes called for brevity's sake) was a king of the glorious Pallava dynasty, and one of the most brilliant of his great race.

The founders of the Pallava dynasty seem to have been adventurers of Northern origin, who settled in the Dekkan about the beginning of the Christian era. The dissolution of the Sātavāhana or Āndhra empire about the third century gave the family an opportunity to establish themselves as an independent little power, and they rapidly extended their dominions until they ranked among the greatest states of the South, rivalling the mighty neighbouring kingdoms of the Colas, the Ceras, and the Pāṇḍyas. Their chief capital was Kāñcī or Kāñcī-puram, the modern Conjevaram, in which the scene of the present play is laid. To art, literature, and science they extended a generous and cultured patronage, and many of the noblest monuments of architecture and sculpture in Southern India perpetuate the memory of their splendid era.

Literary languages of Western Europe are national languages as well; there is no divorce between them and the people; there may be a distance, but no gap between them and the ordinary vernaculars, and their growth and vicissitudes reflect those of the vernaculars. So the historians of the language are able to discover when, where, how they came into existence, and call them to give evidence as to its later destinies. For instance, we know the place where French was born, how it asserted itself against Latin, how it turned out provincial speeches; we can make a fairly good evaluation of the distance between written and spoken French, in the past and now. In India conditions are vastly different; our knowledge of its languages, at least in their most ancient stages, is based only, or nearly so, on literary languages, of which we know neither the local basis, nor the degree of connection with the vernaculars. They do not give expression to the thoughts and feelings of the people; at the most, they give an ideal picture of the culture of a small community.

“Li Shang-Yin (T. I-shan ) A.D. 813–858. A native of Ho-nei in Honan. Graduated as chin shih in 837. Eose to be a Reader in the Han-lin College, and distinguished himself as a poet and a scholar.” (Giles, Biographical Dictionary, 1188.)

“ Li' Shang-yin. A poet and miscellanist.” (Mayers, Chinese Reader's Manual, 364.)

Wang An-shih (Giles, BD., 2134) (A.D. 1021–1086) is reputed to have said that of all the men of the T'ang period the only one capable of fully appreciating the great Tu Fu was this same Li Shang-yin.

Born in A.D. 813, he lived during the reigns of no fewer than six sovereigns of the T'ang Dynasty and died some ten years after the birth of Alfred the Great. According to the T'ang ts'ai tzŭin his early days he called himself Yü-ch'i Tzŭ or Yü-ch'i Shêng . He wrote in a style of his own which later became known as the hsi-k'un style from the fact that Yang I (Giles, BD., 2387) and others of the Sung Dynasty including Liu Yün-shih made a collection of their poems all in the style of Shang-yin and published it under the title Hsi k'un ch'ang ch'ou chi.

By A.D. 1616 Nurhachu had become the acknowledged leader of the Tartar tribes which he had overcome one by one. In this year, at the request of the chiefs, he assumed the title of Emperor, with T'ien Ming as reign-title. T'ai Tsu to give him his dynastic name, captured Moukden in 1621 and transferred his capital thither in 1625. He died in 1626.

T'ai Tsu's son, whose Ch'ing dynastic title is T'ai Tsung , succeeded in 1627 and took the reign-title T'ien Ts'ung which he retained until 1635. He continued his father's conquests and his influence increased. In that year the time seemed to have come for the assumption of a new dignity so he took to himself a dynasty, naming it Ta Ch'ing .

The latest work published in the Balamanoramā Series is Vāsudeva's Rāma-kathā.

The editor has rightly pointed out that the author cannot be the famous Nārāyana Bhaṭṭatiri, the famous poet-grammarian-devotee of Kerala, as was suggested by the late lamented Mm. T. Gaṇapati Sāstri. One may not subscribe to all that he has said about Kulaśekhara, but it must be conceded that he has laid proper emphasis on the fact that our author cannot be identified with the famous Yamakapoet who wrote the Yudhiṣṭhira-vijaya. It may also be admitted with the editor that he cannot be the same as the author of Śāurikathodaya and Tripura-dahana, for their parentage differs, and the styles of the two are different. Similarly, it may well be accepted that our author is identical with the writer of Saṃkṣepa-rāmāyanṇa and Sº-bhārata. So far I agree with him; but I am not so sure that the authors of Rāma-kathā and of Vāsudeva-vijaya, the grammatical treatise to which Nārāyana wrote his supplement, cannot be identical. I cannot also agree in assigning this Vāsudeva to the seventeenth century, a view that has been induced by an incorrect reading and a wrong interpretation.

Qutb MushtarĪ is a MS. poem in the India Office Library. The Catalogue of Hindustani MSS. states (p. 64, No. 122) that the name and author are unknown; but Mohyeddin Qadri in his recently published Urdū Shahpāre gives the name of the poem, points out that twice in the course of it Vajhī is mentioned as the author, and adduces convincing reasons for concluding that this Vajhī and the author of the prose work Sab Ras, which was twenty-five years later, are the same person. The date of Qutb Mushtarī is A.H. 1018 ═ A.D. 1609.

Urdū Shahādre is a work of great value. It discusses Urdu authors from the earliest times down to the death of Valī and to illustrate their writings gives well-chosen extracts, many of which are taken from MSS.

In olden time there lived a paladin called Ching Timur Vatu, and he had a sister. One day Ching Timur Vatu charged his sister thus, saying, “Oh, my little sister, if a hen should happen to come in, don't say ‘Takh’ (i.e. Shoo) to it, or if a cat should come in, don't say ‘Pash’ to it.” And again he added, “If, in sweeping the room, you come on a grain of maize, give it to the hen, or if you come on a bit of dried apricot, chew it a little and give it to the cat.” And when he had given these instructions he went off to his hunting.

To the north-east of the Solomon Islands lies a ring of coral islands surrounding a lagoon about 100 miles in circumference. The nearest land is the northern tip of the island of Ysabel, which is some 200 miles to the south-west. This group of islands has been variously called Ongtong Java, Lord Howe's Group, Leueneuwa, Leua Niua, and Lua Niua. The three latter are more or less unsatisfactory attempts at writing the native name of the largest island, Luaniua. There is no native name for the whole atoll and it is not only misleading but also wrong to use Luaniua for the purpose. Lord Howe has already given his name to three other Pacific Islands, so that it seems best to take the name which Tasman gave and call the atoll Ongtong Java.

These islands are populated by natives with undoubted Polynesian affinities. In physical type they show a resemblance to the Samoans and their language is a Polynesian dialect, but in other respects the culture shows some marked differences from those of the central Pacific. The social organization is closely parallelled by that of Sikiana, in the south, and by that of the Tasman Islands, the Mortlocks and Fead Island (Nuguria) to the north. This organization is not characterized by rank, which is so important in Polynesia.

The vicissitudes suffered by this famous architectural treatise, and especially the sources of the splendid re-edition published in 1925 were the subject of an earlier article in the Bulletin (Vol. IV, Pt. Ill (1927), pp. 473–92). A happy chance throws new light on the 1925 edition and allows me to add this note to what was said before. It is the presence in England of a sixteenth century manuscript copy of a part of the Ying tsao fa shih. If the editors of the 1925 edition had had access to this, they would doubtless have turned to it for data in their efforts to reconstruct the lost Sung original. At all events, the drawings it contains are of great interest to students of Chinese decorative design, for reasons to be mentioned presently.

The two famous monuments known as the Orkhon Inscriptions, erected in honour of the two Turkish princes, Kül-Tegin and his brother Bilgä Kagan, though mentioned in Chinese histories, remained forgotten and ignored down to quite recent times. They stand near the Lake Kocho Tsaīdam, to the west of the River Orkhon, about 50 miles north of the monastery of Erdentso (the site of the ancient city of Kara Korum), and about 25 miles to the north-west of the ruins of the capital of the Uighurs, Kara-Balgassun. They are two great square monoliths, which originally reposed in two sockets. Both these sockets are still in their original position, but the monuments have been thrown down, with the result that Monument II is in four pieces. They contain long Turkish inscriptions in Runic characters on three sides, and on one side (the western) the inscription is in Chinese. The Chinese inscriptions are very beautifully cut; the Runic inscriptions, which are also probably the work of the Chinese stonecutters, are less elegant. It may be mentioned that the Chinese inscriptions differ entirely in their contents from the Turkish.

WÖrter vom Stamme kommen mehreremal im Ḳurān vor. So 20, 56: Speiset und weidet euer Vieh. 28, 23: die Hirten. Die Weide heisst: 79, 31.87, 4. Im Sinne von “ hüten, beobachten” 23, 8.70, 32: und die ihre Verpflichtung einhalten, beobachten. 57, 27: aber (das Wohlgefallen Gottes) beachten sie (die Christen) nicht der richtigen Beachtung gemäss. In 2, 98 wird denjenigen, verboten zu sprechen, dafür sollen sie schaue auf uns, beachte uns, behüte uns gebrauchen. In 4, 48 wiederum wird denen der Vorwurf gemacht, dass sie zu sprechen pflegten; besser wäre für sie (v. 49), wenn sie statt dessen sagen würden. Da die beiden verschiedenen Wörter verwandte Bedeutung haben, in fast synonymem Sinne gebraucht werden können, so ist nicht einzusehen, weshalb Muḥammad den einen Ausdruck zu verwenden befahl, den anderen hingegen, der ihm offenbar missfiel, zu verwenden verbot.

In the Linguistic Survey of India the language spoken in the Western Panjāb is called Lahndā. Previously it had, in India, not been recognized as any independent form of speech, the many local dialects there spoken—Mūltānī, Sirāikī, Hindkī, Jaṭkī, and so on—being looked upon merely as so many dialects of Panjābī. Panjābīs themselves had no general name for this group as a separate entity. When they wished to express that idea they employed a periphrasis, such as Lahndē-dī bōlī, or “ the dialect of the West ”.

European scholars, however, had by that time long recognized the fact that a general name for the whole group was needed, and more than forty years ago one of the first describers of the language, Mr. Tisdall, named it “ the Lahindā ”, i.e. Lahndā, “ dialect.” I am not especially enamoured, myself, of this name, but as it had not been challenged for some thirty years, as it was not inconsistent with English idiom, and as no better name had been suggested, I employed it in the Survey.

The Japanese language contains a number of words that are pronounced differently when standing in the attributive position. The following is a list of such words, taken mainly from the literary monuments of the eighth century A.D.1

(1) e:a. ame heaven, sky: ama-hire (sky—shawl) cloud. ame rain: ama-giri2 (rain—mist) rainy mist. fune ship: funa-de ( < *funa-ide ship—departure) departure of a ship. ine rice-plant: ina-muširo (rice plant—mat) a pillow-word used for qualifying šiki (dense, heavy, frequent) and kaha (river) which are homonymous with šiki (to spread) and kaha (skin).

The death, in tragic circumstances, of Professor Josef Markwart, of Berlin, on 4th February, ought not to pass unnoticed in this country. For although his name is here unfamiliar to all but a small group of scholars, he occupies, and must always occupy, a place in the forefront of European Orientalists, and it would be difficult to name any past or present scholar with a wider range of learning or a more brilliant critical faculty, whether as philologist, historian, or ethnologist. He was a fine classical scholar; he could read nearly every literary language of Asia, and he had a profound knowledge of African ethnology. Though his total output of published work was comparatively small—amounting only to four or five books and a number of articles in learned journals—it may be said that every sentence he wrote bore the hall-mark of his immense learning and his rare analytical power.