It is one of the most popular devices of wits and humorists of all nations to make use of various slang expressions, dialectical or rustic sentences, or local words in order to add to the “fun” in their narrative. Persians are no exception to this. Moreover, educated people regard all the numerous local dialects of Iran as unwritten languages and in their writings occasionally make use of them, but only for such facetious purposes. Peasants and the less educated people strive to use high-flown diction in their correspondence, and even in their songs an imitation of this appears instead of their native dialects.

Within the last quarter of a century two serious attempts have been made to explain the fact that the Avesta uses one set of words for beings belonging to the creation of Ahura Mazda and another for those formed by Aura Mainyu. The former of these theories was advanced by Leo Frachtenberg (“Etymological Studies in Ormazdian and Ahrimanian Words in Avestan,” in Spiegel Memorial Volume, Bombay, 1908, pp. 269–89), and the latter by Hermann Güntert (“Ueber die ahurischen und daēvischen Ausdrücke im Avesta, eine semasiologische Studie,” in Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, philbsophisch-historische Klasse, 1914, Abhandlung 13).

Research in old Eastern literary remains may yet come upon materials throwing new light on the beginning and first development of the movement which, in course of time, came to be called Buddhism. The only works, as yet in our possession, in which we may discern certain archaic records of this most early stage are, as we know, the first part or Mahā-vagga of the Vinaya Piṭaka and one or two portions of the five Nikāyas. As chronicles these do not give us all the light we fain would have. Those, especially of the Vinaya are a number of fragments relating to what led up to the founding of the “Order”, and to certain early stages in its progress. The narrative is always in very slight outline; much would seem either to have been forgotten, or suppressed, as not relevant to the formal registering of some Vinaya statute, and why it came to be. We get the impression that we are reading about persons and places which, for the compilers, are just names, bound up, it is clear, with an ancient and venerated tradition, but not belonging to any actual memories either in their possession or even in their own preceding generations. The places named do not seem to be places known. A few persons emerge, two in high, a few others in low relief. These are, respectively, the founder and his chief rival and adversary, then three laypatrons—two kings and a merchant—also the first layconvert, the founder's family, a few other converts, lastly a few associates who here and there appear as fellow-teachers.

The late Dr. Vincent A. Smith published an article in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1898 in which he sought to disprove Sir Alexander Cunningham's identifications of Kauśāmbī and Śrāvastī with Kosam in the district of Allahabad and Set-Maheth (Saheṭh-Maheṭh) on the borders of the Gonda and Bahraich districts respectively. He himself located Śrāvastī in the vicinity of the village of Khajura near Balapur in Nepal and Kauśāmbī at or near Sutna in the Riwa state. In 1907–8 and 1908–9, when I had the privilege of co-operating with Dr. J. Ph. Vogel and Sir John Marshall in the exploration of the ancient mounds at Saheth-Maheth, I found two inportant imscriptions which fiṇally and conclusively established the identity of those remains with Śrāvastī. I am now in a position to announce the discovery of an equally important inscription in the vicinity of Kosam which makes it certain that the extensive remains near that village mark the actual site of the city of Kauśāmbī. I have also carefully studied the three inscriptions mentioning the name of Kausambi which were known to Dr. Smith, and find that they definitely support the same view.

The design on this seal confines its classification to the period of the Dungi and the Isin dynasty (2409–2075). The worshipper stands, with hands folded at the waist, before a seated deified king, and behind him stands the mother goddess with both hands raised (palms outward), imploring the aid of the divine king for her human protegé. This liturgical pose and design are characteristic of the Ur and Isin periods. See Delaporte, Catalogue des Cylindres Orientaux de la Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 57–70, and Langdon, R.A., 16, 64–5. Compare, for example, Delaporte, ibid., 116. The deified king extends a small cup toward the worshipper with his right hand. In the field above are the lunar crescent and emblem of the stellar Ishtar (Venus).

Two years ago, in the JRAS., an article of mine was published on the leaden rolls with Hittite hieroglyphic texts discovered by the German excavators on the site of Assur (JRAS., Oct., 1925, pp. 707 seq.). The chief purport of the article was to point out the verification the texts afforded of my decipherment of the Hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions; where I had postulated the same phonetic value for two or more different characters, these characters are found interchanging with one another, while the geographical and personal names we should expect to meet with are to be read if we give the characters the values I have assigned to them. The nature of the texts, moreover, if my system of decipherment is accepted, agrees with what analogy would suggest it ought to be. What makes them so especially important for the purpose of verification is that they are long, complete, with every character clearly defined, and, above all, that they belong to a locality and period when the script was affected by the contemporaneous use of the Phrygian alphabet and accordingly is phonetic rather than ideographic besides marking the divsions between the words.

Since the first printed edition of the Buddha-carita appeared over thirty years ago, so much labour has been devoted to clearing the text of corruptions that only the exploitation of fresh material would justify an addition to the accumulations on the subject. It so happened that a little time ago in accordance with the enlightened policy pursued by the Nepal Darbar the old MS. whose existence was revealed by MM. H. P. Śāstri in JASB., 1909, p. 47, was sent to Oxford to be rotographed. Some passages were so rubbed as not to be legible in the rotograph, and I accordingly took the opportunity to make a complete collation of the MS. itself before it was returned to Nepal. Finding difficulties in some of the readings, I then made a word-to-word comparison of the Tibetan translation; but while still at work on an article embodying my conclusions, I came across the first part of Dr. Fr. Weller's edition of the Tibetan text with a German translation covering cantos i–viii (Das Leben des Buddha von Aśaghoṣa. Eduard Pfeiffer, Leipzig, 1926). As this overlapped my article to some extent, I have redrafted the latter and limited it for the present to the first eight cantos. That the two did not coincide more was due to the different aims we had in view. Dr. Weller has concentrated on producing a correct Tibetan text and an accurate translation of it, dealing only incidentally with the text and meaning of the original with which alone I have been occupied.

It has been my good fortune to secure the manuscript of a history of Persia, from the year 1212 (A.D. 1805) to 1286 (a.d. 1869), written in the Shikasta hand and consisting of 135 closely written foolscap pages, each page containing thirty-two lines. Most of the pages are annotated with copious notes. The author of this interesting volume is Aḥmad ibn Abul Ḥasan Sharif of Shīrāz; and his style is terse and easy. It appears that he had secured the manuscript of a history ending at the reign of Fatḥ 'Ali Shāh and decided to complete that volume and bring it up to his own time. As to the identity of the author, I was informed by a friend, who was himself an inhabitant of Shīrāz, that the author was Mīrzā Aḥmad Khān Vaqāyi' Nigār. On referring to the Fārs Nāma of Ḥājjī Mīrzā, Ḥasan Tabīb of Shīrāz, I find, however, that the Vaqāyi' Nigār was the second son of Ḥājjī Mīrzā Asad Allāh. He is not, therefore, the writer of the manuscript in my possession, who seems to have closely studied the conditions existing in Persia at the time he wrote, and expresses frank opinions about the evils which attracted his notice. His criticisms, though moderate in tone, must have been too bold for those times. With regard to this book, he states:— “In those times, I formed a resolution, despite my want of knowledge and information, and because of the mere fact that I can distinguish between black and white, to compose a history, to obtain matter as far as possible from different histories, and to correct and reduce to writing such important subjects as involve less controversy, from the time of His Holiness the Prophet's Flight to the present, in a manner which may give rise to no objection.

1. Generally speaking, two conditions rule the development of Indo-Aryan consonants, when considered by themselves in contact only with vowels. If initial, they are maintained; if intervocalic, they are voiced, opened, and in many cases altogether disappear.

The paradigms given below are the result of efforts to obtain what may be regarded as standard conjugational forms of the Transitive Verb in the chief dialects of Shina.

Shina (Ṣiṇ'a) is the principal language of the Gilgit Political Agency. It is the sole or primary language of the people inhabiting:—

1. The portion of the Indus Valley lying within the Gilgit Agency, i.e. from the neighbourhood of Haramosh to Thor; including the whole Chilas District;

2. The Gilgit Valley from Dahimal, 14 miles west of Gupis, to the junction of the Gilgit River with the Indus;

3. The lower portions of the Ishkoman and Hunza-Nagir Valleys;

4. The valley of the Astor River and its tributaries;

5. The Gurez Valley in Kashmir proper.

6. It is also the language of the people inhabiting the Darel and Tangir Valleys, situated in Independent Territory to the south of the mountain range that forms the southern boundary of the mid portion of the Gilgit Valley. These valleys drain southwards into the Indus. The use of Shina does not stop here, but extends further down the Indus Valley, according to Dr. Grahame Bailey, to a point more than halfway from Chilas to Amb.

Among the Tibetan MSS. recovered by Sir Aurel Stein from the now famous hidden library of Tun-huang (Ch'ien-fo-tung) is a roll of thin paper inscribed on one side with a part of a text of a Buddhist sūtra in Chinese. The reverse contains a Tibetan document, which, as we may infer from many similar instances, was inscribed later. The Tibetan text, which consists of 254 lines of writing (plus the lower half of a preceding line) is a chronicle, covering without interruption a period of seventy-six years. Each entry commences with the name of the year according to the twelve-year cycle, and then appends a brief resume of the leading events, usually ending with the phrase “[so] one year“. The text contains a large number of names, names of peoples, places, and persons, including royalties, generals, and ministers, Chinese envoys and Turkish khagans: and the whole conveys a lively impression of Tibetan activities during the period, especially of incessant campaigns against all co-terminous states, the Chinese, the Hbrog (nomads), and other tribes of Tibet. Of special interest for Indian history are the indications of Tibetan domination in Nepal.

Peterson, in his edition of the Subhāṣitâvali, wrote in 1886: “Of the compiler [of the anthology] all we can say is that he cannot have flourished before Jainollābhadīna [i.e. Zain ul-'Ābidīn], whose date is given by Cunningham as a.d. 1417–67.” Aufrecht places Vallabhadeva, the compiler of this important Sanskrit anthology, in the sixteenth century a.d., on the ground that Vallabhadeva has laid the Sārngadhara-paddhati under contribution in compiling his anthology. With this view Winternitz seems to agree.

In Muslim countries adherents of the protected religions had to put up with certain restrictions on their public life. It was held that this was sanctioned by the Ḳur'ān, “Until they pay tribute out of hand, and they be humbled.” This humiliation is often mentioned in the early treaties.

Three years ago the native Arabs of Tello discovered a group of remarkably fine statuettes in low ground on the western side of Tablet Hill, mound V on the plan of de Sarzec, where Captain Cros found a small headless statuette of Gudea in 1903. The head, however, had been previously found by de Sarzec, and was joined to the torso by Leon Heuzey. A photograph of this statuette is published on plate I of the Revue d'Assyriologie, vol. vi. The monuments recovered by the Arabs from the temple of the god Ningishzida in the Tablet Hill are curiously enough all statuettes. All, with the exception of one, which is published in this communication, were illegally transported out of Iraq, and fortunately one was secured by the Louvre, where it rightfully joined the magnificent group of Gudea statues in the national museum of France. This is a fine alabaster statuette of Ur-Ningirsu, son of Gudea, 46 centimetres high, in standing position, and headless. It is reproduced in Monuments et Memoires publié par L' Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, tome xxvii, Statuettes de Tello, par F. Thureau-Dangin, plate ix; the circular base is sculptured in relief with two files of four figures each, which meet just below the feet of the patesi of Lagash.

The Sanskrit name of this Bodhi-sattva, so prominent in the Mahāyāna church of Buddhism, has been a puzzle to several generations of scholars.

Though it seems rather simple (= past pass. part, of lok-ava, “to look [down]”— īśvara, “lord”), there are at least five or six translations, viz. “The lord of what we see (i.e. the present world),” “The lord whom we see,” “The lord revealed [contemplated],” “The master who is [was] seen,” etc.

Among the Hittite cuneiform documents discovered at Boghaz Keui is a considerable number of legendary texts relating to the gods and heroes, the creation of the world and the like. Unfortunately they are all in a very fragmentary condition, but as progress is made with the examination and copying of the collections in Berlin and Constantinople it may be hoped that in many cases a sufficient. number of fragments will be found to allow some of the texts to be more or less completed. I have already attempted a translation of the fragments of a legend of the Great Serpent (JRAS. April, 1922), and the Yuzghat tablet edited for this Society by Dr. Pinches and myself some years ago (1907) contains one of the mugauwas or circle of “stories” connected with the deified king Telibinus, the Telephus of Greek tradition.

With the exception of a very brief notice in Albírúní (Sachau's transl., vol. ii, p. 13) and a few references in the Táríkh-i-Yamíní of al-'Utbí, and the Rajataranginí of Kalhana, there is scarcely any mention of the Hindu Sháhiya dynasty of Ohind (Udabhanda of Rajataranginí and Waihand of Muslim histories), the successors of the Turki Sháhiya dynasty of Kushan. Cunningham (Coins of Mediæval India, pp. 55 et seq.) advances the conjecture that after a period of usurpation by Kallar (the Brahman wazir of the last of the Turki Sháhiya dynasty) and his descendants, the Turki Sháhiya dynasty was revived by the enthronement of Jaipál, the contemporary of Sulṭán Maḥmúd and the ruler of Ohind and the northern Punjab; i.e., Jaipál and his successors, according to Cunningham, were not the descendants of the Brahman Kallar, but of Kánishka and therefore Turks or Rajputs. This view is contradicted by V. A. Smith, and by the passage quoted below, in which Jaipál is definitely called a Brahman.

The enlightened generosity of certain anonymous Japanese gentlemen has given to the author of the Ku Chou P'ien the power to publish the outcome of some thirty-five years' researches on the ancient writing of China in the splendid form in which it now appears. As a scholar thus allowed to see such a result in his own lifetime, Mr. Tadasuke Tanata should he a happy man.

The text contained in the MS. described below begins with three syllables śa-li-ẖbur, which scholars will naturally (unless illuded for a moment by the thought of sāli “year”) find suggestive of Śāriputra. The recurrence of the syllables will confirm this impression, more especially when far on in the document appears 'an.nog.da.la.sam. yag.sam.bu.de, previously recognized as=Sanskrit anuttara samyak-sambodhi. But, since the conjunction of this expression with the name of Śāriputra is frequently exemplified in the mass of Sanskrit Buddhist writings, we are grateful for the occurrence early in the text of the combination 'a.myi.ẖda, i.e. obviously Amitābha or Amitāyus, pointing to the Amitābha literature. When we come to try the smaller Sukhāvatīvyūka (published by Max Müller and Bunyiu Nanjio in Anecdota Oxoniensia, Aryan Series, vol. i, part ii, pp. 92–100), the distribution and character of the paragraphs soon enables us to fix upon sections ix(viii)–xx, of which several afford great assistance by furnishing names of numerals or of Buddhas in succession. As in the former case, some apparent divergencies from the Sanskrit original direct attention to the Chinese version translated into French by Messrs. Ymaizumi and Yamata in Annales du Musée Guimet, vol. ii, pp. 39–44. And this has enabled Captain Clauson to verify the whole text as a transcription, syllable for syllable, of Kumārajīva's rendering (Nanjio, No. 200). We give the Chinese characters from the India Office copy, and append a direct and inverse index of the syllables as represented in the Tibetan writing. From the interesting colophon it appears that the copy was a work of piety.