In a review of Professor Hertel's recent little book Die Zeit Zoroasters, to be published in the JRAS., I have said that for his very wide-reaching conclusions concerning the date of Zoroaster there seems in reality to be no evidence at all. A renewed investigation of the facts which seem to bear on this intricate question has only corroborated this opinion; and as there could be no room for a detailed refutation of Professor Hertel's arguments in a short review, I feel it a duty to set forth, in somewhat fuller detail, the main points which speak, as far as I understand, against his new theory.

In a paper contributed to the Bhandarkar Commemoration Volume in 1917, Professor S. K. Belvalkar announced the discovery of a new commentary on the Sāṃkhyakārikā by Māṭhara, and identified it with the lost Sanskrit original of the commentary on that work preserved in the Chinese translation of Paramārtha (c. a.d. 550). Commenting on this suggestion in 1918, I observed that derivation of the newly discovered commentary and of Paramārtha from the same source was an alternative possibility. Professor Belvalkar has now, in a paper which was written to form part of the collection presented to Professor Hillebrandt on his 70th birthday, and is pxiblished in the Annals of the Bhandarkar Institue, adduced reasons in support of his original suggestion.

Hindu cosmography—a vast science of rather complicated nature—has quite recently been made accessible to European scholars by the meritorious efforts of Professor Kirfel, who, in his excellent work Die Kosmographie der Inder nach den Quellen dargestellt (Bonn and Leipzig, 1920), has first of all given us a systematical treatise on this subject, based upon all available sources belonging to Brahmin, Buddhist, and Jain lore. At the beginning of each of the three chief sections of his work Professor Kirfel has mentioned his European predecessors; from these summaries we gather that, while Buddhist cosmography has often been dealt with, though never hitherto in a thoroughly systematic way, and Jain cosmography has scarcely ever been made the subject of profound research, no author except Wilford and Pullé has ever tried to deal exhaustively with the entire domain of Brahmin conceptions of the universe. It seems, indeed, remarkable that this large and interesting subject, which is, besides, of great importance for the study of Hindu religion, literature, etc., should have attracted the attention of so very few scholars; and although the present writer does not, in the main, venture or wish to dissent from the highest living authority on the subject, he would like to draw attention, in brief, to some earlier notices on Hindu cosmography occurring in European literature of centuries preceding the date when the literature of India began to be a subject of truly scientific research in the Western world.

On pages 559–64 of Vol: II of Chronica Majora of Matthew Paris (London. 1874) we find under the date of a.d. 1213 the following curious anecdote regarding King John. The heading runs: Qualiter rex desperans miserit ad admiralium Murmelim. The story, which never seems to have attracted the attention it deserves, is of considerable interest to students of Islamic history, whether it be based on fact or no.

Oertel, in Lectures on the Study of Language, writes (in the footnote on p. 304): “The effect of taboo on the lexicon of savage tribes deserves further investigation.”

This vocabulary of over 800 words has been compiled with a view to supplying some omissions in Belsare's Dictionary, published in 1895. Belsare based his work on the valuable Narmakoṣa of the poet Narmadāśankara, of date 1873. The Gujarātī language has in the latter half of the past and in the present century been enriched by the addition of many Sanskṛt tatsamas, and of Persian or Arabic words. On the one hand, eminent modern poets such as Govardhanarāma and Narsinharao, and present century dramatists such as Dolatrāma Kṛparāma Paṇḍya (a Sanskṛt purist), are responsible for the use of many tatsamas. On the other hand, the advance of science and the more intimate acquaintance with the writings of English authors and poets have necessitated recourse to the classical language for expressing abstract ideas and terms, in which the vernacular is clearly deficient. This must be the excuse for introducing so many tatsamas into this vocabulary. It is unavailing nowadays to reject some as “pressed into service to gratify the vanity of a writer”, which is the reason why Belsare omits them. Yet it is not apparent why he excluded the oft-recurring word (blue lotus), while he inserts the rarer (desirous of salvation).

In my Shina Grammar just published there is a popular description of the sounds written eight years ago in India, when it was impossible for me to consult anyone. Now I should like to alter some of it. In phonetics advance is so rapid that one's descriptions are out of date almost as soon as they are written. Happily it is all advance. There is no retrogression.