Though four years have passed since the publication, at Bangkok, of thirty-nine volumes of the Pāli Canon, under the auspices of His Majesty the King of Siam, it was not till a more recent date that, thanks to His Majesty's munificence, copies of this monumental work reached the Royal Asiatic Society, and other libraries in Europe, and so became available for study by Western scholars. The recent visit of the King to this country gave me an opportunity of discussing the genesis and circumstances of the edition with H.R.H. Prince Sommot; and I now desire to communicate to the Royal Asiatic Society the information which I owe to the Prince's scholarship and courtesy. The value of that information will be recognized when it is stated that Prince Sommot is Private Secretary to the King, served on the Editing Committee, and is brother to the Priest-Prince Vajirañāṇavarorasa, who has edited eleven out of the thirty-nine volumes already published.

Amongst the many objects that occupied the Eleventh International Congress of Orientalists held at Paris, it had the opportunity of noticing also the admirable work done by the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon. According to a proposal which I made in the afternoon meeting of the Indian Section on September 10, the Congress accepted a resolution to express its warmest thanks to the British Government in Colombo for the varied and efficient assistance afforded to the historical inquiry about the island by publishing the Archaeological Reports, as well as by editing the Mahavamsa and similar documents. The Congress hoped also that the work which has been undertaken so auspiciously, will be continued by the Government, and carried out in the same manner. Now I beg to add a few remarks to that resolution, which may explain its origin and its purpose. These remarks are only caused by the anxious desire to make the work of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon as useful as possible to the scientific world, and they are based upon the experiences which I myself had in making use of its publications for my own historical and linguistic studies.

The charming volumes which we owe to the distinguished “guild of Jātaka translators” have allured me to peruse the stories of the Buddha's former births in the original. In the course of this reading, the Pali text has reminded me of certain passages and phrases in the Mabābhāşya. Occasionally, too, Pāṇini's own rules have suggested an interpretation which differs from that of the Pāli commentary. Not being a Pali scholar, I should hardly venture to submit the following observations of mine to the Society, were I not encouraged to do so by my friend Professor Cowell.

The subject of Transliteration has lately occupied the attention of the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society. After careful consideration they gave their approval to the system for transliterating the alphabets of Oriental languages into the Roman character, which had been recommended by the Oriental Congress at Geneva in 1895; and after suggesting a few emendations, with the object of securing consistency and harmony in some comparatively unimportant details, commended it to the favourable attention of those Oriental scholars with whom they are connected, and over whom they have any influence. This seems, therefore, a good opportunity to make an effort for the introduction of a similar system among those who are engaged in the very arduous labour of reducing hitherto unwritten languages to writing. The number of such languages is great, and work among them is annually increasing. It is, perhaps, more necessary that an attempt at unanimity should be made in this instance even than in the case of languages which, like those of Oriental nations, themselves possess old and venerable alphabets. The characters of these alphabets have come down to us from a remote antiquity, have borne the tests of time and use, and have satisfied several generations of men who have long employed them; and, as a general rule, it is far better that they should be learned and used by European students and scholars than that they should be transliterated into the Roman or any other character. But the case of “illiterate” languages, if we may be allowed the terra, is quite different.

The great storm of 1737 is one of the few events still remembered in the early history of Calcutta. The traditional account of the matter is that given by “Asiaticus,” which he professes to have derived from the Gentleman's Magazine. It is as follows:—“In the night of the 11th October, 1737, there happened a furious hurricane at the mouth of the Ganges, which reached sixty leagues up the river. There was at the same time a violent earthquake, which threw down a great many houses along the river side; in Golgota (i.e. Calcutta) alone, a port belonging to the English, two hundred houses were thrown down, and the high and magnificent steeple of the English Church sunk into the ground without breaking. It is computed that twenty thousand ships, barques, sloops, boats, canoes, etc., have been cast away; of nine English ships then in the Ganges, eight were lost, and most of the crews drowned. Barques of sixty tons were blown two leagues up into land over the tops of high trees; of four Dutch ships in the river, three were lost, with their men and cargoes; 300,000 souls are said to have perished. The water rose forty feet higher than usual in the Ganges.” Then follows the story of the voracious crocodile in the hold of the stranded ship.

This is not an entirely new subject. Mr. Beames, of H.M. Indian Civil Service, in 1875, published a small yet valuable work, called “Comparative Grammar of Modern Aryan Languages of India.” I myself, in 1878, published in greater detail, accompanied by Language Maps, a “Sketch of all the Languages of Nearer and Further India,” and I still hope, that my valued friend Mr. Grierson, of H.M. Indian Civil Service, will, in 1903, after the expiration of a quarter of a century, complete and publish an enlarged and corrected edition of my Sketch; and I have arranged, that the accumulated additional information, entered in my interleaved copy, should after my death be made over to Mr. Grierson, to add to his own collections, for he is out and out the best informed scholar in this branch of Linguistic knowledge at the present epoch.

In my “Notes on Marco Polo's Itinerary in Southern Persia” (Journal R.A.S. 1881, p. 495) 1 expressed the opinion that the city of Camadi, where Marco Polo rested on his march from Kermān to Hormuz, was a caravanserai or village close to the city of Jīruft, and that the name might be explained as “Kahn i Muhammadī,” or “Kanemadi,” as it is pronounced in Jīruft, meaning Canal of Muhammad. Lately, while collecting some historical notes on Kermān, I found that the first part of my supposition was correct, but that my explanation of the name was wrong.

It is only to be expected, while the ancient literature of Buddhist philosophy is inaccessible to the general critic, and still to some extent also to the Indianist, that many hasty generalizations and one-sided conclusions concerning the nature of Buddhist ideals and discipline should continue to prevail. Enough, however, has already been accomplished in the editing of texts to render some revision of what may be called common errors not altogether premature. There is, for instance, much that is misleading, or downright false, in labelling Gotama's doctrine as Pessimism, Pantheism, Atheism, Nihilism, Quietism, or Apatheia. Nor is that recent criticism altogether discriminating which finds in it the closest coincidences with that of Schopenhauer, or characterizes it bluntly as an ethic rooted in egoism, or as “the crassest eudaemonism,” and aspiring to moral stultification.

In my Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library (pp. 69–86) I described, at what may have seemed rather inordinate length, a work called the Jāvidān-i-Kabīr, which aroused my interest in the highest degree. The interest of this work, as I there pointed out, is twofold: it embodies very remarkable doctrines, apparently akin to those of the Isma'īlīs or Shī'ites of the “Sect of the Seven”; and considerable portions of it are written in a peculiar dialect of Persian which certainly merits a fuller study. Concerning the author of this work, Faẓlu'llāh b. Abī Muḥammad of Tabrīz, called “al-Ḥurūfī,” we know little (except what may be gleaned from his writings) beyond what is contained in the brief notice of Ibn Ḥajar al-'Asqalānī (d. a.h. 852), cited by Flügel at pp. vii–viii of the preface to the second volume of his edition of Hājī Khalfa. “Faẓlu'llāh,” says Ibn Ḥajar, “the son of Abū Muḥammad of Tabrīz, was one of those innovators who subject themselves to ascetic discipline. Imbued with heretical doctrine, he finally produced the sect known as the Ḥurūfīs [from ‘Letters’] pretending that the Letters [of the alphabet] were metamorphoses of men, together with many other idle and baseless fancies. He invited the Amīr Tīmūr the Lame [Tamerlane] to adopt his heresies, but he desired to slay him. And this came to the knowledge of his son (with whom he had sought refuge), and he struck off his head with his own hand.

In the Eastern corner of North Africa is a country very little explored, the extreme Eastern Headland of which is called Cape Guardafui, known to the ancients as Aromáta Promontorum. The Region has a frontage to the Red Sea, and to the Indian Ocean, and its geographical position is in its favour. There is no Protestant Missionary Station within its boundaries: there is no portion of the Scriptures translated into the Language of the people.

[Having noticed, on a visit to the Museum, a Jain statue with a clearly written inscription on its base, I asked the curator of the Museum, Mr. Quick, about it. He expressed himself very glad to give me a photograph of it in order that the inscription might be deciphered. And Professor Kielhorn, to whom the photograph was sent, has been good enough to send us the following note. The reproduction of the figure is from a block kindly lent to the Society by P. J. Horniman, Esq., M.P.

Mr. R. Quick informs me that Mr. Horniman purchased the statue in London in the year 1895.—RH. D.]

The precise meaning of this familiar title of the Buddha is still unsettled. As the word tathāgata is not used either in. the Upanishads or (so far as I am aware) in older Sanskrit writings, there exists no available evidence earlier than the Pāli Pitakas; and there its use is so common as to merit special investigation. Before submitting my own interpretation to the judgment of scholars, I propose to state the views already advanced by others, including the great scholar Buddhaghosa, and next to examine Pitaka passages in which the title tathāgata occurs.

No game occupies so important a position in the history of the world as that of chess. It is not only at the present day, but has been for many centuries, the most cosmopolitan of pastimes; and though one of the oldest known to civilization, it is yet undoubtedly the most intellectual. Long familiar to all the countries of the East, it has also been played for hundreds of years throughout Europe, whence it has spread to the New World, and wherever else European culture has found a footing. A map indicating the diffusion of chess over the habitable globe would therefore show hardly any blanks. Probably no other pastime of any kind can claim so many periodicals devoted exclusively to its discussion; certainly no other has given rise to so extensive a literature. The influence of chess may be traced in the poetry of the Middle Ages, in the idioms of most modern European languages, in the science of arithmetic, and even in the art of heraldry. An investigation as to its origin, development, and early diffusion therefore forms a not unimportant chapter in the history of civilization.

In the article on “The Iron Pillar of Delhi” I noticed that another iron pillar exists at Dhār in Central India, but observed that no detailed description of that pillar was known to me.

I now find that a description of this very remarkable monument has been printed—I can hardly say published—in a report by the indefatigable Dr. Führer.

At the last Congress of Orientalists in Paris I read a paper on the Mahābhārata MSS. in the Royal Asiatic Society, which represent the South Indian recension of the great Hindu epic. As it will take some time before this paper, with extracts from the MSS., will be printed, it may be useful to give here a brief summary of the results to which a closer examination of at least two of these MSS. has led.