Fa-hien, the Chinese Buddhist Pilgrim to India (A.D. 400), has left an interesting narrative of his travels, in a little volume known as the Fo-kwŏ-ki. This was first translated by MM. Rémusat, Klaproth, and Landresse into French (A.D. 1836). Their version, being accompanied by valuable notes, was found of great use in the study of the Buddhist Religion by those who took up the subject, after Mr. Hodgson's discovery of the Nepalese Sanskrit texts. Other translations have been produced since the time of Rémusat to the present date. The last of these versions is by Dr. J. Legge, of Oxford.

Panini made gutturals precede labials; but this was because, having given to a precedence among vowels, it was natural to place gutturals in the first position among consonants ; for a is allied to k as o (or u) is allied to p, and i to t.

Volumes have been written about the political and financial state of Egypt, but little attention has been directed to the present condition of education in that country. Therefore the results of a personal inspection of the schools in Cairo may not be uninstructive, especially since the importance of the subject has been strongly emphasized in Lord Dufferin's celebrated despatch (Feb. 6th, Egypt, No. 6, 1883).

In the very valuable paper on “Early Buddhist Symbolism” contributed to the July issue of the Journal by Mr. Sewell, we have many interesting statements showing the possible influence of the West upon Indian symbolism. These, however, do not, to my mind, lead to the conclusion Mr. Sewell desires to establish; and, in fact, he contents himself with the assertion that the swastika is emblematic of sun-motion, that the chakra represents the sun, and that the triśula “is nothing more nor less than a conventionalized scarab—a sun-emblem.” The first two assertions seem to have been considered self-evident; but, in support of the last, several remarkable coincidences are brought together.

Among the many useful works that have appeared under the auspices of ‘The Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland,’ none is perhaps more palpably open to criticism than the Rev. J. Reynolds' History of the Temple of Jerusalem. To judge from the translation, Mr. Reynolds had, to begin with, but a very imperfect knowledge of Arabic, and, in the second place, from the extraordinary blunders he makes, he can have put himself to no pains whatever to become acquainted, by means of plans, and the descriptions of modern travellers, with the localities of which the Arab author speaks. It is not my present purpose to re-edit and correct Mr. Reynolds' work, for the book runs to some 550 pages, large 8vo., and it may safely be asserted that there is not a single one of his pages that would not require considerable alteration, to make it a tolerably exact rendering of his author's text. Moreover, the pages of the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal hardly afford room for so lengthy a work. I must therefore content myself with giving the headings of each of the seventeen chapters, and shall only translate such passages in the text as have seemed to me of most importance from an archæological or architectural point of view, and for throwing light on the vexed question of the sites of the Holy Places.