It is now generally admitted that a great deal of the ancient and medieval myth and legend enshrined in the Sanskrit epics and Purānas is of non-Aryan origin, and that even in Vedic mythology certain pre-Aryan elements are present. Puranic myths of the godsand legends of kings, heroes, and sages, in the form in which we find them in the Sanskrit works, represent undoubtedly a considerable amount of modification from their original forms, whether Aryan or non-Aryan: witness, e.g., the treatment of what would appear to bea genuine Aryan (? Indo-European) saga-that of Purūravas and Urvaśī, as we find it in the Rigveda and the Śatapatha Brāhmana, in the Visnu Purāna and in the subsequent Puranas.

Mr. Burrow's interpretation (supra, Bulletin, p. 514) of the word hinajhasya in No. 661 of Kharoṣṭhī Inscriptions … transcribed and edited by A. M. Boyer, E. J. Rapson and É. Senart involves a number of conjectural or improbable elements.

Several works dealing with the cultural history of Islam in India assert that the province of Sind became a centre of Islamic learning shortly after its conquest by Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim al-Thaqafī at the beginning of the eighth century a.d.

In 1983 Monika Höhlig published a pamphlet (reprinted in 1990) setting out her ideas for producing a romanized script for (North-West Caucasian) Circassian. Since the bulk of the Circassian community lives not in the Caucasus but in Turkey (or elsewhere in the Near East), her basic tenet was that, where necessary, the roman characters should have the same values that obtain for the purpose of representing Turkish—so that, for example, the letter c would represent the voiced palato-alveolar affricate []. Two further principles which guided the creation of this script were: (a) that any attempt to provide one totally independent character for each phoneme of the language would lead to an unwieldy number of new letter-shapes, and (b) that no diacritic should be employed that is not available on a Turkish typewriter.

In his Dictionary of Khotan Saka (p. 377), Bailey has the following entry: ‘vara- “door?”’ with the following comment: ‘possibly vara- “door” from var- “to close, shut”; or a dialectal v- < dv- would permit connexion with dvar-, Av dvar∂m, dvar∂ “gate” (…) Note Tumshuq Saka vitana “a second time” with vi- < dvi-.' Bailey's suggestion that this vara- means door, is certainly correct. The Passage in question (KT, III, 124) is quoted below.

Among the manuscripts of the William Marsden Collection, to which Sir E. Denison Ross has called the attention of scholars, by reproducing the entries of William Marsden (see the Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, Vol. II, Pt. III, “The Manuscripts collected by William Marsden”), there are five with titles indicating their language as “Canari”, “Canarim”, or “Canarin” (p. 537), one as “Bramana Canarim” (p. 537), one as “Hindustani”, and two as “Mahratta” (p. 535).

The middle of the 14th century offers a convenient dividing-line in the study of Islamic metal work. Few distinguished works were produced after that date and practically no new motifs were added to the artists' repertoire. In a passage of his Topography of Cairo, Maqrizi exposes the decadence of inlaid metal work in the latter half of the 14th century and explains some of the reasons which led to it. In view of the importance of this contemporary account, I am translating it in full in an appendix to this paper (pp. 228–31).

The Mahasin al-majalis of Ibn al-'Arif (†536/1141) is a Sufi treatise of minor dimensions and inconsiderable importance, one of a multitude of such summaries that bridge the gap between the classical works of Kalabadhi, Qushairi, and Makki, and the phenomenal productivity of Ibn al-'Arabi. For all that, the essay (for it is little more) is not without interest; it is allusive and elliptical in style, thus affording material for commentators; and the author begins his discourse proper by quoting, though not by name, the Mawdqif of Niffari; as Ibn al-'Arabi afterwards used Ibn al-'Arif quite freely and approvingly, it is always possible that he got to know and take an interest in Niffari through this intermediary.

Yang Ju is one of the Chinese philosophers of whom we know least. In the fourth century B. C. his doctrines and those of Mohtzyy were the two most successful rivals of Confucianism.1 In the literature of the next century his school is rarely mentioned, perhaps because it had been absorbed into Taoism.2 The most familiar summary of his teaching is that of Mencius: