1. In India, perhaps as much as in any linguistic area, we are faced with an extensive mixture of dialects from the earliest times. The conditions have seldom been such as make for the evolution of a number of sharply differentiated languages. Constant invasions, the movements of great armies, the attraction of vast crowds of pilgrims from distant parts to centres of religious worship, the far wanderings of innumerable ascetics, the influence on illiterate peoples of travelling bards, the absence in the great plains of the north at least of pronounced natural boundaries, the continual interplay of kingdom with kingdom, a district being now in this political area now in that—these conditions have all made for widespread borrowings in language, the extension of common linguistic changes over large areas and the formation of common mixed languages, of which modern Hindōstānī, spoken and understood in varying degree over the whole of northern and central India, is an excellent example.

Towards the beginning of the fifth century a.d. Kālidāsa made his début with an apology for his temerity in addressing an audience accustomed to such old, wellestablished authors as “Bhāsa and others”. After the lapse of fifteen centuries Kālidāsa has held his own, while Bhāsa is practically forgotten. The reason is not the decisive verdict of Time, but the unfortunate loss of his works. But lately came a surprise. In 1912 Gaṇapati Śāstrī discovered and published thirteen dramas in the Trivandrum Sanskrit Series, and claimed them as Bhāsa's. For the past eight years Orientalists have been considering this claim, the general trend of opinion being unfavourable. The present article proposes to supplement the progress already made in the investigation of this question, and to point out the facts practically settled, thus paving the way for further research.

As historical inscriptions of this, the last king of Assyria, are wanting, any additional light on his reign, however meagre that light may be, will probably be regarded as welcome, and this must be my excuse for the publication of this interesting but comparatively unimportant inscription.

Like his predecessors, Saracos (Sin-šar-iškun) called himself “the great king, the powerful king, the king of the world, the king of Assyria”. He was also “the favourite of Aššur, Enlil, and Ninlil; the beloved of Merodach, and Zēr-panîtum, the choice of the heart's desire of Nebo and Merodach”, etc. From the phrasing of this cylinder-inscription, it is clear that he regarded himself as much king of Babylon as of Assyria, and from the fact that the text came from.Nineveh, it might be supposed that his sympathies were as much with the one country as with the other—indeed, as neighbouring nations, speaking the same language, this feeling would in no wise be unreasonable. Less than sixty years, however, had passed since the death of the somewhat ruthless Sennacherib, and this was probably too short a time to allow the Babylonians to forget what had happened during the earlier years of his reign and in the time of Aššur-bani-âpli—the “great and noble Asnapper”, when the latter was in conflict with Šamaš-šum-ukîn (Saosduchinos), his brother. That they had the right to resist the Assyrian claim to over-lordship there is no doubt, and it is therefore certain that the action of the armies of Aššur-bani-apli, king of Assyria, aroused again Babylonian resentment against the dominion of the more northerly power.

In the Annals of Ashurbanipal (Rassam Cylinder, col. iv, 1. 85) for attaddi ana nakamāti Streck adopts the variant at-ta-ad-di a-na ka-ma-a-ti, which he translates “ich warf sie auf den Maueranger”. He apparently follows Delitzsch (Ass. Handw.,p. 334, col. ii) and Muss-Arnolt (Lexicon, p. 399) in taking kamâtu as the plural of a noun kamātu, outer gate (Jensen, K.B. vi, 496), derived from kamû, to bind, to surround. Now there is here a variant reading na-ka-ma-a-ti, heaps, which gives the preferable sense “I cast them forth in heaps”. It has therefore occurred to the writer that kamâti in our text is the plural not of kamâtu but of a word kâmtum. This I take to be derived from a root kâmu, to cover over, to heap up, which is found in some of the cognate languages (Arabic I, covered; II, heaped up; heap; Syriac concealed). Thus kâmâtu in this passage would be an alternative, with the same meaning, for nakamâti, which may originally have been a gloss or scribal conjecture for the rare kâmtum.

In my article on “The Persian Manuscripts of the late Sir Albert Houtum-Schindler, K.C.I.E.”, published in the JRAS. of October, 1917, pp. 657–94, brief mention was made (on p. 672) of a book entitled Silsilatu'n-Nasdb-i-Ṣafawiyya, on the genealogy and history of the Ṣafawís. I can find no notice of another copy, and as the work is of considerable interest and importance, I think that a somewhat fuller account of its scope and contents may be acceptable to students of Persian history.