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.

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.

It is well known that every letter in the Persian alphabet has a numerical value. These values are perfectly conventional. They are as follows:—

The Arab writers who describe for us the intercourse of the early Arabs with the Turks of Turan speak of the former as Afrasiyabi Turks, and the dynasty as the Afrasiyabi dynasty. They identify them apparently with the earliest Turks of whom we have any record under that name, who apparently dominated the steppes north of Mavera-un-Nehr from the middle of the sixth century, and with whom they associate an heroic figure named Afrasiyab. Their capital and metropolis was a famous city situated on the river Chui, called Belasaghun, and they also acquired authority— we do not know exactly when—over Kashgar and the district round it. These Khans also dominated over the more nomadic Turks in their neighbourhood, who were divided into several sections, such as the Karluks, the Kankalis, the Kipchaks, etc.

The Manoratha-Pūraṇī, Buddhaghosa's Commentary on the Aṅguttara-Nikāya, embraces a pretty large collection of highly important and interesting legends, which, according to my estimation, amounts to nearly one-third of the whole work. A general idea of it may be gained from two initial words, viz. Etad aggam; for each legend points to some follower of Gotama Buddha, an example, as it were, amongst all of the same kind, whether man or woman, whether member of the Order or still living in the world.

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 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.

Exact investigation, assisted by some recent fortunate discoveries, has proved that the reputed identifications of many of the ancient sites famous in early Indian history are beyond doubt erroneous. Almost every such identification requires to be submitted to searching criticism before it can be accepted as correct. If any ancient site could be regarded as satisfactorily identified, that of the city of Kauśāmbī might apparently be so regarded. Nevertheless, the current belief is mistaken.

In the Journal Asiatique for 1890, vol. xv, p. 195, the late eminent scholar M. James Darmesteter gave the text and a translation of the inscription, in the vaulted chamber constructed by order of the Emperor Bàbar on a rock near Kandahár, a.d. 1522–27. The inscription is not entirely of the same date as the building. It is in three parts, the first of which only is synchronous with the dome, having been engraved under the orders of Prince Kámrán, then governor of Kandahár. The second, which has been partly defaced, seems to have been executed after Bábar's death by Prince'Askari, to whom Kámrán entrusted the government of Kandahár at the time when, after their father's death, he began those scandalous intrigues against his brother, the long-suffering Humáyún, which ended in the temporary downfall of the dynasty. The third part was written and set up seventy years later by Mir Ma'súm, an official in the service of the Emperor Akbar. M. Darmesteter remarks on this portion of the inscription: “Un commentaire de la liste géographique contiendrait toute l'histoire géographique de l'Hindoustan … Cette liste serait un bon point de départ pour remonter dans la géographie historique du moyen âge et pour descendre jusqu'à nos jours” (p. 223).

The recent discoveries in Nepāl associated with the name of Dr. Fuhrer, Archaeological Surveyor in the employment of the Government of India, may lead at an early date to a revival of interest in the life of the historical Buddha, distinguished generally by the names Gautama and Sakyamuni, and in the district in which he is supposed to have been born.

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.

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.

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.

Since the discovery of the pillar at the Lumbinī Garden commemorating the birthplace of Gautama Buddha considerable curiosity has been aroused concerning the different mounds, or koṭs as they are locally called, which occur dotted over the tract extending from Kapilavastu on the north-west and the Lumbinī Garden on the north-east in Nepalese territory to a distance of several miles southwards inside the British frontier.

In a series of papers which by the favour of the Asiatic Society I have been able to publish in its transactions, I have endeavoured to trace the various revolutions which have taken place among the tribes on the north of China, and I have thought it most convenient in doing so to begin with the latest of these race movements and changes and to gradually work back to earlier times. I should like to continue this work somewhat further, and propose in the following memoir to give an account of the history of an area which has greatly occupied English travellers and students during recent years, and whose history is still very obscure: I mean the great district bounded on the north by the so-called Celestial Mountains, the Tien Shan of the Chinese, and on the south by the Kien Lung Range. This district is generally known as Eastern Turkestan, and I propose to collect in this paper what I can find of the history of its Turkish, as distinguished from its Mongol, masters from the ninth to the sixteenth century.

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.

That Armenian was at one time written in Syriac characters is asserted by writers on Armenian antiquities, of whom one, Indjidjean, whose work appeared at Venice in 1835, says: “We hear that even to this day Armenian books are occasionally found written in Syriac letters; and Simon Assemani, one of the professors at Padua, assured us that he had seen such a MS.” It is unfortunate that Indjidjean gives no further information about this MS., for in no other work that is easily accessible does it seem possible to find out anything about either the method of transliteration or the dialect of Armenian that is so written. It would seem therefore that MSS. of this character are either wholly unknown hitherto in Europe, or, at any rate, concealed; and I am confirmed in that opinion by the fact that, although the last few years have produced a copious literature3 on the origin of the Armenian alphabet, none of the writers who have contributed to it have taken any notice of Syro-Armenian MSS. of this character are either wholly unknown hitherto in Europe, or, at any rate, concealed; and I am confirmed in that opinion by the fact that, although the last few years have produced a copious literature on the origin of the Armenian alphabet, none of the writers who have contributed to it have taken any notice of Syro-Armenian MSS. Since some of these authors argue on a priori grounds that the Armenians must have used the Phoenician alphabet between the time when they employed Cuneiform and the invention of their own alphabet, they could scarcely have neglected the practical light which the Syro-Armenian writing throws on the applicability of the Semitic alphabet to Armenian, had it been known to them.

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.

Vasco da Gama, though not a man of words, was, as Camoens says, a man of strenuous deeds, and it is for the sake of his deeds, and of the results which during four centuries have flowed from them, that we are now commemorating him. We celebrate in him the man whose courage and perseverance gave India to Europe and to England, and who, all unknowingly, was, with Columbus and Magellan, one of the three men who saved the Europe of the Renaissance and of the Reformation from being laid in ruins by Turkish tyranny seconded by French treachery. Had not Columbus and Da Gama, twenty years before the battle of Mohacs and the successes of Barbarossa in the Mediterranean, bestowed upon Spain and Portugal the riches of Asia and America, Charles V could never have hurled back from the German frontiers and the Italian coasts the all but overwhelming inrush of the hordes of Suleiman the Magnificent. But what could the defenders of Christendom have done save for the coffers of the Fuggers and the Welsers, of the bankers of Antwerp and the bankers of Genoa? and whence did these derive their wealth but from the newly-opened Spice Islands of the East and the new-found gold-mines of the West? By discovering the sea road to India, Vasco da Gama made Lisbon and Antwerp the emporia of the world. In 1517 the Turks conquered Egypt, and thus closed the last of the roads along which the world's wealth had of old passed from East to West.