The inscription here reproduced appears on the covering leaf of a gilt palm-leaf manuscript, in. by in., in the possession of the Java Head Bookshop, Great Eussell Street, the proprietors of which have kindly agreed to its publication.

In the whole history of religious controversy in China there never was a period when the Chinese phrase I kuo san hung; wu shui shih ts'ung1: “One state, three leaders; whom should I follow ?” was more applicable than that which succeeded the introduction of Buddhism in the first century of our era. To understand the conditions of the period in question it is necessary to review briefly the situation before Buddhism arrived. Europeans have long been familiar with the early religion of China as described in the classics; but accepted interpretations are being revised in the light of modern archæological and ethnological research.

There is a saying in India that language changes every twelve kos. This saying will still hold good if we say language changes every kos, although the amount of change in the latter case will be almost impossible to detect. In spite of this saying, which is correct at bottom, we are apt to believe that our next-door neighbours (if they are not recent strangers) speak exactly the same language as we do. Similarly we also believe that we speak exactly the same language as our parents spoke or our children will speak. But this our belief is not true, for, as a matter of fact, language changes gradually and almost imperceptibly both in time and space. The language of one's neighbours is slightly different from one's own, but when the distance grows and two persons separated by twenty or thirty miles talk together, they are certain to pick up some peculiarities in each other's speech. In the like manner the speech of the children differs from that of the parents, and in the course of a few generations this difference becomes appreciable.

In one of the contributions to the volume of Indian Studies presented to Professor Rapson (BSOS., vi, 2, pp. 285 ff.), Dr. L. D. Barnett criticizes the explanation of the term Pramnai in Strabo's Geogr., xv, 1, 70 (C. 719), given by Mr. E. R. Bevan (CHI., i, 421). Instead of the identification of the Pramnai with the prāmānikas Dr. Barnett proposes to see in the word a Sanskrit prājña. I must confess not to be convinced by the explanation of Dr. Barnett, neither from the point of view of an antagonism between brāhmanas and sectaries, who, “opposed to Aupanisada Brahmans, and to Brahmans generally”, “endeavoured by means of a carefully disciplined and studiously harmless life to attain to prajñā, practical cleverness, skill in grasping the principles of their crude creed, and in adjusting their conduct to its Procrustean demands”; nor from the philological point of view.

1. , kürzere Fassung in 2 Kapiteln (). Im Shangliaier Tripitaka (Ausgabe des -Klosters in Shanghai, vollendet 1913. Abkürzung: S.T.) und im Tōkyō'er Tripitaka (vollendet 1885. Abkürzung: Tōk.T.) findet sich das Sūtra in Abteilung 24 (), Heft 8, fol. 43 recto-52 verso. Im von Takakusu und Watanabe herausgegebenen japanischen Tripitaka (Taishō- Ausgabe, 1924 ff. Abkürzung: T.T.) unter No. 1670 A im 32. Band, Seite 694a-703c. Kyōto'er Tripitaka, xxvi, 9, 769 recto-777 recto.

Of the 7, 000 manuscripts (including fragments) which were taken by Sir Aurel Stein, almost at random, from the great hoard in Tunhuang, some 380 bear dates, ranging from A.D. 406 to 995. Six are of the fifth century, and forty-four of the sixth. A few of the undated MSS. may be even earlier than 406, while it is highly probable that others are later than 995, seeing that the date 1035 is found in the similar collection at Paris. But in any case the period covered does not greatly exceed 600 years.

The manuscript numbered S. 788 in the Stein Collection at the British Museum is a fragment, only about a foot square, containing on one side of the paper part of two ballads descriptive of fighting in the frontier regions, the second of which is entitled “the Ballad of Yen,”. Both the writing and the paper point to a date in the late ninth or beginning of the tenth century.

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.

Pour les grammairiens tibétains, da drag (= faux d) est le nom d'un suffixe qui s'ajoute aux finales n, r, l.

La loi d'euphonie du da drag exige au debut de la syllabe suivante: t, Č, p.

On peut distinguer deux états du da drag:—

(1) le d est écrit.

(2) le d n'est pas écrit, mais la syllabe qui suit n, r, l, présente la forme qu'elle aurait si le da drag était écrit.

Vaturanga itself is the name given to a small district at the extreme north-west end of the island of Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands; but, according to Bishop J. M. Steward, who worked as a missionary on that end of the island, the language spoken along a very considerable portion of the north-west coast, as well as of the north-east coast, of the island is very closely allied to the language of Vaturanga. In addition, through the work of the Melanesian Mission, the language of Vaturanga has become the “ecclesiastical” language in the schools and churches of the mission throughout the portion of the island indicated.

It is well known that the verb yen to “say” has some very peculiar usages in early Chinese. In about forty instances in the Book of Odes it obviously has not its normal meaning “to say” (or “what is said”, i.e. words). For example (Legge's edition, p. 62), does not mean “The duke says he bestows a goblet”, but simply “The duke bestows a goblet”.

he originating cause of this article lies in an attempt to overcome the difficulties encountered by students when learning Swahili, especially of those, who, having spent a few years in East Africa, are yet unable to attain a fair standard of proficiency.

The difficulties met with by one student, and the mistakes he falls into, appear to be common to many. ‘This suggests that all view Swahili from the same standpoint, and this in turn leads one to think that the study of Swahili needs to be represented from an entirely new angle. This article, therefore, is an attempt to present that new view-point, in subject matter representative and suggestive rather than exhaustive.

The Southern Sudan may be regarded a, s one of the most interesting of African fields for the comparative linguist and anthropologist, for it is here that the Eastern “ Sudanic ” and the Western “ Hamitic ” races meet, and it is here also that one finds that peculiar wedge of people who, for want of a better term, are called “ Nilotes ”.

After the fall of the Han dynasty in A.D. 220, owing to the weakness and tyranny of its last representatives, China was divided by a long internal struggle into three parts. The Later Hans held Shu (Ssǔ-ch'uan), the remainder of the south became the kingdom of Wu, and the north, with its capital at Ho-nan Fu, or Lo-yang, was known as Wei.

In 1925 P. Pelliot drew a very interesting comparison between the Mongol and the Tungus names for the four cardinal points. This comparison was followed by S. M. ShirokogorofFs detailed study of the Northern Tungus terms of orientation, to which W. Kotwicz added a short note on the Mongol terms. Later in 1928 the latter scholar touched on the same subject in nis article entitled “Sur les modes d'orientation en Asie Centrale”, in which the Turkish names for the four cardinal points are discussed. These noteworthy studies show clearly how in the above-mentioned languages the four cardinal points are expressed by various words signifying “right” and “left” and “front” and “back”, as well as “upward” and “downward”.

These words were collected at Bagamoyo and Tanga and on trips between Zanzibar and the mainland. Most of them do not occur in any of the standard dictionaries, that is, in Krapf, Steere. and Madan. In cases where a word has a specialized meaning or a different meaning from that given by the authority, the fact has been noted.

In Semitic languages a root containing n often agrees in meaning, wholly or partially, with some weak root. Brockelmann (Grundriss, i, 536) suggests that the Syriac nhp “barefooted”, corresponding to the Arabic hfy, shows that Aramaic once possessed a reflexive in n. This explanation will not serve when n comes at the end of the root.

In 1802 Kino, a middle-aged Japanese peasant woman in a remote country place, declared that God, having many times tried unsuccessfully to manifest himself in saints and prophets, had “this time” (kono tabi) managed at last to find in her a vehicle for the delivery of his full and final message. From 1802 till 1826 (the year of her death God, through his intermediary Kompira, who plays the part that the archangel Gabriel plays in the Koran), inspired this illiterate peasant with a continuous flow of communications, which from 1811 onwards were taken down in writing and are preserved in some 300 rolls. On the strength of this revelation she founded a sect that despite prosecution in the nineteenth century to-day numbers about 40,000 followers, and which, though its ways of life owe something to Buddhist monasticism, can only be described as a separate religion.