I think it may be of some utility to the Students of the Assyrian Language to bring together in the form of a Glossary a certain number of words of which the meaning appears to be established with a reasonable amount of probability. I have here presented to the Society the commencement of such a work, to be continued, as I hope, on a future occasion. I have not followed any alphabetical order, but have numbered the words, so that in the event of their becoming sufficiently numerous, an alphabetical index referring to these numbers may be added. I have been very careful to refer to passages in which the words are found, so as to enable any one to verify their accuracy. I have used some typographical abbreviations, the prinicple of which are the following:—

In the Ultra-Indian peninsula different layers of nationalities may be distinguished, being successive arrivalsfrom different quarters. In most cases it is difficult to determine with exactitude the time of their respective settlements; but, as a general rule, the later conquerors have driven the former possessors of the soil into the hills, appropriating to themselves the more fertile lands on the banks of the rivers; and it may be readily assumed that the inhabitants we now find in the valleys of the Menam and Irawaddi are the most recent immigrants. History shows this to be the case. Whenever, in the course of events, the empires stretching along the great rivers became weakened by luxury or broken up by internal dissensions, the rude and warlike tribes of the surrounding mountains, watchful of the growing weakness of their former masters, and the decay of their defences, have burst from their forests and made slaves of the populations of the towns. This phenomenon, not unknown in other parts of the world, has been frequently repeated in the histories of Assam and Burmah, of Siam and of Kambodia; and it is by keeping before our eyes these continual revolutions that we may collect the disjecta membra of arts and sciences from the different quarters to which they have been scattered, and arrange them under one comprehensive aspect, where each of them occupies its natural position.

Mohamed Rabadan was a native of Rueda on the river Xalon, one of those Moriscoes who were driven out of Spain, chiefly on the ground that they would not and could not amalgamate with the Spaniards, and that they clung to the Arabic language and customs, and were, and always would remain Arabs, foreigners in Spain and enemies of its people. It is possible that at the time of the expulsion some of the Moriscoes did not know Spanish, but it is yet more probable that the great majority of them knew nothing of Arabic; and the best proof of this is the volume written by Rabadan.

Dear Mr. Palmer,—The manuscripts, of which you have been good enough to draw up the list, which I trust the Asiatic Society will print, came to us at the end of last century. The donor, Edward Ephraim Pote, was a son of Mr. Pote, of Eton, and was elected a scholar of this College in 1768. He took his degree in 1773, and seems to have entered the Civil Service of the East India Company very soon after that.

Hitherto our knowledge of ancient Buddhist architecture in India has been derived mainly from the rock cut examples. These, though most valuable for the purpose, from their number and immutability, have the defect of being all interiors, and we obtain little or no knowledge from them of what the external appearance may have been of the structural buildings which they represent. It is doubtful whether we ever shall know, in so far as the Vihâras or monasteries are concerned. These seem, like those of Burmah at the present day, to have been principally constructed of wood, and have perished by fire or decay; but our knowledge of the Topes or Sthûpas is daily extending, and we may hope soon to understand them and their arrangements with tolerable completeness.

All Sanskrit scholars must feel obliged to Professor Brock-haus for his edition of Somadeva's Kathâsarit-sâgara, the last part of which, from Lambaka ix.-xviii., was published last year. To copy a work containing 21526 slokas, to select the best readings from a great number of manuscripts, in short, to publish, for the first time, a work in such a manner that the whole affords an almost undisturbed pleasure to the reader, is a heavy task. Indeed, the editor might well say in his preface: “I may say in good conscience that the text, as given by me, is more complete and correct than it is found in any of the MSS. I used. I have corrected faults in orthography, grammar, syntax, and prosody by thousands; there remain, however, many passages which need further correction, partly on account of the condition of the MSS., partly on account of my deficient knowledge.” I willingly subscribe to these words, except the last, in which the editor has scarcely done justice to himself. In so extensive a work the sharpness of the eyes and mind becomes so blunted that it ought not to be ascribed to deficiency of knowledge if some faults are to be met with. Professor Brockhaus would certainly judge less severely of the performance of others than of his own.

In the second volume of his Chips from a German Workshop, p. 34, foot-note, the distinguished Professor Max Müller adverting to the above-mentioned dissertation, the earliest of the invaluable series which we owe to the most illustrious of English Sanskritists, makes the remark: “This Essay, I find, is a literal translation from Gagannâtha's ‘Vivâdabhangârnava,’ MS. Wilson, 224, vol. iii., p. 62.”

If the crucial instance which has already been adduced and laboured, for the intent indicated above, should be regarded as anywise inconclusive, the ensuing particulars will be found to complete my argument.

Verse 1, note 1. This hymn begins with a somewhat abrupt description of a sunrise. Indra is taken as the god of the bright day, whose steed is the sun, and whose companions the Maruts, or the storm-gods. Arusha, meaning originally red, is used as a proper name of the horse or of the rising sun, though it occurs more frequently as the name of the red horses or flames of Agni, the god of fire, and also of the morning light. In our passage, Arusha, used as a kind of substantive, has taken bradhná as an adjective,—bradhná meaning, as far as can be made out, bright in general, though, as it is especially applied to the Soma-juice, perhaps bright-brown or yellow. Names of colour are difficult to translate from one language into another, for their shades vary, and withdraw themselves from sharp definition. We shall meet this difficulty again and again in the Veda.

So long ago as the year 1847, during a temporary absence from my duties in India, I volunteered to undertake the classification of certain imperfectly determined and but partially deciphered series of coins in the East India House collection—in continuation and completion of Professor Wilson's comprehensive description of the more popular departments of Central-Asian Numismatics already embodied in his Ariana Antiqua. Among the subdivisions so treated, may be cited the Kufic Mintages of the Grhaznavides, a detailed notice of which was inserted in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1848 (vol. ix.), as well as a second article; bearing more immediately upon the subject under review, on “the Pehlvi Coins of the early Muhammadan Arabs,” which appeared in the twelfth volume of that Journal. In entering upon the examination of the available specimens of the latter class of national representative currencies, I found myself called upon to encounter a novel and very difficult branch of Oriental Palæography, the study of which, indeed, had but recently been inaugurated by the publication of Professor Olshausen's most instructive work “Die Pehlwie-Legenden:” while it was manifest that the obscure language, of which this imperfect alphabet constituted the graphic exponent, was dependent for its elucidation upon still more fragmentary and defective grammatical or lexicographical means: obstacles which the since accelerated progress of modern ethnography has, up to this time, failed to remove. Under these conditions I naturally approached this new investigation with sufficient diffidence, and sought to secure the critical soundness of any suggestive deductions that might present themselves, by a decisive appeal to every archæological test within reach.