It is somewhat disconcerting that in our Sanskrit lexicons we sometimes meet with words which have been wrongly translated and this is particularly distressing when such words are frequently used in literature and indicate objects which must have been familiar to the Indo-Aryans. A notable example is Skt. haṃsa, commonly interpreted by the dictionaries as meaning not only a goose but also a swan or a flamingo. Unfortunately Western indologists have shown a distinct preference for the latter two aquatic birds, because the goose is considered a far too prosaic creature to enter the exalted realm of poetry. A study of the subject has convinced me that hamsa means the goose and nothing else.1 My conclusion is based in the first place on ornithological evidence.

In 1930 Pandit Kameshwar Dayal, then Deputy Collector at Cawnpore, published a note on a mound situated on a bend of the river Rind about two miles to the east of Bhikdeo, an important village in the Derapur tahsil of the Cawnpore district. The mound covers an area of about 35 bighas and rises to a height of 35 feet. It contained large bricks measuring 30 in. by 20 in. by 4½ in., evidently used for building purposes, and had yielded beads, coins, and other objects. Among the coins recovered from the site were copper coins of the Mathura Satrap Hagamasha. From these finds Pt. Dayal concluded that the mound of Ujjhān was a site of archæological interest which would repay excavation and ought to be declared protected under the Ancient Monuments Act. These recommendations however do not appear to have been acted upon.

It has been recognized long ago that Ptolemy's topography of Cis-Gangetic India was based on trade-routes. Nearly a century ago Vivien de Saint Martin spoke of “the almost exclusive employment of itineraries of merchants and caravans indicating on each route the series of daily stations”. We may compare the lists of stations inserted in books on India of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of the earliest examples we find in Joannes de Laet's little volume De Imperio Magni Mogolis (Leiden, 1631), p. 57. The author evidently derived his lists from the itineraries of the English merchants Richard Steel and John Crowther. The French jeweller and traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier has included full lists of stations along the principal trade-routes in his Indian Travels (ch. iv–xii). In the first place he deals with the two routes from Surat to Agra, all-important to European traders, the one by the Tāptī valley and Mālwā, the other by way of Aḥmadābād and Rājpūtānā. If we keep in mind that Ptolemy must have used similar lists, it will go far to explain the disconcerting fact that so many among the localities in his tables are not known from indigenous sources, either literary or epigraphical, whereas famous towns have been omitted. His tables are fundamentally lists of stages, and this must be our guiding principle in unravelling the riddle of Ptolemy's topography. The present note is an attempt to demonstrate this in some detail.

Ptolemy (vii, 1, 50) mentions Eragassa as the last but one of eighteen places which he assigns to the Kaspiraioi, whose territory is stated by him to stretch from the country1 of the Pandoouoi (or perhaps from the town Iomusa) towards the east as far as the Ouindion, i.e. the Vindhya. Eragassa is called a metropolis, and must therefore have been a place of some importance. Let us briefly survey the identifications proposed by various scholars. Lassen located Eragassa at “Komulmir”, i.e. Kumalmer, a fort in the Udaipur State of Rajputana. Vivien de Saint-Martin, while suspecting the name to be a “Latin interpolation”, explained it as a corruption of VaranasI, the ancient name of Benares. According to Colonel Yule it would correspond to Giriraja, “Royal Hill”, a name which might indicate Govardhana, near Mathura. Dr. W. W. Tarn1 gives us the choice between Ajmer and Eran in the Sagar district of the Central Provinces. But the ancient name of the lastmentioned place is known from inscriptions to be Airikina or Erakana. Possibly this hst does not exhaust the identifications proposed.

In his Linguistic Survey of India, Sir George Grierson has drawn attention to the first Hindūstānī grammar, and given someparticulars about its author, Joan Josua Ketelaar, who was a German in the service of the Dutch East India Company. In the presentpaper I wish to supplement the information regarding Ketelaar's career by means of some biographical data mostly drawn from the Company's records preserved in the “ Bijks Archief ” at The Hague.

The remarkable group of five rock-cut temples at Māmallapuram or Māvalivaram, to the south of Madras, has often been described. Popular imagination has associated these wonderful shrines with the Pāṇḍvas; thus it has happened that the one which is smallest in size has become known as the rath of Draupadi. Evidently this temple was in reality dedicated to some form of the goddess Durga, whose effigy, standing on the severed head of the Buffalodemon, is found carved upon the outer wall, whereas her vehicle in the form of a well-conceived but unfinished lion-statue may be seen at no great distance.

In recent years explorations of great importance have been conducted on a Buddhist site in the Pālnād taluk of the Guntur district of the Madras Presidency, lastly under the superintendence of Mr. A. H. Longhurst, of the Archaeological Survey of India. The site in question which comprises several ancient mounds is situated in the midst of wooded hills on the right bank of the river Kistna or Kṛishṇā, the Kaṇṇapeṇṇa or Kaṇṇavaṇṇā (Skt. Kṛishṇavarṇā) of Pali literature, at a distance of some 15 miles from Macherla and on the border of the Nizam's dominions. One of those mounds is known by the name of Nāgārjunikoṇḍa. Mr. Longhurst claims it to be the most important Buddhist site hitherto discovered in Southern India.