Having already discussed the first of the two forms used for Summer, we may examine the second, and attractive theory of its origin put forward by Mr. Yeh Yü-sên. This theory is freely cited by Mr. Tung Tso-pin in Part 3 of the Excavations at Anyang (Academia Sinica), 1931, especially on pp. 511–514. Mr. Yeh observes: “When the ancients invented characters for the Four Seasons—Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter—I surmise that in each case they drew their imagery from the object most conspicuous in that season. Now the character hsia, summer, is not found in the oracular sentences, but on the analogy of the example previously adduced, the words chin ch'un ‘the present Spring’, I have secured three instances where, following chin, there occurs a single character, in each case a pictogram.” Here Mr. Yeh cites three passages from Bone inscriptions, two from Lo Chên-yü's Yin Hsü Shu Ch'i, and one from a work not accessible to me. The three figures below I have copied direct from Lo's plates, as cited by Mr. Yeh, but not from the minuscule forms as constricted into the text of Mr. Tung Tso-pin's article.

If a man is sick of a swelling, the colour of his sickness being black, thou shalt [pound] (and) strain the tops (juice) of oleander (?), mix in fine-ground flour, mash in rose-water (I), bind on; (or) tops (juice) of tamarisk.

At Oxford, in 1927, while hunting up references to the verses of an unknown anthology of ancient Arabic poetry, which I hope to present shortly to the students of Arabic, I came to find mention of another unknown anthology of Ancient Arabic poetry: Muntaha 'l-Ṭalab min Ash'dr-i 'l-'Arab by Muḥammad b. al-Mubârak b. Muhammad b. Maimûn, said to contain one thousand Arabic odes. Although the anthologist, Muḥammad b. al-Mubârak b. Muhammad b. Maimûn, was no familiar figure in Arabic literary history, the name of the anthology and the note about its enormous extent at once struck me and led me to think that it was a very valuable work. So I at once consulted the well-known expert, Mr. (now Dr.) F. Krenkow about it. Mr. Krenkow informed me that he also had come across the name of this anthology, most probably in the catalogue of the books in the late De Slane's library. Afterwards, when I visited Germany and met Dr. Hommel of Munich, he felt immensely interested in this anthology, and suggested to me to be on the look-out for it in my intended Near East tour especially in the libraries of Istanbul and Damascus. As a matter of fact, in Istanbul I came upon a codex of this work in the library of Laleli, where it is numbered 1941. But this codex, 2·1 cm. × 1·5 cm., containing 164 folios, was only a small part—one-sixth—of the whole work. Again in Cairo I found two manuscripts of the Muntaha 'l-Ṭalab in the Royal library.

It was in reference to this claim that I was once asked by the author of Musik des Orients (1929), Dr. Robert Lachmann, now the director of the Department of Extra European Music at the University of Jerusalem, whether I had actual evidence in regard to frets on the Arabian and Persian lute in the Middle Ages. He asked the question because a German writer, Karl Geiringer, had searched Arabic and Persian manuscripts which gave delineations of the lute without finding a solitary example which revealed the presence of frets on the instrument.

Sulamī's tractate on the Malāmatīs (Risālat al-Malāmatīya), as preserved in the Berlin manuscript, has been fully and scientifically analysed and described by Professor E. Hartmann in Der Islam, vol. viii, pp. 157–203. There remains nothing to be added to the conclusions reached there. It is, however, to be remarked that Hartmann's article takes no account of the Cairo manuscript of the tract: this, indeed, could hardly have been available at the time the article was written. The Cairo manuscript has been noted and utilized by Massignon: a striking feature of this copy, however, which distinguishes it from that preserved at Berlin, appears to have escaped attention, and the purpose of the present note is to call attention to this peculiarity.