The history of the ceramic art of ancient Susa is as interesting as its political history. The earliest history of Susa is shrouded in legends. No authentic theory has been advanced by savants up to date as to the earliest inhabitants of Susa. The Susians or the Elamites, as they are generally called, are mentioned by Greek poets as the Ethiopians of Asia. M. Dieulafoy believes them to be negroids, which term is very vague and hypothetical. It is not proper to discuss the origin of the early Elamites in this paper. I shall pass over this question with the remark that they were most probably rather the natives of the soil than foreigners settled in Elam. At any rate from the results of excavations that are carried on in Susa every year from the time of M. Dieulafoy and M. de Morgan up to date we know that they were greatly advanced in civilization. They must have carried on commerce with neighbouring countries, as is proved by beads of lapis lazuli and of clay glazed like turquoise used in necklaces.

A B Abdallh Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Al-Djaihn, the famous tutor, and later vazr, of the Smnid amr, Nasr ibn Ahmad, is one of the most interesting figures in Arabic literature and history. From the scanty information which is to be found in Ibn al-Athr. Yqt, and Mrkhwnd, we can judge that he was an excellent statesman and a good general, whose political and strategic abilities directed the affairs of the Smnids at one of the most critical periods in their history. Nor can it be doubted, from the information supplied by Ibn Hauqal, al-Muqaddas, al-Masd, and the Fihrist, that al-Djaihn was a man of wide learning and a good writer, with an intelligence far above the average of Oriental authors. We know from the Fihrist that he wrote several books on different subjects, but unfortunately all his works are lost.

The importance of dates in Sanskrit literature renders it desirable to examine critically the interesting attempt of Dr. S. K. De to upset the accepted view that the Subhṣitvali of Vallabhadeva, by reason of its reference to Jainollbhadna (i.e. Zain ul-bidn,c. 141767), is not to be dated earlier than the second half of the fifteenth century. The piece of evidence on which Dr. Des theory rests has long been before us in the shape of a reference to verse 726 of the Subhṣitvali in the commentary by Vandyaghaṭya Sarvnanda on the Amarakoa, which, according to a note of the present date given in the comment on verse 21 of the klavarga, was written when the aka year 1081 and the Kali year 4260 had expired.

The only definite statements as to the authorship of the play occur in the commentaries in two different MSS., and are conflicting; one mentions Bodhayana as the author, while the other mentions the name of Indracarumani. There were several Bdhyanas, two of whom were poets and it is not easy to decide to whom the first of the above statements refers. Several plausible guesses have been made, based on evidence other than the statements in the two commentaries. It has been pointed out that the Bhagavadajjukam, in common with the plays of Bhsa, lacks all reference to the author in the text, begins with a Sthpan instead of the usual Prastavana, and bear some resemblances to them in style and diction. On the other hand, it has been shown that the play shows similarities to the Mttavilasa of Mahendra-vikrama Varman. Both plays ridicule Buddhist doctrines and extol Hindu Dharma. This argument gains strength from the fact that in the stone mscription at Mmundr, which has been proved to be that of Mhendra-vikrama, Bhagavadajjukam and Mattavilasa are mentioned in company. Similarities in diction have also been traced between the two. It will therefore be seen that the authorship of the play is still uncertain, and will continue to engage the attention of scholars for some time to come.

The text of the Ngava inscription, alluded to at page 551 of the School of Oriental Studies Bulletin, Vol. IV, Part III, was communicated to Sir George Grierson through the kindness of the late Professor P. G. Gune. It is given below with the kind permission of the former. The inscription is mentioned at page 351 of the Kolb Gazetteer, is dated in the aka year 1289 (A.D. 1367), and was found engraved on the stone steps of Bhimesvara's temple at Ngava, 3 miles south of Alibg in the Kolb District of the Bombay Presidency. It is described in the Gazetteer as a Sanskrit inscription. But after line 4 the language is clearly archaic Marṭh. Professor Gune stated that the rubbing showed that three letters in the first line and one each in the sixth, sixteenth, and seventeenth lines have become entirely defaced.

It is generally agreed that the nominatives ov and oy are formations from the demonstrative stem u which appears in most of the modern Indo-Aryan languages, e.g. Nepali: direct u, oblique us.

In the oblique formsles, la and lenMiklosich {ber die Mundarten und Wanderungen der Zigeuner Europa's xi, p. 15) saw the stem of Skt. ta, which forms the oblique cases to the nominative s and s. Professor A. C. Woolner (Journ. Gypsy Lore Soc., New Series ix, p. 128) opposes this view for the very cogent reason that there seems to be no other instance in which an initial IndoAryan t has become lin European Romani: it becomes I regularly only in the intervocalic position. He derives it instead from a Prakrit pronominal stem na. This however presents nearly as great a phonetic difficulty, for the regular representation of initial n is by n : there are a few exceptions only in some cases of metathesis or dissimilation, such as len river (if from nodi), lilai and linai beside nilai summer (nid;ghh).

The authors of these notes had an opportunity of observing the pronunciation of Naqibullah, son of Nairullah, a Bumba Khel Pathan from the village Dhudiyal, north of Mansehra in the Hazara district, during some eight sittings at the School of Oriental Studies in May, 1927.

Naqibullah, who was for several years a sailor, has settled down in London, where he keeps a boarding-house for Asiatic sailors. Being married to an Englishwoman he does not speak Pashto with his family; but his boarding-house is very much frequented by Pathan sailors, Peshawaris, Chhachhis, and Bangashes. The Peshawar and Chhachh dialects may have influenced his pronunciation slightly; but he is an intelligent.person, and appeared to be quite conscious of the difference between Peshawari forms and those belonging to his own dialect, even in cases where he would generally be inclined to employ the former ones. He reads and writes Hindostani, and to some extent English, but not Pashto.

(a) (1) The intensive compound is of commoner use than the simple verb. Practically every verb is made intensive by prefixing the root of the simple transitive or intransitive verb, or the causal form, to one of the following serviles :Len to take ; den to give ; dln to hurl, drop, pour, etc.; mrn to strike, kill, destroy ; jn to go ; parn to fall (gently or metaphorically), to be in a lying position ; uthn to rise, stand up ; baithn to sit . The prefixed root remains unchanged, but the suffixed servile is regularly conjugated. The prefixed root gives the general meaning, but the suffixed servile modifies or intensifies this meaning. The shade of meaning may often be expressed in English by an adverb or by the tone of voice, as baithn to sit, be seated , but baith-jn to sit down , thagn to cheat , thaglen to cheat out of .

(2) While the simple and intensive forms are not identical in meaning, the simple form can often, but not always, be substituted with no more than some loss of force. It is sometimes no easy matter to render the exact shade of meaning given by a particular intensive.

The Buddhist Birth-Stories have spread widely among the Mongols chiefly in two collections: the liger-n Dalai (The Ocean of Parables) and the Altan Gerel (Golden Gleam). The former, according to Professor Berthold Laufer, is an adaptation of the mDzans-blun, the Tibetan translation contained in the Kandzur of the Chinese S M M, which has been edited and translated into German by I. J. Schmidt under the title Dzanglun oder Der Weise und der Tor. In the preface of his work Schmidt points out that while the two versions, Tibetan and Mongolian, agree in the main, the tales in the Mongolian text have been amplified and paraphrased, often with supplementary matter not found in the Tibetan version, although in the latter are found in places short passages which the Mongolian version has not.

Professor J. Takakusu, on the other hand, is inclined to doubt the Tibetan origin of the Mongolian text on the ground that in the second chapter of the liger-n Dalai the phrase thousand princes is erroneously given as ten princes , and that such a mistake can only arise from a mis-reading of the Chinese character =f- as -J-.

With a magnanimity which is singularly rare these days Mr. H. Kevorkian, a curio-seller of New York, lent me a year ago his exceedingly precious and valuable MS. of an anthology of Persian poetry, giving me full permission to utlize or publish it, and I take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Kevorkian for his liberality. The MS. is entitled Mu'nisu'l-Ahrr fi Daq'iqi'l-Ash'r and contains copious extracts covering all branches of Persian poetry, from the elegy, the ode, and the double-rhyme poem to the quatrain and the unit, quoted from two hundred Persian poets whose names are found on the first folios of the MS. and are the reproduced lower down.

Of the five Temazheg poems which follow I have only attempted the translation of four. The fifth, though the vocabulary is comparatively simple, is so elliptical in construction that a translation is impossible. The same applies in a lesser degree to the others, the translation of which is therefore somewhat free.

Tuareg poets, besides being fond of topical references which are incomprehensible to strangers, are inclined rather to flatter the intelligence of their hearers than to err by being too explicit. Grammar and syntax are freely sacrificed to metre and effect.