There is a once popular Malay romance, the Hikayat Indraputra. It and the Malay recension of the Ramayana are cited in a Malay work of Muslim theology in a.d. 1643 as examples of infidel works suitable for sanitary purposes unless the name of Allah occurred in them. Probably the romance was compiled in fifteenth century Malacca, and to its author, as to so many Malay authors of romance, may be appositely applied Virginia Woolf's delicate analysis of Sidney's Arcadia: “He had no notion when he set out where he was going. Telling stories, he thought, was enough—one could follow another interminably. But where there is no end in view, there is no sense of direction to draw us on. Nor, since it is part of his scheme to keep his characters simply bad and simply good without distinction, can he gain variety from the complexity of character. To supply change and movement he must have recourse to mystification. These changes of dress, these disguises of princes as peasants, of men as women serve instead of psychological subtlety to relieve the stagnancy of people collected together with nothing to talk about. But when the charm of that childish device falls flat, there is no breath left to fill his sails. Who is talking, and to whom, and about what we no longer feel sure.” Nor does even the Malay of to-day care any longer. But to the comparative student of Oriental literature the Hikayat Indraputra, like many other Malay pastiches, has an interest from the varied sources of its interminable tapestry.

MR. KUO MO-JO, in his essay to establish the original identity of the characters now written tsu and shê, asserts that in early ages men held the male organ to be a manifestation of divine power. Sometimes, he says, they termed this power tsu, and sometimes shê, as in the expression ch'ih shê, to hurry to the shê, that is, to hurry forward bearing the phallic divinity on their shoulders. This custom still exists. A gentleman of Yang Chou (a city in Kiangsu Province) informed Kuo that at mid-Spring, in the second month of Spring, on the shang ssŭ Festival day (i.e. 6th of the Chinese moon), the Yang Chou practice was to make enormous paper models of the male and female emblems, one of each, and for a procession of men and women carrying these on their shoulders, to hurry along to burn them in front of the Shun Yang Temple. This is called ying ch'un, Welcoming the Spring.

The Periplus Marts Erythræ describes the seaports below Barygaza in the following way according to Schoff's translation: “The market-towns of this region are, in order, after Barygaza: Suppara, and the city of Calliena, which in the time of the elder Saraganus became a lawful market-town; but since it came into the possession of Sandares [an unjustified conjecture for the text's Sandanes] the port is much obstructed, and Greek ships landing there may chance to be taken to Barygaza under guard. Beyond Calliena there are other market-towns of this region; Semylla.…” Suppara is now Sopara on the coast above Bassein, Semylla is Cemūla of two inscriptions, now Chaul, and Calliena is Kalyāṇa. This last, situated at the foot of the two regular ascents of the Western Ghats leading towards Nasik and Poona respectively and with good access to the sea, was the natural outlet for the commerce of the Andhra dominions on the west coast, and the notice, just quoted, shows how its trade was stifled, as the Kṣaharātas extended their rule southwards from Broach. It is unnecessary here to consider who are the kings alluded to in this passage or in the earlier one mentioning Nambanus (a conjecture for the text's Mambarus), but clearly we are dealing with the rivalry of the Western Satraps and the Andhra kings. That the former were successful in their policy towards Kalyāṇa is shown by Ptolemy's omission of the town. The order he gives (taking Renou's text) is Souppara mouth of the River Goaris, Dounga, mouth of the River Bêndas, Semyla.

In a previous paper notes have been, given on some points in connection with the Silver Punch-marked Coins of the Older Thin Class in the British Museum. Here further notes are given on the Silver Punch-marked Coins of the Later Thick Class of the Mauryan Period, on the Copper Punchmarked Coins, and on the Tribal Coins: for convenience of reference the paragraphs are numbered in continuation of those of the previous notes.

The first attempt to treat of Indian music, at least incidentally if not systematically, was made by the Sikshas and the Prātisākyas, though both of them related to its vēdic phase. Of these two works, the latter displaced the former on account of a lucid and simple style, although Nārada Siksha still continues to remain indispensable, because no Prātisākya for Sāma Vēda is available.

After Pargiter Kirfel especially has pushed on the textual criticism of the Purāṇas. He collated carefully the so-called central part of certain Purāṇas (B-H, Bḍ-Vā, Mt-P, Ga, Vi, A, Li, Kū, Vā, Mr). This part may be called the “world's history” of the Vaiṣṇavas, containing the famous “five topics” of every Purāṇa: the creation, the creation in detail, the lines of the first beings, the world's ages, the lines of the heroes. Kirfel discovered that the oldest version of this text is preserved in the nearly identical recensions of H-B, but he did not go on to the end. (1) He could not identify the chapters of his text with the five topics, (2) he did not always follow the readings of H-B (cf. § 8), (3) he did not ask if H or B has the older text, and (4) if the source of H-B is still extant. Reading the story of Kṛṣṇa in the Mbh, H, and B, I gathered some other material useful for this problem, which is of some importance for the history of Indian religion and literature. If we consider that according to Indian tradition H is purely a supplement to the Mbh, then the question arises: Has H borrowed this world's history (vaṁśa) from B, and was this text originally an independent one still preserved in B, or had B taken the text from H ? The main point of this paper is that B has borrowed from H, and that H really is a supplement to and an imitation of the Mbh.