Some modern commentators have ascribed the Bhaṭṭikāvya to Bhartṛihari, the author of the celebrated Śatakas, without assigning reasons for their assumption. It has never been shown why this kāvya, dealing with the story of Rāma, is entitled Bhaṭṭikāvya. The imaginary derivation of the title from either of the names Bhartṛihari or Bhaṭṭanārāyaṇa is so far-fetched that it must be rejected, if strong evidence be not adduced to prove that either of them was really the author of the epic.

One of the papyri of the second century A.D. which Drs. Grenfell and Hunt lately discovered at Oxyrhynchus, in Egypt, contains several passages in a barbarian language, which is presumably an Indian dialect. This may be concluded from the facts that that text—a farce—is concerned with a Greek lady named Charition, who has been stranded on the coast of a country bordering the Indian Ocean, and that the king of that country addresses his retinue by the words Ἰνδ⋯ν πρ⋯μοι, ‘ chiefs of the Indians.’ In other places the same king and his countrymen use their own language.

The fragment here referred to belongs to Mr. John Quinn, jun., of Liverpool, and was purchased by him from the collection of the late Mr. Boutcher, artist to Mr. W. K. Loftus in Assyria. The height and the width are nearly the same, being about two inches and seven-eighths. Like all the tablets from Nineveh, it is of baked clay, but the colour is much darker than the generality of documents from that site which have not been stained with bitumen, or some other material, in consequence of their 2,500 years' burial in the earth. According to a statement made by the agent who sold it, the fragment, at the time it came into his hands, was covered with grease, which would account for the exceedingly dark brown of the surface. Unfortunately, none of the lines, which number eighteen in all, are complete, about a third only of the middle portion of the longest of them being preserved.

In January, 1904, in revisiting the more important Chalukyan temples of Mysore, we heard, for the first time, of the existence of two or three old temples in the Hassan district. Five miles from Arsikere, between that place and Hassan, one of these stands alone in a field off the turnpike. It belongs to the village of Haranhalli, which lies at a short distance off. Built in the form of a Maltese cross, it has a one-star formed sikra, similar to those of Somnathpur, but rather lower. Peculiarities of this tower are three smaller replica stars projecting from its base on three sides, each running up in sculptured tiers. Being small, they do not disturb the harmonious outline of the sikra.

The Kūrkūs are a Muṇḍā tribe living in the north of Berar and the adjoining parts of the Central Provinces. At the last Census, of 1901, their dialect was returned as spoken by 87,675 individuals.

There must have been in ancient India three thousand years ago, as there are in the India of to-day, many languages and many dialects of these languages. Unfortunately, there was no Linguistic Survey and no Dr.- Grierson in those days ; and of all of these save one — the language of the earliest Aryan settlers in the north-western corner of India — we have to say, “ their memorial is perished with them.”