The distinction made between the ākhyāyikā and the kathā by the writers on Sanskrit Poetics is well known. We propose in this paper to consider how far the prescriptions of the rhetoricians apply to the few existing specimens of the ākhyāyikā and the kathā by Subandhu and Bāṇa-bhaṭṭa, and what light, if any, they throw on the development of these species of prose composition in Classical Sanskrit.

It has hitherto been assumed that the Tone system of the Yoruba language comprised four tones, viz.—a high tone, a middle tone, a low tone, and a so-called compound tone. An examination of the phonetic structure of the language has led to the conclusion that there are other significant tónes which must be understood. The purpose of this article is to explain the Tone system of the language as viewed in the light of recent investigations. The observations and transcriptions are based upon the pronunciation of Mr. A. Baptist, a native Yoruba, to whom I am considerably indebted for his patience and his zealous interest in the subject.

The farce styled Matta-vilāsa-prahasana, to which I have previously adverted in these columns (I, iii, p. 35 ff.), seems to have formerly enjoyed a considerable vogue in Southern India, owing perhaps as much to its genuine merits as to its royal authorship. The scene in it where the Buddhist friar recites the Sikkhāpadas is echoed in another play, the Bhagavad-ajjukīya; a reference to it has been pointed out in my paper on the Kalyāna-sāugandhika (above, III, i, p. 35); and there exists an anonymous commentary upon it (Brit. Mus. Or. 9272).

Khajuri, in Sanskrit Kharjūrikā, is the name of (inter alia) a small village about 2 miles to the west of Guḍā (Gooda), and some 44 miles to the west of Indargaṛh, in Rajputana. Among its ruins is the inscription which I now edit from an estampage recently sent to me by Pandit Gopāl Lāl Vyās, the learned and energetic Curator of the Darbar Archæological Museum at Jhalrapatan, who has also very kindly supplied me with some notes on the topography.

The following is a translation of a little work bearing the full title of: Relation / de la / Mission / des Peres de la / Compagnie / de Iesus/. Establie dans le Royaume de Perse / par le R. P. Alexandre / de Rhodes. Dressée et mise au iour par un Pere / de la mesme Compagnie. A Paris, chez Iean Henault, Libraire-Iure, / ruë Saint Iacques, à l'Ange Gardien & / Saint Raphaël. M. DC. LIX. Avec privilege du Roy.

Mr. k. rama pisharoti, m.a., has very kindly reported to me the readings of the MSS. of the Kalyāṇasāugandhikam in the library of the Sanskrit College at Trippoonithura, and I gratefully present the most important of them as a supplement to my provisional edition of that play in this Bulletin, Vol. IV, p. 33 ff.

In 1910 I published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, August number, pp. 437–61, under the title of “The Marsden MSS. in the British Museum”, some notes by W. Rees Philipps and H. Beveridge on some remarkable treasures once in the Jesuit Archives of Goa and now in the British Museum. These MSS., comprising ten volumes (Add. MSS. 9852–61), contain original letters by the Jesuit Missionaries in India and the farther East, addressed mostly to the Provincial of Goa, before the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1757 by the Marquess de Pombal. Some of the documents refer, however, to Cochin and Southern India, these portions of the mission field having belonged to Goa till the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Ecce iterum Crispinus! The readers of this Bulletin are doubtless as weary of the dis crambe repetita of the Bhāsa-controversy as I am, and I must crave their indulgence for returning to it in reply to Professor Keith's remarks in Vol. III, p. 295 ff.

The early literature of the Hindi group of languages, that is the literature written in Avadhī, Bihārī, Rājputānī, and Hindi proper, was largely poetical, and prose was rare. In the beginning of the nineteenth century Lallū Jī Lāi and Sadal Miśr entered Dr. Gilchrist's service and at his suggestion translated some early works into modern vernaculars. The works selected were chiefly Sanskrit, and they were translated into Braj or Khaṛī Bolī. Lallū Jī is the better known of the two, but he was not a pioneer, nor was his example followed. For nearly fifty years after he wrote, nothing of real merit was produced in Khaṛī. The practical founder of modern Hindi prose, the man who gave it its impetus and started it on its career of prosperity, was Hariś Chandar. A somewhat exaggerated emphasis has been placed on Lallū's and Sadal Miśr's translations, and this has resulted in a lack of perspective. Lallū has been acclaimed as the “Father of Hindi prose”. The title is inaccurate, and has been made the subject of protest. One Hindi writer, in complaining of his being called the “Creator of Khaṛī Bolī”, maintains that such an idea is entirely erroneous, and remarks that before his books were brought out Sadā Sukh Lāi and Inẖā Allāh were writing in straightforward Hindi. He adds, in an amusing aside, that they wrote on their own initiative and not at the behest of another. He also criticizes Lallu's style as being too much tainted with Braj idioms and poetical turns of expression. Sadal Miśr he regards as Lallu's superior.

There is an old and widespread opinion that India is the “Country without a History”. And this idea is one of the reasons of its having become wrapped in that veil of mystic twilight in which the Romantic Period of the last century saw it, given up only to religious and philosophical speculation. Perhaps this veil has not yet fallen from the whole of its antiquity. It is true research has enabled us to attain some knowledge of the history of many dynasties, wars and social revolutions, religious struggles and literary feuds; nevertheless, all this seems to be merely a ripple on the surface, a waving of billows above the calm depth of a population that never changes its manner of life. Again and again we are told that much of the oldest tradition has survived in India up to the present day. And this is certainly true, for there is no land so fitted to serve as a place of refuge for past forms of civilization and culture as this country is, great as a small continent, with all its contrasts of plains, deserts, and sultry jungle, of mild hill climate and exuberant tropical vegetation. But this statement evades the essential facts. In every country, side by side with the latest forms of civilization, its oldest traditions are still alive, and though they may be of interest to the folklorist, it is not the task of the historian to trace cultural developments in their atavist remains, but in the beginnings and the culminating points of their evolution; and these have always been supported by the leading classes, and the history of them has been more or less that of the reigning civilization of their time.

This is an attempt, made so far as I know for the first time, to give a Hindi translation of all the more ordinary phonetic terms in use at present. Doubtless the list could have been enlarged by the inclusion of rarer words, but such a course might have lessened its utility. The phonetic words or phrases have been taken for the most part from a work by Professor Jones. They number about 180. A few of the Hindi equivalents will be recognized as common in works on grammar. They do not, however, carry one far. For the rest I have had to put down the words which seemed to me best to express the required idea. Pioneer work of this description is always capable of improvement. It should be undertaken not by an individual but by a learned committee.

It is well known that the oldest existing complete literary work of a Mussulman Turk, the Qudatqu Bilik or Qutadghu Bilik, was composed in 462 H. (a.d. 1069–70) by Yūsuf Khāṣṣ Ḥājib, a native from Bālāsāghūn, on the River Chu, for a Khān residing in Kāshghar who is called “Mashriq Maliki Tabghach Khani Malik Bughra Khan” (King of the East, Khan of China, the King Bughra Khan), “Tabghach Qara Bughra Khanlar Khani” (the Chinese Qara Bughra, the Khan of Khans), “Tabghach Ulugh Bughra Khan” (the Chinese, the great Bughra Khan), even more simply “Ordukent Khani Beg” (the Khan of the court-town, that is Kashghar, the prince). The statements concerning the chronology of the Kashghar kings of the eleventh century are very vague and scanty, and are not supplied by numismatic evidence; therefore it is not an easy task to ascertain who was the king mentioned by Yūsuf. There can be no doubt that he belonged to the dynasty of the Ilek Khāns. The chief authority on the history of that dynasty has been for all Muhammedan and European scholars the great work of Ibn al-Athīr, especially the statements given under the year 408 H. We are told by Ibn al-Athīr that Arslān Khān, son of Qādir Khān Yūsuf, King of Kāshghar, Khotan, and Bālāsāghūn, was deposed by his brother Bughra Khān and taken prisoner; Bughrā Khān was some time later poisoned by his wife, who put to death Arslān Khān also, in 439 H. Bughrā Khān ruled only fifteen months and was succeeded by Ṭoghrul Khān, son of Yūsuf Qadir Khāan (that is, by his brother), who ruled sixteen years (until 456 or 457). His son, Ṭoghrul-tagīn, was deposed after two months by “Hārūn Bughrā Khān, brother of Yūsuf Ṭoghrul Khān and son of Ṭafghāch Boghrā Khān” (?); Hārūn Bughrā Khān passed (‘abara) Kāshghar, made Hārūn (? mistake for Ṭoghrul-tagīn) prisoner; the army of the latter submitted to him, and he took possession of Kāshghar, Khotan, and the neighbouring districts to Bālāsāghūn, where he reigned twenty-nine years and died in 496. These statements can, of course, not be quite correct; if Bughrā Khān Hārūn was the brother of Ṭoghrul Khān, he must have been a son of Yūsuf Qadír Khān, and is, in fact, called so by Ibn al-Athīr himself on the previous page. The reigns mentioned by Ibn al-Athīr, and said to have extended from 439 to 496 (fifty-seven years), do not cover all that time, but nearly ten years less. We know, indeed, from an earlier author, Abu-I-Faḍl Baihaqī, that the first Bughrā Khān (called by Ibn al-Athīr Maḥmud) died not in 439 but in 449. Bughrā Khān Hārūn must have reigned in this case from 467 to 496, Ṭoghrul Khān from 451 to 467; the Qudatqu Bilik, composed in 462, was therefore written in the reign of Ṭoghrul Khān, but Bughrā Khān seems to have been a co-regent of his brother; Ibn al-Athīr speaks of the war made by the two brothers against Shams al-Mulk, Khān of Samarqand. Therefore it was quite natural to come to the conclusion that the Bughrā Khān mentioned by Yūsuf Khāṣṣ Ḥājib was Bughrā Khān Hārūn ibn Yūsuf, and such an opinion has been expressed in my article “Bughrā Khān” in the Encyclopædia of Islām.

The fate of Bhāsa has been an unhappy one; long but little more than a name, his dramas have now been rescued from oblivion only to become the object of an energetic attack, which assures us that they are compilations and adaptations made for the stage of Kerala not earlier than the eighth century A.D., derived to some unknown extent from the works of Bhāsa. which, however, are now lost.

A letter received some time ago from my Lamu correspondent, Muhammad bin Abubakar (commonly known as Muhamadi Kijuma), contains a passage which may be translated as follows:—

“Behold these verses: I obtained them from the Watikuu (that is to say), from an aged woman of Rasini; it contains a testimony (to the ancient glories) of Emezi, which was a great country [city?] with mansions of stone, very large, and before the Arabs settled in Africa, it was already in ruins. It lies to the south of Waraka.”

The following remarks on the pronunciation of Hausa are the result of observations extending over a period of two months made by the writers upon the speech of some of the Hausa-speaking natives employed at the Wembley Exhibition.

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 language of Zanzibar par excellence is Swahili, and Zanzibar may be said to be the home of this language, not in the sense that its oldest form is spoken there, but because the Zanzibar dialect has come to be known best, owing to the writings of such men as Steere, Madan, Sacleux, and, to some extent, Krapf, though his dictionary is mainly devoted to the Mombasa dialect. Also in the days of the opening up of Africa, explorers and traders generally fixed up their caravans in Zanzibar, and these porters and soldiers journeyed into the far interior, some of them remaining there and thus making Swahili a lingua franca understood, as Steere says, along the coasts of Madagascar and Arabia, and in Central or inter-Tropical Africa, as well as by the Seedees (Sidis) in India.

Of the Primitive Indian stops it is true to say, as Dr. J. Bloch says of their descendants in Marāthī, that in most of the modern Indo-Aryan languages they have in principle remained unchanged. This is certainly true of initial stops; and although single intervocalic stops have with the exception of the cerebrals disappeared, new intervocalic stops, double or single, have been introduced as the result of assimilation among consonant groups.

Within twenty years of the flight of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina, and only ten years after his death, the recently persecuted adherents of the new Faith embarked on a series of conquests which distinguish the spread of Islam as one of the most important, if not the most important, historical period of the last two thousand years. The conquest of Egypt by the Khalifa Omar was hardly complete in a.d. 641, when the Arabs turned westward along the southern shore of the Mediterranean and became involved in a series of adventures which were destined to menace Europe at a most critical time in its history. The people of Arabia had begun to make another bid for world power which the European branches of Western Man eventually achieved, at their expense.