In recent years I have had occasion to examine the Dîwâns of these two Arabic poets in connexion with theses prepared by two Indian candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Oxford, and it has occurred to me that a short selection of what appeared to me at the time to be the best verses of these poets might not be lacking in interest, as no translations into English of any of the poems of either have yet been published, so far as I have been able to discover. I am not unmindful of the objections made by Doctor Nicholson when I applied a similar method of selection to the works of Mutanabbi eleven years ago, but I think that they apply, if at all, only in a very limited degree to poets of the calibre of Abu Tammâm and Ibn Hânî, whom no critic would be inclined to place in the first rank. Abu Tammâm is mainly famous as an anthologist, but his original verse is of much higher quality than that of Ibn Hânî, whose fame seems to rest more on the incidental facts that he was born in Spain and that he expressed heterodox religious opinions in a very violent way than on any poetic quality. The really great poet Abu,’l ‘Alâ, al-Ma‘arrî expressed a great dislike for his verse, comparing it to wheat grains crushed in a mill, owing to the harshness of his phraseology.

The relations between the later Śātavāhana Kings and the “ Western Satraps ” have formed the subject of many discussions already. The matter is, however, still in an unsatisfactory state. Mr. Smith's Early History of India (4th ed.), for instance, says that Nahapāna “ may be assigned approximately to the middle of the first century after Christ, or possibly earlier ” (p. 221); but this may not be done if “ it is possible that the Kshaharāta records are dated in the Śāka era (in the same way as those of the Castana line) ” (p. 232) ; and yet we are told in the same place that all the data seem to harmonize admirably. They do nothing of the kind, and it seems to be still true that “ the whole question of the history of Nahapāna and Castana, their relation to each other, and the relation of both to the Andhra power, requires careful re-examination in the light of the available inscriptions. Too much has hitherto been taken for granted ” (Rapson, JRAS., 1899, p. 376).

Le seul spécimen que nous possédions de la langue du pays des Mitanni est la lettre trouvée à Tell-Amarna M. Hrozný a bien reconnu, et M. Forrer l'a confiṛmé, que. la langue Harri, une des langues des inscriptions trouvées à Boghaz-Kueuï, est probablement apparentée au Mitanni; mais puisque le Harri, non plus, n'a pas été interprété jusqu' ici on en est encore à les conjectures plus ou moins vraisemblables sur la lettre en langue Mitanni, seul document d'une certaine extension, les quelques phrases en langue Harri connues jusqu'ici, n'étant guère que des formules sacerdotales, ne donnant que peu de renseignement sur la nature de la langue et le sens des mots.

The Trustees of the British Museum recently acquired two inscribed tablets, one of limestone (116662) and the other of copper (116663) which proved to be from the same foundation-deposit, and to be engraved with identical texts. The stone tablet (5 in. × 2⅞ in. × in.) is almost perfectly preserved, except for slight damage on the obverse, but the same side of the copper tablet (4¾ in. × 3 in. × ¼ in.) is rather more seriously injured by oxidization of the surface. By far the greater part of the inscription, however, can be read without difficulty in both examples, and the two together make up a complete text. For permission to publish this and the following dedications I am indebted to the Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities.

Recent discoveries at Ur have thrown fresh light upon the Babylonian custom of burying beneath the floors of houses small figures intended to secure the houses and their occupants against sickness and evil spirits. There are texts giving instructions as to how such figures should be used, and examples of the figures themselves were already known, but now we have, to illustrate the texts, a far wider range of types and much more detailed information as to the manner of the actual ritual in connexion with them.

Corrigenda to Pages 279-284 of the Journal (April, 1926)

I regret to find that several errors in the transliteration of the ancient fragments of the Arabic gospels, which appeared in the Journal for April, 1926, escaped my notice. These have now been pointed out to me by Professor Kratchkofski, and I therefore give below the necessary corrections.