Michael Madhusudan Datta (1824–73) wrote Meghanādbadhkāvya‘ The death of Meghanād’, a nine-canto epic, in 1861. Being a Rāma story, the poem naturally owes much of its substance to the Rāmāyaṇa tradition, which is represented in Sanskrit by Vālmīki's mahākāvya and in Bengali by Krittibās's work; but it differs from that tradition, widely and in a most original way, in the characterization of the persons, the selection and presentation of the episodes, and above all in sentiment and sympathy. This divergence was the result of deliberate choice. ‘I despise Ram and his rabble (i.e. the monkeys); but the idea of Ravan elevates and kindles my imagination’ Datta wrote to R. N. Basu. In other letters he gave further indications of his thinking about the approach to his subject. ‘I mean to give free scope to my Inventing powers and to borrow as little as I can from Vahniki’; and,' If the father of our poetry (i.e. Vāhmīki) had given Ram human companions I could have made a regular Iliad of the death of Meghanad.

Photographs of unpublished Parthian and Sogdian manuscripts were taken recently in Berlin by Captain J. A. Dabbs, of the University of Austin, Texas, and sent by him to Professor Henning, who kindly allowed me to look through the Parthian material at once. One fragment, M 741, proved to be of considerable interest. It contains portions of two hymns, which are alphabetic and may therefore be presumed to be original work in Parthian. The device of beginning every verse with a letter of the alphabet limits each hymn to some twenty-four verses; but in this case the two hymns are connected in their subject-matter and possibly formed part of a sequence. Several hymn-cycles have been identified in Parthian and Middle Persian, but the alphabetic device is not used in any of them. The hymns in M 741 have as their subject two myths of the creation, following chronologically one upon the other. The narrative would be difficult to follow, however, without some previous knowledge of the mythology, for the handling is poetic and allusive. Words and phrases occur which can be found in other similar texts, having been taken presumably from the prose scriptures which were the authority for all later renderings of the Manichsean myths. The author could assume a general familiarity with these scriptures, and so allow himself some freedom in his retelling of the stories.

The first hymn, which contains a new Parthian name for a divinity, has for its subject the seduction of the Archontes and the descent of active evil to the earth.

The following songs are some of those collected by me in Mombasa during the autumn of 1969. I am deeply grateful to the School of Oriental and African Studies for giving me this unique opportunity to study this rich field of Swahili traditional poetry.

In the history of Indian art some areas are in very much better order than others. For those whose interests are concentrated in the Mughal period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), the study of the history of painting has been vastly advanced in the last 20 or 30 years. Every year increases the great number of paintings known to exist in public or private collections, or passing through the sale-rooms and the stocks of dealers in three continents, and almost every year there are significant discoveries and publications. In the field of Mughal architecture, perhaps, the same rapid progress is not visible. Some attractive coffee-table books figuring it have recently been published but there is a disappointing lack of analytical examination.

For some time past the writer has been endeavouring to collect material for the writing of an Economic History of Persia from the earliest times to the present. He has found himself greatly handicapped by the lack of accurate information respecting the earlier epochs of Persian history, and his researches in this direction are by no means complete.

Bengali has some unusual negation patterns which have not yet been examined from a syntactic point of view. There are two negative verbs nei and noy, and a tensed negative ni, a past tense version of na. This article challenges some traditional misconceptions of these structures, it looks at the syntactic environments of each of these negators in the context of actual language use, examines the areas of overlap between them, and arrives at a new understanding of these patterns.

In the first part of this study ‘framing’ bāj have been considered in connexion with religious rituals celebrated in the fire-temples, and with acts for achieving or maintaining ritual purity, mostly by pāw-mahal priests. Here it is proposed to consider such bāj as are needed and used in daily life.

A passage of the tale of Husrav and the Page (Pahl. Texts, pp. 29-30, in Unvala's edition, § 30) may form the starting-point for a discussion of kavāt. It has not so far been fully translated.