In the Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, London, at pp. 107 to 117 of III, 1, are to be found some criticisms by Messrs. Krishna Pishāroḍi and Rama Pishāroḍi on my views of Bhāsa and his authorship of Svapna-Vāsavadatta and the connected dramas published in the Trivandrum Sanskrit Series. Their arguments are summarized hereunder with replies thereto:—

I. “Every open-minded critic must perforce admit that Pratimā-nāṭaka must come after Kālidāsa, Chārudatta after Śūdraka, and Avimāraka after Daṇḍin.”

In the course of a visit to Urfa in south-eastern Turkey in 1961 I was able to re-examine and to photograph the short inscription at the bottom centre of the Tripod mosaic which I had discovered in 1956. The photographs are incorporated in the colour transcription of this mosaic by Mrs. Seton Lloyd, published with my article ‘The Sabian mysteries’, in E. Bacon (ed.), Vanished civilizations, 1963, 204. The revised text of this inscription, however, has not yet received detailed analysis; I venture to return to it here because it contains features that may be of interest to students of Semitic philology and religion.

The controversy as regards the genuineness of the allegedly seventeenth-century Ethiopian philosophers Zär'a Ya‘qob an Waldä Haywät and their two opuscula, known as hatäta ‘examination, inquiry’, has for close on a century generated scholarly discussion. In the footsteps of C. Conti Rossini (RAL, vm, 1899, 43 and RAL, xxix, 1920, 213—23) Mittwoch has adduced weighty arguments against the authenticity of the two tracts, and in his Amharische Version der Soirées de Carthage (Berlinand Leipzig, 1934) he has cited the relevant literature. I do not propose, in the present context, to traverse the same ground once again. The Ga‘az texts of the two hatäta were edited and translated by E. Littmann (CSCO, Scriptores Aethiopici, vols. 1 and 2, Leipzig 1904) and rendered from Ga‘sz into Amharic by Zämänfäs Qaddus Abraha (Asmara, 1955).

In the 1920s Eugen Mittwoch's pupil, Dr. Hans Schlobies,2 wrote to Alaqa Dästa,3 who was considered a notable student of Ethiopic literature, to enquire about indigenous knowledge of those two works. Part of the learned Aläqa's reply was published by Mittwoch in the Soirées de Carthage, 3–4, but Mittwoch's Ethiopian Nachlass (now in my possession) contains the original of Alaqa Dästa's letter which I propose to set out here in its entirety:

To the honoured Dr. Yohannes Schlobies. While I say ‘let my respectful greetings be to you and your entire family’, I present the compliments appropriate to your distinction. Honoured Sir, so far from being-as you wrote to me-' famous

Ever since the West began to take an interest in the music of India, the great affinity of the Indian system with that of Greece has been one of the first characteristics to attract notice. As early as 1782 Sir William Jones remarked on it at length in what is perhaps the first detailed article on the subject written in any European language, entitled ‘On the musical modes of the Hindus’. Originally this was published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, but subsequently it was incorporated in a delightful collection published by Sourendro Mohun Tagore called Hindu music from various authors.

One major problem which comes to the fore in comparing Omotic languages is the wide diversity seen in the inflectional morphology of the verb. To the linguist coming from Ethiopian Semitic or East Cushitic the variety encountered from language to language in Omotic is bewildering. The problem may be illustrated by comparing paradigms of three languages of the Ometo cluster—a group which on the basis of lexicostatistic calculations is considered to be fairly close-knit. Two of the languages, Zayse and Koyra, have been classified (together with Haruro, Ganjule, Harro and Zargula) as East Ometo, a label which is intended to convey a genetic as well as a geographical affiliation. The third language is Gofa, which, as a member of the dialect cluster which includes Wolaitta, Kullo, Konta, Gemu, Zala, Malo, Oyda, etc., is classified as Central Ometo. The paradigms compared are: (i) the perfect (or past) declarative, (ii) the perfect (or past) interrogative, (iii) the imperfect (or present) declarative, (iv) the imperfect (or present) interrogative. The verb employed in the illustration is wod'-‘kill’.

Recent surveys of historical writing on the modern history of the Nilotic Sudan show the rather late appearence of critical historical studies which draw on contemporary Arabic source materials. Only in the last decade or so has the abundant contemporary Mahdist documentation been decribed, partly classified, and utilized by scholars. So far, few of these documents have been reproduced and, although some attempts to prepare critical editions of texts have been made, they remain unpublished.

It has been stated many times that the principal idea in the repetition of words is that of emphasis or intensity. My observation has led me to conclude that this is incorrect, and that the true sense in almost every case is one of the following:—

distribution (over time, space, or a number of objects), pleasantness, no meaning at all.

In order to make the inquiry practical, it is better to confine it to cases of words repeated without alteration. If anyone will in the course of his reading take 1,000 consecutive instances of repetition, he will find that (i) short words are repeated far oftener than long,(ii) repetition of adjj. or advv. with a pleasant meaning is much commoner than of those with a nasty meaning, and when the meaning may be either good or bad, the good is intended,(iii) nearly every instance comes under either distribution or pleasantness.

Ibrāhīm b. Ḥasan al-Kurānī al-Shahrazūrī al-Shahrānī belonged to the Shāfi‘ī madhhab and was a ṣūfī in the Naqshabandī order. Muḥammad Khalīl al-Murādī in his Silk al-Durarft a‘yān al-Qarn al-thānī ‘ashar (Bulaq 1301/1883, I, 5 f.), states that he was born in 1025/1616 and died in 1101/1697 in Medina. He studied under the best scholars of his day in Damascus, Cairo, and Medina where he finally settled down. His fame spread and pupils came to him from distant lands to attend his lectures in the prophet's mosque. He was the author of more than 100 books and treatises. The Garrett Collection of the Library of Princeton University contains manuscripts of several of them, one being an autograph. The names of many of these will be found in the Silk loc. cit., Brockelmann, GAL, G. n, 505 and S. II, 520, and Ismā‘īl Pasha al- Baghdādī's Dhayl to Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Istanbul, 1951, I, 35 f.

Among the manuscripts in the National Library in Bangkok are a number of sმmut dam ‘blank books’ written in yellow orpiment on blackened paper. Many of these are in Thai, but a few, catalogued under the number XVII 37 are in two scripts that show very close affinities with South Indian Grantha.

The Grand Council (Chün-chi ch'u ) of the Ch'ing dynasty was an efficient, autocratic institution. It operated under direct imperial supervision, outside the regular administrative channels, performing its function in swift and confidential ways. Its operations enabled the Ch'ing rulers to expand their powers, strengthen their control and, most important, perpetuate their autocratic rules. Because of its versatile performance, the Grand Council enjoyed the monarch's trust, and a long existance.

During a survey of the Djebel Khaled area, in conjunction with the excavation of the nearby Bronze Age site of El Qitar, Professor Graeme Clarke discovered two Syriac inscriptions on the wall of a small, vaulted tomb- chamber. Tracings were made and these, together with photographs of both the inscriptions and the sepulchre, were sent to me so that I might translate their contents and offer accompanying comments. In the meantime, Professor Clarke has published his valuable description of the Djebel Khaled area and its necropolis, including the tomb-chamber.1 Furthermore, Professor Takamitsu Muraoka has offered a tentative reading of the two Syriac inscriptions.2