There is found in the Rgveda and in later mantra literature, but becoming obsolete later, a root noun is- of frequent occurrence. This is normally interpreted by Sayana as meaning ‘ food ’ (annam), and in conformity with this the modern interpreters usually render the term by ‘ nourishment’ or the like. Though this interpretation seems adequately to suit some passages, a survey of the whole material shows that this is too narrow a sphere of meaning to apply to the word in all its contexts. The central meaning is ‘ thriving, flourishing, prospering, prosperity’. This may apply to that thriving which results from adequate nourishment, to that nourishment itself, or to the force inherent in it. But it may also refer, and more frequently does, to men's thriving in economic, material, or social position, to the possession of riches necessary to maintain this status, and to the riches themselves. It also applies to the fructifying influence of rain or river-water necessary for the maintenance of life.

The Chinese demonstrative fwu has recently been examined in an article by Dr. B. Schindler.1 The use of as a final particle is, however, discussed only in connexion with the combination and Schindler does not commit himself to a definite decision as to its function. That the final f￡ deserves a detailed investigation is sufficiently shown by a glance at the definitions given by standard Western authorities:

The classification hua-pen. covers a small but important part of the A vast corpus of Chinese fiction. The term is sometimes translated ‘promptbooks ‘,and was applied first to the written texts used by the market-place story-tellers of the Sung period, and later to new versions, fashioned by writers, of the tales these men had told. The stories of the Ching pen t'ung su hsiao shuo may fairly be described as hua-pen in this second sense.1

THE following table shows: in columns 1 and 2 two separate series of personal affixes; in column 3 the present tense of the verb ‘to be’; in column 4 the personal inflexions of the present tenses of all other verbs; and in column 5 the personal pronouns in their separable forms.

WHEN the geographical term ‘Bengal’ is used in any study of the old or medieval period of the literary history of the area, it must be borne in mind that it has so far been impossible to delineate its then boundaries with precision. Such early cartographical evidence2 as there is, suggests that it is improbable that the topography of Bengal resembled very closely that which is now familiar in our modern maps. The great rivers, which are the most distinctive characteristic of the formation of this part of India, are known to have made considerable changes in their courses; and the constant depositing of silt in the delta districts has almost certainly increased the area of its land surface during the centuries.

Since Professor Francesco Gabrieli's announcement to the twenty-third International Congress of Orientalists at Cambridge (August, 1954) has raised the hope that preparations for a new and complete edition of Idrisi's Geography will soon begin, I shall not withhold any longer the small additions which I have to make to my note in BSOAS, XIII/4, 1951, p. 1045. Wadi snt. Idrisi describes it, in his chapter on the British Isles, as the nearest place to England on the Continent and belonging to. Ifrands. It occurs several times also in his chapter on Francia, Normandy, Flanders, etc., where the main passage1 shows it as ‘a very small town on the sea shore from which one sails over to England 25 miles away’. It is now commonly accepted that Wadi snt denotes Wissant, a former port not far from Cape Gris Nez in the direction of Calais, most frequented for the crossing of the channel until the 14th century.2 Dr. Beeston's explanation of the Arabic form of Wissant, ‘with the first part of the name rationalized into the Arabic wadi’ (BSOAS, XIII/2, 1950, p. 273), is all too brief.

The purpose of this article is to re-examine some of the ways in which tone has been stated in certain of the spoken Tibetan dialects, and to apply to the Nominal Phrase in one of them, Lhasa Tibetan (LT), the suggestion that such statements can be more profitably associated not with the syllable, as hitherto, but with the word.

The Girnar Inscription of Skanda Gupta,1 read in conjunction with the Bhitari Inscription of the same king,2 shows that Skanda Gupta came to the throne while the Gupta Empire was in great difficulties as a result of the invasion of the Hunas and the mysterious Pusyamitras. On pacifying the country Skanda gave much thought to the choice of governors for the outlying provinces, and decided to appoint one Parnadatta as governor of Surastra.

FROM the Western point of view the process by which the Goddess gradually established herself in the official Hindu Pantheon is of great interest. As it took place in historical times and in a culture which has known no violent breaks or radical changes of religion, it gives us a fairly continuous series of glimpses which illustrate the ways and means by which this prominence was reached. On the one hand we find accounts of the violent means—wars and massacres—employed by Devi in order to achieve recognition, as for instance in the Bengali folk-epics of Candi and Manasa-Devi. On the other hand, we find a series of philosophical-metaphysical speculations which increasingly stress the importance of the female principle in the workings of the Universe, and finally establish the Goddess in the very centre of things. Like her Lord Siva, Devi has many aspects, but—at least in the official and orthodox view—all these often conflicting aspects converge in the concept ‘The Goddess’, whatever their individual autonomy may have been or still is among the village worshippers. There is no doubt that, however young both Siva and the Goddess may be in official religion, they can claim a non-canonized existence prior perhaps to that of Brahma himself.

‘Thus decreed and ordained T’lb lord of pastures, and S‘Dm and YHM’L of Suhaim, for their tribe the people of the town BRN and T‘Rm and ’SRm and DR and all territory belonging to the town BRN: that they (namely the people of BRN, etc.) shall cause this grazing-ground to be delimited and prohibited to every herdsman belonging to the pasture areas of the hill-town dDB‘NN, so that the latter may not drive any flocks on to it as (it is) defined by the boundary-cairns of this grazing-ground along all its boundaries; by virtue of the grant of grazing-rights made to them (namely the people of BRN, etc.) by their lords the Banu Suhaim.’

IN Tsaur Jyr's Collected Works (Tsaur Jyi Chyuampyng)1 we find under the title Chieh Baurminq two stanzas, together with a few fragments, believed to be parts of the poem, gleaned from commentaries to works other than Tsaur Jyr's and from the encyclopaedia Beeitarng-Shuchau.2 The title of this poem (literally: ‘I am ill-fated’) suggests the story of an ill-fated lady, deserted by her husband or lover, reduced to dire poverty and therefore constantly in tears, as we find her commonly depicted in Chinese poetry. The I contents of the poem, however, do not tally with this expectation. This fact has been ignored by the majority of scholars who commented on the poem, but two commentators3 have touched on it while discussing the significance of the poem as a whole.

In his exhaustive treatment of the language of the Vasudevahindi by Sanghadasaganin (ed. Caturvijaya and Punyavijaya, Bhavanagar, 1930) in the eighth volume of this Bulletin (BSOS, VIII, 1935–7, pp. 319 ff.) Alsdorf mentions as one of the most interesting and remarkable archaic forms in this text an ablative sg. m. n. ending in am, which he tries to explain as a normal development of the common abl. in -at. The passages in which he noted this strange ablative ending are: tao nissaranto dukkhamaranam (Skt. tato nirasarisyad dichkha-maranat) ‘then he would have escaped a miserable death’ (6, 13); pawayakandaram viniggaya (Skt. parvatahmdarad vinirgatau) ‘both of them came out of the cave of the mountain’ (146, 29); cukka si ayaram (Skt. cyutasy acarat) ‘you have fallen from the acara’ (227, 24).

IN October 1948, the Governor of Hong Kong appointed a committee to consider the position of Chinese law and custom in that colony. The report of this committee, which was published in February 1953,1 will have drawn attention to the fact that the old family law of China, quite apart from the limited recognition given to it by the courts, continues to exercise considerable influence on the lives of millions of Chinese, not only in Hong Kong, but in the other British territories of South-East Asia. In China itself, as regards matters of the family, the Civil Code of the former National Government had never, over most of the country and for the mass of the people, any very eifectual force, and the customary law continued to exist in almost undiminished vigour until the establishment of the People's Government in 1949.2 Since then the situation has changed completely. New laws regarding marriage and property are effectively enforced, and have everywhere replaced the old customs and, what is still more important, an extremely efficient system of mass-education in the principles of Communism will before long have expelled from people's minds those beliefs on which the old Chinese law was based. From now on, apart from Formosa, it is only in Hong Kong and among the communities of overseas Chinese throughout South-East Asia that Chinese customary family law will continue to exist, but even with such limitations it is still of sufficient importance to make its study of practical significance.

In his article in BSOAS, xv, 1953, pp. 588–597, Professor E. G. Pulleyblank has made a number of statements which, in my opinion, need explanation and correction. This is not the place to discuss wider problems of Chinese gentry society in detail; this will be done on another occasion. I limit my notes, therefore, to a few interesting points.

The domain of h- and q- which are prosodic features is stated in this paper to be the radical and its immediate extensions and affixes: for example, *h(edide), eating, is phonetically elile, and *q(edade), sleeping, is phonetically date. But as in other Akan languages, especially Twi, h- and q- may prove in Nzema also to be a feature of larger pieces.

THE paradigms that may be set up for the nominals in Tigrinya1 in terms of the category of number (established on syntactical and further morphological grounds) consist of two members, conveniently termed ‘singular’ and ‘plural’. The morphological analysis for the forms placed in this grammatical relationship may, for some of them, be given in terms of ‘external flection’ or ‘sumxation’, but for many forms, including those in commonest use, the differences of syllabic pattern, and other differences throughout the entire forms, justify the use of the traditional term ‘broken plural’. It is the purpose of this paper to make a phonological analysis to handle the morphological relation between the broken plurals and the singular forms with which they are grammatically paired.