The composition of this Yaksin or woman-sprite under a flowering vine appears at a first glance to possess dynamic energy, but closer inspection reveals its absence. Stella Kramrisch remarks that, creamy and luxuriant though the modelling is, it is not shaped throughout by rhythmic energy. The right outline of the figure vacillates and the drawing of the leg is weak. The body is heavy and lifeless, and though carved in relief is so wanting in construction that it looks boneless and flaccid. The figure is squashed and flat instead of being rounded as the curves demand. The arms are too thin for the broad waist and the right arm appears dislocated from the body. The expression of the face and body is cold and reminds one of some of the worst European sculpture.

The average quality of the sculpture at the Exhibition of the Art of India and Pakistan at the Royal Academy, London, is remarkably high. Naturally there is a bigger percentage of first-class pieces in bronze than in stone, because so much of the best stone sculpture is fixed in temples or carved on rock. The great Siva could not be moved from Elephanta nor a River Goddess from Ellora nor the Descent of the Ganges from the rock-face at Mamallapuram.

Owing to the exigencies of war I failed to get my copies of the Journal of the American Oriental Society between 1939 and 1945, and it is only within the last few days that I have seen Dr. Ludwig Bachhofer's most interesting article on “Greeks and Sakas in India” which appeared in the Journal as far back as December, 1941. In that article Dr. Bachhofer pays a warm tribute to Dr. W. W. Tarn's epoch-making work on The Greeks in Bactria and India, but at the same time challenges some of the views expressed by that great scholar. Though very late in the day I hope I may be allowed to add a few comments on what Dr. Bachhofer has said. I do so with no little hesitation, because failing eye-sight now makes it difficult for me to read or write, and still more difficult to re-examine the numismatic data and other minutiæ referred to by Dr. Bachhofer. On the other hand, half a life time spent in excavations at Taxila and other sites on the North-West Frontier of India has put me in possession of many relevant facts, of which it is evident that Dr. Bachhofer is still, through no fault of his own, in ignorance; and it is clearly my duty to make these facts known to others without loss of time. Already, it is true, I have written a full and comprehensive account in three volumes of the results of my long labours at Taxila, but though the manuscript of this book was sent to the Cambridge University Press at the end of 1945, I fear that in prevailing conditions it may be a year or two before it can be published; and in the meantime eminent scholars like Dr. Bachhofer may be spending valuable hours on problems which have in effect already been solved.

Indian influence upon European literature goes back to the earliest times. The learned German scholar, Dr. Gerland, traces to Indian sources a number of the episodes in the Odyssey; the story of Circe, for instance, appears also in Somadeva's Kathā Sarit Sāgara, where a Yakshinī, or female demon, changes men into beasts by playing to them on her magic flute. The Sirens are the Indian Rākshasīs, and the Cyclops are Rākshasas. India is the home of fables, especially of beast and fairy stories, and these found their way to the West by a variety of channels. Some were carried by traders, others by wandering tribes like the gypsies, whose Indian origin is now generally accepted. Others again reached the West by way of Baghdad and Alexandria. Thus the story of the Judgment of Solomon occurs also in the Mahoshadha Jātaka, where it is attributed to the Buddha in one of his previous incarnations; doubtless it found its way from India to Palestine along with the ivory, apes, and peacocks which Hiram, King of Tyre, brought from Ophir to Jerusalem by way of Ezion Geber. If we identify Ophir with Sopara on the west coast of India, near Bombay, this becomes still more probable, for Sopara or Śurpāraka was a well-known port in Buddhist times, and the capital of Aparānta, mentioned by Aśoka in his list of Buddhist countries.

Recently at the village of Noh in Bharatpur Tensil on the Bharatpur-Chiksana (or Agra) road I discoveŕed the two colossal figures here illustrated. The Yaksha with a lateral topknot on his head is of the same type and stone as one from Parkham village, now in the Curzon Museum at Muttra. It also has an inscription like that on the feet of the Parkham Yaksha. Its height above the ground is 5 feet and its girth round the upper arms 7 feet.

It is well known that the time of Zoroaster and the date of his birth or that of the announcement of his mission have not so far been indisputably established. In spite of very numerous writings published during more than two centuries, in which the question has been studied by many scholars, no unanimous conclusion has been reached. The opinions of famous scholars in the last eighty years have differed so widely that the date suggested has ranged between the eleventh or tenth centuries and the last part of the sixth century B.C. We are still hardly near to agreement on the matter.

I Feel bound to record my grateful sense of obligation to those Sinhalese Buddhists, whether belonging to the Holy Order or laymen, who have helped me in the preparation of these the following notes. Their courtesy was unfailing and their readiness to impart information inexhaustible. As for the humbler and less educated Buddhists of Ceylon, it is impossible not to be touched by their simple devotion and by the vivid manner in which their religion enters into their life.

The Burmese chronicles are emphatic that it was from the Mon city of Thaton that King Anuruddha in a.d. 1057 obtained the Pāli canon. Yet students of Burmese history have been by no means insensitive to the difficulty of reconciling this with the exclusively Hindu character of the more or less contemporary archæological remains at Thaton. The late Prince Damrong even went so far as to suggest that P'rӑ Paṭhóm, in the neighbouring Buddhist kingdom of Dvaravatī, rather than Thaton in Burma, must have been the city that Anuruddha conquered, and from which he derived his Hīnayāna Buddhism. I now propose shortly to reconsider the archæological evidence, in the light of recent advances in our understanding of the mechanics of Indian cultural expansion and of a certain passage in one of the Mon chronicles to which attention has not hitherto been directed in this particular connection. I believe that this may help us to resolve the difficulty.

The palmleaf manuscript containing the text of the Prajñâpâramitâ-piṇḍลrtha by Dinnâga was found in the monastery of Žalu which I visited in autumn 1939. It consists of three leaflets without indication of any date. This small book is an epitome of the Aṣṭasâhasrikâ-prajñâ-pâramitã and it is intended to classify the arguments expounded in this treatise and to adapt its long repetitions to the logic of a rational and intelligible scheme.

In the sixth, century a.d. Chinese and Persian merchants used to meet regularly in Ceylon for the exchange of their products: this is clear from Cosmas Indicopleustes, xi, 336, and Procopius, Persian Wars, i, 20, 9–13. In addition to this the existence of direct sea-commerce between the Sassanid Empire and China has often been asserted as an established fact, e.g. by J. T. Reinaud, Relations des voyages faits far les Arabes, etc. (Paris, 1845), p. xxxv; H. Yule, Marco Polo (London, 1903), p. 83; L. Caetani, Annali dell'Islam (Milan, 1905–1926), ii, 2, 12 A.H., sect. 133, note 1; iii, 16 A.H., sect. 328; E. H. Warmington, The commerce between the Roman Empire and India (Cambridge, 1928), pp. 138, 358, note 146; and others. But this assertion rests on slender evidence and requires discussion. I shall endeavour to set down all the passages which might be adduced and to assess the value of each one.

A Description of several social grades of the Sinhalese occur in the rite called the Ūrā Yakkama (Shooting of the Boar) contained in the Kohombā-kankāriya. Its context is as follows: The chief performer enacts the killing of the boar and the sharing of its flesh among the various craftsmen. From the remarks made about each recipient and the treatment which the representative of each trade receives, one sees what value was attached to the work of each from the point of view of the dancer. The function of each in the social order is also mentioned. Below is given the text of this part of the ceremony as it has been gathered, from oral tradition from different districts in Ceylon. As may be expected, many variant versions exist, but only a few have been noticed here.

A Part from the evidence already discussed, the Sūtra period yields very little information for the study of the gotras. The Buddhist and Jaina canonical works, however, do supply some valuable confirmation of the general picture we have been able to extract from the Brahmanical texts. These canons as we know them now are admittedly late, and for the most part may be taken to reflect the life of a different geographical region from that of the Sūtras. Yet they must contain much genuine tradition of the lifetimes of the respective founders, and it is therefore of considerable interest that the gotra-names recorded agree with the Brahmanical sources. As is well known, the Buddha was a Gautama (see p. 84 ); and since the Gautamas were included in the Āngiras group, he is also on occasion addressed as Āngirasa. In addition, numerous Brahmans appear in the Pali books, with most of the commoner gotra-names.

This brings us to the point where we must consider in more detail the action of the celebrated Dominican Friar Domingo Fernandez Navarrete, and his long-standing feud with the Portuguese Jesuits of the China Mission. Navarrete was born at Peñafiel and entered the Dominican Order in 1635, going to the Philippines in 1648, whence he proceeded to China ten years later. Unlike many of his Order, he was a cultured man of great ability, and a competent Sinologue for his century. Arrested on the occasion of the persecution of 1665, he was deported to Canton with the Jesuits and Franciscans from Peking and the provinces. Here he took a leading part in the ecclesiastical Junta held to discuss the controversial question of the Confucian Rites and allied topics in 1667–68. He escaped from Canton in rather equivocal circumstances in December, 1669, and after a short stay at Macao sailed to Europe by way of India and the Cape of Good Hope. On reaching Rome he was made Procurator of the Philippine Mission, and returned to Spain in 1674, publishing the first volume of his highly controversial Tratados Historicos, Politicos, Ethnicos, y Rdigiosos de la Monarchia de China two years later at Madrid. The work created a sensation on account of its outspoken criticisms of the Jesuits in China, but nowadays it is read more for the author's vivacious description of his own eventful odyssey in the Far East. A second volume entitled Controversias Antiquas y Modernas de la Mission de la Gran China was printed at Madrid in 1679, but never published, since the Inquisition suppressed it after the first 668 pages had been printed off.

The three Buddhist sects, peculiar to Ceylon, are agreed upon all fundamental points of doctrine. The differences between them are confined to points of practice and of outward observance.

As has been seen the Siam Sect was founded after the arrival at Kandy in a.d. 1753 of a delegation of monks sent from Siam at the request of King Kīrti Srī to renew the validity of monastic orders, which had come to lapse in Ceylon in the course of frequent wars and internal disturbances. The following quotation is taken from Donald Obeyesekere's Outline of Ceylon History (Colombo, 1911):—

“In 1750 the Emperor (i.e. King Kīrti Srī), with the assistance of the Dutch, dispatched an embassy with presents and a letter to King Dammika of Siam, requesting the latter to send some learned priests for the purpose of advancing Buddhism in Lankā (Ceylon). Accordingly there arrived in Lanka a learned high priest, named Upali, with over ten other, priests, bringing with them books of Dharma and the Vinaya, such as were not to be found in Ceylon. They were received with great ceremony and honour by the Emperor, and ere long the rite of ordination was conferred, amid great rejoicing, on the principal sāmaneras (novices) of Ceylon. The Siamese priests were given the Malwatta Vihīra to reside in. Another chapter of priests, together with the high priests Mahā. Visuddhācariya and Varananamuni, were sent over to Ceylon during this reign by the King of Siam, and hundreds of Sinhalese underwent the upasampadā ordination.”

M. Louis Renou, in his critical text of Ptolemy Bk. VII (Paris: Champion, 1925), gives the first name in ch. 1, s. 83, as Nαγαγοúρα (Nagagoura), with -γ-(-g-) as the third consonant. This is the reading of the MS. Vatic. 191 (X), which M. Renou and other authorities find superior to its competitors. The majority of the other MSS. utilized by M. Renou give the name as Nαϒαρονραρίςc (Nagarouraris), with -ρ- (-τ-) as the third consonant and an added final syllable which looks as if it had crept in from the margin or was some other kind of a corruption: this reading was followed by earlier editions such as that of Nobbe. The choice between -g- and -r- as the third consonant is thus a choice between “the best and the rest”, always embarrassing for a critical editor. One is, in such a case, fully entitled to prefer “the best”, as M. Renou has done. Moreover, it is only fair to mention two extraneous considerations, which could be argued as supporting -g-. First, there is another case where X reads -g- and the rest read -r-, and X is unquestionably right: this is in ch. 1, s. 50, Ȇragassa X, Ȇrarassa al., modern Eraj, ancient Erakaccha. Secondly, the termination -goura might claim some a priori probability if one considers the article by Przyluski in Bull. Soc. Ling., xxvii, p. 218 (not xx as wrongly given in footnote in JRAS., 1929, p. 273); but this point has very little weight, for as Przyluski shows and anyone can quickly see, the consonant which precedes the terminatio -oura in Ptolemy is very variable.

In this commentary there are variations from the version by Abū Bishr and additions to it. Margoliouth says that the commentary is based on the version by Abū Bishr and suggests that Avicenna had a copy which had been annotated by one who had had access to the Syriac translation. If this should prove to be correct it will still not explain all the additions. That Avicenna uses for Úποκρîτης and not the of Abū Bishr may be due to the Syriac, but al-Fārābī before him had used tragodia and komodia instead of the (panegyric) and (invective) of Abū Bishr. Other changes may be explained by Avicenna's ability to get out of the faithful but obscure Arabic rendering more than the ordinary reader; as when he prefers to for γλττα (1457 b 1) and to for εύΧ (1456 b 11).

This defiant little inscription of three words has held its secret through twenty centuries. On the Bone relics of the Honan Find it is not uncommon, but in the inscribed Bronzes, even the oldest, it is not met. Brief and perhaps paltry as it may seem, it has not failed to engage the attention of Chinese spécialists without any very convincing conclusion. But on one point Chinese critics do concur. These small three-word entries are no part of the main scription of the oracular sentence. They stand isolated in place, and have no syntactic connection with the latter. Perhaps they were archivests' memoranda, or, as I suggest, the craftsman's directions to his finisher. They have none of the importance of the sentences, and their only interest now is that they have proved inscrutable. I, too, have joined in the quest and have, indeed, excogitated a conclusion acceptable to other students!