One of the most beautiful and interesting paintings at the Royal Academy Exhibition of Indian Art (No. 472) was lent by the Asutosh University Museum, Calcutta. Two subjects, painted on both sides of a single sheet in reverse directions, represent the Milkmaids of Brindaban awaiting Krishna by the River Jumna on a moonlit night. The one not shown at the Exhibition is reproduced by Mr. D. P. Ghosh in the Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art (vol. ix, 1941, p. 112): the other is reproduced here (PL I).

There is an aspect of the development of South Indian figure A sculpturebetween the seventh and tenth centuries a.d. that has received little attention, namely the stylistic relation of bronzework to stone sculpture, and in particular the reciprocal influences of the two different techniques, modelling and carving, on the formation of a single characteristic Coḷa style in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The pottery and glass fragments examined here were collected in 1941 from three sites on the Aden littoral. They were picked up on the surface at (1) Kawd am-Saila, the “Dune of the Flood-Course”, a large isolated mound situated on the main Aden-Lahej-Yemen road, (2) Al-Ḥabīl, lying north-west of Lahej, just a little off the main Yemen route, and (3) Zingibar. The lastnamed site lies within the Abyan oasis on the coastal plain, some 35 miles north-east of Aden. For an area of some miles there, extending almost to the foothills, the surface is covered with potsherds of all kinds and periods, both glazed and unglazed. In places the ground is quite red with fragments of unglazed earthenware. Abyan is a site of great antiquity well known to Arab authors, and in pre-Islamic inscriptions, but the other two places have not yet been identified.

“Comment, transplantée au Cambodge, à Java, et dans les autres pays, l'esthétique indienne a-t-elle donné naissance à l'art khmèr, à l'art javanais et aux autres arts hindous d'Extrême Orient ? C'est là, un des problèmes les plus délicats qui s'offre aux archéologues.” In those challenging words, on the last page of his recent valuable work of synthesis, M. Coedès indicates with his usual acumen a main goal of future Greater Indian research. It presents a formidable task indeed, calling for inquiry into the whole problem of culture change in Greater India.

The people living in the Turkestan steppe region and usually known as “Kirghiz” call themselves “Kazakh”, and they are by customs and dialect different from their Turco-Tatar relatives who lead a half-nomadic life in the Tien Shan and in the Pamir Alay Mountains of Central Asia and who, though recorded in Western literature as “Buruts” or “Karakirghiz“, are the real Kirghiz. As they are one of the earliest known Turco-Tatar tribes, both the language and history of this little people merit some attention, all the more because since the foundationof the Kirghiz Socialist Soviet Republic (in 1924) the language has become aliterary one and, together with social and economic life, has developed a good deal.

The Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya sūtra is a religious document of the first importance. It carried Hiuen-tsiang through the Gobi desert, was reproduced, in writing, on stones, in recitation throughout Asia from Kabul to Nara, and formed one of the main inspirations of the Zen school, occupying in Buddhist mysticism about the same place the “Mystical Theology” of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita occupied in Christian. Unlike other very short Prajñāpāramitā-sūtras, the Hṛdaya is of great philosophical interest. The Svalpākṣara, and other abbreviations, were designed to bring the benefits of Prajñāpāramitā within the reach of those unable either to study or understand it. The Hṛdaya alone can be said to have gone really to the heart of the doctrine. The historical analysis of its sources can contribute to the understanding of this sūtra, by restoring its component parts to their context in the larger Prajñāpāramitā sūtras.

The Chuvash language contains many words lacking a clear etymological relation to the Turco-Tatar languages (of which the Chuvash is a member) as well as to the neighbouring Finno-Ugrian languages. One of these odd expressions is the word for “knife”, zězě, which, according to Ashmarin's Thesaurus Linguæ Tschuvaschorum (vol. xiii, pp. 109–110), has no derivations in this language. Among the examples of the use shown there, one is of some interest for students of folklore and may therefore be inserted here in translation: “Having buried the maid they put a knife at her head, saying: Cut thou with this knife the bread yonder; and they put a needle and thread, saying: Sew the chemises with them.”

Rñiṅ-ma-pa is the early form of Lamaism or Tibetan Buddhism, as the name shows, but is popularly known as the Red Sect. The term “early” refers to Buddhism as introduced into Tibet before its destruction in the reign of King Glan-dar-ma (836–841). There is no difference between the exoteric Buddhism of the early and later periods. But in esoteric Buddhism, dependent upon direct instruction of the masters, there is a difference between the two. The early form and what has persisted since then is known as the “earlier translation” (sṅa-hgyur) or Rñiṅ-ma; and what was reintroduced after that king's death is known as “later translation” (phyihgyur), which branches out into different sects such as the Sa-skyapa, the Bkah-brgyud-pa, and the Dge-lugs-pa, popularly called the Mixed-coloured, the White, and the Yellow. This paper is concerned only with the Red Sect.

The purpose of this article is to collect a number of examples of two or three Hebrew constructions which seem hitherto to have been incorrectly explained or missed and to see if a satisfactory explanation can be found of any or all of them.

Dr. rudolf hoernle's Manuscript Remains of Buddhist Literature Found in Eastern Turkestan (1916) contains the collected fragments of the two most celebrated works ascribed to the Buddhist hymn-writer Mātṛceṭa, generally known as the Śatapañcāśatka and Catuḥśataka Stotras. The editor pointed out (p. 76) that in the Catuḥśataka fragments the poem is twice called Varṇārhavarṇa Stotra and that the Tibetan translation in the Tanjur, parts of which were published by Professor F. W. Thomas in the Indian Antiquary, vol. xxxiv, pp. 145 ff., gives it the same title. Further perplexities are indicated in Dr. Hoernle's note on the first fragment of the Catuḥśataka (Stein MSS., Khora 005a) which begins in his edition as follows:—

Obverse

1. xxxxxxxx x ṁ prayātu citto jagati x (dhayu) x (matiḥ) ‖ 100 (śloka) ‖ Prasādapratibhôdbhavo nāma buddha stotram xxxxxx

Besides the common-Semitic forms mšrq and m'rb for east and west, we find in certain Sabæan inscriptions the terms “towards Yatîl” and “towards Qatabân” employed. Rhodokanakis followed by Höfner assumes the former of these terms to imply “eastwards” and the latter “westwards”. The argument leading to this seems to be roughly as follows: (1) in the Minæan inscription EES 2830, 1–2, ḍr' is opposed to mṣbḥ, and since the latter plainly means the east ḍr' must mean west and is to be compared with the Arabic expression “the sun was near setting”; (2) in the Minæan RES 2774, 5, bn śnn ḍr' is opposed to bn śnn ytl, which therefore must mean eastwards (3) in the Sabæan CIH 570, 5, “towards Yatîl” is a correlative of “towards Qatabân”, which therefore means westwards; (4) this is confirmed by Gl. 739, 3, where “towards Qatabân” is opposed to “towards the east” (mšrqn) in the parallel text RES 852.

The correct interpretation of has presented a problem so far not satisfactorily solved. Acting on the a priori assumption that in the time of Gideon writing could hardly have been so generally diffused that a mere lad caught casually would write down the names of the chiefs of Sukkoth, the Revised Version renders, somewhat disingenuously, “and he [the lad] described for him [Gideon] the princes of Sukkoth, etc.” Realizing, however, that such a translation was quite indefensible lexicographically, it safeguarded itself by adding in the margin, “Or, wrote down.”