Letters and coinage are the natural fruits of commerce. Scholars agree that the Indian or Brahma alphabet had a Western origin, and owed its existence to commercial exigencies. But while Hofrath Dr. Bühler traces it to a Phoenician source, and ascribes its creation to the early part of the eight century b.c., M. Halévy derives it from an Aramaean script in the time of Alexander the Great No such definite theory has been put forward with regard to the silver coins called purānas, the most ancient coins of India; but it is generally believed that they were current before the Macedonian invasion, and, as silver has always been one of the most important of the imports from the West into India, we should naturally suppose that silver coinage came also from the West—unless, indeed, it were an indigenous invention. In the case, then, both of Indian letters and of Indian coinage, a direct and constant intercourse with Western Asia is the presupposition of every solution. Now, for a trade between Western Asia and India three routes are possible. The first climbs up the precipitous and zigzag passes of the Zagros range—which the Greeks called “ladders”—into the treeless regions of Persia. This route was barred for centuries by the inveterate hostility of the mountaineers, and it did not become practicable until the “Great King” reduced the Kurdish highlanders and the lowland Semites to an equal vassalage.

The presentation of the Rules and Examples of the Kāvyaprakāśa, in skeleton form, traced as far as possible to their sources, is the object of the present paper. I wish, however, that I had been able to achieve greater success as the result of the immense labour bestowed upon it. Most of the quotations from the older writers were found when studying the work in Poona, twenty-one years ago, with Krshna Śāstrl Vaijāpurkar; but many others were obtained from the literature unearthed by my friend Dr. Bühler during his famous tour in Kashmir and edited by the late Pandit Durgaprasad and by Dr. Peter Peterson. Doubtless many of those which have defied my efforts to track them were composed by the joint authors themselves; whilst others may have come from works no longer extant, a remark which applies very specially to the large number of untraced Prākrta passages. Yet, in spite of all this, I feel that the task might have been performed in more scholarly fashion but for the complete breakdown of my eyesight three years ago, which has considerably circumscribed my work ever since. And, now, a second attack of Glaucoma incapacitates me still more, and seems even to demand the complete abandonment of Oriental studies.

When you enter the chief hall of a Buddhist temple in China you cannot fail to notice two rows of large yellow figures—one along the east and the other along the west wall. These figures, which are usually numbered and labelled, are called the Eighteen Lohan, and if you ask your guide what they are he will probably reply “belong joss.” This answer may not be deemed satisfactory, but further inquiry will only elicit the information that these are images of Buddha's eighteen great disciples. The names, however, show that this information is not quite correct, some of them being unknown to the original Buddhist canon. If you go on to Korea and visit the curious old Buddhist temples in that country, you will find that Buddha's Hall has rows of similar figures, but sixteen in number. If you continue your journey and visit Japan, you will find there also Sixteen Rakan lining the side walls of the Buddhist temples. Lohan and Rakan are for A-Io-han, the Chinese way of expressing the Sanskrit word Arhan for Arhat. Suppose you could go back and travel to Lhassa, there also you would find Sixteen Arhats, or as they are called there, Sthaviras, in the Chief Hall of Buddha's temples. Tibet, however, seems to have also its Eighteen Lohan, imported from China apparently in modern times.

Under the above Arabic title there has just appeared in St. Petersburg a Festschrift to Baron Victor Rosen, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his professional activity. It contains articles extending over a wide range of subjects by eleven of his former pupils, who are most of them at present professors or lecturers at the University of St. Petersburg.