The labial spirant does not occur at all in Sanskrit, but the words beginning with the letter F constitute an interesting but limited class in the language of the Avesta. They occupy less than 47 out of the 1,879 pages of Bartholomæ's Altiranisches Wörterbuch, and less than 21 out of the 611 pages of Kanga's Avesta Dictionary.

The question of the orientation of the dead has recently engaged the attention of anthropologists, the term in this connexion meaning, not, as the derivation of the word implies, a position in the direction of the west, but in some specified relation to the points of the compass. For example, Mr. W. J. Perry, discarding what he terms the “solar theory” of Sir E. Tylor, reverts to the explanation suggested by Herbert Spencer, that the beliefs concerning the direction of the Other World depend on the migrations of the tribes, the Land of the Dead being identified with the region from which a certain tribe has, or believes it has, come. Mr. Perry's investigation is confined to Indonesia, and Sir J. G. Frazer quotes a case from British New Guinea in which the dead are buried on their sides with their heads pointing in the direction from which the totem clan of the deceased is believed to have come originally.

In the present paper, certain points are submitted for consideration with reference to Indian punch-marked coins. They are the result of an examination of two finds of punchmarked coins found in 1917, the one at Patna and the other at Gorho Ghat, north of the Ganges, in the Bhagalpur District of the Province of Bihar and Orissa. My examination of the Patna coins was published in the Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, 1919, pp. 17–72, and of the Gorho Ghat coins in the same Journal, 1919, pp. 463–94. I have since then examined a number of other punch-marked coins which have agreed with and supported the conclusions that were arrived at from the examination of the above two finds.

Sivājī occupies so prominent a place in the history of the Marathas that many European and Indian writers have made him the subject of their study and works. Among writers in English we are especially indebted to five: Eobert Orme, official historian to the East India Company; James Grant Duff; H. G. Eawlinson; C. A. Kincaid and D. B. Parasnis; Jadunath Sarkar.