This article is an attempt to establish critically the synchronisms which appear to exist between the mediaeval portion of the Ceylon chronicle Mahāvaṁsa and the results of South Indian epigraphical research. The definite dates to which a number of Chōḷa and Pāṇḍya kings can now be assigned are due to the laborious and difficult calculations of my late friend Kielhorn, while several of the synchronisms were discovered by another old friend and fellow-worker, Rai Bahadur V. Venkayya, the melancholy news of whose sudden death at Madras on November 21, 1912, reached me while I was collecting materials for this article from his learned Reports.

This celebrated historical poem, written to sing the glories of the last Hindu emperor of India, the illustrious Pṛithvīrāja. Chauhān, records the gallant deeds of the Chauhān kings of Ajmer, and is of great importance to the history of India. Only one manuscript copy of the poem is known to be in existence. It is a birch-bark MS. in Śāradā characters and is in the Deccan College library, Poona, where it is numbered 150 in the catalogue of the collection of 1875–6. It was discovered in Kashmir in a.d. 1875 by Dr. Bühler in the course of his tour in search of Sanskrit MSS.

Among the languages of the Austronesian stock, formerly called the Malayo-Polynesian family, several are entitled to the name of literary languages, languages with a literature of their own in refined prose and poetry.

Since Sumerian studies began Assyriologists and other philologists have tried to compare Sumerian with some known language or group of languages, and thus to solve definitely the important problem of the origin of the primitive civilization of Chaldæa. That the Sumerian race and Sumerian language really existed, and Sumerian was spoken in Babylonia in the most remote epoch, that this language was neither Aryan nor Semitic but an agglutinative language—these are facts now established by the researches of earlier and modern Assyriologists and recognized even officially by science. J. Halévy's theory, denying the very existence of the Sumerians and their language, has now no followers among serious scientists, and the study of Sumerian is based upon such methods and facts that the appearance of another Halévy raising anew “the Sumerian question”, and bringing some new arguments in order to support his theory, seems, if not impossible, at least very improbable.

Among the many peculiarities of Egypt, not the least notable is her instinct for rejecting the foreign influences which her position at the gates of three continents renders exceptionally numerous. This power to repudiate what is alien seems to belong to the very genius of the land. It is, perhaps, a sign of the sufficiency and adequacy of Egypt for herself; an indication that within herself she finds what she needs for her existence and for her development, and that the outer world and its gifts are not required. Her ancient history is an eloquent witness of her own peculiar power; a power to achieve, to develop, and to realize the highest that is in her, only under conditions of comparative isolation, or under such conditions of contact as leave her full freedom of choice; and her less ancient, as well as her modern, history no less eloquently testify to the deadening effects of contact with the outer world.

The first extract, “A,” from the text of the Tajārib al-Umam (Gibb Memorial facsimile, vol. vi, pp. 135—41), depicts the fiscal condition of the soil at the seat of the Caliphate at the date of the establishment there of Buwaihid ascendancy in a.h. 334. The passage appears in an abridged and rather inadequate form in the Kāmil of Ibn al-Athīr (viii, 342–3), and a comparison of the texts serves to show the value of the Tajārib original.

Since everyone interested in Indian studies has probably read Mr. Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali, and has learned from Mr. Yeats's Introduction to that work that its author is an expert in many other matters than poetry, it may be interesting to readers of our Journal to know that Mr. Tagore has written a very suggestive and original study under the title of Śabdatattwa of the grammar and phonetics of his native language. It would take too much space to give an account of the whole book, which, after all, contains many technicalities which are only useful to professed students of Bengali. But I may be allowed to give a brief description of the chapter which criticizes Mr. Beames, well-known Bengali Grammar. This chapter relates almost entirely to questions of pronunciation, and these are notoriously difficult to discuss in writing. The differences between Mr. Beanies and his critic are sometimes, I think, partly due to this difficulty.

Mr. Gait, on pp. 71 and 72 of his History of Assam, has given the mythical origin of the Āhoms, the branch of the Shán or Tai race which invaded Assam in the thirteenth century and which held sovereignty there for centuries till A.D. 1826, when Assam became a portion of British India. Mr. Gait's authority was probably the old Āhom Buranji, or history, which with other Buranjis was translated under the orders of the Assam Administration by Srijut Golap Chandra Barua. Mr. Gait describes how Lengdan. the king of heaven, directed his son Thenkham to descend to earth and establish a kingdom there. Thenkham was unwilling to leave heaven, and so it was arranged that his two sons Khunlung and Khunlai should go instead. Lengdan presented them with an idol called Somdeo, a magic sword (or Hengdán), two drums to be used for invoking divine aid, and four cocks for telling the omens.

The objects illustrated in the accompanying Plates are published with the aim of bringing to the knowledge of Orientalists and others a type of Chinese relic believed to be of unique design, and presenting an interest of more than one kind. Despite their excellent preservation, they must, for reasons given below, date back at least to the later half of the third century B.C., but how much earlier than that remains at present uncertain.

The Dvāviṃśatyavadānakathā is a compilation of Buddhist Birth-stories of comparatively late origin. Much of it, particularly of the prose portions, was borrowed from the Avadānaśataka at a time when the MSS. of that work were already faulty. The recension of the Avadānaśataka, from which the author of the Dvā. took his material, was that to which Speyer's MS. D belonged. The language in which it is written resembles that of most of the Northern Buddhist texts, in particular the Vicitrakarṇikāvadanā— that is to say, a kind of popularly developed Sanskrit, which shows for the most part the same line of growth as that followed by the Prākrit dialects many centuries before. The solution of the history of this dialect, and of the question whether, as is probable, it was only a written language, depends on the collection of more material. Below I give a detailed list of the points in which the Sanskrit of the Dvā. differs from classical Sanskrit both in forms, in syntax, and vocabulary. It is possible that scribal errors may be responsible for some of the forms. Few of them are invariable; most are found side by side with their classical equivalents. It will be seen that the majority of the forms and constructions can be paralleled from Pāli and the Prākrits. The figures placed in brackets after forms show the number of times they occur in the text.

It is now possible for me to supplement my Arabic text of Ali Baba by printing in full the only other original version so far known. I shall add some further information which I have gathered on the identity of the scribe of the Bodleian MS. and various notes on the text of that version. Besides the criticisms of Professor Torrey, printed in this Journal for 1911 (pp. 221 ff.), I have had the advantage of privately communicated suggestions from Professor Goldziher, Artin Pasha, and Joseph Gabriel, Esq., a native of Ḥaṣbaya in the Lebanon, but now for many years in business in Manchester. His communications have been of especial interest.

Ch. 00262, papier. Comprend—

1. Fragment d’un recueil de Śikṣās, folios numeratés (coll. Stein) 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, qui sont 90, 91, 92,93, et 44,45. 159–60 mm.; 4 lignes, belle écriture.—Voir les Sekhiyas et Mahāvyutpatti, 263.

I venture to make the following suggestions, based on some recent studies of Bengali accentuation and prosody. The subject is difficult, and, to save space and words, I state quite tentative conclusions in rather too positive terms. But my statements are merely suggestions.

It is mainly with the two principal sets nē, nō of Gujarātī and rai, rō of Mārwāṛī, and with their older forms, that I propose to deal in these pages. Since the right clue to the explanation of them—with the exception of rō, which presents no difficulty—has been missed by scholars as yet, I trust that the present investigation into their origin will be of use even to such as might hesitate to accept all my views unreservedly.

The title of this paper suggests a definite answer to a definite question. I do not think that such an answer can be given except in very general terms. The mystics of Islam, like all other mystics, recognize that the object of their search cannot be apprehended by knowledge, much less described by words. The goal is ineffable: all that can be done is to describe the journey from beginning to end. This is no easy task, and would assuredly be a long one if we accept the view of a celebrated Persian theosophist that the ways to God are in number as the souls of men. It is possible, however, to reduce to a system the main features, both theoretical and practical, of any mystical type, and with the help of a highly developed symbolism to indicate in some degree what is the nature of those experiences which lie beyond thought and knowledge. My present purpose is to discuss the meanings attached by Ṣúfís to certain metaphorical terms which are used in reference to the state of union with God.

The short tenth century account of the Nile in the Delta, which is published here for the first time, is an extract from a unique Arabic MS. on geography preserved at the British Museum (23379 Add.).

[The fragments transliterated below by Professor de la Vallée Poussin, together with a number of smaller morsels, formed part of a large birch-bark pothī, of which each page contained ten or eleven lines and measured about 39 × 7 cm., and were found at Khadalik. The characters are of the upright Gupta type.]

As our Society has published a communication on Indian phonetics, may I make a suggestion which may perhaps interest students of the Indian vernaculars? We all know that most languages have a musical quality which enables us to recognize what language is being spoken, even if we are too distant to hear the words used, or too ignorant to understand their sense. This characteristic quality is composed of stress and pitch. It has to be acquired by everyone who would speak like a native and would be readily and easily understood. It is not only by the meaning of words, but also by the significant modulation of a phrase that we make ourselves understood. It is very interesting, for instance, to note the change of stress and pitch when a word is borrowed from one language into another. This change is audible even when the borrowed word is pronounced by itself. It is even more obvious when the borrowed word forms part of the significant music of a phrase. So far, I am merely saying what is known to all students of living tongues. What I venture to suggest is that the characteristic modulation of a language may provide useful hints as to its origins and history, that the careful study of stress and tone may be a help to the philologist. This should particularly be the case where a language belonging to one family of human speech has been recently adopted by a race that once spoke a language of another family. It is easy, for instance, to feel an alien, a Celtic element in the pronunciation of English by an Irishman, a Highlander, a Welshman.

I propose to examine the various dialects of which specimens are given in vol. iii of the Report of the Linguistic Survey of India, to group them together according to their method of forming numerals, and then to examine the forms of the numerals used as bases for the higher numerals.

About the year 300 it became plain that a new religion was spreading through the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. This was the faith taught by one Manes or Mânî, a native of Babylonia, who was put to death by order of the Shah Bahram or Varanes I in 275. One story is that he began to teach when 13 years old, another when he was 24. We know with fair certainty that he was 60 when he died; so that if we take the more probable date his missionary activity must have lasted for thirty-five years— a longer period than has generally been allowed to founders of new religions. His teaching must also have started in the reign of Ardeshîr, the restorer of the Zoroastrian religion, by whose orders were collected the books known as the Avesta. Ardeshîr's religious restoration was avowedly made for political reasons, and with the view of binding together the newly-founded empire of the Sassanides by a common faith. It seems to have given a good deal of offence to the older Persian nobles, and it was very likely among these that Mânî found his first converts. The later Manichæans boasted that he converted to his doctrines Ardeshîr's successor, Shâpûr or Sapor, the conqueror of the Emperor Valerian, and also the next king, Hormuz or Hormidas, who reigned only a few months.